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younglegends) wrote2022-12-16 09:00 pm
younglegends) wrote2022-12-16 09:00 pm
[journal] i would still feel the same
hey guys... it's time to reminisce. lol. probably my last real journal post of the year, aside from end-of-year round-ups and media logs (of which i have so many... i have so many dw drafts rn apologies to ur reading pages in the future). only two weeks left, huh? let's have a good end of the year, everyone. i hope you're keeping warm. <3
winter
i don't know what it is about this year but it feels like i've truly forgotten my whole life how beautiful winter is omg... maybe it's because the summer lasted so long or because i was sick for two weeks during the transition but all of a sudden: snow and ice and lights in the pitch black night and air so crisp and cold it hurts to breathe, but in an impossibly good way, like you needed it to remember this body you're living in, this winter you're living through. of course it helps that i have so much to be grateful for right now. i can't help feeling that this time of year always has the energy of the closing lines of poems--toward that clean and beautiful finish, feeling like you've won. december is that, for me, the month of letting go, loosening; softness, somehow, in the bare austerity of what is left.
the year was hard. the spring was hard, so hard it genuinely shocks me a little to remember it, like, ah, really, was that this year? was it that bad? it was. and all that pain is already receding into the fog of memory. i feel a little silly and a little sad to remember that time, which i can only tell myself is what my past self would have wanted me to feel about it now: the rawness having frozen over enough for me to safely appraise it from a distance, through the thickness of the glass. sure, the thaw can still creep in, the crack in the ice. but not now.
always a pleasant surprise to come across a quote that sums up what you've been feeling at the exact time you're feeling it, which means everyone else is feeling it too. for me it was this quote:
eating
eating by myself is always a pretty indignified affair--scrounging together leftovers, eating cheap fast food and wondering why i'm still hungry (the amount of tim hortons breakfast sandwiches and wraps i've scarfed down for lunch at work...), trying to spend as little time as possible on "cooking" for myself because i still have yet to cultivate a healthy relationship with that, i guess. which is to say that if it weren't for eating with others there wouldn't be much to enjoy. and yet there has been so much to enjoy.
some of my favourite, fondest meals of the year.
to cherish
i. a few months ago, back in september, i purchased a necklace. it was half of an intended matching pair to the necklace i bought as a birthday gift for a dear friend. the pendant is in the design of a tarot card: XVII the star. i won't pretend to know shit about tarot but i was really drawn to this necklace, and not just because i've been obsessed with stars since reading orv (maybe a little bit tho). though i've only had it for a short while, it's already become the subject of fun and silly interactions--a student looked at it and proceeded to ask me apropos of nothing what my star sign was (me: pisces. her: yay i'm a water sign too!!); a stranger i passed by for 0.2 seconds on a crowded train i ran to catch somehow had the time to see it, do a double take, and inform me that it was a "beautiful necklace". i wore this necklace almost every single day until i broke the chain a few days ago. it can probably be fixed, or if not the chain can be replaced, but i had the thought--ah, it was really well-loved, wasn't it?
ii. atlas has been with us for almost 4 years now. it's funny to remember him as a puppy--feisty, a menace, chewed holes in my socks when i was still literally wearing them etc. now he wants for nothing but to sit next to you--or sometimes on you--as you both exist in the world. he's wormed his way into all the places: the couch my parents swore was off-limits, having arranged the furniture strategically to block his access and now inevitably rearranged it to allow for a gap; the blanket that was going to be donated and has instead become his bed; the mysterious corners of my mother's frozen garden in the backyard. sometimes in the night i'll go looking around for him and i'll have to check all his claimed spaces, and when i've finally found him--already watching me in the dark--he'll spill onto his side to grant my reward: the opportunity to give him belly scratches and rubs. he'll still cry when we all leave at once. he comes when he's called. no doubt he's spoiled, which makes everyone happy, him and us.
iii. it's impossible to live alone in this world, for which i am in the end so very glad.
