From the Archive: Early October Edition [2023]

[From the Archive: Early October Edition 2023]

Hello my lovelies,

It’s been a long time. I meant to write more to you, I swear - except I just haven’t been able to bring myself to finish anything. I blame the sunny, languid temptations of summer. But alas - autumn is coming and it’s time to put the summer dresses away and the writing cap back on. So here I am.

I’ve been feeling fragmented lately, all loose ends and flitty thoughts. My pile of drafts has sadly descended into a site of dismembered chunks, a leg of a predicate here, an isolated adjective over there, the odd homeless sentence gasping for breath amidst the carnage. So I’ve decided: why not embrace the chaos and the formlessness?

I’m going to experiment with writing these letters in the form of Zuihutsu - the running brush. This is inspired by Sei Shonagon’s The Pillow Book which I absolutely adore (and is very much responsible for my obsession with the Heian period!). One thing I love about Zuihutsu is how it allows you to accompany someone through their lived experience, whether it’s the unique mundanities that make up their everyday or the spontaneous glimpses into the workings of their mind.

[1] It’s my first time walking into the heart of the Isle of Dogs. I see bleak industrial low-rises, dark specks against the wispy clouds and peach sky, Keat’s soft-dying day marred by the harsh, unfeeling landscape. What a waste of a lovely Autumn sunset.

I see a couple lonely-looking swans circling on the water. It looked like they were crumbs in a gaping brick mouth.

“You know my dream is to live in a forest”, I hear a girl tell her friend.

I couldn’t agree more with her at that moment.

[2] Whenever I’m insecure about a decision, I have this need to find justication through some form of intellectual validation.

F tells me to rest, C tells me to rest - repeatedly over the last few days - C also tells me to rest. I don’t rest. A few hours later, I catch myself skimming through Levy’s paper ‘No Time to Think’. “Leisure is important for creativity and contemplation”, Pieper exhorts.

Yes, I think I might just rest tomorrow.

[3] Things that make my heart sink: Slack pings. Remembering that it’s Monday tomorrow. When the dance teacher plays the song for the class and it’s a song you don’t know and isn’t very vibe-able. 7 minutes till the next train. “Thanks for applying to…”. When you’ve got a lovely view at the theatre and a tall person shuffles along in the row ahead and sits down right in front of you. You walk into a restaurant in a foreign country and you only hear English, and every language but that language. Accidentally clicking into ‘All Mail’ after work and seeing a stressful email. When I fulfil nature’s calling and realise there’s no toilet paper in the cubicle. Lovely green Matcha dessert, except it’s actually pistachio.

[4] O shows me footage from the bike cam he wears when cycling to and from work. He mentions that he’s reported 177 incidents to the traffic police, has attended court once as a witness, and has gotten a warning for rushing a red at the end of one of the videos he has submitted. “Keeping London roads safe”, I nod, impressed. “I’ve only ever seen 4 accidents and I bike to work everyday”, he points out.

I recount my trying journey to the Leys School in the dark on my bike (one of the only ones I’ve undertaken) from back in my Undergrad days. “It was raining as well”, I throw my hands up dramatically. “But that’s basically just to the Fitz Museum.” “It’s a big road with lots of cars.” “It’s Silver Street”. O is not impressed.

On my walk home after dinner, I see a guy cycling with his hands in his pockets.

Show off. Good thing I prefer walking anyways.

[5] Serendipity has a way of seeping in, like sunlight in a curtain-drawn room.

I cancel my Roam subscription because I want my digital garden to be more visual - more spirited, less sterile. I check my inbox later that day and come across a Substack email about Sane.

“A more creative and collaborative internet”, they promise. Well wouldn’t that be nice. 

[6] In our era of the great intangible Cloud, we’ve forgotten the power of physical spaces and objects. As an ex-tech worker (and current digital human) myself, I find myself hunched over my laptop all day, staring into the phantasmic world of my 17x15 screen. Always the same stock icons featuring a white silhouette overlayed on neat little square boxes, the same cartoonish faces and sanitised spaces (Miro, Slack, Notion - woohoo). I want the roughness, the edges, the cracks. I want to see the brush strokes, the unshaved ends, the wear and tear of time.

