written last night. november days in hong kong; so different from last year.

8:23 pm. he’s asleep on the sofa as I type this. broken social scene is keeping me company but I am not really listening to the words of lover’s spit even though it is one of the best songs on the album. it has been a long time since I listened to it. the past few days I have been waking up to yellow glow of our apartment as the sun touches the walls through the curtains in my room. my morning routines are starting to set their roots in my day. during the first few minutes of my consciousness I am not responsive to the outer world but the words of the day are already being formed in my mind. I imagine them on paper; what they sound like, what they taste like. I picture my words being printed in a book on a shelf in a bookstore. that image, that idea never leaves me. and then I remember.

I remember that my words are filled with gaps and pauses and there is so much I am not capable of noting down the way it should be. sometimes my imagination precedes me and the meaning of words escapes me. so I take photographs instead, I read other people’s words hoping they will provide me with comfort I cannot find in my own writing. I keep thinking of susan sontag and her greatness. I am constantly reminded that the only thing standing between me and being a great writer is laziness. I keep trying to find excuses. writer’s block, too much work, too many people. this and that.

at the end of the day I sit down and write. write, write, write, write. like there’s no tomorrow. because there isn’t one. for some reason filmmaker’s apartment is the only place right now I can find some quiet moments. I wanted to think it’s a good thing but it actually feels as if chains have been tied around my arms. but I still took a minibus back to the ghetto; we had dinner and we walked around. I am confused around tsuen wan and I never really know where to turn because it all looks the same. but then I don’t have to know anything for as long he’ll be waiting at the bus station with a newspaper in one hand and twenty fifth cigarette of the day in the other.

perfect sunday, working sunday, relaxing sunday. warm weather, blue skies. coffee, lunch, beach. markets and bookshops. taking photographs, walking around. talking, laughing, smiling. sitting in silence. bombay, twilight, bokeh. traffic jam, zaz on repeat. chicken kebab with chips for dinner. the day ended in solitude; a short walk from the red district back to central. I fell asleep before midnight.

today marks two weeks that I’ve been back in hong kong. less importantly, it’s also exactly a year since I’d finished my last exam and then never went back to school. winter is drawing closer in this part of the world but sometimes it feels as if we are just pretending. maybe so. I am slowly descending into a daily routine but I am finding it demanding – in terms of sleep and time management for other things. I loathe that term to begin with. I am not even going to attempt to make this a whole rounded piece of writing because at the moment I am just glad that I am writing. just writing. like I used to. like I need to.

it’s good to be back.

ps. if you’re reading this, please get a better mouse.

just a few things I can cross off of my endless reading list. I finished my internship last friday, which freed up a lot of time. most afternoons are now spent in various cafes, reading, writing. filmmaker is usually present to witness this act of what he called “looking like semi-intellectual assholes”. I am probably paraphrasing but you get the idea.

we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. a book must be the axe far for the frozen sea inside us.

disappointment (n.) – the feeling of sadness or displeasure caused by the nonfulfillment of one’s hopes or expectations. I have been filling my notebooks with drawn out lists of new words and phrases learning how to use them in a context that would make sense. still at the end of the day it is the words I already know and have memorized, the words that I have personal experience with that I come back to, trying to figure out whether there is a chance of ever being freed from the burden of sleepless nights and arguments about nothing. literally nothing. another definition of a word that I come back to often is appreciation. in my mind I put it next to love. it is equally overused and treated with equal indifference. to say that I am starting to get tremendously disheartened with everything would be an underestimation. people place importance on wrong things. I am not fighting anything or anyone but if I were, that’s what my battle would be against. relevant vs. irrelevant.

it has been approximately eight months since I have left the institution as a high school graduate. the more time I spend away from classrooms, lunch breaks and other stereotypes associated with being a student, the more I realize that being an educated person has nothing to do with spending ten hours a day in a building with people with whom you are supposed to have things in common. I have always known this but now the proof is becoming tangible. because now I am reading, learning and writing more than I have ever before (the so called time factor comes in here) and it feels as though the path I am supposed to be taking is only at the start of its disclosure. in other words, this is only the beginning of the person I am to become one day.

