plagued by nostalgia
entry no. 1 ⸻ with love, from chicago
I wonder why the present has always seemed so unattractive to me. I’ve consistently felt pulled to the past. Since childhood I’ve been plagued by nostalgia.
I think at times: Maybe if I just closed my eyes my memories could become visceral enough to transform into my reality. If I just stayed right here with my eyes glued shut, maybe I’d feel my body move backward. I could defeat time.
I suppose that’s why I take photos. If I can’t capture the tangible reality itself, then I’ll use the visual as a means to capture the emotional. These attempts are moderately successful at best. But to be able to look back and feel just a sliver of what I felt at a given time is enough. For me, at least.
I took the photo above at around 10 or 11 PM in Tokyo the night before I was flying back to the US. I was crying. You wouldn’t have known that, of course. I was walking the streets of Ikebukuro with tears streaming down my face. A shameless public cry. The tears were the manifestation of a sort of inconceivable happiness and a deep, deep sadness. It doesn’t really matter to you why I felt that, but I look at that photo and think of those feelings and the sensations return. Not in totality, but in pieces. A photo is a memory after all.
A memory will always be different from the real experience because there is error in retrieval. Memories can be disappointing in that way. It’s as if every time you remember, you lose a piece from a puzzle of the memory itself. Eventually you’ll just be left with fragments. Perhaps you’ll be left with nothing.
But still, when I recall a certain memory I can’t help but feel like my body is being pulled from all directions. Forwards and backward and into the sky and ground. I feel a twist in my chest and ten tons heavier. I am stretched to my maximum. All I can do is stay still and let the want consume me. Why can’t I be happy with the now?
I don’t have a solution to this dilemma, really. This is not a new phenomenon. I think possibly every human to exist has grappled with this. Its universality doesn’t make it any less consuming. It will continue to eat at me. It will continue to eat at you. Maybe the solution is to resign my existence to the insatiable nature of nostalgia. A sort of radical acceptance, I guess. It seems like an unsatisfactory resolution.
In the meantime, I suppose I’ll continue to take my photos.
The sun and the moon, but that’s a constant.
The color of each given time of day. Morning is blue, but so is night. Day can be yellow, but also lilac. Sometimes I feel like each moment’s corresponding color; sometimes I don’t.
Elasticity. The feeling of being pushed and pulled at once. Kind of like the moon, gravity, etc. Feeling as though your body desires to exist in multiple states at once. Being challenged, challenging yourself. We are fluid, yet there is a rigidity to living in a single body. The elastic exists in a single state at the start and end but takes many forms amidst the in-between.
Maps by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Karen O wrote this song in five minutes. The lyrics are honest and repetitive. But love is repetitive, it is pleading, it is tenacious. It begs to be seen in contrast to other loves. How very earnest this song is, but it’s that quality that makes it so timeless to me.
Twin Flame by Weyes Blood
The production of every Weyes Blood song is so intricate. Her voice is that of an other-worldly siren—a song you must hear to understand. Natalie Mering, I love you.
Colour Green by Sibylle Baier
This song is so stripped down, it could have easily slipped through the cracks. Yet, I keep returning to it. It brings comfort to me as a lullaby would to a baby.
I appreciate if you’ve stuck around and read until the end of this entry. The very fact that the thoughts I conjure in my little brain are valuable enough for you to read is such an honor to me. I hope you’ll find me next time.
Until then,
