Tag Archives: Death

17/09/2025

September 18, 2025 By in Death, Dreams, Forests, Light, Love, Registry, Sisters Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

(cw: death)

It was me, waiting for me / Hoping for something more

– Joy Division, “New Dawn Fades” (1979)

Post-Punk did not die with Ian Curtis’ untimely death. but he was indeed gone for good that summer of 1980. being the ringleader, Joy Division passed along with him. he made that decision to cement himself into eternal tragedy. to think of the austerity of the life he led. you can hear it in his voice which was almost always cracking, on the precipice of giving up, and historically so prior to his demise. he never made it to the North America tour.

to lead a life of austerity is to feel mortality ebbing and trying its best to constitute itself within your own body. things have gotten easier but they can still be difficult. you wonder how many more things the universe can throw at you. a barrage of difficult events over a long period are not to make one stronger, but to force one into making decisions. the decision to leave. the decision to stay. the decision to forge on. the decision to give up. each and every decision has its responsibility and its consequences. there are a lot of things in the world that can chip away at your light and your reservoir of energy.

once upon a time i wanted to travel to places with you. i wanted to see fields and find areas that are so quiet we could hear our own hearts beating. the world is so big and we are both in it. somehow we could even know each other. there are places with crowds of people. there are places with crowds of trees, or crowds of rocks. there are places with little trees, and little rocks. i wanted to lead an authentic life like that. with my heart on the rocks and the trees and the grass and in the air. and i wanted to show it to you that i could do so. something i could share with you. we can find what is simple and happy that works. i still do. it just feels like it has aged.

when a dream is extinguished, the other dreams become precarious. if enough dreams become dashed, the rest could follow like a fission chain reaction. once all dreams are extinguished a person is left with bare goals. goals form a necessary layer for survival and the day-to-day. and even that is at risk of erosion too. i have wanted to imbue the world with many things. i am not stupid. but world might kick me in the shins and call me stupid. i am already trying to nurse wounds. yet. eating can become hard again. sleeping can continue being not restful. dreams are possible until they are not. dreams might not be possible until they are. wake me up when they are.

to think that the light went out in you and you chose it to. i wonder if what made you into a husk is hollowing me out too. did you push your light to see where it could still take you, until it got so strained it turned into a fading ember? how tired were you by this point? was love no longer enough for you? is devotion something that failed you? did you feel that there was nothing else left for you, too? the Moon is already more than enough. but i am not the Moon, which means that is thrown into question. you were more than enough, but maybe you could not see it. i am left behind wondering what is left, and how much loss becomes too much of a cost.

as it turns out, there is poverty in time and space too. the past is rendered poor by its own consequence of letting its richness fade backwards into time. your own room can turn into a prison when the conditions are ripe for it, along with the places you frequent, the places of routine. being too tired to cry from the day’s labors is a constriction of both time and space too. the loss of a relationship makes the spaces in your world smaller. the smaller it becomes, the more trapped you will feel.

you want to feel the enchantment of The New again. you want to put in the work to make it something that is worthwhile and lasting. but can you handle the disappointment that might follow? can you handle any further hurt if it comes towards you at this point? can you live with yourself if you fail again, and if you repeat the same mistakes without intending to, and reach the limits of what your best can do? you have many wounds and you are still prone to more.

if there can be something else, this is a call.

28/10/2024

October 28, 2024 By in Alternatives, Death, Desire, Forests, Love, Music, Registry, Time, Timelines, Universe Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

The divine has placed us / In a small world

– Bilal, “Reminisce” (2001)

oh, but of course i have thought of you. seen you in past, present, and future. in our befores and afters. seen you sideways in time and seen your side view. i remember your sideview often. those occasions where the universe lets me skip past the temporal-spatial quandries of the present, i saw your sideview before i would have seen it later.

C has said how, in many contingencies with anyone else i have ever known, i knew you in past lives. of course it was not our first time. although compared to others, our relations were newer. which is to say, less baggage, and some very faint inklings of back then.

when i know you sideways, i know what could have been. knowing how we would have spent more time where we were younger. me, still shy, but attempting to be direct. what your next tattoo would have been, i would never have expected still. i make certain decisions to be more courageous, to deal with certain demons from my past, all so that they will never get to hurt you. all this sideways knowledge.

somewhere in the deep past is still something about you i have yet to remember. maybe it is something plain and whimsical. i like the sound of the word whimsical. i think about how it would sound like when you play it with your tongue. perhaps the tinkling that comes with your own enunciation is what i will eventually recall. that timbre that soothes me so deep. it has a forest feeling to it. and the forests and jungles are sites of low intensity warfare across communities, peoples, and tribes — arborescence and fauna and slime alike. i hear your timbre ringing through the forest, reaching into time like a swift blade, heavy like claymore. medieval longings in misty proportions, dark as the emergent bog.

later i will see you. in many laters i continue to see you. in many laters the happiness i have wished for you, each incantation varying from tic to guttural stops to syntactical choice to what vocabulary to invoke, manifests sideways across the continuum of the real. each time you receive bountiful harvests, i delight upon my work, all my assistance, and sit back in relief. whatever they call it — possible worlds, universes, timelines — to see how in so many of them, you are cared for and given space, in each contingency in each chance in each phase transition… it leaves my heart molten, unguent, aglow.

now, i show you my red lips. sideways i show them to you too. if you recall anything about me, shall it be this across lives and deaths.

