I’m on my proverbial knees, begging for mercy as the short-term memories arduously tread through my brain’s simile of water; as if each moment in time has grown heavy legs, now pushing through the waves like a triathloner resisting the tide, defiantly making it to the (rarely) calm shore of my mind that is each present moment (usually chaotic), failing to drown out of view, instead permanently positioned as ever-present in the reality of now. And now again, meaning every memory claims victory against banishment from long-term storage, ceasing to release, relinquish, and retreat; each memory becomes more immortal than my very own mortality. Splashing and haunting.
Every single moment I’ve ever felt I now feel eternally in the forefront of my mind. ‘Tis a mighty curse. I have hexed myself, my memory, and my mind. Like fire burning in the wet sand. I’ll remember that waiter from The Butcher’s Daughter who’s now sighing way too loud in my Pilates class. Not going back there. Like ever. Oh, and that time I saw my friend’s sister’s friend’s friend on Bedford who definitely doesn’t remember who I am but I did. I do. That address I wish I never felt familiar with but can’t avoid. That fight I wish I hadn’t started in the kitchen in the middle of the night in 209. What love felt like, scarcely forgotten. That time blueberries made me sick. That time I cheated on a German test when I was eight and had to sit in the corner after Herr Ruby scolded me. That song we loved. That time my bra was showing in class during a Chinese presentation and the teacher was the only one who told me to check the “missing button.” That time I started swimming the wrong way during a final race. That other time I farted for seventeen hours straight on the Cathay Pacific airplane ride and my mom thought it was a sewage issue with the bathroom and had the flight attendants convinced there was a structural issue with the aircraft crawling around the cabin on their hands and knees. Until I farted again in the car ride home. Her face when she realized. The list goes on.
My brain needs me to write like a credit card company needs the postal service for promos but you see I’m tired because you see it’s that time of the month you see and I was so exhausted (it’s been one of those days where I got home exactly 12-hours after leaving for work) that I didn’t make it to CVS in time so I have now self-induced an extra day (& perhaps more) of an already very long seven days. God is definitely not a woman. The patriarchy always finds its footing and stops mine. The painter would never turn the brush towards herself. The character of each stroke is but many in a bucket of paint, not a singular absolution. If I don’t write this down I’ll explode, combust, faint, drown from inhaling the acrylic: death by paint. I’m hemorrhaging from my compulsive ideating. Proverbial knees. Proverbial knees. I couldn’t allow the dye of each thought to bleed into the page from overthinking…what a shame that would be. Only the fake tanner would remain, ensuring the pruned skin would maintain a distinguishable patchy orange tint beneath the gloss.
My freshman year English teacher (high school not college), Janae, once said to me after class: “I wish I could watch a live CAT scan of your brain.” And only now, ten years later, do I get it. Up until now, I just thought everyone else’s brain felt like one was constantly micro-dosing with their morning coffee (but cube the visuals).
“Why do pickle jar posts always get published late into the night,” he asks, with trepidation, supplanting curiosity for misplaced judgment. Curiosity never killed the dog. Isn’t it obvious? It’s when the air is quiet and the late-night-now-early-morning is ripe with creativity as the dust churns to stillness, settled, silent, calm, quiet. Thoughts begin their race against the riptide and the current is picking up. In this economy of content, creativity feels like rationed bread during WWI and I’m the one stealing all the dreams and dormant thoughts mistakenly securely stored in each mind nestled atop those Brooklinen sheets snoring, dozing. I’m the OG BFG (before turning honorable) here to pluck dreams away.
Imagination is a hot commodity and I’m all about knowing the trends my friends. My hand shakes through the hyperextension of my stark focus as I buzz with memories and now ideas; I guess I really am a writer living in Brooklyn. Noah introduced me that way at the LIVE PEOTRY reading. But what would I read? This. Right now. I’m actually reading this. One clap. Wake up. No really, I’m just a girl with a substack and a lot of thinking to get through. And so…I procrastinate by fixating on memories I can either never access in real life again, return to, change, or remember as they were really, you know fully isolated in their truth, either due to age, time or delusion. Instead, I’ll replay them until the memories evolve into a vision I feel comfortable with. Which I’ve realized means that I’m letting the present slide away faster than mayo on a butter knife smoothed onto a BLT.
Some memories, like ones I have from Hong Kong, I can’t access because the geographical location is so distant and the nostalgia’s crystalized to a point that if I prod too hard the glass will pierce my sticky fingers.
It’s 2008, I’m stalking the stacks of the DVD library in the west wing of the Ladies Recreation Club, situated on the uphill slant of Hong Kong Mid-Levels’ Old Peak Road. It was there, in the cavernous shadows of chestnut stacks, that you found a playground of rom-coms and graveyard of thrillers; every movie conceivable sat at our fingertips. Catherine Payne and I would revel in our freedom. All we had to do was slide out our pick from its dusty place on the shelf, then state the most powerful words you’d ever say: the family membership code. It was the ultimate test of maturity and a huge bonus to how cool you were.
That’s a good one. And there are others, much closer in time, like graduating from high school and college, and also some others, that feel more blurry compared to a memory from fifteen-plus years ago that really is quite confounding; maybe the dust hasn’t set yet and the manual focus is still readjusting. Some moments are too close to understand so we must wait for time to wisen our memories and sober our spirits.
Cathay Pacific! 😳
she never even got to be a painter until recently🥺 anyway.. cant wait to watch u ascend patriarchy ty for sharing ur loveliest mind w us alll