5/4/24

running away from japan. day trip to california.

i was so far up i could see the roundness of the earth, darkness draining from the edge of the skyline. what a beautiful world with mesmerizing things (6:31AM, los angeles, CA)

i was supposed to be here. otherwise i wouldn’t be

soon you will be in the sky for so long you’ll miss the ground. don’t wish to be in the air. don’t wish that

q: would you have wanted this forever?

a: no. i would’ve hated it. no matter how much i loved it, it would have made me so angry to be made so small, to not have a choice and to be trapped there forever. for my body to have known nothing else. it’s beautiful but i know i would’ve hated it.

i did not know last week that i was to be here, reborn in this body i have envisioned for myself, but now it is here and there is nothing else to say

do i miss tokyo? perhaps i was aching for some distance, thinking it might have granted me something, seeing her face from a little far off and not so close? – i am uncertain. but somewhere along the lines i am secretly silently crouched somewhere, waiting for the feeling to come.

reminder to you, god. i have not been bulshitting life, i am taking life seriously as per your request and i would like you to take this all into account

i know how it has been these past few months, no one giving you quite what you needed. and i want to take you by the shoulders then yumi, and press you to me

i want my city back so badly, don’t want anyone else to have her while i’m not there. i want it to stop breathing until i land again.

on the other hand i think there’s something seriously wrong with tokyo, there’s some sort of discrepancy between the people and the way the city works. also between the people in daylight and the people at nighttime

 

 

5/8/24

i was at the sink somewhere brushing my teeth with two tubes of toothpaste. first one was labeled New York and the other labeled Fear. my dreams have never been so clear

life creation

creative intelligence associates

 

 

5/9/24

somehow, this late, the Tokyo Effect takes her place, settles into my body

and sweet, you don’t have to try and get things back. they are or aren’t yours

 

 

5/11/24

how have i been living my life here so far? in the quietest of ways, like them. why don’t i do that? why don’t i live my goddamn life? because they don’t. i would love to. but right now this moment calls for me to be strong, for me to not breathe also.

be glad this life is not a meaningless loop

my mother’s smile in stranger’s faces. this is exactly what i feared.

but then i hate that i can’t feel safe in new york but that tokyo isolates and estranges me. they’ve both got their killer evils and it breaks my heart

 

 

5/12/24

part of me thinks, what if i can’t do either. what if tokyo numbs me to danger and i go back to new york only to find that my body has grown unaccustomed to danger and i have to learn all over again how to hide my face when i don’t want to be seen? what if i only think i want new york because i hate this? my body has grown used to the safety here. and so what if i can’t ever come back here?

maybe i am just letting neither of the places do anything for me. maybe my problem is that can’t let anyone do anything nice for me

 

 

5/15/24

don’t we all imagine that we’ll be like that someday, our backs bent

we pass by the elderly and laugh with our friends, hands covering our mouths with our sparkly nails like True Frightened Women, and we don’t have a single insecure thought that one day our beauty will be washed out like the face on a copper coin, rubbed away by a fingerprint

i know what it’s like for something to feel inevitable

so this is the magical city. i wonder what is the fate of these people

 

 

5/16/24

i love you and it is not fair, that i am only seeing things clearly now

definitely going to advertise my books as ones having 宮崎 inspired relationships

 

 

5/17/24

it’s like a sickness thinking still of the person not waiting on you, who you have not been waiting for. but sometimes you feel it near, as though it is waiting for you to falter and forget your promises

sometimes i forget you grew up here that you know about all the things i am learning about. you feel so american sometimes mother, though you act so different with your parents here

 

 

5/18/24

but then again it is nice to have something forcefully taken from me

“”find my tokyo””

“”live””

saw those ads on a train

 

 

5/20/24

and i could come to love it all. maybe

my mother always believed i was prettier than everyone, over my rude friends, over even the celebrities i grew up idolizing. isn’t that faith enough?

somehow i’ve pulled this out of my myself. somehow, this is starting to feel more and more possible

 

 

5/21/24

to live in a place where your ethnicity is undeniable

those circles we will never belong to

 

the style here, the fashion

but this is the beautiful part isn’t it, that it’s right in front of you.

i wanted to write a book about mothers and daughters and female friendships i felt it brewing inside me

 

 

5/22/24

81,000 –> 85,000 words

moved a lot of stuff around and it became a bit more legible

 

 

5/23/24

the version of me that wasn’t serious about this is long gone, faded into my blood

cus you know what’s the point of writing books and enjoying them and wanting this if you don’t send them out?

you feel like you see pieces of people

 

feel the sun at my back

when i was twelve my father told me i walk just like my mother and how could i ever undo the order of those words and just how deeply they had pinned themselves to me? years later it is still impossible to remove the pathways those words built inside my brain

doing everything i think i possibly can that i wasn’t doing before

 

 

5/25/24

i feel like that week of april third version of me didn’t know anything. you needed to go to japan first you needed to really understand

maybe it’s time to honor how i felt during those times

that’s all people try to be in this world, is physically beautiful. why? to be loved by other people i guess

 

 

5/26/24

won’t be a fool for anyone

 

 

5/27/24

watching the shadows beneath the door

i wanna meet artists and work at cafes together (and five months later, don’t you do just that? and aren’t you the cause?)

 

 

5/28/24

i’m blasian in this lifetime in order to understand something (new project springs suddenly to life)

 

 

5/29/24

from a young age i have known the shape, cutout, carving of my country but have never felt the blessing of her on my skin, never tasted how it sounded within the confines of a cold embrace. so cool and unfamiliar and yet soft like home, so painfully close to what childhood was.

why doubt yourself? it has been years

and i will never forget that god let me go home that night, did not leave me afraid and stranded

look at how beautiful you are, tokyo; and you are even more than that.

