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2 songs that have made my heart feel alive (in the past 2 days):

X

“I will learn you so gently you won’t even realise how carefully I’m choosing every way to keep you safe.”

dreamgirlvibes

radical-revolution

eymurn

Don’t let your empathy be greater than your self respect.

3.19.26

i remembered where "sinoku" came from, just last week. i'd always recalled it being my neopets username, but hadnt dug deeper into the origin until mom brought up our ventures upstate. the small town of Elmira NY, Dundee to be specific, may or may not still have the Sunoco gas station where i spent a short stint of spring and summer days of my pre-teen youth. the barnes and noble was where i would curl up on their comfy chair with a pile of books next to me. it's where i escaped that one time g and i had a fight and i needed to run away. i can still smell the smell of grass and burning coal, hot in my nostrils. i can feel the rough surfaces of things i had been too sheltered to ever touch- spread against my palms with no care in the world. with rachel, i felt the word "free" for the very first time, as we sat in the back of her mom's pickup truck, wind in our hair. i even remember there being specific spots of the long winding 1 lane road that would smell like cow manure when you passed by those farms. my face was beginning to bloom with pain and pus, and i recall thinking the wind from the drive would be a "facial" of some sort. naivety was par the course. rachel's mother would drop us off at the county fair, and we'd turn around to see her making out with someone new. the former governer of the town, in this instance. it needed not be spoken that this need not be spoken. rachel and i would take off running toward nowhere in particular. running and laughing and exploring the land. if my parents knew how little supervision i had, they would have been livid. i, at my adult age now, am also concerned that something could have happened. like being in their trailer home and her older brother having a strange aura to him, an aura that made me very uncomfortable. this aura was palpable prior to him talking about his love for knives, something that i explicitly was told not to speak of. there was another secret, too, i was given to keep. what was that, again?

i remember asking rachel what her biggest dream was. She smiled at me, beaming even. "To be married at 18!". i remember thinking that was an uncanny response, but i was not judging her for it. the town was so small and there was a different timeline for everything. i remember feeling sad at her response, though.

--

"It was nice meeting you!" someone said to me tonight, extending his hand out. Ah, i hesitated. i had *just just just* washed my hands. i let our elbows touch and tell him sorry. i didnt include that i had watched him sneeze a total of 5 times that night.

Mine?

"sinoku"

i would say. 4 times, to 4 people.

--

with Rachel, my hands would touch everything. The leaves, the mud, the dirty windows, the rusted metal, the abandoned rubber, the streams of water, the puddles of gasoline, the dusty rooftop of my family car we had just bought from Mike. There was one night rachel and i giggled as we sat on the sunroof edge and pressed our toes into the thin layer of dirt, making our mark and throwing our heads back in glee, the clear sky shining on our sweatied and matted hair. The "Sunoco" sign loomed behind us, like a beacon of darkness against the moonlight.

i suppose sin/xin has been my shadow for quite some time now.

i picked up Luna this week. Haven't held her for a very long time.

i couldnt remember any tabs except for the chords of the moon song, which naturally flowed from my fingertips.

i softly whispered the lyrics

trying to find the threshold where my volume touches a pit of embarrassment and shame

It hadnt occurred.

i sang the moon song, notes cracking at the edges, closing my eyes to when i was standing next to your body and singing this to you. My friends were sitting in the pews in front of me. They came all this way to support me. All they heard was crying. Notes could barely come out. i didnt care. That didnt matter

Perhaps thats why i feel okay again revisiting music. It was never about performance, it was never about applause. until now i couldnt understand why it felt impossible for me to sing.

It was and will always be a direct connection to love. It's my heart splayed out any which way.

i miss you too, Grandma Fe. i had not yet written about you. You were mentioned today in conversation, with a smile that had been reflected. Hope you and Grandpa Joe are playfully teasing each other wherever you are.

i sang this song just once when Arnell passed, too.

;

Kev and i just watched episode 8 of Alone, where the guy was feeling persistent chest pains but had already invested a month of hard labor + all the other sacrifices he made to be in the competition + the desire to win the money for his family. He sat down, unable to make that decision to leave. He asked his brother (who had passed away) for a sign. Without skipping a beat, the camera captured a flock of birds passing right above him, "heading south." He smiled and cried.

"This is what i mean..." i tried telling kev. i'm still not certain he or others would truly understand. It's like lyrics that are meant to make sense but don't have logic to quite explain it in words. But it sounds right, it feels right, it just is and it holds all truth. how can i explain that i genuinely believe time isn't linear, that these moments are layered, and that a soul does not have to exist in a physical form to still be present?

i know there will never be enough words to explain what i feel- a "truth" borne through no substantial, measurable "logic", yet confidently established with complete conviction. i don't believe it's something within our realms of learning. it makes sense that it's not something that makes sense.

i think of these lyrics, the people i love, and the instrument ive expressed with, and can't help but smile.

time's we're swallowed up

in space we're here a million miles away

yingtan

HERO 英雄 2002┃Dir. Zhang Yimou

2.7.26

it's been a long time since i've finished a movie and left feeling completely suspended in time afterwards. Glad i had never watched Hero as a child and decided to watch it for the first time now (&for kev sharing it with me). Such a beautiful, beautiful movie.