die; laugh;

a generally random, disorganized, and sometimes extremely depressing collection of thoughts

[clearlakeves]

thoughts on female queerness as a queer Asian woman

Growing up, I was often told stories about my culture by my parents. Stories like the woman who floated to the moon, the archer who shot down the suns, the white deer who led the hunters to Sun-Moon Lake. Many of these stories were about heroes or heroines who fought monsters and fell in love -- but as I grew older, it became clear that these stories only existed within the sphere of what is considered culturally appropriate in Asian culture.

To be female, queer, and of Asian descent in the United States is to struggle with identity for much of your life. It is easy to define oneself by only one of those things, or maybe even two. But to be all three is to look back into history to find a gap in knowledge before the modernization of China. Only recently has there been a push to promote such Asian histories in the Western world -- moreover, any of the sparse sources found tend to be limited to post-1900s Asia. However, this is still a marked improvement from previous centuries, when even a mention of female queerness tended to represent a sort of social taboo.

In many other cultures, we have ancient letters from women to women, about their love for each other - and yet we do not possess the same for Chinese women. Perhaps the irony of it all is that while some degree of acceptance of homosexuality existed prior to Western/Christian influence, the only documents written by women about same-sex desire are from the latter half of Chinese history. We know these people existed! There are oblique references to women who took female companions, who lived with them in relationships that could be construed as marriage-like. We have stories of “Golden Orchid Associations”, “paired eating”, even fiction stories (written by men) that focus on female-female queer relationships. However, none of these are from a woman’s perspective, and even fewer of them paint such relationships in a positive light.

[clearlakeves]

a insomnia-driven set of thoughts (i.e. a book review) on Julia Armfield's Our Wives Under The Sea

I feel like I should like this book more than I actually did. On paper, it's got all the stuff I like -- a tragedy in the making, "you love her but you can't keep her", the ocean, cosmic horror, etc. But...something about the execution is just off for me I guess? 

Let me be clear: these are 100% my own opinions, and I understand that a lot of people like this book. That's absolutely fine! Nobody has to agree with me! Everyone is entitled to their own opinions! No hate here :)

Things I liked:

   1) I think the book does a very good job of acknowledging/representing the queer love? romance? at its core. Miri and Leah are married, and that is important to them, and it's not a major plot point or anything, but there are still subtle societal pressures surrounding them. It's always nice to see relationships like this normalized in a realistic way.

   2) The ocean descriptions. oh my god. I love the ocean and I think the book did an excellent job of conveying its beauty and also how terrifying and vast and unknown it is. "To know the ocean, I have always felt, is to recognize the teeth it keeps half hidden." Amazing. 10/10 line. Beautiful.

   3) Leah's chapters are pretty cool. She's obviously the more dynamic character to Miri's more passive one, and while this...has certain drawbacks I'll talk about later, conceptually the idea that the more passive person, the one left behind picking up the pieces is the one stuck in the present while the dynamic character is (in a sorta meta sense) stuck in the past is a pretty cool subversion of traditional adventuring/fiction tropes. It's clear that the Leah whose chapters we read no longer exists in Miri's present.

   4) It was always going to end like this. You were never going to be able to keep her. "Every horror movie ends the way you know it will." That one Tumblr post that goes something like "I loved you so much I broke the laws of nature to bring you back but I do not think either of us are happy." (aka the leftover pizza post). Despite the fact that I had issues with the way Miri and Leah were written, the sense of mounting doom constant in the background of the story was there, and contributed heavily to the tone of the overall story.

My problems:

   1a) I think my biggest problem is that the story and writing just did not make me care enough about either of the main characters. We are supposed to care about Miri, and through her, care about Leah. (I concede that Miri herself acknowledged this, but being self aware about this does not invalidate the detachment I felt from both the characters.) Leah and Miri are the center of the story -- if we cannot bring ourselves to care about them, the story sort of falls apart at the seams.

   1b) I think this lack of care is because neither Miri nor Leah get any real character development in the story. I was on a 14-hour flight, trying to understand why I loved The Song of Achilles but not this book, when they're conceptually and theoretically a bit similar. I mean, one reason is that Madeleine Miller's writing just works much better for me personally, but also, we are drawn to care about Patroclus and Achilles because we get to actually see Achilles develop as a character (from a young boy to an...adult?), and fight against his own demons and societal pressures. Even though it's a similar character pairing, where one character is much more dynamic than the other, the timespan of TSOA really works for it. In comparison, Our Wives Under the Sea sort of glosses over Miri and Leah's character development (we assume that it exists. It honestly might not.) in favor of a really short timespan and a lot of introspection. (Leah's portions are set in the past, but they focus pretty much solely on the events of the ill-fated submarine expedition, while Miri's are only about the aftermath. Kind of makes the whole story disjointed.)

   2) Connected to problem 1 (probably the reason for it tbh), but Miri is barely an entity in the story. This is bad because by and large, her sections are longer than Leah's. We know she loves Leah, she has a weird and complicated relationship with her mother, and probably suffers from some mental illness. But she spends such a large portion of the book waffling around and just being confused about everything! This does not an interesting character make. 

   3) Connected/extension to problem 2. Miri is so...passive? I wanted more emotion from her. It feels like she doesn't even do all that much to try to help Leah, it's really just her coming to terms that Leah is not actually back, and/or that she's changed. I wanted her to fight before coming to terms with it, or fight it to the end. Instead her entire tone was more just resigned. I cannot understand the care and love she had for Leah if she's so resigned and just depressed about it all the time. (Maybe her repeated calling of the Centre is supposed to be her fighting? Idk I just didn't get enough of that from her.)

