–
i’ve been terrible with tumblr, but this is what happens with tumblr, at least with me. i do check my dashboard almost everyday, but i don’t always have words i want to put here in this space, though i enjoy the comfort of having it, knowing it’s here for when there’s something i want to say, something i want to record and share.
–
i’ve been thinking about friendships lately, and i was going to say that i’d been thinking about them a lot lately, except that’s untrue. i’ve been thinking about how friendships die, too, and how this is a belief i’ve had for years and how it isn’t something i regard with any amount of regret – or maybe that’s just my ability to mourn the end of something but then move on because i do think things come to an end for a reason, and, usually, when it comes to people, that reason is change.
i do think i’ve changed a lot since i moved to nyc. i learned a lot about myself, about my ambitions, about my fears and lack of self-esteem, about my personality, about my identity, about my depression and inclination for suicidal thinking, and i’ve changed a lot in accordance. i’ve learned to be alone in whole new ways, but i’ve also learned to seek out people who are both good to me and good for me. i’ve learned to accept care, and i’ve learned to give care. i’ve learned that rejection crushes me to levels i couldn’t even fathom before, but i’ve also learned that i might lack confidence in every aspect of my life but that i have it in spades when it comes to my writing. i’ve learned to be both generous and fiendish with my time. i’ve learned that i live, breathe, dream books and literature but that books and literature, surprisingly, will not save me and that that is actually a comfort, that this thing that is my life is not what will save my life when i’m sinking.
i’ve learned that the one thing that hasn’t changed is that i still love and need nell and music as much as i did before, that, in those darkest moments, nothing else can reach me, that i can reach for nothing else and cling to it to save me.
some might argue that not all change is good, and maybe parts of me haven’t changed in the best ways, but change is change, and i’m okay with who i am today – i rather like her, in fact, and like where she’s going and what she’s going to do, how she’s going to live, and what she’s going to write.
–
been going to book events as usual and have been better about writing them up! a few from recent weeks, all great, but the viet thanh nguyen/vu tran talk and roxane gay conversations were particularly spectacular:
- jung yun.
- helen macdonald and mary karr.
- hanya yanagihara.
- patti smith.
- viet thanh nguyen and vu tran.
- roxane gay.
also, here is a page of books i’ve read so far in 2016 with links to instagram reviews. it will be updated as i continue to finish books.
cherry blossoms! one of my top 3 favorite times of the year!
more photos on the toilet papers!
"The Professor was reading the note clipped in the most prominent spot on his jacket, the one he could never avoid seeing as he got dressed. "My memory lasts only eighty minutes.“ I sat down on the edge of the bed, unsure whether there was anything more I could do for him. My mistake had been the simplest one – and perhaps the most fatal. Every morning, when the Professor woke up, a note in his own hand reminded him of his affliction, and that the dreams he’d dreamed were not last night’s but those of some night in the distant past back when his memory had ended – it was as though yesterday had never happened. The Professor who had shielded Root from the foul ball last night was gone. Somehow, I had never quite understood what it meant for him to wake up alone each morning to this cruel revelation."
— Yoko Ogawa, The Housekeeper and the Professor (102)
quick bites.
01. started a publicity internship last week, and it’s been fun and interesting and all-around rad. and hard work. there’s a lot of lifting of boxes and standing and packing books because publishers send out a lot of books.
02. so many things bubbling in my head that i want to write! for now, i’m just going to say that, today, picador published jung yun’s shelter and penguin published the story of hong gildong, which is their first korean penguin classic, and i can’t PSA about these books enough. seriously. shelter is fantastic, and i can’t wait to read this new translation of hong gildong. and did i mention it’s the first korean penguin classic? part of me can’t believe it took this long for them to publish a korean title. all of me is giddy that one finally exists and hopes that there will be more to come.
03. i ordered bandi’s the accusation in korean, and i’m very interested to read this, not only because it’s the first short story collection by a north korean but also because i’m very curious about it on the language level. i have thoughts brewing in my brain as i wait for it to arrive.
04. speaking of my brain … my brain simply refuses to remember katakana. hiragana? no problem. kanji? difficult but a fun puzzle. katakana? what the fuck, no.
