I don’t know what to write. Or what to do. All I can do now is write what comes to mind. I need to let go of the past so that new work can come out. Am I too stuck in the past? I don’t want my past to be a burden on my future. The past me should be tied to the past and stay in the past. The present me needs to focus on the present, ask what I can do in this moment, and then act. Asking me might be like letting go of the past me. Because the future me is a creation of the present me.
The future me will be a blank slate. Something without anything written or drawn on it. It’s scary to think that my choices will fill that canvas. But the choices I have made, the moments I must make, are there, and they threaten me. If I let them pass me by, I will not be myself. If I mimic and live by other people’s choices, I become them. The weight and responsibility I must bear to be me is hard.
But if I can’t protect myself, who can protect me? I used to hate the people who hurt me. But now I am fully responsible for myself. Maybe, thankfully, I’ll have people to share that responsibility with, but that’s just a way out a help. I have to be me. I have to be me.
Who I am is what I choose to be and what I show. From the way I dress to the way I speak, to the way I act, to the way I look, to the way I spend my money, to the choices I make in my life. There were days when I left in search of happiness. I left Russia for happiness, and I didn’t go back to Korea. I decided to stay here and figure out what I really wanted.
If I have the courage I had on those days, if I still have the fire in my heart, if I don’t make decisions that will hurt me, if I put myself first, not others, if I live for me and for the people I care about, then I will be able to be me in that situation.
I don’t want to define my choices as wrong. And I don’t want to regret the past choices that made me who I am today, I just feel the need to let go of them and go back to being me with nothing. This is the society I belong to now, and this is where I have to live. I am me and you are you.
Does it make sense to work and live with strength again, is there any point in that? I’m really powerless now. I feel like a hollow balloon. A jar with a hole in it. No matter how much I fill it with something, it always comes out again. It’s already so broken that even if I try to glue it back together, the sadness comes out through the cracks. I wish there was a grief processor, something that you could just put the sadness in and it would disappear after some time.
My heart is not such a processor, so sadly, if I put it away, it spills out, overflows, breaks, makes a hole, makes ooze, fester again, and when I want to get a little better again, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts. I wonder if there will be a day when all the wounds will be healed, and then I will be okay. Will there be a day when my sadness limit will be filled and disappear if I put it away, and can it just end like that?
Life is a series of sadness and I’m tired of it. I’m depressed and sad, but I exist in the here and now. I don’t know why, but I still breathe, eat, grieve, and think about certain days, and those days are the reason for life and the reason for death. John Cage said that life and death are actually the same thing, and it seems like it is. I hope the day comes when I can accept sadness for what it is.
If I could just accept it for what it is, and not dwell on it, and just think, “Oh, I’m sad right now, and I’ll be happy again someday, and this time will pass,” that would bring me peace. I don’t necessarily want to be sad right now, I don’t want to be overwhelmed by sadness, I just want to be like, “Oh, I’m sad right now,” but I want to be able to maintain my normal state.
If I could just make my mind work, if I could just live my life the way I want it, if I could just make everything happen the way I want it to happen, then I’d get rid of these wounds first, replace the urn, and then I’d throw away all the sadness and make a grief processor, and then I’d pretend I didn’t see it and live my life the way I want to live it.
I know these words are meaningless, but I want to say them as if they really happened. That’s my predetermined future. That’s how I’m going to live. Maybe the fact that I can write this here is because this is my grief processor, albeit a broken one. I can’t pretend not to see it, but if I pour more and more grief into it and make it all pile up into nothing, I’ll just have to live with it.
a video installation with three beamers
