From Night Shift to Best Guess: Lucy Dacus' encouraging view on love

Lucy Dacus is without a doubt one of the best songwriters of this current generation of music. She writes songs effortlessly that make real the utterly intangible human experience. I do not say it lightly when I say her songs have caused several epiphanies and realizations in my personal life.

Night Shift tells the story of walking away from a love that wasn’t really love - and Dacus takes confidence in calling it that. There is no begging or grovelling, there is an acknowledgement of the feelings and the fallout - but that staying is not love, staying is self-destruction. 

“You don’t deserve what you don’t respect

Don’t deserve what you say you love

And then neglect.”

Oftentimes I think admitting we have feelings, admitting we feel strongly, is seen as a weakness. Admitting you love someone more, that you care about them more, that you’re a fool who fell in love - how stupid can you be? Ha, you showed your hand. That’s why they don’t care about you, you came on too strong.

I do think there is a difference between love bombing/mirroring and genuine care; and I think sometimes it is hard to spot in our current dating and relationship economy. Love bombing is an attempt to lower your defenses and manipulate you, and sometimes it is hard to spot but lately I think you should just wait it out. Love bombers usually give up or get angry, or just don’t really care about you or your interests. Not to be confused with mirrorers who mirror all your interests and tastes, only to discover later on they were just pretending or inflating how much they knew about it to seem interesting to you. And listen, some of these things are not bad and normal in dating but essentially we need to focus on the true goal: genuine care.

Genuine care is the acknowledgement that choice is an illusion and if you care about someone, it doesn’t matter if it's platonic or romantic. It’s my favourite meme because it’s true. 

I think queer people know this better than anyone, we often hear how ‘men and women just can’t be friends’. People who are, in theory, attracted to each other, can’t possibly just stay friends. But queer people who have fallen in and out of love with their best friends know best that loving someone fundamentally, wholly, at their core means just being happy to be in their lives. We struggle with this concept as a society but I think as a society we struggle with what love is. 

If love is meant to provide something - a home, a feeling, an acceptance, then love not delivering on that is seen as a betrayal. But if love is something we participate in and give freely, then love at all levels is always love. This is not a brand new idea, this is what love is in the Bible. Love your neighbor, as you love yourself, as you love god. No distinction, no indifference. 

But I’m going off topic, ‘Night Shift’ is a song about realizing you deserve better, even though you love fundamentally - it’s moving on because you know this kind of love without boundaries is pure self-destruction. It’s sad and bittersweet, it asks, will we ever find a love that compliments us? The feeling of hopelessness, walking away from a love you felt so completely but wasn’t reciprocated?

Lucy Dacus’ newest single, ‘Best Guess’ is her proclamation that love that kind of love will eventually find you. ‘Best Guess’ doesn’t come on strong like a power ballad you’d expect at a wedding about how love is eternal and unfaltering and that we knew from the beginning. ‘Best Guess’ says, I acknowledge that life is unpredictable, life comes without certainties, but if I had to guess, if I had to gamble it all, it would be on you. And to me, that is far more romantic. 

Joni Mitchell sang in a Case of You, “Just before our love got lost you said "I am as constant as a northern star" And I said "Constantly in the darkness. Where's that at?” and GOT7 said, ‘swear not by the moon’ because it changes shape every night. These big declarations often show their reverse; that life is unpredictable and always changing. That no one can predict the future, no one can guarantee that from day to day, from year to year, things will not change. Actually, our only assurance is that they will. When Dacus decides not to weigh in on permanence, but on the inevitability of change it is far more honest and heartening:  

“If this doesn't work out

I would lose my mind

And after a while

I will be fine

But I don't wanna be fine

I want you”

It takes all the pressure off the individual to be the saviour and the loved one and everything, but stays romantic. It says, if I had a choice, I would choose you. And right now, I choose you and will choose you. Not, fate, not destiny, not ‘you’ll regret this if you leave’ but I love you but I don’t need you. I want you. How much more pleasant it is to be wanted, to be chosen, rather than inevitably or a burden.

Orpheus as a warning, not an ideal

I think everyone who took a Classics course once or twice in university has a pet peeve about the modern reception of some myths. Most, the majority, have been misinterpreted or ripped from context. Which is normal, every generation reinvents a myth for a new application or purpose. But the one I can’t let go of, the one I personally need to destroy is that of Orpheus. Every instagram, pinterest or tumblr post about how Orpheus was simply ‘human’ and we all would have looked back are completely missing the point of the myth and what it says about our modern conception of love - and fear.