05. posted a new tasting menu, “white day,” to marble bird bakery yesterday! would love and appreciate if you’d check it out because this is a project that i love and is very special to me! link is here! yey!
i used to love murakami when i was in my early twenties, which is when i “discovered” him. i started with the wind-up bird chronicle and went through his backlist like water and read probably 90% of his novels over the course of two-three years — i was obsessed and couldn’t get enough.
i think that murakami has a way of writing loneliness that speaks to lonely souls. in my early-twenties, i found his work comforting, not necessarily because of narrative or character but because of the tone and mood he captures with his simple prose and surrealism (despite my dislike of surrealism) (and magic realism), and i think part of me could strongly relate to the solitude of [all] his main characters’ lives, their quiet repetition, their nostalgia even, their sense of aloneness in a strange world.
which is why i still think of murakami fondly despite having fallen out of love with his writing in recent years.
it does bother me how male-centric his novels are and how one-dimensional his women characters are, but, to be honest, my loss of love has mostly to do with how his novels all follow the same formula. you generally know what’s going to happen in a murakami novel — you’ll follow the male protagonist through his quiet, hum-drum life, and he’ll have one loud, brash friend, and he’ll encounter strange things and meet a girl and obsess over her ear, and he’ll be sort of changed but maybe not by the end of his journey. it’s a rudely reductive way of looking at his work, i acknowledge, but i find that to be the usual expected framework of murakami’s novels (with a few exceptions, of course). if murakami is anything, he’s totally consistent, and i think, at one point, mostly likely after 1q84 (which i did like and find interesting), i simply lost interest. i mean, colorless tsukuru is so beautifully and thoughtfully designed, and i do still love that opening passage, but, otherwise, it was just so, so bland.
maybe it says something that the murakami novels i still think of kindly are the ones that follow women — sputnik sweetheart* and after dark — as well as south of the border, west of the sun, which had one of murakami’s less one-dimensional women (i quite liked shimamoto). and 1q84 even, thought it could have been (should have been) edited down severely.
or that the novel i absolutely hated (hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world) had one of the most offensively one-dimensional women i’ve ever read, as well as your very typical murakami protagonist male who gets sucked into another world while on his quest.
or maybe none of this says anything at all, and i’m simply trying to over-analyze.
* i must also add that it has been years since i read sputnik sweetheart and have not gone back to it, especially since my second read of norwegian wood drastically diminished my initial love for that.
–
this is getting long, so i expanded some more about murakami and influence on the toilet papers [here]! thanks for the Q!
and i do like nell’s speechless album! i do wish they’d perform more off it (and from their older songs in general).
it’s international women’s day, and i’m not that big on hashtags (despite sporadic participation), but i’m all about opportunities to share asian-american and [east] asian books-in-translation (i admit/acknowledge that my geographic focus is narrow). here are ten books by international women i love.
- banana yoshimoto, lizard (washington square press, 1995)
- marilynne robinson, lila (FSG, 2014)
- krys lee, drifting house (viking, 2012)
- ruth ozeki, a tale for the time being (penguin, 2013)
- mary shelly, frankenstein (penguin clothbound classics, 2013)
- han kang, human acts (portobello books, 2016)
- helen macdonald, h is for hawk (grove press, 2015)
- charlotte brontë, jane eyre (penguin clothbound classics, 2009)
- jang eun-jin, no one writes back (dalkey archive press, 2013)
- shin kyung-sook, i’ll be right there (other press, 2014)
also, one of my favorite book quotes comes from yoshimoto’s “helix,” a story which can be found in her collection, lizard:
“even when i have crushes on other men, i always see you in the curve of their eyebrows.” (64)
happy international reading!
hello, i made a website, and you can find it here, and it’s a website that brings together food and really short fiction. if you have time, i’d appreciate if you could check it – i suggest you start with the “about” page then make your way down the tasting menus!
yey! enjoy!
hullo!
i’ve been listening to it the last few days, and, while i can’t say i head-over-heels love it, i do like it, and i’m excited that mot’s back. i love their eerie, unsettling sound; it has a heavy atmosphere to it; and i’m all about music that puts me into weird, floaty headspace. (does that even make sense?) (it’s one reason i love nell and metric, too – they also create great headspace.)
songs i love and have been listening to repeatedly:
- “헛되었어" – what a great song to start the album on. it sets up the overall tone and mood of the album beautifully.