it is liberating to be aware of this. I could compare this moment to when I realized, for the first time in my life, that I am a human being; a person. I was less than three years old and ever since then I have changed very little. I remember I stood in front of a mirror in a small hallway for a couple of hours, staring into my eyes and thinking, hi there. you’re alive. and your name is sara. now it’s my time to do something of substance so others can create a consequential association to my name. I am hoping it will be more than that crazy girl. except I would be lying if I said that this is about other people and what they think about me. I never cared much about that.

the familiar caffeine high is starting to kick in. 6:21 pm. I can feel the sunset slowly bringing this wednesday to its end. my favorite time of the day.

weheartit.com

*

I am returning to my notebooks. buying finding forrester on dvd and watching it over and over in the last few days has freed my writer’s block and dissolved it into nothingness. my mind is hungry for knowledge, for words, for perfect sentences. I am going start buying cheap paperbacks (as soon as I over come my disgust over second hand books) and read, read, read, read. yesterday morning I rummaged through the piles on the windowsill of my bedroom, recovering my french textbooks from the bottom. I have forgotten everything I learnt a year ago. starting from scratch again. my reading list is endless which makes me panic.

it saddens me a bit that I have abandoned my notebooks this year. in a way I was forced to. but finally the person whose indirect fault it is has disappeared from my life for good. don’t you come back no more. in the last few months so many people have come in and out of my life that I have lost faith entirely. instead of opening up the door a bit as I had promised myself to do, I am finding now that they are shut tight – even more than before. and that’s bad. for everyone involved. is it possible for someone so young to lose faith in love? something that I have barely experienced yet. I go on about this in my large handwriting for another twenty pages but I am going to spare you of all that bullshit. you’re welcome.

I purchased Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons (I like the original russian title better). I bought it mainly because of it. the title intrigued me because of the circle I have found myself in as of late. the french are making sure my insecurities stick and that I never forget a single word. I am not sure whether I should be grateful or full of spite. falling into oblivion isn’t exactly helping my emotional stability. but it’s happened all too fast. somebody before me has underlined words and phrases and wrote notes in margins of the pages. for no particular reason I am imagining it was a woman.

the combination of blue sky, sitting outdoors in a cafe together with doses of caffeine, nicotine and good literature satisfies me more any boy has ever bothered to. I am beginning to understand that in order to discover my existentialist purpose I need to reach deeper and further into what the world surrounding me has to offer. some probably view memorizing poetry and entire paragraphs of classic works as a waste of time but to me it equals the importance of brushing my teeth in the morning (I realize how inappropriate that parallel is). it is almost an unconscious process. sometimes it is hard to define the substantiality of some of those parts in terms of their importance to me and nobody else. because in a way when you are reading a book there is a certain intimacy that creeps into the space between your mind and the pages before you. you want it to be unique. you want that moment and the whole experience to be yours. how do you take something that is greater than yourself and make it your own? in words of william forrester it is a soup question.

a soup question of my own.

finding forester. the hunger similar to that of a starved man has returned in its entirety. I am starved for words, cheap paperbacks, endless cups of strong coffee and french music in the background. lost in words. the pen feels unnatural in my hand even though I have filled more than a dozen notebooks and endless pieces of lined paper with words coming from the depths of my mind; emerging from the darkness.

writing during daylight has never come easily to me, however, lately it has been the only period of time I am able to keep my mind still and focused. I have written more than two hundred thousand words this year and summer is barely half way through. but what does that mean really? how, how do I know when or whether I am ready? how much time, how many nights do I need spend frowning over a couple of partially finished paragraphs before I reach the stage of acknowledgement and more importantly, appreciation of their quality? perfection would be too much of a strong word; I am not wiling to understand or define its meaning. poetic expressions are escaping me and all that is left is my self-invented hate corner and sarcastic remarks in the direction of the contemporary society. the events of my daily life force me to indulge myself in everything that I have but not necessarily own.

