Hey! Happy new year! I hope everyone is doing alright and keeping warm. My apologies for only sending out a single entry in December, I was studying for finals and dealing with other necessary troubles. Regardless, I am happy to have been able to send out an entry and am continuously baffled by the consistent engagement with this newsletter. I am forever grateful and I hope you are able to find some sense of release in my writing, or at the very least you are able to gawk and laugh at me like a zoo animal. Either is completely fine.
Per usual, there are mentions of death and existential themes in the following entry.
It’s gotten cold again. I slept thirteen hours last night and missed my friend’s birthday party. I’ve decided to apologize this year.
Yesterday I was exhausted and so I went for a run. I ran on the mountain at the center of the city, Frederick Law Olmstead’s masterpiece Parc Mont Royal. I used to run there every day, now only a few times per week. During the first mile I saw someone I slept with last semester. We had sex and he slept over. That was the first time anyone had ever done that. The night before yesterday I was texting him apologies for being unreliable, flakey, all other forms of horrible. We ran into each other, literally, and joked for a bit. He said I could keep running so I did. The second mile was normal. The snow cracked and groaned beneath me as it does and I huffed as I do. The third mile of my usual path begins with a steep uphill climb, maybe for a kilometer or so. Most people turn right at this point and go to the lookout. I turn left up the daunting hill. The path here was desolate, but for a quiet couple dressed in all black. Upon turning the path’s first corner, I looked up. The branches of the trees hung above me frosted and bright against the pink sky. The sun was setting real slow and the ombre of the sky sunk into the snow. The branches intertwined like capillaries and they swayed in the breeze alive. I hate being this descriptive, but I need you here with me. I pulled out my phone to take a photo and quickly recognized the futility in trying to capture this beauty within a flat iPhone photo. I thought about how I would pay any amount of money for a painting or a photograph that could capture the essence of that moment.
That led me to Hugo. Hugo died on Halloween. He took the most beautiful photos of the trees and made everyone smile. Right then I cried because I was there and he was not. I was running in the woods repeating, “I am here. I am here. I am here.” It was completely out of my control. I couldn’t feel my legs pulling me forwards anymore. I wasn’t even running, I was just moving. I was suddenly Percy Shelley. I was suddenly sublime, swallowed whole by the majesty of being. I realized then that I am here and Hugo is not. I realized then that I am here and he is not, but he was. He must have been here. I thought of the lonely stars, their light reaching out to us. You just have to look. It’s cliche, I know, but I need you here with me. Look at the stars. You are embraced. Existence is interaction. There it is. Right there. Now close your eyes. What do you see? Light, reflections.
Somewhere, it is there. I am so sorry.
“We will all die.” That is untrue. We are already dying. There is no absolute. Death is the center of all things. Life is braided around it. Death is the paint, the paintbrush, the canvas, the frame. What death is we will never know. We can only know what death is not. Death is not this. Or this. Or this. Or this. Death is____. It’s in between everything. The Apostle Paul referred to death as the nature of mortality. To Paul, death is not what happens when you die or even the opposite of living. Paul’s death is finitude, limits. Paul’s death is everything. Isn’t it so much less terrifying knowing that death is already here?
I am here. He is not. That is all. Define here. I cannot. Define not. Everything else. Everything is sacred, everything is holy. Nothing is connected and everything is new. I need you to understand me. Do your best. I need you to hear me and listen. I live between moments of misery. Sometimes the Earth opens and I fall into the sky. This is such an incredible place. There are no ethics in anything, no judgements to be made. What will happen has already happened. This is not about time. This is not about spirituality or religion. This is about you and me. We are already gone and I have never met you. You know as much about yourself as you do a stranger. You know as much about a stranger as you do the bottom of the ocean. My professor said, “Ignorance requires knowledge.” In a sense, yes it does, but I think we know something is missing and yet have no knowledge of anything. All things are in motion and nothing can stop that. All objects, all subjects, all in motion. Where? Do not tell me about cycles, I don’t care. Nothing that has happened will ever happen again.
Back to the ground.
I promise I haven’t lost my mind. It’s probably the disease. I spend my time bored. No matter how busy, I am bored. My vision is terrible. When I see you, I see four of you. Forgive me. I know my writing is not special, I promise you I know that, but I insist on writing.
I want to kiss someone. I want to love until I explode. How can you look at a person and not see the stars? The sum of all of us. All things crashing together. I am in love with you, though we have never met. Think of a new color.
My friend told me my personality makes her think I am malnourished. I am over-nourished, blessed by the gift of existence. I love food. If you are counting calories I am so sorry. Before you eat, just eat. We are on Earth and then we aren’t. Spend all your money and do only what you want to do. I was told I need to go into open space alone for an extended period of time. I will disappear for a year and come back with a book no one will want to read. Write a letter and throw it away. I’ll watch every romantic comedy until it makes sense. Anxiety is not it, it’s something else. I either feel completely alien or born across everything. You are me or you are nothing like me. I’m not special, I’m nothing.
I’m obsessed with obsession. Knut Hamsun’s “Ylajali”, Céline’s “Molly”, Edmund White’s countless men, Dostoevsky’s parricide, Paul’s “Christ”, Otto’s “Numinous”, Dr. Frankenstein’s “monster”, Gatsby’s “Daisy”. It’s love. I find it in everything. We can only love what we create. Projections of forms of real things. It’s a trick of the trick of the light. I will make you into something new and I will love you. I cannot know you because I cannot know anything. To know is to love and to love is to create. This is my cosmogony.
Think of all the sunken ships. Metal skeletons. Where do planes disappear? I will find you there.