i think, therefore i am?
"Life is short and the world is at least half terrible"
[newsletter is undergoing a bit of a (under brief construction) moment, i’m cutting out the “sometimes i read” section but you can still keep up with what i read through my pinned tweet on twitter! ok back to our regularly scheduled program!]
“I think, therefore I am” said René Descartes. to me, it’s always been more “i think, therefore i am, therefore people perceive me, therefore i have immense anxiety over the fact people actually Witness me existing and making a fool of myself”.
lately i’ve been feeling this urge to make new friends, to step out of my comfort zone, to say yes to things i’d normally say no to, to Try things out just for the sake of trying. to be young and stupid (never idiotic) (always stay safe) (don’t be Dumb).
i’ve always lived a relatively safe life, always staying within the confines of my own comfort zone. i’ve never really felt like that was a problem until i got into college and my comfort zone started to overwhelm me, to smother me with its pretense comfort. it wasn’t comfort anymore. it was pure, unadulterated anxiety, making its voice louder than my own and speaking over me.
[Notes App, Jan. 18th 2019] Past-Noa wrote : “I don’t know how to be the best version of myself. I know I’m not as happy as I could be because I’m staying in my comfort zone as much as I can. Everything seems so scary and I’ve been trying so hard to get out of this phase of being in constant waiting for my life to “start”. I don’t want life to pass me by and realize I’ve not done anything with it. I get constantly anxious about not being good enough, being too weird or inadequate, or about not belonging anywhere.”
(god this makes me feel weirdly sad!!!!) (this was in my pre-bts era) (Past-Noa held so much sadness inside of her). three years later, a lot has changed. well, almost everything really. i don’t like this so-called comfort zone because its name often gets confused in my head with the one anxiety wears. i find myself craving to get out of it, because even though i left most of it behind, there’s still a part of it that clings to me like a second skin.
a friend of mine invited me to hang out with her friends recently. it was overall really fun, i had a good time and i had missed the thrill of meeting new people, the stress that comes with it. don’t get me wrong, i still felt my heart clench with anxiety before leaving to meet them up, still felt the tug of my inner thoughts going “just don’t go. it’s whatever… you’re tired anyways, right? right?”
in when death comes, poet mary oliver wrote :
When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
i want to give not only myself but also the opportunity to connect with new people a chance. summer is approaching and it’s never been a season i particularly look forward to because everything feels so much clearer during summer. you can’t hide with the sunlight shining directly down on you. to be fair, i don’t think it’s about hiding for me anymore. i’m comfortable enough these days that i don’t feel like i ever have to hide, but i guess it wouldn’t hurt to step foot into that sunlight, to throw myself in it and revel in what it can bring me, what i can bring to it.
in the poem good bones, maggie smith wrote :
Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.
i want to give this place a chance. maybe i can make it beautiful.
a poem for small things
saw a heart-shaped cloud and felt strangely Seen by the universe
ate at lunch break from work all by myself and it was so lovely. i don’t get to share many moments with myself lately as i’m almost always surrounded by people and it felt so nice to just sit there, eating a banh mi and listening to an audiobook while looking at the blue sky. i’d forgotten how much i love to do things on my own. life is neat sometimes, it’s true.
this poem called i love uncertain gestures by valerio magrelli : “they matter to me / because in them, i see the wobbling, / the familiar rattle / of the broken mechanism.”
when art makes me feel (alive)
born in 1929, Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese artist, known globally for her massive installations as well as her colorful art. the piece of hers i want to talk to you about today is called My Flower Bed (1962).
raised in the 1920s in Japan, Yayoi Kusama had a somewhat "traditional" upbringing. when she started to show an interest in art, she didn't get much (if any) support from her family. when the second world war started, like a lot of Japanese children, she was mobilized for the war effort, working in a parachute factory.
Yayoi Kusama lived in the US between 1957 and 1973. she had, by then, already had solo exhibitions back in Japan, during the early 50s. living in New York, she made a name for herself on the avant-garde scene through her "Accumulations" and her big installations. Yayoi Kusama's art also came to be somewhat of a byproduct of her compulsive obsessions and mental health issues, as well as hallucinations, she dealt with ever since childhood. "As a little girl, Kusama experienced a hallucination. Sitting in a flower field, she suddenly saw flowers turning into dots surrounding her and talking to her. This experience, although terrifying, would be the source of inspiration for what would become her trademark: polka dots. “Our earth is only one polka dot among a million stars in the cosmos. Polka dots are a way to infinity,” she later declared." by accumulating forms, often soft, the artist strives to control her anxiety and presents her work as therapy.
My Flower Bed, one of the emblematic works of this form of artistic self-therapy, appeared on the cover of Art Voices in the fall of 1965, showing Kusama lying in it. “I made my Flower Bed', she explains, 'especially to sleep there. […] Filled with loneliness, unable to sleep, I love myself in my Flower Bed for the night because flowers are sweet and loving. I am then like an insect which returns to its flower for the night; the petals close in on me like the mother's womb protects the unborn child. […] Until dawn, the flowers of my Flower Bed will sway in the night breeze and quietly caress me, for the night is the time of love and sex."
there’s much more to Yayoi Kusama’s art than My Flower Bed. from anti-war activism to fashion to her visual immersive installations such as Infinity Mirror Room, her art ranges from a diversity of mediums. used as therapy before anything else, it shows how art can act as not only a safe place or a space of expression but also as a remedy or at least a catalyst to process our own existence and everything it involves.
lots of love,
noa <3
kisses all over ur cute face