Imprints and Increase
But this stuff, the mass of inhalations and exhalations and floating thoughts and strange mini-interactions, this stuff composes the big life that we’re going to look back on.
Written during el 11 de enero hasta el 27 de enero – 149 days in Colombia (that’s a lot of days!)
Favourite lines from “Bygones” by Marina Keegan1
“… so we beat on Birds flocking south until we Circle around and realize maybe Maybe all that running wasn’t worth it. Maybe we should build a cabin. Or teach high school. Or use our hands… We’re not stuck. That’s the thing, we’re not stuck. We owe no one our nothings… Ambition is a choice. Ambition is a race we chose to run So we could get here so we could I don’t know so we could save poor People or invent something or be in charge… And I’m tired of justifying with tomorrow’s bliss, because Yesterday’s tomorrow is today and Someday the sun is going to die And then the human race will end and I’ll still be texting to see if that other party’s better. Do you wanna leave soon? No, I want enough time to be in love with everything… The middle of the universe is here, is tonight, And everything behind is a sunk cost Lost in our oceans and our oceans are deep… And I cry because everything is so beautiful and short.”
How do I sum up 4 months of my life that stick out like colour in black & white? At no point in the last 20 years could I imagine myself here. And I rushed in, confused and enthusiastic, did and didn’t hit the ground running, and now I’ve run past the finish line (at least, the first finish line) and have my face pressed to the glass, telling myself to Be Still for a few moments longer.
Why do we rush through life, eyes to the floor, as if it’s something to do with maximum efficiency and not something that’s already so short in its own way?
But I can’t even blame myself. I know I was telling myself to enjoy the precious moments months before it ended. And I didn’t have my eyes on the floor. No, I really believe they were wide open, absorbing, awed. How beautiful, as Stellar said, that there is love to be found everywhere in the world. I have these cross-continental, intergenerational friendships that will last a lifetime. But I want them to last even stronger, like in some celestial way. I want to write these months and these people into the stars. I want to hold these memories in my heart, always. How could I forget? I don’t want to forget. The view from Jose’s apartment, Lea’s crying laughter, the rain on the rooftop, the baby cow at the fence, dancing in that tiny hotel room.
I know I’m so lucky to have had the following opportunity: the opportunity to forget the Other Things. I forgot about perfection, achievement, and appearance. Instead, I thought about love, creativity, and feelings. I would like to remember these things.
So this is how it goes, I guess. The thinking, the forgetting, the gaining. And over and over again. And there’s what’s left – what we remember. What sticks. I guess it hurts so much because I’m trying to stick myself to these last 4 months. Don’t leave, I’m whispering. Don’t let me forget about you. Don’t leave me alone again. Stay here and remind me that there’s love and creativity and feelings. That there’s more out there, always more than what I know. Keep teaching me. Teach me the things I don’t know yet – teach me altruism, teach me patience, teach me selflessness, teach me acceptance, teach me independence, teach me courage, teach me maturity, teach me understanding.
I know I need to trust the imprint this time and these people have left on me. That it won’t just fade into nothingness like I’m afraid of. That way, I can continue. I can learn the things that I don’t know yet. That way, I can gain. And I can increase. And I will remember. These are not plain “additions” to my life.2 These are the things that I breathe and cry for. For these times and people, I would do anything.
From a week ago:
January 4th, 3:41AM
I feel really lonely right now, which is to be expected. Amy has just left, so now it’s hitting me again, the fact that I really have no one in this gigantic city of 9 million. Not a single soul.
The thing is, I know that soon I will have people. Sonali is moving in on the 13th, and I already feel we’re getting along swimmingly. So that’s at least one person. And I feel relatively optimistic about my ability to make friends.