   4) Too much is left unknown. I personally think the not knowing what Leah saw in the ocean is fine, but all the stuff happening with the Centre felt very mundanely confusing for no apparent reason? And I guess the author was maybe going for realism, where sometimes you just don't get answers to questions but...it's just more confusion on top of the already confusing wtf is happening to Leah thing.

   5) Kind of nitpicking at this point, but I felt like the introduction of Juna felt really unnecessary. I think it should've been someone else who drove Miri to the beach. Perhaps Carmen or Sam? Or maybe she drives herself idk. Most of the side characters in Miri's parts honestly felt useless to me. At least Jelka and Matteo seemed to serve actual narrative purpose in Leah's parts?

My final verdict: 2/5 ⭐.

Long story short, I really wish I had liked this book more than I actually did. It has such a cool premise! Maybe it was the stream-of-consciousness writing style or something, but it just wasn't my thing.

[clearlakeves]

I think I have spent most of my life falling in love with feelings. 

My first relationship was with a boy who made me feel normal, a boy who snuck me library books beneath the plastic-wooden desks of a dull painted classroom. When he whispered to me fragments of stories in alcoves of knotted blue and dirty wooden chairs, I thought “this must be what love is like”, because what else could it be?

When I was nineteen, a girl kissed me at center-stage, in the fleeting moments between the close of the curtain and the heady rush off-stage. When she pulled away, the air between us was thick with excitement and exhilaration of a performance well done, and for a moment I was flying, unmoored and unbothered, wondering, “is this what love is?”

I am not much older now than I was back then, but somehow, I cannot help but think that there must be something more to all of this. Do I love because of the way I feel? Or do I feel because I love? 

In the end, does it even matter? We love, because we love, because we love. We run around in circles to escape our emotions, to run towards them, but they come for us in their own time all the same. I suspect we are incapable of anything less than what it is that love entails, simply because we are. So in the end, is it only love that matters?

[clearlakeves]

a not-so-brief essay-ish thing on time and immortality

***spoilers ranging from mild to extreme ahead for Watchmen and The Good Place. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED***

So I read Watchmen (Alan Moore) recently, and Dr. Manhattan in particular got me thinking...what must it be like to be simultaneously experiencing infatuations, loves, betrayals, heartbreaks, all at once? 

As ordinary humans (I think) we experience life in a very linear sense, memories and flashbacks notwithstanding. But someone like Dr. Manhattan feels everything from his entire life all at once and all the time, It just makes me wonder, what must that feel like? And if I were in his place, would I lapse into desensitization toward much of the human race (as he somewhat does), or would it allow me to treasure all those moments?

Eternity is...a long time, to put it mildly. As human beings, we are acutely aware that everything we do is constrained by time, in some way. Immortality, however, removes that time constraint, and although that might initially, seem wonderful (Imagine! Having all the time in the world to do anything and everything you could ever dream of doing!), once enough time passes, boredom and apathy would inevitably set in. Human connection essentially loses meaning, because you are aware, even if nobody around you is, that one day, everyone you have ever known will be gone, and you will still remain. And that’s only if you experience time in a linear fashion, much less the way Dr. Manhattan experiences it.  

The more I think about Dr. Manhattan’s experiences the more I am reminded of Janet (the anthropomorphized database) from The Good Place. (Admittedly, Watchmen and The Good Place are two very different shows, and one could argue that their philosophies towards life are incomparable.)  As someone who is essentially immortal, like Dr. Manhattan, and also does not experience life in a strictly linear sense, Janet seems to have a completely opposite outlook on life. One of the things she tells Jason, after he decides he is ready to leave the afterlife and walk through the Last Door is probably one of my favorite lines in the show.

“Jason, it's okay. I'm never gonna forget you. In fact, to me, you won't even really be gone. I don't experience time the same way you do. I kind of live all times at once.”

~ The Good Place, Season 4, Episode 13, “Whenever You’re Ready”

And then, of course, this bittersweet gem of a conversation:

Janet: “To me, remembering moments with you is the same as living in them.”

Jason: “Can you just remember the happy times and forget the bad stuff?”

Janet: “There was no bad stuff. It was all good.”

~ The Good Place, Season 4, Episode 13, “Whenever You’re Ready”

It’s really a very lovely moment, punctuated by Jason’s trademark wackiness and awkward charm. I’m not ashamed to say that I may have shed a tear or two. But anyways, Janet has a sort of, while not necessarily optimistic outlook, at least a far more positive one. And although this could be attributed to her uh...status as a decidedly eternal non-human entity (unlike Manhattan who was once human), her conviction that everything that she has experienced was all for the better is perhaps, the real irony of this discussion - that Manhattan, who started off human, becomes less “human” in thought than Janet, who was never human in the first place.

Immortality is complicated, to say the least. It’s an extremely difficult concept for us, as humans with finite lifespans (presumably) to even reckon with. Thankfully, and hopefully, we won’t ever have to deal with it personally. 

The universal truth of life is that everything must, and will, end, including us. But instead of looking at that end like it’s a curse, perhaps we would do just as well to look at it as something inevitable, yes, but also a blessing in disguise - a construct that frees us to experience life to its fullest, with all its joys and sadness. We love, and we lose. We laugh, and we cry. We are human, and although that means we may suffer and fail, we all all the better for it. 

[clearlakeves]

stardust;

maybe we were all once stars

maybe we fell, and hit the earth, stuck in flesh and bone, forever tethered to the cruel ground that forbids us from rising to the sky

maybe that’s why we yearn for the stars, even as everything falls to pieces at our feet

maybe one day we’ll join the stars once more, when our flesh and bone catches fire and turns to stardust, rising on the wings of the night