Orpheus did not look back out of love, he looked back out of fear. 

I’ll die on this hill because I’ve been Orpheus and I’ve been Eurydice. And when I was Orpheus I was scared, and when I was Eurydice I was disappointed. 

 

Orpheus was a figure in Greek mythology and was a legendary musician and poet, he travelled with Jason and the Argonauts in their pursuit of the golden fleece. But we all know Orpheus from his descent to the Hades to save his wife, Eurydice - and how famously, he could return with her under one condition: he was not allowed to look back. But he did, and Eurydice was lost to the underworld forever. 

Although Orpheus was a figure of Greek mythology, our most well known retelling of his story comes from the Latin poets. He features in Vergil’s Georgics and Ovid’s Metamorphosis, and becomes our blueprint for telling the story going forward (I think, don’t hate me). 

The original tumblr post by user tbosas posted “Jan 17” goes as following:

‘“If I was orpheus i would simply not turn around” yes you would. If you were orpheus and you loved eurydice, you would. To love someone is to turn around. To love someone is to look at them. Whichever version of the myth - he hears her stumble, he can’t hear her at all, he thinks he’s been tricked - her turns around because he loves her. That;s why it’s a tragedy. Because he loves her enough to save her. Because he loves her so much he can’t save. Because he will always, always turn around. “If i was orpheus i would simply --” you wouldn’t be orpheus. You wouldn’t be brave enough to walk into the underworld and save the person you love. Be serious.’

Honestly, I would not have a problem with this if it was about anyone other than Orpheus. Greek myth is full of tragic figures, but Orpheus is not a tragic hero. By our modern conception and our modern media, this take is completely valid. You don’t love someone if you’re not willing to sacrifice everything for them, you don’t love someone if you’re not consumed by them completely. It is our modern creation of love as the other half - love as a destination that will complete us. It is perpetuated by romance novels and rom-coms and dramas. But it is not a Greek tragedy, it is consumption, it is loss of self in the other and arguably, that is not always love. And in this case, Orpheus is more overwhelmed by his fear - than his love.

Stay with me, this take is not brand new, it is in fact, ancient. Plato himself says Orpheus was a coward, not a hero, in the Symposium:

“But Orpheus, son of Oeagrus, they sent back with failure from Hades, showing him only a wraith of the woman for whom he came; her real self they would not bestow, for he was accounted to have gone upon a coward's quest, too like the minstrel that he was, and to have lacked the spirit to die as Alcestis did for the sake of love, when he contrived the means of entering Hades alive (179d).”

Plato derides Orpheus for not having the courage to enter Hades honestly, and instead attempted to cheat death. Orpheus is compared with Alcestis, the daughter of King Pelias, and wife of Admetus who voluntarily took her husband’s place in Hades. Plato notes that after having cheated his way into Hades, Orpheus couldn’t even be victorious in returning with his wife - he still failed.  To understand this better, we have to understand that to not look back was not simply a trick set by Persephone but an ancient precept that appears in other texts and stories. 

The gesture of looking back exists not only in Orpheus’ stories but can find an interesting parallel with Lot’s wife in the Bible - famously while escaping the destruction of Sodom, she looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt (Genesis, 19). My favourite description of the event comes from Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse-Five:

“And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes.”

Vonnegut finds himself in line with tbosas, that yes, of course we would look back - it is human to look back. And I wholeheartedly agree with that, but I disagree that in the stories of Lot and Orpheus that is the point. The texts are not prescribing for our humanity, our innate fear, our innate love, these texts are prescribing against it. Orpheus and Lot are warnings, examples we are not meant to follow. 

There is evidence (and you are going to have to trust me) that gestures of looking back, gestures of moving forward without regret, are part of ancient prescriptions for living life fully - it was apparently part of ancient witchcraft, to complete a spell or ritual ‘don’t look back’ or avert your gaze. It does appear again in the bible in Luke 9:62: “No one who puts his hand to plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” - it was about having courage to go forward, to change, to become new. Some scholars (again, trust me) speculate that in the early years of christianity it was meant to encourage those embarking on journeys to spread the word of the lord, to cross countries and vast distances, to leave their homes and not look back or hesitate. 