But I had a very grabbable thought last night in the car on the way back to my apartment (from Humo Negro, quite possibly the best restaurant I have ever dined in. Thank you Amy!!!). It was prompted by a memory of someone I love with my entire heart, who I do not speak to much anymore, a memory that I hold so near and dear to my heart. But I realized that I hadn’t thought of that memory in months. This sad sort of fear placed its hands on my shoulders as I thought, this is how we forget. We slowly start thinking less and less about those sweet times until they fade into this land where we can only recall them when presented with a photo or something. And maybe not even then. Maybe that’s when people squint at photos and say, is that really me?
Perhaps it’s inevitable that we lose some memories to make room for more. I’m grateful for the opportunity to move around this world, meet new people, experience new things, and therefore gain more ideas to be influenced by (hopefully for the “better”). But last night, I felt, achingly, that I wanted certain people around.
I want my sister in the apartment next door so we can go for coffee and brunch every other day rather than a handful of times a year.3 I want to have Stellar in the room across from me so that I can knock on her door when something horrific happens and cry all the tears to her, and for her to do the same. I want Lilian in the passenger seat, singing lyrics with me and making the car feel like, well, not a car. I want Amy’s snarky jokes and her various knitting projects laying around and her sweet laugh. I want Arun and his loyalty and humour that bring me back to the ground. I want Monica, the best museum partner in the world, someone who has only ever lifted me up. I want to share a hot chocolate and long walk with Clarisse, who I could talk to until time isn’t a concept anymore. I want Lashyn to hug me in that knowing way and to make me laugh harder than I thought possible and to say things that make me feel so understood. God, and how I want _____, to receive his tears and for him to receive mine, to be reminded of the beautiful way he sees the world, to continue to be inspired by his kindness and love for people, to hear his indescribable voice, to laugh at his perfect jokes, to make me feel like there’s no understanding that cannot be reached with Love. And then, dramatically, I want _____, to see if he’d still like me the same after all these years. I want _____, and all my other old friends, to see how they have turned out to be. I want Melody sitting next to me, so I can talk to her every day rather than a couple times a year, because she is the most Perfect person I’ve ever met.
And I miss Jose. I miss feeling like I matter. I miss his dry laugh, the way he squints when he’s in thought, his curious brain. I want someone to hug me, I want someone to listen to my thoughts and I want to listen to theirs.
And honestly, right now, I don’t want anyone except for those people. I want familiarity. I want their predictable laughs and lines on their faces. I want them to know me. And how sad that those people that I love will not be here for this part of my life. They’ll be there in the way that I’ll text and call and think of them, but I won’t get to spend time in person with them. But I want them here for this phase of my life and all the rest because I love them. I feel robbed of time with them.
And from today:
I’m feeling much calmer. I resolved the apartment bug issue (a very long story that has already occupied too much of my brainspace for one lifetime), my lovely roommates have moved in, I have met a few cool people, and I’m doing things that make me feel like myself (cooking tomato egg, reading, going out with friends). Of course, I still often miss Medellin and all the people that I love, but I think, plainly, a lot of distractions and stimulants are now floating around again after a while of the dust being settled.
While I’m feeling this way, I want to take some time to really pull out some things I’ve learned over my 4 months in Colombia about myself and about life, or things that have been reinforced.
1. Everyone is experiencing life in a different way.
a. Go in with an open mind and trust your instincts. Do what works for you. Before arriving in Colombia, I talked to many people about what to expect and searched desperately for any valuable droplet of advice. People told me many different things, and I think I gave those bits of advice a bit too much power. I was trying to keep too many things in mind and was stressing myself out. A lot of things that I thought were going to happen didn’t, and vice versa. I’m glad I did my research, but in the future, I will trust that every experience is unique and that I don’t need to memorize a blueprint before embarking on something new.
2. While human connection remains one of the, if not the most, important things in my life, don’t force relationships to be what they are not.
a. I hope I never lose my passion for human relationships. But I think it’s also important to recognize their natural ebbing and flowing. People enter different phases of life at different times. People might not have time for the relationship I share with them because they become occupied with other things. Sometimes, we’ll just be learning different lessons and thinking about different things, and our conversations will be like magnets with the same poles facing each other. That’s okay. I want to remember that a friendship isn’t lost just because it isn’t grooving perfectly in one moment. They can be circled back to and valued just the same in a corner of my heart.
