Most people ask “What are you doing here?” right after learning about each other’s names. “I’m trying to see”. I’m particularly satisfied with this answer. Vision, finding places and ways to see, finding guiding light for where to place one’s attention. Each day though bothered by various degrees with the question of survival. I’m going to see. I have very little idea about comfortable ways of earning a living. Somehow living does not come as a given. It must be earned. The right to be, the right to breath, the right to breed, the right to bleed. I have none. Illegally inhabiting a fairytale space. I wonder where is the limit of an illegal alien’s delusion?
Serious people have a resting thinking face.
Young wide eyed artist has much appreciation for this place, these people, encounters, take it all in.
“BE prepared to be absorbed and chewed up by this place”. I wonder if this was an advice, a proclamation, a spell or a prescription.
The place to be, a place to be, a hole to dig, a shovel to swing. I feel grounded in my delusion. I feel grounded in a place known for all the contrary. I said this place, these people, they have an earnestness. I was told that was a very good description. The person said it almost couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it. But that disbelief was so fleeting, his 7 years of local experience, academic trained mind gave him an armor for genuine appreciation.
“Are we pretending here? I have slight imposter syndrome feeling here, amongst these people.” I can’t think of any smart thing to say. To pre-tend, before at-tend, what comes after? Gratitude? Depression? Life-affirming architecture? Or zero registration? I’m not sure if I’m running away from reality by impulsively moving here. Without prospect, without any apparent reason to be here. But how can anyone, ever, not face reality, or living in reality, when there isn’t anywhere else, no space is outside of this reality. My delusion is the product of this reality. There is in fact, no separation between the two. My delusion is shared and cultivated together with, becoming of real. If I were to starve to death. Perhaps the most undesirable real, but real nonetheless. Hope is real, wish is real, real thoughts happening in real space. Anxiety is real, pain is real, real feelings materializing across bodies. What isn’t real? I am rather trapped in the realness of it all. K has no allure to me.
Responsibility only comes from my interaction with my space. Response-ability. I can’t respond to my parents’ wishes. They are not my wishes. This is differently motivated than answering or not to others’ wishes. Sometimes to surrender to another’s will is well. But how do I do away with the desire for (material) comfort, the desire for recognition, admiration, and total acceptance? How do I do away with the function of power in my curiosity, attendance, presence and absence?
Permenant and Pertinent Resi(st)dance 