I think our modern interpretation of Orpheus is inline with our modern ideas of love - definitely, our Twilight generation of love. When I read Twilight, at 12, I longed for a love like Edward and Bella’s. All consuming, it was about life or death. Bella would not live without Edward, Edward would not live without Bella. Edward had lived for years, waiting for Bella and Bella would want someone she could not have even imagined before she met him. But reader, we’re not 12 anymore and Edward and Bella were not in love; they were consumed by each other. A love that disregards your own life, that disregards your love for your loved ones (where platonic and other interpersonal relationships pale in comparison) is not love. It is our western fantasy of true and complete acceptance, of annihilation and entropy. To be loved so deeply we dissolve. That nothing else matters - not sickness, not death, not injustice, not inequality.

To quote Erich Fromm in the Art of Loving:

“Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one “object” of love. If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism. Yet, most people believe that love is constituted by the object, not by the faculty.”

Love that ignores our larger place in the world, our bigger connections, is not love - it is ego. And it is convenient for our Western Capitalist society (here I go) to be obsessed with a love that disregards equality and justice; we’re all too busy, obsessed with being consumed to know that love is between all of us. Between those suffering injustice, those suffering discrimination. Fromm’s idea of love aligns with the Jesus in the New Testament - as love as something we offer everyone, including ourselves. That love is meant to transform and uplift, not destroy.

So when we say, of course Orpheus would look back. Of course you’d look back if you were Orpheus, we ascribe to a love that is based on fear and loss. It’s love based on scarcity; if I lose this, if I lose this person, who will love me? Who will support me? Who will understand me? Not realizing we are interconnected organisms related to every other living thing. Held and supported by organisms we’ll never fully comprehend. I think you can be scared in love and still not look back. I think you cannot look back and you are still deeply in love and deeply consumed. I think love is more like air than a rare mineral, that we need to hoard and fear losing. I think we all lose something now and then that tells us death will eventually take everything we care about, and that rightfully scares us. No, it doesn’t make sense. Existence isn’t big on reasons.

But, we should not fear death - we should not fear loss. Our love isn’t doomed to be lost, we shouldn’t fear loving things, knowing eventually they’ll leave (leave us or leave into death). If Orpheus had mastered that, he wouldn’t have looked back - but Orpheus, like Lot, is human. And like I said in the beginning I’ve been Orpheus. I’ve been scared to lose - I’ve been consumed with fear. And I’ve looked back countless times, but as an Orpheus, I think we should take into mind the purpose of the text. The purpose of Lot. Which is to ascribe bravery. To tell us that even though we are human and fearful, we can hope for better and try for better. Ancient stories often acted as tales of what not to do, what not to be - not fates written in stone. They didn’t say well this is just what humanity is like - they said no, you can be better. 

And like I said, I’ve been Eurydice - condemned by fear back into the depths of the underworld. Oh, to have a lover like Aclestis, who does not fear death - who only knows love. That is what Plato is saying when he calls Orpheus a coward. Also, lacking in our modern reception of Orpheus is Orpheus’ death. Orpheus dies, dismembered by followers of Dionysus for betraying Dionysus in favour of Helios. That is a different story for a different time, but it is interesting to note that Dionysiac cults were also strongly associated with the afterlife and having a good life in Hades and closely associated with cults of Persephone (Queen of Hades, who gave Orpheus his terms of ‘Don’t look back’). So Orpheus turned away from death to light - perhaps still in fear, perhaps in hope, still met a tragic end. 

References/further reading:

• Bremmer, Jan N. Greek religion and culture, the Bible, and the ancient Near East. Vol. 8. Brill, 2008.

• Lee, Yen-Fen. "Ovid Rewriting Virgil: Two Versions of" Orpheus and Eurydice"." 外國語文研究 7 (2008): 129-150.

• Vergil, Georgics 4.453-527: Orpheus and Eurydice Translated by A. S. Kline 

• ovid metamorphoses 10 1-85

• ovid metamorphoses 11 1-66

Atlantis/Antigone: what do we owe the dead?

Atlantis is a South African movie released in 2021 inspired by the Sophoclean tragedy Antigone, the movie is set in the wind swept and far-flung town of Atlantis. Atlantis was established in the 1970s as part of the apartheid government and spatial planning that sought to create a coloured industrial town. This “Bruin Droomstad” would promise housing and jobs to its residents, but the government ultimately failed and since the area suffers from unemployment, crime and housing issues. The town also shares its name with a famous lost Greek city, perhaps adding in its selection for a modern interpretation of the Antigone.

