Reading this morning about astrology, it made me remember the time I was walking down the street with my sister when she came to visit me. A dad was walking with his son, about 11 or 12 years old I’d guess, and he was carrying a book. I do not remember it specifically, but it revolved around astrology and superstitions. The dad was walking with the son, holding his hand and telling him things like “I don’t want you to be getting into these crystal balls and whatnot,” as the son just held onto the dad’s hand, clutched his book in the other and looked at the ground as they walked. He looked up and caught my eye and I just remember wanting to tell him that it’s okay. Not everyone will understand the things you like or do. I wanted to tell him to go buy those healing crystals or crystal balls his dad told him not to—not to rebel, but to find out things for himself and to learn that all that really matters is what matters to you.
Posts tagged writing.
![iheartmyart:
Keith Haring [Brooklyn Museum Exhibition Tumblr], page from his diary, NB-0](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0q7nzMv9g1ro4xk4o1_1280.jpg)
Keith Haring [Brooklyn Museum Exhibition Tumblr], page from his diary, NB-0
When I got here a year ago I remember getting lost on the subway and ending up somewhere by Chinatown, on the island of Manhattan. I thought that Brooklyn and Manhattan were essentially the same thing – a kind of blurred-together metropolis separated only by a few bridges and tax brackets, really. I had a giant black suitcase and two other bags holding pretty much everything I owned, and I was traipsing around Chinatown with every bag overflowing. No cab would stop for me. I ended up sitting on the corner of Mulberry Street and smoking a cigarette, waiting for a cab.
When I got here I was not the type of person to like everyone I meet, pretty much disliking everyone until they give me a solid reason to like them. I think it shows from the stuff I used to write before I moved here. There was a lot of hate, a lot of anger, a lot of pent-up aggression that comes from the kind of person that takes to writing to give validation to their drinking habit, as I was doing at the time. I dunno, man. I can look at the kind of person I was three years ago when I started this experiment / career and see someone completely different. Someone trying very hard to please others, or at the very least be “edgy”; some bastardized cool-kid version of altruism; trying to make everyone happy.
Sitting on the curb I finally got a cab by telling him I’d give him an extra $5 in tip and he kindly obliged to take me across the bridge to Brooklyn. It was very cold. I had flown in from California and was wearing a jacket and a t-shirt… maybe a pair of Converse.
I was more depressed than I ever let on, back then. I didn’t want to “kill myself” so much as I wanted to completely erase myself from the planet and just fade away, really, to just be a very minor footnote in a few people’s lives. There wasn’t anything, really, to go on for. There were a few times walking across the street in Los Angeles where I remember thinking I wouldn’t care if a car hit me. That would be it. “Not wanting to live” and “wanting to die” are different things. You can be surprisingly productive and not want to live at the same time, and that was where I was at, and I was hiding it from everyone very well.
I remember the cabbie got lost and we ended up circling the neighborhood a few times. He was nice enough to turn off the meter when he realized his mistake. He asked if it was OK for him to smoke. It was fine by me, I said. He talked about his wife until the light turned green and I remember looking out the window at all the stores – all of the lights on what turned out to be, I realized months later, to be Smith Street in Carrol Gardens. It was about 10:30 at night on a weekday and a few people were outside the bars smoking; their jackets hunched up around their necks. It was very cold that day, and there was snow on the ground.
I can look back on who I was before I moved here and see someone who’s ambition outweighed their desire to work. I thought that harming myself by drinking (and occasionally dabbling in drugs) would only help me get to “that writerly place” in my head: that I could be just like my idols. Bukowski, Hemingway, Thompson, Kerouac. All geniuses in their own way, but all hell bent on destroying themselves (I loved their work, and still do, and I’ll preface this by saying I really don’t give a shit if it’s not “cool” or “scholarly” to appreciate their work after a certain age). There is something to be said about the kind of person that thinks they’ll find good spirit by downing a bottle of the same thing. It’s a heightened state of your depression, abusing that stuff. You think that you’re very much above the water and that you can finally breathe when you’re drunk, when in fact you’re just swallowing yourself to death.
There was a small moment on Smith, a few blocks away from where I was going to stay for that first month, when the light was red again and for once I remember thinking “I have no idea what is going to happen” about my move. That was an entirely new thought. For the last couple of years before that, I had known exactly what was going to happen. I was going to find a way to get out of my own skull and have everyone love me at the same time. ‘That’s what people do, right?’ I remember thinking one night in Los Angeles, ‘That’s why people get up in the morning’.