the energy of attempt vs the surety of stasis
this mary oliver quote has been rattling in the back of my skull for years; i once copied it into the first page of a new notebook that has since ironically been mostly left blank. i don't think i use this quote the way she probably intended it. this year, i made an attempt. caught a glimpse of all the yawning space and distance ahead to traverse, and stepped right back again.
i'm ending this year a lot how i started it. which is to say that not much has transformed this year, and what did was mostly what i observed. but many things settled in different ways i couldn't necessarily have predicted, and i mostly feel relief. after some years of upheaval and turmoil and agony... i'm glad to have had one that wasn't that, lol? and here comes my own brain with words like "complacency" but against it i do feel grateful for the peace i find myself in rn, however short-lived it may be. wasn't breaking myself into something new as one constantly seems to have to do. i'll hold onto it all for a while longer.
word of the year
2019: invention
2020: secretive
2021: beholden
2022: rescue
what were you expecting!! it's all i've talked about all damn year. isn't life full of these little emergencies and these little rescues. anyway, hey, we made it through.
winter
i don't know what it is about this year but it feels like i've truly forgotten my whole life how beautiful winter is omg... maybe it's because the summer lasted so long or because i was sick for two weeks during the transition but all of a sudden: snow and ice and lights in the pitch black night and air so crisp and cold it hurts to breathe, but in an impossibly good way, like you needed it to remember this body you're living in, this winter you're living through. of course it helps that i have so much to be grateful for right now. i can't help feeling that this time of year always has the energy of the closing lines of poems--toward that clean and beautiful finish, feeling like you've won. december is that, for me, the month of letting go, loosening; softness, somehow, in the bare austerity of what is left.
the year was hard. the spring was hard, so hard it genuinely shocks me a little to remember it, like, ah, really, was that this year? was it that bad? it was. and all that pain is already receding into the fog of memory. i feel a little silly and a little sad to remember that time, which i can only tell myself is what my past self would have wanted me to feel about it now: the rawness having frozen over enough for me to safely appraise it from a distance, through the thickness of the glass. sure, the thaw can still creep in, the crack in the ice. but not now.
always a pleasant surprise to come across a quote that sums up what you've been feeling at the exact time you're feeling it, which means everyone else is feeling it too. for me it was this quote:
Winter is the only true season of touching. In winters, no matter how efficiently you dress up, a raindrop will find you. Fogs will enshroud you and leave their wetness on your face. Dry, cold air will crack your lips. As you inhale, mist will touch your nostrils and the inside of your throat. You will feel winter’s touch on the backs of your ears. Winter’s physicality reaches everywhere.which i found extracted from this essay... always surprising and funny to see how cleanly a quote can be divorced from its context btw. who could have known this essay would be about moss!
eating
eating by myself is always a pretty indignified affair--scrounging together leftovers, eating cheap fast food and wondering why i'm still hungry (the amount of tim hortons breakfast sandwiches and wraps i've scarfed down for lunch at work...), trying to spend as little time as possible on "cooking" for myself because i still have yet to cultivate a healthy relationship with that, i guess. which is to say that if it weren't for eating with others there wouldn't be much to enjoy. and yet there has been so much to enjoy.
some of my favourite, fondest meals of the year.
- hot pot: i love you hot pot. i love you my family and friends. i love you my friends' friends. sometimes happiness really is just eating vegetables and meat out of a steaming pot together.
- dessert: hung out with a lot of people who insist upon the importance of dessert, every time, no matter how much we ate for the main course, and that's something that feels lucky too, something something indulgence abundance giving in to joy that melts in the moment: we're here together, so why not. also, i'm not even a big fan of shaved ice but i ate a lot of it lately (yes, in WINTER) due to hanging out with people who are simply obsessed with shaved ice. still, it's definitely nice as a dessert that's inherently meant to be shared!