In Atlantis, Ra’ida “Ray” Hendricks is a taxi driver working for Uncle Amir, the man married to her mothers cousin, and his son Nazeem, as she tries to support her younger teen brother Marid (who also acts as her gatjie). The story revolves around the disappearance of Marid after he tries to steal from Uncle Amir and Nazeem, only to end up missing and with his friends dead. The Antigone revolves around Antigone  and her attempt to give her brother Polyneices a fair and proper burial in defiance of her uncle, Creon, the current ruler of Thebes. Antigone and Polyneices were children of the former ruler, Oedipus, who stabbed out his eyes after realizing he had killed his father and married his mother when he took over control of Thebes. Polyneices had died fighting his brother, Eteocles, after a dispute over the throne. In the adaption, Antigone is represented by Ray, Creon by Uncle Amir, Polyneices by Marid and Haemon (Creon’s son and Antigone’s betrothed) by Nazeem. 

In the beginning of the film, Ray drives her taxi past a wall with graffiti that states ‘Kingdom of the blind’ which can reference several instances of blindness. The first and most obvious is Oedipus blinding himself after learning what he’d done and leaving the role of ruler of Thebes open. The second, is Creon’s blindness is the Antigone and his refusal to listen to divine will. Third is Ray’s blindness to the true nature of Uncle Amir and Nazeem. Ray considers them her ‘family’ even though she is romantically involved with Nazeem. But Ray believes in them and their goodness, despite the overwhelming evidence that they are involved in shady and illicit dealings. Creon’s blindness results in the death of his wife and son at the end of the Antigone, while Ray’s blindness results in the death of her brother Marid - unable to realize the true nature of her family until it is too late. Lastly, it can be argued that there is a socio-cultural blindness buried deep in Cape Town and wealth gap and spatial injustice. Communities like Atlantis, engineered to reflect apartheid’s racial scheming but ultimately failing and stranding its residents far from work as well as community services show that the best way to exist in Cape Town is to turn a blind eye to the social and cultural failings, lest it get too uncomfortable to look at. 

The central conflicts in the Antigone revolve between Creon’s upholding of his authority and rule, and Antigone’s defiance in favour of divine justice and ritual. In Charles Segal’s 2019 ‘Sophocles Praise of Man and Conflicts in the Antigone’, he notes that Creon defines himself and his authority by his civic and political roles (Segal, 2019). Therefore, he associates honour with what benefits the state and cannot conceive that the gods would honour a traitor to the state, as Segal notes: “presumes that human and divine—or political and religious—values exactly coincide.” Segal compares this with Antigone, who relies on what honor means to the gods. In the end, by denying Polyneices burial Creon denies the natural place for death - that death is not ‘an instrument for control’ but a part of human existence (Segal, 2019). Alternatively, Antigone is completely committed not only to seeing out the death of Polyneices but her own:

“Take heart! You live. But my life has long been in Death's hands so that I might serve the dead." (560, translated by Sir Richard C. Jebb, 1900)

Antigone says this to her sister Ismene, who always wants to die alongside Antigone. Ismene warned Antigone against performing the burial rites, but later is willing to throw her lot in with her sister who steadfastly insists she stay out of it. Their exchange is harsh, but full of love and compassion. As noted by Robert Frances Goheen in 'The Imagery of Sopchles Antigone', Antigone is led strongly by her emotions:

“Whereas Creon’s metaphors consistently employ sensory phenomena and so have an immediate aura of measurable fact, Antigone draws heavily upon direct terms of emotion, many of her expressions are half-way between imagery and emotionalism…” (76)

 

In this we can definitely see Atlantis’ Ray and Uncle Amir - Ray is led by her emotion. Her love for her found family in Auntie Aliyah (her mother’s cousin) and her husband Uncle Amir, she believes completely Marid would never do anything to hurt her or his friends. While Uncle Amir is committed to the ‘law of the jungle’, and his belief that is just how things work in the world (his world). 