[7] Marie Kondo tells me to surround myself with objects that “spark joy”. While I understand the sentiment behind it and agree that it’s a useful rule-of-thumb to follow on occasion, I’ve always found that phrase a touch too tepid and one-dimensional for my romantic sensibilities.

I don’t just want a dull, mechanical spark- I want a whole goddamn fireworks show. I want a raging wildfire in New Mexico, a warm hearth, a flickering candle in the wind. I want different colours and textures and spirit. I want objects that make me feel — be it wonder, gentle melancholy or better yet, that rush of something that can’t be wrangled into words; objects that excite the imagination and send me winged and singing onto Argive soil.

[8] Things that annoy me: Pigeons that fly low, especially those that shoot straight at you. Dried rose petals from my mask stubbornly clinging onto my face towel. Making more mirror stains when I try to clean. Being late to dance and not getting a front row/mirror spot. Ads in the middle of a relaxing Lo-Fi soundtrack or Anime OST. GPs that need multiple attempts to draw blood. Having to decide between books to buy. Trying on a cute dress and then you see the price tag. Loud, obnoxious conversation nearby when reading. Phones buzzing near me when reading. Phones on the bed. People scrolling on phones. Phones in general.

[9] I’ve recently decided that I like red wine more than white wine and Umsehu more than Yuzu Wine. F claims that the former is his influence, but I disagree. I used to crave sweet liquor, but now I want depth of flavour.

[10] Some bad habits that I have: I never know how to take leave gracefully; I have the tendency to drag out interactions until the other person mumbles some excuse to go or says the perfunctory “let’s get the bill”. Not throwing empty toiletry bottles away because of the stubborn belief that I might be able to squeeze just that little bit more out of them. Scrolling through old photos as a method of procrastinating. Drinking too quickly - whether that’s a Turmeric latte or a glass of wine (dangerous!).

[11] Another instance of Serenditpity (with a capital S). I’m sitting in Naru with F after a long day at Windsor. I’m about to order the beef bulgogi, as I always do. “That looks good” F nudges me. I see the girl at the table to my right clapping her hands excitedly over some sort of stew. She and her friends catch me staring. 

“I’m so sorry but that looks amazing. What dish is that?”. 

“Galbi Jjim”. 

That has been my go-to Korean dish ever since.

[12] I wonder how Ono No Komachi and all my lovely Heian ladies would’ve fared in contemporary society. Would they have Substack side-hustles, or be Tumblr b*tches? Sei would’ve definitely been an influencer on Instagram.

[13] Things that pleasantly surprise me: Finding a quaint little side street off a big road that you often walk down. Peeping into the shutters of a random, plain-looking building and seeing a lovely interior within - whether that’s vaulted ceilings or a space peppered with orchids. Japanese-anything in London. A bright flower on the side of a very concrete road. Bookstores in unexpected places. Receiving a message from an old friend I lost touch with. Matcha outside Japan that actually tastes like Matcha, and not sugar water.

[14] Liquid time, slipping through my fingers. “It’s the last year we’re going skiing as a family”, my mum tells me, “your dad is getting old”. A 12-year tradition coming to a close. Four families at Rusutsu over Christmas - a yearly ritual marking the passage of time. Girl, girl-woman, woman. The sturdy oak stands constant through it all. But now, the Vale has opened. Daniel’s missing. Our snow days look more like half-days to match our waning energy levels.

Things that seem like forever-things change. Continents drift. Stars die. But I don’t want them to. 

[14] I dream of Cityplaza Ice Palace, of how it used to look like half a decade ago - blue-speckled black mats, old-school turnstile gates with spinning arms, faces of the coaches smiling down on you from the left wall. I bump into a couple of old classmates - A, B, N, J - some of them I haven’t seen since High School graduation, none of them I’ve ever seen at an ice rink.

I visited the rink in real life a few months back. They’d put a giant screen in the middle of the ice rink during covid (butterflies and waving grass as you do axels), added hi-tech gates and sleek decor, made blue-grey the new black. Yet the smiling coaches still grace the left wall.

I shuffle some classic Taylor Swift when I wake up. Long Live is the first song that comes up.

It’s strange how some places only exist in my memory now, how some faces and people - as they were - are mere patched-up fragments of my recollections.

***

A short collection from my archive (à la Taylor), pre-cabin-in-the-woods (more on that another time). I remember this being fun to write. I hope you enjoyed reading it too :)

Kelly