3. If something is occupying your brainspace, and in some corner of yourself, you know what the right decision is, and if making that decision will free you from your mind’s paralysis, make the decision.
4. In gripping loneliness, make sure to let the love in.
a. I will not ball up and pity myself and think about how miserable I am (maybe for a few minutes). I will think about how much people do love and care about me.
5. Make the first move! Be brave!
a. I’m afraid to think about what life would have been without sending Jose that first message.
6. Be honest about what you’re insecure about and what scares you. It will help so much. These things don’t have to be hidden and festering. They can be expressed and changed.
a. My life and relationships changed when I realized I could be entirely myself and that I could say what was on my mind.
7. Be kinder to and more patient with the people who love you most, especially your family.
8. When you have an instinct to love someone very much, don’t deprive that instinct of the light of day!
a. Love the people who need it.
9. Learn the things that will make you appreciate life more and treat others with more kindness.
a. The arsenal of fun facts Jose can pull from daily makes me want to take knowledge in like big scoops of cereal (the best nighttime snack).
10. Be honest about what makes you happy, what drives you, and what you want in life.
11. Don’t be afraid to have bold conversations.
12. Read!!!
13. It’s important to have some sort of balance in life so you’re not consumed by one thing and, therefore, will have yourself and your life come crashing down if that one thing is threatened/falls apart.
14. Be kindly honest with people; they will appreciate it. It will make relationships much easier.
15. Very important to inform yourself before forming opinions.
16. Try to learn to disagree well. Being agreeable is not always The Way. Stand up for what you believe in, even to your friends, even to people who are smarter than you.
a. Muttering to yourself later on about how much Righter you are is not a very brave move.
17. Hold on tight to what makes you feel extremely understood.
18. But also, push yourself to understand things that aren’t so comfy. Sometimes, rightness demands discomfort or worse, and if you’re always trying to protect yourself, you won’t do what’s right.
19. Try harder to be respectful. Be neat and be on time.
20. I’ve learned more about what I like and don’t like in people. I like curiosity, kindness, humour, intelligence, enthusiasm, passion, sensitivity, and proactivity.
21. I think my strengths (people-opener, passionate, encouraging, logical, sensitive) would make me a great teacher or organizer of some sort.
This List thing feels sort of limiting right now. It feels a little silly list things that feel so miniscule next to the giant of the time that I’ve had here. I think stream-of-consciousness paragraphs might serve me better.
I think in my time here, I’ve learned to believe in myself more. Getting dropped in a country knowing no one and not knowing the language at all was very scary. I think trusting in myself, my capabilities, and my potential has helped me build a happy life and learn the language quickly. I’ve also learned so much more about what people mean to me. I’ve always known they were important, but to have found so much joy in people across the world has changed the definition of “friend” for me, or even just “person.” This experience is humanizing people all over the world, and I want it to continue doing so. The world is big, so much bigger than the tiny little worlds that we experience, which feel so tremendous and important. And they are, these little worlds. I take my little feelings and my little goals and my little friends very seriously, because they are Big and Special in their own way. They are all I will ever really experience, so why try to diminish them if they will always feel so important? However, I think it’s also important to recognize that there are a lot of other Big and Special things outside of your own experience.