Antigone in front of the dead Polynices by Nikiforos Lytras 1865

However, it is worth mentioning there is a distinct difference in how the Antigone and Atlantis characterize the morals and positions of their characters. In the Antigone, the lead characters belong to the ruling class of Thebes - it can be argued Atlantis is similar but the criminal implications are unfortunate. Uncle Amir being a gangster and Nazeem similarly, a gangster with violent tendencies towards women. Uncle Amir’s counterpart Creon is obviously misguided in punishing his Antigone and denying the burial of Polyneices, but he does do it with the authority and belief it is good for Thebes. Haemon, by comparison, is in love with Antigone to the point he defies his father and kills himself. Haemon also advocates for Antigone to his father, and not just for her but for the wellness of the polis.  In Atlantis, Nazeem pulls a gun on Ray and threatens to kill her for going against the family. The sudden violence against our modern Antigone feels unnecessary and cheap. Even the killing of Marid is different. Marid is killed by Uncle Amir as a message, because he is the gangster King of Atlantis and this is how he earns respect. Polyneices dies fighting for his rightful share to rule Thebes - Creon does not honour him because he will not honour a usurper. 

The mix of Cape Town and Greek tragedy does make a delightful mix, but anchoring it with senseless crime and violence in a play where the violence is incredibly intentional. In Atlantis, the ‘bad’ people on screen do not steal to survive, they live in excess. We get countless expositions about how Nazeem and Uncle Amir drive nice ‘larnie’ cars and dress well. It misses out on how often young people turn to gangsterism because they do not have a choice; it is not romantic or noble or far removed like a Greek play but a statistic when you look at Western Cape gun deaths. 

Bronte Snel as 'Ray' in Atlantis (2021)

I do like the movie and think it's interesting, however I think in using the Antigone it does not quite reflect Sophcles’ narrative intentions. The Antigone is not really a story of revenge as Atlantis becomes, but of divine law and justice - everything unfolds as it is meant to. Atlantis might have benefited better from using a play like the Hecabe by Euripides; one of female rage and powerlessness in tandem which suits Ray as a protagonist better. None of the men are sympathetic in the Hecabe, or at least not to the point where anything can be changed. Marid and Polyxena also, similarly, make good comparisons. Polyxena dies for no other reason than Achille’s ghostly rage, and Marid dies for no other reason than Uncle Amir’s lost pride. Impotent Nazeem goes well with an impotent Odysseus who, while understanding of the female protagonist's situation, cannot actively intervene. Odysseus does allow Hecuba revenge for the death of her son as it does not concern the Greeks directly, which could also represent the police Captain Witbooi in Atlantis who laments there are far more powerful people than him but he can support Ra’ida from the sidelines. 

Without the comparison to Antigone, I do think Atlantis is an interesting movie but it seems stuck between following the same beats of the Sophoclean tragedy but missing the steps that make the Antigone compelling. At the end of Atlantis, Ray has gotten her revenge on Uncle Amir - his wife and son are dead just like her brother. But at the end of the Antigone, Antigone is dead at her own hand and the death of Creon’s wife Eurydice and his son Haemon, are yes caused by his foolishness but more overwhelmingly, his defiance of the gods. It is not revenge for siding with Eteocles against Polyneices, resulting in his death. That was part of human conflict, it was allowing Polyneices body to rot out in the open without the proper funerary and burial rites - polluting the earth and the polis.

References:

• Antigone, Sophocles (translated by Sir Richard C. Jebb, 1900)
• Atlantis, 2021, South African film
• “Bruin Droomstad” (Coloured dream-city) - The Story of Atlantis — Cape Town Museum: https://www.capetownmuseum.org.za/places/atlantis accessed 27 September 2024
• Segal, Charles. "5. Sophocles' Praise of Man and the Conflicts of the Antigone." (2019): 137-162.
• R. F. Goheen, The Imagery of Sophocles’ Antigone (Princeton 1951)

pools of acid

 I tell myself, when I have nothing to write or can’t describe what I’m feeling – that’s exactly when I should write. On one hand I don’t even know where to start, but also is there anything to say? Lately, progress has felt like doing the opposite of everything that has felt ‘right’ in the past. I think I’m coming to terms with the fact everything I thought was ‘right’, was wrong and I just didn’t know. And I’m resistant because if that’s true, then I was clueless. It’s like being waist deep in acid, thinking its water – only to discover you chose the wrong pool. And your pride says, ‘I would never choose the wrong pool – I know what I’m doing’ and you stay in the pool of acid, saying water always burns like this. It’s like accepting conditional love from someone and telling yourself, yeah, it always feels like this. Like I want to turn my skin inside out, like I want to completely disappear. It’s meant to be like this. You don’t entertain the idea that maybe, you’re human and it’s first time being alive and sometimes you’re going to mistake acid for water. Sometimes you’re going to mistake emotional unavailability for stability.

