DIARY OF MOMENTS ❖ facing resistance
“God must be getting bored,” says B on the phone. I’m standing on a rock while the sea thrashes around in cyclic fits. It multiplies heights of saffron-tinged foam. Today she is relentless, the sea.
The wind is biting so sharply that it causes E to faint on a patch of grass of halfway to the car. I give her the same treatment I do to people who get too high (quick decisions, no complicated questions, affirming touch), and hold her up the rest of the way to sit in a hot car. She sleeps and then sits up in my fuzzy purple jumper to eat sweet pastries. I accidentally make her cry by telling her about the new thing I’m writing about how we hold onto objects when we can’t hold onto people. And she says, “I’m going to be sad when everyone leaves.” We’ve been swimming for one year, we’ve been friends for several.
*
This city is surging with the swirling of its rapturous, dreamy twenty-somethings. Migrations began in spring.
That was when we chattered excitedly and gave eachother bad, well-meaning advice. We worked each other up for impulsive decisions just to see someone else live out a reality just out of our reach. That blind love and belief will push you to do the stupidest things. Great things.
LA, Boston, Shanghai, Brasov, Copenhagen - list of places that people I love disappear to. It feels like just yesterday I watched the incense smoke curl all day as you painted in your orange studio. We stared at the ceiling and made plans all day. It was always better than doing them.
Some of us get on motorcycles and others get into new ventures - business or romantic. T’s eyes are wide with possible futures, his aperture expanded to capture the luminosity of each cinematic projection.
There is so much happening, and very little for me to do about it, it is hard sometimes not to feel I am being flushed out. But I tell myself I am not being flushed, I am choosing to go. People can just pick up and leave, and you have to be happy for them, even when you aren’t. Nobody tells you this.
*
Sydney is sunny, and cold. Kavita Bedford: This is an outdoor city, but we keep our desires, our doubts, our hearts hidden behind locked screen doors - people walk up and down the sandy coastline, but it is so difficult to read the emotional state of the city; people keep their feelings politely locked up. It’s true. I’m annoyed at how much I am the product of my stimuli. In some ways I’m truly sick of this place.
I’m still angry about some things, but I’m not angry about being angry. Peoples rage runs either hot or cold. Mine is cold: I become ruthlessly executional. I get on with my life. I’m convinced it’ll all sort itself out when I leave: end scene — new scene.
I try not to rage at any other person except god herself, but I still do, sometimes. I get up often and suddenly decide to do things differently; this thing about me stays the same. I am impulsive about doing better. I am too good at making plans with no one in them.
*
Why do people come here and swim in the cold and wind? I think they want to feel the resistance, push against it.
When the waves are strong enough you can feel the ecstasy of near total abandonment; fold into the bind of something else’s raw will. Or you can kick and splash against it, feel the pain of being small and alive. Feel hot in your chest and cool on your skin, you know at last where you end and the world begins.
When chaos comes to sweep away the earth as I know it, I welcome it with open hearted, unflinching fear. I’m not a good swimmer, but I do it all the time.
I stand shyly on the rock. I like the way the sea licks at the edge, patient to wear down the earth over millenia. She pleads with the earth to come to bed. His resistance is steadfast but secretly weak. I get a sense of something inside of me evolving.
A girl in the water laughs. “Come in,” she says. “The water is warmer than it looks.”
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Take care,
Marlene