Another thing I’ve learned here is the beauty of openness and enthusiasm. I respect different ways of loving and living, but I think the openness and enthusiasm I’ve seen here is more Right. The hugs, the laughter, the family. I think I will feel a thirst for it for the rest of my life. I want to fill my life with people who aren’t afraid to make the first joke or who wave at me like I’m a long-lost friend after meeting once. I don’t want reserved, or dampened, or stoic. I want crashing waves of love that touch every corner, and I want feelings, strong and illogical and beautiful.4
And I’ve learned more about the beauty of presence. There is nothing more special than having people around. It is such a gift to be able to say, “see you tomorrow.” It is such a gift to hold people close and to hear their laughter in your ear. As Daniel Keyes writes, “the universe [is] exploding, each particle away from the next, hurtling us into dark and lonely space, eternally tearing us away from each other – child out of the womb, friend away from friend, moving from each other, each through his own pathway toward the goal-box of solitary death.”5 I know I will die completely alone, which is a bit horrifying, and I know that I want to love solitude, but I think right now, while I’m living and breathing and so are you, we have each other, and that’s something to put in our pockets and run with. It might be all we have.
Another thing I have been thinking about a lot is how much we forget and how fast that makes life seem. Years melt into seconds as we move through life (towards the “goal-box of solitary death”!) as one shifting vessel, leaving the past behind every passing moment. Everything becomes different: our daily routine, our friends, our responsibilities. But it’s still You doing said routine, seeing said friends, and completing (or not completing) said responsibilities. And while you are surely changing too, it’s still You. It’s still You, and before you know it, x amount of years have passed, and you have more than you need to reminisce about. 4 months could’ve been in a blink of an eye, and don’t even get me started on 4 years. So, I want to take everything I’ve learned to Do Right by my life. I want to continue believing in myself, in my capabilities and potential, which I know are more than I can even begin to imagine (what the human soul can accomplish when truly put to the test is extraordinary); I want to continue humanizing the world so that I can see beyond my current limits of thought and possibilities, and so that I can be kinder. I’m going to feel very strongly, and I’m going to unabashedly pour love and laughter into the world and its people. I’m going to hold the people I have right now very tightly. All this so that I don’t run through life without taking time to learn and love along the way. I’m going to be kind, create beautiful things, and laugh as much as I can. If I’m going to forget, I want to have those little imprints that remain on me be imprints of authenticity, love, and beauty, imprints that I put myself in the way of, imprints that people I admire so deeply make in me, not just the imprints left by the inevitable events life deals you. This is what I am and what I am about.6
It's been almost a month since I moved to Bogota (time is so weird), so I think it’s time to wrap this up. Although I feel like I’ve been doing a pretty good job planting roots in my new life, I’m afraid of looking back on my time in Medellin a bit too much. I’ve been editing about an hour and a half of GoPro footage from my time there, which is really making me miss what I had.
3 more updates:
1. Having a cozy room and people at home waiting for you is so important for feeling well.
2. I think living in Colombia for nearly five months and having recently moved to a new city is making me feel a very particular kind of lonely.
a. I’m very extroverted and very romantic about the potential of human relationships. So, I feel energized to put myself out there and make friends. But I think because I somehow found treasure people in Medellin and knowing how fast the time with them went, I’m even more disenchanted by friendships that don’t fill me with happiness and love. I want to grab people by the shoulders and tell them to be honest and funny and interesting (lol). I want to put the getting close part of the friendship on 2x speed. I can tell myself that the process of building a friendship is beautiful, but I crave the deep understanding that comes with a deeply planted friendship so, so much. Lately I’ve been sitting in my bed past 11pm wanting someone to sit next to and to ask questions and discuss the thoughts I had throughout the day and hear theirs and confess my evil thoughts and actions and to hold each other and to wake up together. I want some kind of soulmate, I guess. I’ve never really had a craving for that kind of connection. I think it’s a mix of missing old friends, wanting deep friendships, and having lived in a foreign country for a good chunk of time.