 

We need to stop assuming we know better – because we really don’t. But acknowledging you don’t know everything is the first step to changing things. It’s been hard, completely unravelling the things I thought were pillars of my life. Knocking it all down and starting again. I miss who I was six months ago sometimes; she was having a horrible time, but she still believed she was doing the right thing. I never know if I’m doing the right thing, and I usually tell myself, if it feels wrong that’s how I know it’s right. But how do you trust yourself again?

 

One thing though, I will say, has helped me is finding myself in other things. In my friends, in my family, in my favourite shows and games. Its like I left a trace of something, anything, and now that I’ve lost it all – its like someone returning a jacket or a book you thought you’d lost. Something you hadn’t thought about in years, but the memory is as fresh as if it just happened. You don’t know even know what you’ve forgotten. I am trying to make peace with all of this, but it’s so, complicated. I want to backslide because I am scared of making the same mistakes again – how ridiculous does that sound? I’m scared of finding myself here again, so, what if I just never leave? It’s the same logic as staying in the pool of acid, and maybe change starts with acknowledging that fundamentally, none of this should hurt. Love shouldn’t hurt, your day-to-day life shouldn’t hurt. Hurt is an aspect but water is soothing and calm and soft and if it burns then you’ve found the wrong pool.

one of those nights

 

I had a nightmare last night and I should have seen it coming because before bed I felt a familiar depressive mood that I hadn’t felt for a while, but over the course of the day had sort of resurfaced. But before bed, I reminded myself that the feeling was temporary and in the morning I would feel better. And I did. I think for a long time I was confused about who I was – I thought I was the depression. I thought I was the isolation and the cynicism. I’d spent so much time estranged from myself that I thought that was who I was. I’ve already made this blogpost before, about being sunflowers and about acknowledging ourselves and our needs. But someone can say something and suddenly you’re 16 again and really want someone to like you, to see you.

 

The nightmare was actually about seeing something horrific, and no one acknowledging how bad it is. A true ‘it’s all in your head’ take. Perhaps, the reminder of that feeling sent me completely out of myself – the, no one will like you or love you if you talk about this. If you reveal those parts of yourself, you will be hard to love. But if no one has told you this today yet, I’ll repeat what my best friend thousands of kilometres away said while we were playing games the other morning: “You are easy to love.” You are easy to love. In fact, it’s the walls we put up in front of the vulnerable bits that make it difficult to feel or express those things. It’s the mask that keeps us from being truly seen.

 

To be loved is scary and its cringy. It’s, “let me leave all the things I thought I had to hide about myself in the open”. What happens when we start seeing our flaws as our successes instead of failures? What happens when we stop naming emotions as bad and good and just let ourselves be. Like, leave yourself alone. You’ve done so much, and you try so hard. You’re doing so well. Even when you make a mistake, we all make mistakes, it’s incredibly human – you’re just being your species. This year, taking responsibility for my depression and how it affected my relationships was the number one thing to uncovering my unhappiness. “Why didn’t they choose me?”, “Why didn’t they reply to my message?”, “How do I change myself to make them like me?”. Why do they have to like me? If I’m not important to them, why am I waiting for them when I can meet someone else who thinks I’m important? I needed to stop thinking I knew what my happiness looked like and let it show itself me to instead. Even when it was uncomfortable, even when it was different, but sticking it out because I can’t leave myself behind again.

what did you say?

I have a few favourite movies but the most recent one is ‘Better Days’ (2019) directed by Kwok Cheung Tsang. Better Days is about two teenagers, Chen Nian – a high school student who becomes the target of the school bullies and is ostracized for her mother, who while trying her best, can’t seem to escape accusations of being a scam artist. Xiao Bei, a teenager who dropped out of school and spends his time doing petty crime and getting into fights. Chen Nian just wants to write her final exams and turns to Xiao Bei to protect her, just for the time being. What results is a soft and tacit understanding between two people the world hasn’t loved enough. There are many scenes I’d like to write about, but for now I’ll settle on one. Towards the middle of the movie is montage of scenes between the two as they grow close, including one when they’re on a motorcycle, speeding through dark, orange-lit streets. Chen Nian says, “Don’t you think maybe I don’t deserve your kindness?” to which Xiao Bei replies, “What did you just say?” suggesting he didn’t hear her, but a small smile says he did – and he doesn’t care.