10/11/2023

November 10, 2023 By in Death, Dreams, Ghosts, Love, Memory, Registry, Time Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

Time has stopped again.

I have been tracking the way time flows. It has not moved a lot, or even a bit on some days. When it does it goes in a recursion. I am tired of going backwards. From backwards I return to stasis. Dread accompanies those loops. Dreams intensify those loops. It’s like being infected by a temporal sickness. Whenever time stops still at 0s/s it feels the closest to death itself. In death time stops for a single person – in a localized field of stasis. While outside the field time goes on in other ways.

There are so many things I would like to say. Sometimes I whisper them in my dreams. Dreams become a very unreliable sandbox. Outside of dreamtime I wonder if it is worth it to say anything at all. I play scenarios in my head, both in sobriety and dreams. I try not to replay actual past scenarios. For when I do, I would begin to edit things: add a what-if here, and a could-have there. Time would loop backwards again like a song on replay but backwards. Ocean Vuong’s Time Is A Mother has a poem that does that. Rewind and stop, rewind and stop. It is one thing to rewind, but another to stop. So much of memory are frozen moments drained of life and time. To capture, to freeze joy or pain like that, as if it were a precious crystal barely unchanging, is cruel. It does no justice to the complexity of recollection to remember like this. To resume time forwards or backwards even worse so. It is like reanimating literal skeletons in one’s closet. It is necromancy. It is trying to reimbue life to something that just wants to rest. Skeletons just want to be dead and buried.

The obvious solution is to let go. Let go of time. Let go of memory. Let it reflow. Not something that I have mastery of. Something that takes time to learn. Time has stopped.

23/10/2023

October 23, 2023 By in Death, Life, Love, Registry Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

Hello Reader – if you’re still looking through this WordPress, I want to say thank you, and that I wish you well.

Death has been abundant this past month. Deaths caused by the carnage of Empire, in the form of the warring Israel nationstate, backed by the older and newer imperial cores. My utmost solidarity goes to Palestinians doing their best to survive, and those finding ways to fight back despite the bleakest conditions. Whenever I catch up with old friends nowadays, I have mostly told them I am glad they are alive and living their lives. It does sound like a grim thing to say during peacetime (edit: though, is it really peacetime? For many of us, War has not fully come knocking yet. We are in a temporary reprieve), but I have learnt in the past year that people can come and go suddenly. I have been cherishing the faces I know a lot more now. It is a wondrous thing to first cross paths, and even more so to continue doing so.

May we continue to cross paths, and make the most of our time together.

•, a friend of mine, once told me that “Death is a condition of Life”. • has been through near-death experiences. They feel Death to be much closer having almost experienced it. How we will eventually expire and decay. How again we could go so suddenly. I only hope to still be with you, holding your hand, while we decay. If you go suddenly, I hope to celebrate the paths you crossed in song, in dance, in the carving of a rock, in skipping pebbles across the beach, in helping an insect to survive.

The converse is also true, I told •. “Life is a condition of Death”. It is the fact of Death that allows us to spring forth and defy it. To challenge it. To argue it. To cheat it. To remain alive and to survive is a full-frontal, gorgeous display of colors. It does not matter if Death will catch up to us, if it has failed to do so in the present. This is why each friendly face is powerful and significant – it is a face that is cheating Death by the simple fact that they are still alive and expressive. Anything is still possible in that present.

I am still ill, trying to heal, trying to process the damage that has been done to my body and psyche. I have craved constantly for Death given all the pain. But with every day that I continue living, I am beginning to appreciate more and more that I am surviving. I cannot make amends to those that I have hurt if I am dead. I cannot continue physically loving those that I love if I am dead. Let this be sobering.

12/09/2023

September 12, 2023 By in Disease, Dreams, Registry Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

(cw: death, murder, rape, sui)

I had two pieces of black organza salvaged from a sympathy bouquet for Brianna Ghey in February. I didn’t know her personally of course. But whenever I grieve over her or think of her, it always feels like it could have been any of us. Trans lives have tended towards shortness. Whenever a trans sibling’s birthday passes (very recently, C’s did), it is a sobering achievement on its own. It marks another year of survival for one of us. The ways we leave can be brutal, violent: murder, incarceration, rape, suicide. This past month, every single day I have wanted to end it all. My dreams have intensified and have emotionally exhausted me. I have been so tired, and so very lonely.

I felt that the way we mourned for those who we have lost can be extended into back into daily life. This was why I ended up with two pieces of organza in my storage. I was figuring out a life and practice for them beyond the mourning period. Today I discovered a place for one of the pieces. My room is positioned well. On some nights, I have witnessed the Moon on her serene rise through my window. High upon the ledge of my window I have installed a clear acrylic case. I have stuffed the case with the organza, where my rocks can lie snug. When needed, the Moon will keep them company. It’s a precarious arrangement, but I try my best to make things comfortable.

If failure smells, it has become my odor. If heartbreak stinks, I have been wearing it like parfum. I can barely stay awake during the day or night. While I am awake I have been stuffing myself with food. I want to give up.