In this issue:
New England Cold
Humanoid Goldfish
New England Cold
Earlier this year, Shivani got into a residency program in Rochester, NY. We drove there this past weekend to get a glimpse of what life might look like for the next two years. We couldnāt be more excited.
I romanticize the American small-town feel where it gets cold and there are some creeks or rivers nearby, and New England trees, wiry and naked in the winter. The sound of cars swoosh outside and people are sensible enough to not replace their car very often. They buy a new car when theirs stops working and thatās pretty much it.
People shovel their own driveways. There are old movie theatres and old skateparks and kids ride their bikes in the summer time, and being a South Asian man is a bit of a novelty. People canāt pronounce my name so after I try to correct them twice, I shrug and accept my name is going to be their best rendition of it. Itās not their fault, their mouth just doesnāt move that way.
I have this image in my head: I come home to my wife or she comes home to me and we say hi to each other and thereās no plan tonight like most nights and we have a quiet night of eating leftovers and maybe she calls a friend and I play some video games and we go to bed around 10:15. We wake up at our usual 6:30 and do it all over again. Maybe some variationāa new spot for lunch, a new drive home playlist, different muscle groups at the gym, a new show while we eat. And itās quiet and peaceful, and I canāt hear the old cars down on the street or feel the New England cold from the shelter of my living room. My life feels small and cozy, like the American town I call home.
Humanoid Goldfish
My memoryās atrocious. If you tell me I said or did something, Iāll probably believe you. This isnāt anything new, either. Iāve always been this way. I canāt believe people remember specific events and conversations from months or years ago. For me, life is a 30 year-old vague, hazy shape.
Maybe thatās why Iām obsessed with memoirs. Authors turn into archaeologists, excavating from their childhoods and teen years the moments most consequential to the adults they eventually become. They recall the seismic impact of a specific look their mom gave them or the phrasing of a text. They craft a neat narrative for their life with clear cause-effect relationships based on the apparent source material. I could never. I know most of the major plot points of my life, but itās a slideshow with blurry, black and white stills. Frankly, I canāt replay specific moments that had any material impact on my worldview or character. Itās all just one heaping jumble. Life is murky memory soup.
I wonder who I would be if I remembered more of my life, remembered more of the brilliant content Iāve consumed, remembered more of cause-effect relationships. In essence, I live a delicious life without remembering the ingredients.
Iāll read my journal entries from years ago and have no recollection of putting those thoughts together. Itās self-discovery, redefined. Clearly, I need to log my thoughts because if I donāt, itāll be like I never had them. Unless I make permanent that which is fleeting, I will believe Iām incapable of the fleeted. Iāll be sure I canāt have an interesting original thought since Iāll have no evidence to the contrary. Writing, for me, is self-preservation. If I donāt, past versions of myself, with my old ideas and beliefs, really donāt exist.
My favourite Twitter creators have tweeted tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of times, forming incomprehensibly complex and elaborate self-referential webs. Theyāll reference a ramble-y thread written three years ago like it was ever-present and accessible just below the surface, ready to be woven into a new context.
I wonder what I could do, who I could be, if the best of what Iāve thought and consumed was hovering just below the surface, handy at a momentās notice. What connections am I missing? Which insights am I leaving on the table?
Itās not worth pondering for long. Before tomorrow morning, I will forget about the forgetfulness and I will be lulled back into a state of contentment, until I stumble onto these paragraphs years from now and feel the frustrations all over again.
Excavating,
Vandanš”