“Is this good? It’s a block up. It’s a one way street and I don’t want to go all the way around, can I just drop you here?”, said the cabbie, and I agreed, it would be good to get some air, at least, I remember thinking. I paid him $30 for a $20 cab ride. He seemed like a good guy. He helped me unload my bags to the curb, wished me luck, and drove away. I remember standing there very well. I had everything I owned and was neither “here” nor “there”.
Traveling, ultimately, is exactly that street corner on that night. You are neither coming or going, you are going from one place to another and there’s nothing you can do except give in to the fact that right now, at that minute, you are nothing more than a passenger. You may have come from somewhere and you may be going somewhere, but the state of traveling is very much a state of non-being, allowing yourself to give in to the wave of whatever may be, may be.
It felt like I was finally home, that night. I knew it right away – the first breath of the bitingly cold air as soon as the cab drove away. There are many things to be said about Brooklyn and many of them infinitely better than I could ever put them but there was something that was very apparent from the get-go: Brooklyn has a sense of community like none other. Whereas Los Angeles and Chicago (where I’ve lived before, and love both dearly) have a sense of segregation (Los Angeles is class based, and Chicago, awkwardly, is race based) – Brooklyn truly feels like a combination of everybody. Neighborhoods become gentrified and overrun but there will still always be the characters that hold the neighborhood together. All you really have to do is find the heart and hold on to it. The guy at the bodega says hi when I walk in and knows who I am and hooks me up with a Twix now and then ‘cause he knows I like them. The guy at the pizza place knows my order and wants to talk about sports. I’m not saying you won’t find that elsewhere in other cities – I’m just saying that here you can find it on almost every block in this borough.
I slept for a month on the floor of an apartment owned by a very kind woman before moving to Fort Greene. It took a while to stop drinking as much; still very much under the impression that I had to get loaded for people to like me. They wanted to see the character, right? Well, I’d give them the character, then. World’s Coolest Guy who fucking hates himself. That ebbed away within six months. It took me a trip to Savannah, Georgia to really appreciate the fact that it was OK for a place to feel like home; that New York City wasn’t my parents; I didn’t have to impress it. I could just be myself and it would treat me the same as everyone else. There’s something extremely comforting about that. It’s something that I think has saved me from a very different fate. I probably wouldn’t be sitting here writing to you – let’s just leave it at that.
I was walking back home tonight and passed the Habana Works building with the giant Notorious B.I.G. mural on the side and this message – “SPREAD LOVE IT’S THE BROOKLYN WAY” – on the front of the building. It’s not a remarkable part of the street – there’s a paint store and a questionable pizza place – but the words light up the street almost like a caption to a living, breathing, everchanging photograph – a subtext that is fully readable for anyone who cares to look.
That feeling where it doesn’t seem coincidental that you read something. Your eyes dart back and forth, faster and faster as you get towards the end. When you feel like you just read about yourself, but not exactly. That feeling where you’re really glad you were able to read something honest from another person and feel just a little less alone. Thank you for this Ned.
one warm hand can warm your heart.
you left
one of your mittens behind
on the carpet,
and i wore it the rest of the day
pretending our hands were still together.
(via theclotheshorse)
I think some people enjoy feeling miserable. They make it apparent when they are ‘falling apart’ and somehow are fascinated by their misery. I think these people are secretly like this because they are hoping and wishing someone will care enough to try and save them.
Laying in bed and letting the hours pass by
What would I do with myself if I had a week, a month, a year off from everything?
Would I just lay in bed?
I want to leave
I want to let my mind be preoccupied with things like “where are we going to eat today?” or ”will these layers be enough? I’m not used to the weather here.”
Did you notice how I said we?
Pencil. Ink Pen. Ballpoint.
My buddy Ian Dingman drew these writing utensils for me. I recently had them tattooed on the underside of my right forearm by D’mon at True Tattoo in Los Angeles. I love the hand-drawn quality, how the lines are imperfect.
love these!
Sincerely, Kim Bui
Kim bu·oy [boo-ee, boi]. I am a freelance writer and designer living in New York City.
This is where I post about things I like. These things usually include: design, magazines, typography, nail art, asian snack foods, french macarons, a few fashion things or anything creative that catches my eye.
Facebook | Twitter | Flickr
