I started watching this kdrama titled “recipe for farewell” recently. The male protagonist would cook for his terminally-ill wife, then post the recipe and his thoughts on his blog. It made me feel that blogging could be so simple. Something as mundane as the process of cooking a meal can be made to be so interesting when we accompany it with our inner monologue.
We don’t think much of cooking that meal, our inner monologue, and capacity to eat that meal. Writing this reminds me of a passage I’ve read in Station Eleven recently:
Clark was thinking about how lucky he’d been. Not just the mere fact of survival, which was of course remarkable in and of itself, but to have seen one world end and another begin. And not just to have seen the remembered splendors of the former world, the space shuttles and the electrical grid and the amplified guitars, the computers that could be held in the palm of a hand and the high-speed trains between cities, but to have lived among those wonders for so long. To have dwelt in that spectacular world for fifty-one years of his life. This was how he’d told Miranda Carroll of her ex-husband’s death: he’d pressed a series of buttons on a device that had connected him within seconds to an instrument on the other side of the world, and Miranda—barefoot on a white sand beach with a shipping fleet shining before her in the dark—had pressed a button that had connected her via satellite to New York. These taken-for-granted miracles that had persisted all around them.
Most of us have grown up surrounded by so much modern comfort that it would take extraordinary effort to pause and reflect on how much it takes for it to be delivered. I have spent so much emotional energy being sad about the current state of the world, but reading Station Eleven made me feel thankful that despite that the current pandemic virus being insidiously destructive, at the very least I can be here typing this because I can still charge the battery on my laptop and the internet still works. That’s the power of reading fiction I guess: imagining other worlds enable a contemplation of our relationship with the one we’re in.
I’ve always aspired to be a proficient note-taker but I am still terrible at it. It is also a practice I guess, to be mindful enough to document those passing thoughts. We have so many thoughts passing through our brain that we take them for granted thinking that they are so plentiful and typical. Now that everyday we’re living with a pathogen that can cause brain fog and other neurological deficits, I try to be more appreciative on my longwinded thoughts and ability to form coherent sentences with reasonable spelling skills. During my infection one of my greatest fears was to lose my ability to write. Writing – another one of those things we do so often that we don’t think much of it.
I think about why I don’t take down notes or blog as often as I would have liked. I think there is a subconscious belief that my thoughts and lived moments aren’t that interesting. To capture them there must be a belief that they are worth capturing, and to develop the habit and workflow to capture them. Then we have to develop the awareness to activate that workflow whenever something potentially interesting pops up. I often notice interesting thoughts during runs, but I don’t have something that could easily capture these thoughts. Being able to record voice memos during the run would help, but I still struggle with using my voice.
Maybe some people think that it is somewhat narcissistic to develop such an interest in our own thoughts. But I think it is a sort of respect to the complex network that exists in our brains, and this complex network is connected to a much more complex network that is this world. The interestingness forms when we consume something in the external world and process it with our inner selves.
The magic occurs when we put that intricately formed thought out in the world, and then someone else takes that and form their own intricately formed thought. Perhaps some people think self-expression is selfish, but I think it is one of the ultimate forms of participating in the world. It is not easy to give that time, space and respect to our inner selves, to believe something beautiful can emerge.
What is it like to have that much respect for one’s inner world? To keep on having a sort of anticipatory vigilance for something that could emerge out of our selves? Like let’s always carry a note/sketchbook with us in case something meaningful comes along? To me it is like having faith that it is a matter of time that something interesting will be captured. There are no questions, no doubt, no what ifs, no am I good enough. Just a knowing of an almost primal quality.
I can’t imagine having such confidence, and I am almost always dismissive of the messy world that lives in my head. But I would like to cultivate this capacity to anticipate, capture, and then truly appreciate the captured thought or moment. Because it takes a lot to be able to see all the connections of the nodes that must take place before a particular thought or moment can come by.
To have that sort of awareness underlying my consciousness, perception and existence – would that be a blessing or a curse? I want to be a person who is capable of being excited of the potential that exists in every moment, who eagerly takes out her creative tools because who knows what can emerge?
At this point I am just so tired of everything. It feels incredible that I can even convince myself to type this. I feel like this stems from a lifelong dismissive attitude of myself, which stems from a lifelong dismissive attitude from my environment. It seems so impossible that I can be any other way. But sometimes we set off on a journey not because we think we will make it to where we want to go, but because we can no longer stay where we are.