I am listening to music that will never be mine, not because I don’t belong into the world it represents but mostly because generations before mine have imprinted irreversible distrust of people like me. I am not sure whether this should be classified as a racial issue because I am just as sensitive when it comes to it as jamal wallace. but the line is so thin and it is within such proximity I can feel its heat. the heat of fire that had been ignited some five hundred years ago but has never burn out entirely. and so I sit on my bed, covered in various mess, seated in accordance to turkish customs, writing down words of meaningless thoughts. and the same time pretending that I understand the lives of individuals that live around the chungking mansions (the slums of hong kong located not far away from my apartment building.) maybe filmmaker was right.

I am back to where I started. fighting hard not to fall in love again. the boy from belgium with the heavy french accent came to my life out of nowhere. I picked him up in a street corner bar of the red district and ever since we have become friends. or some version of friendship. he asks questions constantly but at the same time promises he is not trying to invade my life. because he can feel it. the way I flinch, the way I hold myself back. it’s there. I stay out all night with him but at the end of it all I leave alone. I have never had any set of conditions; it has become a habit I am comfortable with. I am trying to find someone who will actually have the patience and understanding. those will then stand out. right now, though, I feel there is only one person who would understand this; a certain someone in far away california, an entire world away. but I am used to that phenomenon. my whole life is based on it. the sun is about to set down in south east asia and I have only been awake for a couple of hours.

unknown source.

waking up to a clear blue sky. coffee in bed. a whole hour of lounging around before leaving the apartment. favorite tones on the stereo. the thickness of air as I open the balcony door to invite the new day in. beautiful messages from friends. missed calls. missing mommy in los angeles. wanting/waiting to leave hong kong for a while. making plans with friends half way across the globe. finding forrester. reading lists. making notes on various subjects. listening to yale university lectures on the american civil war and post-war reconstruction area. look in the archives of academic earth if you’re interested in educating yourself. I also recommend the introductory lectures on ancient greece. but only if you get kicks out of studying history.

the daily writing routine is beginning to show as beneficial. my days are long but somehow the time flies by at such speed most of the time I am not entirely sure what day it is. because it only feels like tuesday. looking forward to a walk this evening and some time in librairie parentheses. maybe a dinner with a friend and a couple of drinks. tomorrow is already friday. nine days until I am home.

how is your day?

I was drinking my third coffee, chain smoking. writing, filling one page after another, tiny handwriting penned in a dark haze of early morning hours and glow of neon lights. whores outside the window. for some reason I know their names. maria, anna, anna-maria. three sisters; all wearing crosses on their revealed cleavage. red district is a strange part of hong kong but it has always belonged to it. I kept writing. but I knew it would only take a couple of moments before he walked over to my side. you write a lot? I smiled but didn’t answer. I am not comfortable with questions about my writing. I always think of writers who do public readings.

he danced with everybody but me. he made sure he was close enough for me to see him. and I stared at him. I let him see that I am looking. he was looking at me looking at him. our reflections in the mirror looking at each other, our shadows holding hands. siamese twins. his dance moves impressive but shameless. and then she’s always a woman to me. I walked over to him, took him by the waist and whispered, dance with me. he didn’t even think about it. took me to the centre of the dance floor, pressed his sweaty warm body against mine. holding me in his strong but gentle arms. I put my head on his shoulder, breathed in the scent of his neck. he kissed my ear. we barely moved. what are you thinking? he kept asking me, and still does. what are you thinking? I want to know what you are thinking. sunrise washed away our desire and I left him there.

but he waited for me. two three days. then he came for me as I didn’t know where to go. he held my hand as we crossed the road because I was a little more than intoxicated. we sat together, breathing the same air. much later after we changed our locations, I sat close next to him. resting my head against his shoulder. he leaned into me, our heads touching. I want to kiss you. it was beautiful. his large lips, soft skin on the back of his neck, curly thick hair. we didn’t move a lot. eventually he walked with me to get a taxi, and just before closing the door he leaned in and kissed me one more time. today there have been four missed calls.

pierro.