 

The scene tossed around in my head until I came across a reel that put it into focus, the reel by thedailyvictorian on Instagram that starts ‘Welcome to life, you’ll get hurt here’ is about the sweetness and bitterness of life, and all the things you can expect and look forward to. The one line that resonated with this scene was: “Or someday you’re gonna tell someone that one thing you’re sure makes you irredeemable. And when you search their eyes for disgust, you’ll find only love.” Chen Nian asks Xiao Bei this after saying she knew Hu Xiaodie was being bullied, and even though she wanted to be her friend, she was worried it would make her a target of the bullies too. Useless, because in the end the bullies targeted Chen Nian anyway. But when Chen Nian asks, “Don’t you think maybe I don’t deserve your kindness?”, she is revealing her shame and her guilt to which Xiao Bei doesn’t even acknowledge the question because it’s not a question. She doesn’t need to deserve his kindness – she has it regardless.

 

To ask ourselves if we deserve love, if we deserve kindness suggests there’s a state in which we are unlovable and undeserving – but the truth is, we aren’t. Ever. I used to think I was waiting to be a certain kind of person; that for now, I could only give love and kindness, I hadn’t earned receiving it yet. That was something I would have to work for. And I believed that up until very recently where I sat in my therapist’s office and said, “There isn’t a point where I become loveable, I am always loveable”. Even when my hair is unwashed, even when my room is messy, even when I miss all my shots in Apex Legends. To withhold love and kindness on the basis that you just don’t deserve it yet, is not a concept worth tolerating – instead when it arises, we should respond like Xiao Bei: “What did you just say? I didn’t hear you.”

on space dogs

Lately, I’ve been looking for myself in lots of things. In people, in places, in songs. I spent the last three years thinking that if I projected an imagine of ‘perfect’, then one day I would indeed be perfect. Instead, I let myself get further and further away from myself. It felt as if I was flung out into space and have been hurtling aimless since. This year has been a rescue mission: bring her home. I have a tattoo of the space dog Laika on my forearm, people always ask why, and I usually say something along the lines of ‘oh I just love the space race’. The truth is, I didn’t want her to be lonely. Laika was a dog that the Soviet Union sent to space in 1957, she was a street dog who everyone (but her) knew was destined to die in space. I loved the idea of a doggy cosmonaut, hated the idea of a poor little street dog never finding her way back home. Forgetting her or pushing her from my mind just didn’t feel right, drawing her close, keeping her in my thoughts, rewriting her story felt better. So I put her on my arm, so she would never be lonely again and neither would I. I have felt, absolutely lost in space.

 

So this year I sort of launched a mission to bring myself back – I pointed satellites to the deepest reaches of myself, I sent out probes, I played my favourite songs and movies on repeat hoping she would hear it. Hoping she would make her own way back. At first, I thought maybe there was no way to do this – no way to recover parts of yourself you’d lost. But then, I caught her frequency. A ping in the darkness. That was enough to know it was worth pursuing, if there was a chance, we’d wait for her forever. I wouldn’t say the rescue mission is complete, but it feels like everything I do lately brings her slightly closer. Her favourite food, her favourite clothes, the things she had forgotten she loved with her entire being.

 

I think what I didn’t realize is how important it was to look – before I’d look in one spot, and the deafening silence would be confirmation that trying was futile. I hate this, I’d think. This is only going to end horribly. But when I learnt to stick it out – to stretch a blanket out beneath the stars and watch, earnestly and whole-heartedly, did I see the real results. I think I hadn’t realized how cynical I’d become, how resigned to my fate I felt, not realizing that I’d never been that person – I’d always looked to the stars and felt comforted. Comforted by the many worlds and the possibilities. Stars burning regardless of what happened on earth. I wondered when I’d lost that part of myself, or when I’d stopped talking to the moon. But ultimately, that wasn’t important. I have the mission, and I’m going to finish it.  

