golden-realities

[golden-realities]

Adidas x Human Race by Gabriel Moses

[golden-realities]

i don’t write about bars. because they remind me of you. waking up with your cigarette smoke still entangled in my hair, but you are no longer here. i would never wake up by your side because we only touch each other after one glass too many, sometimes two and in dim lighting, sometimes neon.

i don’t write about bars. because they make me wonder why it is so difficult to love me in the daylight?

[golden-realities]

and in the dim light you were the one I was looking for,

but were you looking for me too?

[golden-realities]

ur early 20s are about being obsessed with kindness and mary oliver and seasonal fruits and recreating comfort foods you ate as a child and learning how to love and crying because you have no choice but to live the life before you and finding god on the bus back from the grocery store

[golden-realities]

Jennifer S. Cheng, So We Must Meet Apart; “August 24, 2018”

[golden-realities]

Walk with me until the night stretches out in front of us, walk with me until we forget what hurt us in the daylight.

We are both a little silent but you tell me that there is power in my quietness. We walk and I watch the contours of your face fading in and out underneath the street lights.

We walk until the bars around us clear out. People lock their doors, lights burn out. I am not ready to let you go, and as I watch your distant eyes I realize that maybe you've never been mine. So walk with me, just for a while, before we fall asleep in different beds.

[golden-realities]

I know it feels like you are the only lonely person out there. I know that when you walk through the streets you only see couples, you see groups of friends and families and people going out and others staying in but always together, never alone. I know you listen to their weekend plans and dinner stories and you wonder what you did wrong. You don't want to hear that loneliness is a gift too, because you have been lonely for some time and you've had enough of it.

And maybe when you come home to an empty apartment or wake up on a Sunday with no one to spend it with, you are overcome by a sudden sadness. Because you might be alone and you might even be a loner but you still crave warmth. And that's not such a bad sign. So as long as you don't make a home out of your loneliness, know that most of us feel lonelier than we'd like to admit. You'll meet the right people and in the meantime meet yourself.

[golden-realities]

I love those autumn mornings when you can smell the air and it’s a little bit cold but not too cold and there are leaves everywhere

[golden-realities]

It is 11 pm. In an hour I will turn Twenty-one. It is the first birthday I will spend all by myself. Alone in a foreign city. Yet as I lay in bed I can't help but smile. I try to come up with one thing I want to leave with my Twenty years old self and one thing I want to take into the next chapter. I write down "self sabotage" on one piece of paper and let it fly out the window. I write down "savouring each moment" on another snippet. I breathe out and realize that I am happy and for the first time in my life I have my own back.

[golden-realities]

at a certain point you just get tired of your own shit. you have to force yourself to meditate, workout, eat mindfully and read the books to form a routine that gives you a sense of happiness within yourself again. it’s exhausting i know, but you gotta keep fighting for yourself because no one will take care and love you the way you can for own being. this life is not something to go bout so casually, everyday is your first and last time to embrace this moment. this life was gifted to you with a planet to explore and souls to experience. so show up for yourself.

[golden-realities]

today I saw a building burn down

as I sat on the train heads started turning, people gasped then went unbearably quiet. a cloud of black smoke rose dense and deadly from the upper floors of the high-rise building.

when I stepped out onto the plattform there was not a single noise as we stood in horror, a horror we could not avert our eyes from. there it was again, the pain in the pit of my stomach, this dizziness, those glassy eyes.

the pain of watching something or someone burn down, burn out and knowing that there is nothing you can do to help. so you stand and stare until moments which felt like hours later, the sirens of fire trucks rang in the distance. I noticed that I had held my breath. only once the sirens got closer I exhaled with the slight relief that it might not be good but it’s never too late.

sometimes I am the building. sometimes I am the spectator and sometimes I am the siren in the distance. I smell smoke. I smell rain too.

[golden-realities]

At seventeen I filled page after page of my notebook. I wrote when I sat by the window at night. I wrote in the morning, back when I didn’t drink coffee yet.

It’s been four years and I wonder what has changed. I know we all wonder about ourselves. We look back at the person we once were or the versions we could have been. We wonder what changed. Even though deep down we know the answer. We know that it’s ourselves. We have changed. The though part is to decide whether it was for better or for worse.

I sit and drink my cup of coffee. I drink my coffee in front of a blank page. Sometimes I get a dark brown stain on the paper. Then I watch as it fades into lighter shades and am content with what I’ve accomplished. I rarely write in the mornings. I rarely write after six or ever.

Perhaps I have unlearned this talent. Perhaps I no longer believe in talents or in myself. Have I read too many books? Did I reach the point of “Well, there’s a ton of people doing this a lot better than me so why even try”?

The thing is I am not seventeen anymore and I am glad about that. Because even though sometimes I do not meet my own expectations, I move on. I am no longer numbed when things do not go as planned. I am fine with waiting until writing feels soft and uncomplicated again. Who knows maybe I was wiser at seventeen, maybe I am wiser now. What I do know is that I quite like the taste of coffee in the morning and I can’t wait to write about it one day.

[golden-realities]

“My life, he will think, my life. But he won’t be able to think beyond this, and he will keep repeating the words to himself—part chant, part curse, part reassurance—as he slips into that other world that he visits when he is in such pain, that world he knows is never far from his own but that he can never remember after: My life.”

[golden-realities]

when Matt Haig said “I worry about people being in prison for crimes they didn’t do. I worry about human rights abuses. I worry about prejudice and politics and the world my children and their entire generation are inheriting from us. I worry about all the pain in the world that I am not actively able to stop. I worry about how much I’m wrapped up in myself, which makes me even more wrapped up in myself. “

[golden-realities]

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Look buddy, i’m just trying to make it to Friday.

[golden-realities]

“It’s summer now, and you’re craving a simpler existence. You want to read. You want to write. You want to meet strangers for dinner, and not refuse another drink at another bar. You want to dance. You want to find yourself in a basement, neck loose, bobbing your head as a group of musicians play, not because they should, but because they must. It’s summer now, and you’re looking forward to worrying less. You’re looking forward to longer nights and shorter days. You’re looking forward to gathering in back gardens and watching meat sputter on an open barbecue. You’re looking forward to laughing so hard your chest hurts and you feel light-headed. You’re looking forward to the safety in pleasure. You’re looking forward to forgetting, albeit briefly, the existential dread which plagues you, which tightens your chest, which pains your left side. You’re looking forward to forgetting that, leaving the house, you might not return intact. You’re looking forward to freedom, even if it is short, even if it might not last. You’re looking forward.”

— Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water

[golden-realities]

1. Clarice Lispector | 2. Egon Schiele | 3. Dylan Thomas | 4. Joseph Lorusso | 5. Jenny Slate | 6. Ron Hicks | 7. Mary Oliver | 8. Safet Zec | 9. Madeline Miller | 10. Antonio Piatti | 11. Ocean Vuong | 12. Peter Wever | 13. Richard Siken