If it's meant to be I'll see you later

“What is meant for you, will reach you even if it is beneath two mountains. And what is not meant for you will not reach you even if it’s between your two lips.” -- Imam Al Ghazali

It's the first day of fall. 

Time to dust off my Puma Blue -- A Late Night Special and take her for a spin...

I've actually been writing a lot more, but every time I write out what's happened or what I've been thinking, I get nauseated reading it and paste it onto a throwaway draft instead. I think that's okay though because some things really should be kept to myself and I'm getting better at distinguishment after years of not shutting up when I should've. I went to a concert two Fridays ago and felt so awfully strange, like something in some timeline had drastically changed without my knowing. The next day was September 13th. I was in the shower first thing in the morning and felt extremely unwell. I can't remember what I was thinking about or how I got there, but I couldn't stop crying. I finished up, tried to stop crying like a baby as best as I could, and ran to the staircase to call someone I hadn't heard from in months. I'm sure that hotel has great CCTV footage of me soaking wet like a kitten who despises baths trying to look for a good hiding spot from their cameras. Speaking of which, the hotel we stayed at was funny. I had no clue when I booked the room that it was in it's soft launch phase until we actually got there at check-in and the lobby was filled with 축하 화환. I had called ahead of time to ask if the room had an iron and they said that they had a steamer. I didn't realize they meant one singular steamer, which ended up being passed around the rooms in between room service phone calls and knocks on our door from maintenance asking for it. At one point it was lost and they kept calling us to ask if we had it. I couldn't even be mad that there were wrinkles in my Tankair because it felt like I was in a sitcom rather than my very own Kafkaesque hyperreality. I imagine there's a laugh track. We were in Room 313, which is a really good number to me, but I don't know why yet. For years now, I've been feeling as though I'm always a hair's breadth away from spiritual psychosis. Maybe not psychosis, but a gnawing feeling of it or something more akin to that part in Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell where he stares at Van Gogh's Chair for a really long time. Except I'm not on psychedelics and I'm definitely not looking at a Van Gogh.

I remember saying that 2024 was a To Be Continued...-ass year, but I'm trying to figure out when that second half comes out because I don't think it's gonna be 2025. This is the year of endings, so maybe this is just my silly little interlude of blaring realization and coming down from the highs of maladaptive escapism. 

Anyways, it's fall and I feel like dressing like a Twilight character and having a side part and pretending in a much healthier way. I bought a Cocteau Twins record because I saw it playing in one of my dreams and I've been thinking about this pumpkin spice oat milk matcha (I know...) that I've already had twice this month, so I think I'm off to a great start. I really want to go to a botanical garden and see the ocean when it's really cold outside and I want to write many love letters and think about how it felt when I was younger when it started to get cold. My parents would pick me up from elementary school and I remember how weird and fun it felt to go with them to run errands right after, as if I were experiencing a whole different version of my day. I think about the old houses we used to live in and their street names... Cinnabar, Domingo... and how they were always in cul-de-sacs. I think the more I can recall how fall used to feel as a kid, the more I can return to myself and feel like something darling and meaningful solidified in me over time.