 

 

5/31/24

i wake up from a sleep so deep even my teeth feel swollen, out of place.

 

 

6/1/24

sending picture of a sunset to your mother: hi, hello.

 

 

6/2/24

it was like i died, leaving the city of my birth. watching on social media an influencer visiting nyc for the first time going to all the places i used to haunt. it was like i was a ghost that was watching her inhabit my spaces. it was like i could no longer be present in that physical space, that i was prohibited, and trapped here, until further notice. it was, truly, like i died. i don’t think i could go entirely too long without new york.

 

 

6/3/24

i could do new york alone but i couldn’t do tokyo alone. i know that in my making.

 

 

6/4/24

to the twelve year-old thing in me that will not leave, that time my mother told me spiders in the house were a form of protection — remembering that years later only after i’ve just smacked one into the wall is not useful, only sad.

 

 

6/5/24

tomorrow it’s 90,000 words

 

 

6/9/24

is this the lesson: that i can’t protect myself if i am to live?

[god slaps his forehead in frustration.]

 

 

6/12/24

you really are lovely, he said putting his chin on his knee and looking at her

inched to 99,000 words

 

 

6/15/24

i don’t know, once you get away from tokyo there really is so much to see

why do birds like fields. and where do birds go that we can’t? what you need is outside of this, outside of me and of us and of you and you must find it out there, walking the world. but what you’re looking for isn’t here

this might just be lovely after all it might be just what i need. i realized i was chasing happiness, or running from discomfort, and so i left the country last month. and i still will not say to myself that it was a mistake.

i have no idea what i’m doing but that must be part of the plan

to take the lessons, take them to heart and almost get out of here, you know? anything is bound to break you open and you really must let it, let it come running at you

 

 

6/17/24

had another dreameth weemeth. and maybe it’s my subconscious just looking for somebody safe that i can’t take the interpretations around here too seriously

 

 

6/19/24

to the country who will still only speak to me in english even though i share your blood — what a shame you cannot recognize me. though i might just be ready to tell you i have been loving you, falling in love with you for quite some time

i hated you because you were a city just like the one i had come dashing from, one i had wanted to escape badly. but i did not give you a chance and for that i am so sorry

 

6/22/24

this is why i now say i will only fall in love with someone who likes mountain-climbing. what kind of deep person are you to go all the way to the summit in silence and by yourself the way i did in kyoto?

i feel like i am always escaping, and how to escape that?

when i got back down to the bottom, i felt nature’s voice inside me say, ‘thank you for spending time with us today’

 

 

6/24/24

we can’t help these things you know, we can’t help who we feel close to

today’s word count goal: 106,000 –> 107,000 words

i just imagine it all the time

 

6/27/24

i have more than i have had in a long time; so why the sadness?

 

 

6/28/24

absolutely have not been looking at you for days seriously

people find ways to chip at my surface, to make me love them

 

 

7/2/24

as long as i have books and writing i know i am not lost from god

 

 

7/3/24

i don’t know your family. i’m not willing to put up with them. love is not enough

 

 

7/4/24

it’s ones belief in oneself, always

you are being stretched and expanded in ways you do not see yet

 

 

7/5/24

what a shame you can’t recognize your own people

really trying to gather my bearings. i love the fruit this will bear

there’s something about this city that makes me need a little guts. to pull it out a little from the little old me. this time, a knife inside a woman.

because being outside of it i can turn myself into it in the blink of an eye

 

 

7/10/24

hm nothing in this brain yet except i’m not feeling very good (will look back and these will be just be words and not real things)

 

 

7/12/24

maybe i only love you because i am leaving you (東京)

 

 

7/15/24

somehow it loves us back. it loves what it’s created, the friends it’s brought together. oh you sick sad ツンデレ. you can’t help but sit back admiring your handiwork

 

7/16/24

i am being given the chance to be loved. asking to be loved means being given the chance to love others. and can i do it. can i do it well, as i have often done when i let go?

 

7/17/24

i feel like i’ve got nothing left to say maybe because it’s getting closer

and then a new book idea springs nonchalantly into your lap. god wants your happiness

 

 

7/18/24

did i pray for it? do i remember

i want to feel good all the time

and the ache in me is unimaginable, to be ignoring what is here

 

7/19/24

a boyfriend; why?

so i can unlock a new version of myself, i said

i think it is just that i have been looking for excitement when i should be looking for peace instead

 

 

7/20/24

i can’t fuxking believe july is almost over

 

 

7/22/24

you were sitting by the curb for five minutes and when i look up from my book you’ve stepped on the gap and i am missing you, missing that expression on your face that i would use as data

 

 

7/23/24

it is the last day of classes here, darling. and just think: you are now unlocking a new version of yourself with all this pain in your chest. it must hurt to feel and face it all at once.

but you are ready now which is why it is happening now

goddamn the pain of leaving everyone is nearly killing me but i’m alive enough to feel it keenly

the pain of saying goodbye is teaching me the pain of saying goodbye is teaching me —

maybe i will not miss tokyo for who she was but for the people i met here that i will remember forever because of her. all the impatient, short-tempered, fleeting anger and pain and loneliness, and what is it i feel now? regret that i am leaving. i curse this irony of this world. this will stay with me possibly forever

my heart cannot take how many goodbyes, all these goodbyes, saying it

your voice got me out of bed

i had no idea it would be like this by the end, i had no idea i would love so many people. devastating but feels hopeful somehow

i am reminded yet again that beautiful things end all the time and it is not for me to decide when they end or that they should continue, but only how i feel about it

the world being full of people you will never meet and people you will never speak to again

heart may be cracking open, stay tuned

 

7/24/24

and some people you will just never see again no matter how hard you try