Space

Space — liminal, imaginary, abandoned, abstract, locative, in-between, nominal, temporal...

Where do you want to be at this very moment? 

I want to go back to that morning when we stepped outside of the electro club at 8 30 in the morning. My hearing, as if shifted gear, as if I changed the radio station, was like separated from the sound of the open-air by something... maybe something like a pair of headphones, or a piece of plastic, that I could almost hear the sound of the space — the space on the streets of Berlin on a spring morning. 

I was not sure if I felt tired, though we stayed up the entire night dancing. I actually don’t remember the dancing part, specifically, but the memory of my self physically being there is clear in my mind. 

We walked in silence, and I pointed out that we were walking in silence, then you said, “it’s like what they say in that movie: that’s when you truly feel comfortable.”

Yes, “when you can just shut the fuck up and enjoy the silence together.”

Whenever I am up early in the morning and am in good company, I always feel like I have entire freedom to do whatever the hell I want, for the rest of the day. That feeling is so incredibly exciting and has so much anticipation to it. It’s like you have all the time in the world. 

I also want to linger in that moment when I imprinted the images into my memory. Images of you sitting in the train, looking out and in thoughts; or when you met me at the train station with your headphones on. You saw me and you smiled. 

I want to be in my small dormitory room again, not in the state when I moved out — blank, just blank — but when photographs of my friends are on the wall, my papers all over the table, light dimly lit, pile of clothes on the chair, bed undone. I would lean out the open window, and light a cigarette. I remember the time when I thought I was exhaling bits of my soul out the window along with the smoke into blue-blackness, because I thought the concept of love was completely and finally crushed for me. It was done. It was over; no more loving and I couldn’t physically imagine being so weak again. There was no more of me to afford. 

But where am I at the moment? 

I am in so many different places. So many. Every hour I feel like I am in at least two different types of space simultaneously. I am walking around in a multicultural city with a so-called “hybrid” identity, where there is a front of interstices, but it is just a front. So much energy poured out into fronting in this country.

I am in silence at home when words should be exchanged, but they just cannot be uttered out. There is just nothing to say, or is there? My mother said, “sometimes it just feels so pathetic eh? There’s nothing to say to each other in the family.” 

I am taking bits of my time out to live the past in the present. 

I am, however, also in a place where I am constantly looking for change. I don’t want changes to stop occurring, otherwise I’d feel stale. 

I am busy, but I don’t seem to be working all the time. I have no time, but I do. 

People often say, oh how I wish to be two places at a time right now. They probably are, just don’t realize how damn confusing it is. 

Hemingway

Cannot resist the impulsion to wanting to share this with you, because it made my heart throb.

From A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway:

"A girl came in the café and sat by herself at a table near the window. She was very pretty with a face fresh as a newly minted coin...

...I looked at her and she disturbed me and made me very excited. I wish I could put her in the story, or anywhere, but she had placed herself so she could watch the street and the entry and I knew she was waiting for someone. So I went on writing.

...I've seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.
   Then I went back to writing and I entered far into the story and was lost in it. I was writing it now and it was not writing itself and I did not look up nor know anything about the time nor think where I was nor oder any more rum St James. I was tired of rum St James without thinking about it. Then the story was finished and I was very tired. I read the last paragraph and then I looked up and looked for the girl and she had gone. I hope she's gone with a good man, I thought. But I felt sad.

...After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love, and I was sure this was a very good story although I would not know truly how good until I read it over the next day."

The Moments

The Enlightenment, the revolutions, the Modern era, the Jazz Age... like Kazuo Ishiguro writes in his novel The Remains of the Day, enormous changes and turning points as such do not arrive in the public realm of media and acknowledgement as they are—the changes that take place are more so as the conclusions and results of numerous discussions and exchanges of intellectual thoughts that happen in different small corners of the world, where one may not even expect to host the key moments to the growing and developing of grand ideas, and perhaps even to the betterment of humanity.
This makes my every day life and some small movements just that much more exciting.

Have you ever had one of those moments, take a vague example, when you venture to write an email to the staff of an institute requiring questions of what are the possibilities and opportunities that you may entail, either out of an impulse or after nights of thinking and “life” decision-making in the shower (you should try that), and you feel this rush of exhilaration of ambition, happiness, hopes, and basically adrenaline through your body to your mind, and you think: “this is it.” That could be just it—one of the moments, and let me emphasize again, THE moment, that brings you onto the path which leads you to somewhere you may have been dreaming to be, or which actually pushes your own limits which you thought were the most you could do with the underestimated ability and courage that you have, or more so, had, since now you have overcome your underestimation of yourself and successfully “exceeded” yourself. No matter where the path takes you, which may not be the destination where you want to be exactly, but it is certainly on the way there, and many steps away from where you started.
Recently I came across one of Bruce Lee’s inspirational philosophies: “Running water never grows stale. So you just have to keep on flowing.”
I am so blessed to have encountered those opportunities that I took, which are now opening more and more doors to new possibilities. Be the running water, and keep flowing. Like the saying, “The only thing that is constant in the world is change.” Only constant changes will bring you to continuously expand your world and maintain the energy that we all once have. Push and pull to constantly make “the moments” happen. Motivation is not something that is possible of staying by our side at all times, but it is surely something that if we keep flowing, we will come across it and emerge into one great magnificent energy without even knowing.
Roller coasters have ups, downs, and loops. WIthout any one of them, especially the downs, the ups will not be as fun, the loops would not even exist.