- shoutout to my family's favourite restaurants: 1) the northern chinese place that serves up a huge steaming pot of lamb broth, lamb skewers, the best shaobing i have ever tasted that we dip in the chili sauce of their chuanbei liangfen. 2) the cantonese-style restaurant we've frequented for, what, it's gotta be over 15 years now?? which seems like a fake number but it's true--rice soaked in the sauce of their you lin ji (chicken with a dark soy, garlic, green onion sauce) and mapo tofu; the chicken chow mein i've reliably loved since i was a child. 3) the sichuan restaurant's yuxiang qiezi (eggplant; their garlic sauce is simply addictive) and shui zhu yu (boiled fish)--we clear the plates every time, no leftovers.
- and then the specific: that time t and i went out to eat oysters and got drunk off one (1) drink each, got pho to alleviate the effects and promised we'd get to round 2, then rode the train home instead lmfaooo. cooking with t, and being cooked for; getting drunk together watching better call saul. the japanese bbq my sister and i indulged in--snagging the last available table before a line formed--before going to the metric concert. cooking and enjoying shoyu butter mushroom pasta with a. devouring bowlfuls of my mom's ge da tang (dough drop soup). the slice of taro crepe cake i ate for my birthday, which was delicious.
to cherish
i. a few months ago, back in september, i purchased a necklace. it was half of an intended matching pair to the necklace i bought as a birthday gift for a dear friend. the pendant is in the design of a tarot card: XVII the star. i won't pretend to know shit about tarot but i was really drawn to this necklace, and not just because i've been obsessed with stars since reading orv (maybe a little bit tho). though i've only had it for a short while, it's already become the subject of fun and silly interactions--a student looked at it and proceeded to ask me apropos of nothing what my star sign was (me: pisces. her: yay i'm a water sign too!!); a stranger i passed by for 0.2 seconds on a crowded train i ran to catch somehow had the time to see it, do a double take, and inform me that it was a "beautiful necklace". i wore this necklace almost every single day until i broke the chain a few days ago. it can probably be fixed, or if not the chain can be replaced, but i had the thought--ah, it was really well-loved, wasn't it?
ii. atlas has been with us for almost 4 years now. it's funny to remember him as a puppy--feisty, a menace, chewed holes in my socks when i was still literally wearing them etc. now he wants for nothing but to sit next to you--or sometimes on you--as you both exist in the world. he's wormed his way into all the places: the couch my parents swore was off-limits, having arranged the furniture strategically to block his access and now inevitably rearranged it to allow for a gap; the blanket that was going to be donated and has instead become his bed; the mysterious corners of my mother's frozen garden in the backyard. sometimes in the night i'll go looking around for him and i'll have to check all his claimed spaces, and when i've finally found him--already watching me in the dark--he'll spill onto his side to grant my reward: the opportunity to give him belly scratches and rubs. he'll still cry when we all leave at once. he comes when he's called. no doubt he's spoiled, which makes everyone happy, him and us.
iii. it's impossible to live alone in this world, for which i am in the end so very glad.
the energy of attempt vs the surety of stasis
this mary oliver quote has been rattling in the back of my skull for years; i once copied it into the first page of a new notebook that has since ironically been mostly left blank. i don't think i use this quote the way she probably intended it. this year, i made an attempt. caught a glimpse of all the yawning space and distance ahead to traverse, and stepped right back again.
i'm ending this year a lot how i started it. which is to say that not much has transformed this year, and what did was mostly what i observed. but many things settled in different ways i couldn't necessarily have predicted, and i mostly feel relief. after some years of upheaval and turmoil and agony... i'm glad to have had one that wasn't that, lol? and here comes my own brain with words like "complacency" but against it i do feel grateful for the peace i find myself in rn, however short-lived it may be. wasn't breaking myself into something new as one constantly seems to have to do. i'll hold onto it all for a while longer.
word of the year
2019: invention
2020: secretive
2021: beholden
2022: rescue
what were you expecting!! it's all i've talked about all damn year. isn't life full of these little emergencies and these little rescues. anyway, hey, we made it through.