3. During the past few months, I thought a lot about memory and forgetting, but I’m now thinking a lot about what I do during the moments of my day and the things that are going to compose my memories.
a. A quote I like by Annie Dillard goes, “how you spend your days is how you spend your life.” I think what I’m thinking of is somewhat aligned, maybe on a more magnified level. I had a sudden thought the other night that every moment of our lives makes up our lives. There’s no deleting any part. As my sister says, every 24 hours is equal. Even though the day you graduate, the day you get married, the day you start your first job, and the day you run that race might feel like they’re worth more, they’re not in terms of objective value. You are given the same 24h every day, and in terms of that time, it never varies. You are the one (and other people/circumstances) that causes you to graduate or get married or start that job or run that race that day. It didn’t have to be October 21st, 2003. It could’ve been October 22nd, or October 23rd, or 50 years into the future.
b. Every moment is a moment that we could possibly look back on. Of course, we might not remember these moments, but this stuff, the mass of inhalations and exhalations and floating thoughts and strange mini-interactions, this stuff composes the big life that we’re going to look back on. What and how we live every day is the pool of stuff our brains get to swirl around and choose things from to remember.
c. I don’t mean this in a perfectionist way in that we need to do everything right and make moral decisions. I mean it more in the sense that I want to be more Present, not in the way that I’m enjoying every moment to the max or whatever. But more that I am actually Consciously living my life. Let me elaborate.
d. I’ve been thinking that addictions/“bad” behaviour = anything that I do that I feel like I’m not consciously deciding and that I don’t like that I do, whether it’s picking and chewing at my cuticles or going on Instagram when I have a 5-minute pocket of free time or snapping impatiently at my parents. Or even things like listening to the same songs over and over, not because I love them or want to listen to them in that moment, but just because they’re right there at the top of my playlist. I could go on and list things that slowly start dropping off the “addictions” or “bad behaviour” lists, but that might go on the “behaviour that I don’t feel proud of” list.
e. I want to live my life Consciously, without said addictions/bad behaviour/behaviour that I don’t feel proud of. I want to pay attention. I want to do and say and think things because I Consciously Choose To, not out of pure habit. I don’t want to be a thoughtless cut-out of a person muddling down the street and through the years of my life and then looking back and trying to pull out things I’ve learned and memories that I love from a collection of moments of straight-up existence instead of Actively Living and Thinking. Instead of having my moments, my days, my life be made up of habits that I don’t even like, I want them to be made of authentic, purposeful decisions.
And with that, I think I’ve just folded 149 days worth of brain laundry. I feel scared to end this. It feels like shutting the door when it was still cracked open, even just a little bit. But I know I’m ready in the way that I need to be. For now, I’ll hold the Memories, I’ll be proud of the Imprints, and I’ll call the People. And as one of Lashyn’s favourite quotes by Emily Dickinson goes, I will make sure “[my soul stands] ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.”
“I love you. I’m glad I exist.”7
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Really, really, really recommend reading (out loud) or listening to the whole poem: https://7saturdays.wordpress.com/2014/04/07/real-life-inspiration-marina-keegan/ or
“i found myself comparing my life against adrian’s. the ability to see and examine himself; the ability to make moral decisions and act on them; the mental and physical courage of his suicide… how few of us - we that remain - can say that we have done the same? we muddle along, we let life happen to us, we gradually build up a store of memories. there is the question of accumulation, but not in the sense that adrian meant, just the simple adding up and adding on of life. and as the poet pointed out, there is a difference between addition and increase.” – Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending
I remember we had the best conversation in a coffee shop with stairs in Montreal. I can’t remember what we talked about, but I remember we had the best conversation. Which relates to what Amy said, which is that it’s so hard to remember conversations. A million words said and honestly not much recalled. But it’s so sweet that we love each other and love people, because honestly we don’t really remember, we just know.
Just thought of the line from Titanic: “I figure life’s a gift, and I don’t intend on wasting it.”
“And as I lay there with her I could see how important physical love was, how necessary it was for us to be in each other’s arms, giving and taking. The universe was exploding, each particle away from the next, hurtling us into dark and lonely space, eternally tearing us away from each other – child out of the womb, friend away from friend, moving from each other, each through his own pathway toward the goal-box of solitary death.” – Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon
“At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?... And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.” - John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Wendy Cope, “The Orange”