- “perfect dream” – i really, really, really wish mot would release instrumentals for their songs, especially this. the music is so fucking beautiful, especially the piano and keyboard, but i’m not as in love with the vocal melody, though i do like the lyrics:
날 지켜주던 침묵들이
내게 말했지
모든 걸 원했던 내겐
들리지 않던 위로를
오늘이 지나면
조금은 나아질지 모르죠
모든 게 사라진
완벽한 꿈속에 잠들면
the silences that protected me
said to me
to me, who wanted everything
comfort i couldn’t hearif today passes,
you don’t know if things will get a little better
if you fall asleep within the perfect dream
where everything’s disappeared
- “재와 연기의 노래” – eaeon’s voice was made for songs like this. i also really love the instrumentals for this, and this song just crawls under your skin and haunts you. lyrics paint quite a picture, too:
재로 덮인 하얀 마을에
재로 지은 하얀 집에
재가 되어 버린 심장을 가진
하얀 재 소녀
타 버린 피아노 앞에 앉아
타 버린 마음 노래하죠
라 랄라 랄라 랄라
in a white village covered with ashes,
in a white house built of ashes,
having a heart that’s become ash,
a white ash girlshe sits in front of a burned piano
she sings of a burned heart
la lala lala lala
재로 덮인 하얀 마을에
재로 지은 하얀 집에
숯이 되어 버린 심장을 가진
까만 재 소년
타 버린 기타를 들고 앉아
타 버린 마음 노래하죠
라 랄라 랄라 랄라
in a white village covered with ashes,
in a white house built of ashes,
having a heart that’s become charcoal,
a black ash boyhe sits holding a burned guitar
he sings of a burned heart
la lala lala lala
in general, i love how mot layers sound. it’s very intricate but seamlessly done, and it doesn’t wear the labor that obviously goes into it. the thing i dislike most in literature or music is when you can see the effort in the work, but mot makes it all sound so effortless, though you know a lot of thought and consideration has gone into every detail of their music. i love and appreciate and respect that dedication/commitment to craft (that doesn’t devolve into art for art’s sake), especially when you get an album like theirs. thumbs up, i say!
(also i probably botched some part of their lyrics … translating lyrics makes me hella antsy.)
–
a few weeks ago, i ran into a friend i hadn’t seen in months, and we went to get dinner. as we were catching up, she asked how i’d been, and i told her honestly that i hadn’t been doing well – but, also, as is the norm, i tried to deflect and move onto other topics quickly, tried to turn the conversation back to her. she answered whatever trivial question i’d asked her quickly, before saying quietly, kindly, don’t do that. what’s going on with you?
i’m not someone who’s comfortable talking about shit she’s going through, but it was the first time someone directly called me out on it. part of me writhed inside because, seriously, i don’t do vulnerability well (who does?), but the other part was grateful for her doing so, for implicitly saying that what i was going through was important enough to be spoken, to be heard and considered and addressed.
–
good luck to everyone taking the NY bar today and tomorrow! no matter how shitty and uncertain things are in my life right now, i am so, so glad i didn’t continue down that route. i’d rather be tumbling mid-leap in this stupid, crazy leap of faith that is my life because at least there’s masochistic contentment there – or maybe i’m so mentally numbed from metaphorically bashing my head against the wall these last 18 months …
–
i picked up the guitar again last week, and it’s been two years since i last played. my fingertips are unhappy and sore now; even typing sends tiny, tiny jolts of pain up my fingers; but i’d forgotten how relaxing it is to be able to tinker away on an instrument, how much the little accomplishment of learning a song can mean. does it mean much in the bigger scheme of things? no, not really, and i’ll never be a great guitarist, but that isn’t the point, simply that here is this thing, and it is something i can do and enjoy, something to store away for greyer days.
–
a point of comfort: that, when i bring up the possibility of my moving away from nyc when my apartment lease is up, there are people who protest. that, even though the last eighteen months have been unspeakably difficult, there have always been people there to check in on me, to ask hey, how’re you doing, to share a meal. it means a lot to me, this community. it’s what makes leaving so impossible – people and books, books and people, this city that has always been kind to me.
–
i can’t stop eating hot dogs. :|
toni morrison. this past tuesday. write-up on the toilet papers.