sunflowers inside

If I told you I knew already, from the start, this would end like this – you would say I’m self-fulfilling prophecy. And maybe I am – but sometimes you look at something, and you already know its end. It’s “oh I’ve been down this path before, I know where it goes”. And even though I knew it wouldn’t end well, I kept going. Is that my fault or yours? I had the thought this year that I had finally woken from a nightmare, but I couldn’t decide what was better – to know none of it is real and finally break free from it? Or the ignorance of believing everything is out of your hands? Obviously the first, but I miss the bliss of the second option. The belief that none of this has anything to do with me – I am but a hapless passenger on this raft and it heads straight for a waterfall. What do you mean I can jump out? What do you mean I have to swim? Isn’t it better to float, isn’t better to accept the inevitable?

 

It's so much harder to acknowledge that this is a negative thought pattern I’ve created for myself – that at one point served me, but now no longer does. This is a piece of code I run to feel better about something that doesn’t exist anymore. It’s obsolete, but what if the new program isn’t as good? Isn’t as effective? What if it crashes the entire system? So what? Is that worse than falling off the waterfall? No one tells you how hard it is to unwrite the beliefs you have about yourself and your life, no one even tells you, “Hey, that might not be wholly accurate of what life is like”. No one tells you you’re going to turn 25 and your brain chemistry is going to change. Your old coping strategies won’t work anymore, and you will have to uproot everything and start again. It won’t be a choice. It’s living your life thinking you’re a succulent – minimal effort, little teaspoons of water and poor soil, only to discover you’re an incredibly picky house plant that needs water every second day, plant food and to be rotated in the afternoon sun so your leaves don’t burn. And you think, “when did I change?”, only to discover you were always the house plant, you just convinced yourself your needs weren’t important. You told yourself if you believed it hard enough you were a succulent.

 

One of my favourite poems is the ‘Sunflower Sutra’ by Allen Ginsberg, about a sunflower blackened by the grime and dirt of a railway track and urban pollution – but the poem is a reminder, “You were never a locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower!”. My favourite part is in the last stanza: “We’re not our skin of grime, we’re not dread bleak dusty imageless locomotives, we’re golden sunflowers inside.” We are golden sunflowers inside. We forget how our environments can twist and change us but does not fundamentally change who and what we are. Sometimes we need to a reminder, and to listen to the reminder. Often, we see the red flags, the check engine lights, and we think, I don’t have time to unpack all that – let me just keep going. But if there’s anything I’ve learned those things always catch up to you, the car breaks down and suddenly you can’t move forward even if you wanted to. All this to say, I loved you very much, and of all the people to teach me this lesson, I’m glad it was you – but my heart aches for a future where we could have said, ‘let’s not go down this path, let’s go this way instead’. How lonely it was, to realize we were heading two different directions, even though I would meet plenty of new people, old friends would greet me with warm hugs and new friends would emerge as pillars of strength. I found myself, caught between the known and the unknown and decided I could no longer do what I’d always done and forced myself down an unfamiliar path. And I hated it, I dug my heels and tried my best to resist this – but it was a wave and now I can’t stop, I just have to see where it goes. I’ll miss you, but the person you knew was a liar. She didn’t even realize she was lying to you because she was lying to herself.

 

 

ghosts of district six

 There’s this episode of Unsolved Mysteries that is about the ‘tsunami spirits’, about a phenomenon in Japan after the 2011 tsunami and subsequent nuclear power station melt down – that people would come across spirits who didn’t realize they were dead, unaware of the catastrophe. Taxi drivers would pick up clients only to take them nowhere and for the people to disappear suddenly from the backseat. Young men would be seen walking home, with no home to go to. I couldn’t finish the episode, because whether or not you believe in ghosts or spirits or an afterlife, nothing is more relatable than the feeling of trying to get home. Looking at the images and videos of District Six, how many people still know the way back to their houses? To the corner store? To the cinema? 

Two ladies stopped me for directions to Buitengracht Street yesterday, and I said, follow the road till you see a McDonalds and head up towards the mountain. How intimately I know my way, how every curb stone holds a piece of me. I walked down Queen Victoria Street and saw myself, a few years earlier, walking from where I used to work in the library, up the road and to the right on my way to the Vida the next block over. I often wonder if there are ghosts, what will my ghost haunt? Which streets and sidewalks, what rooms, and buildings? What place has left such an impression on me, that I couldn’t dare separate from it. 

Looking at District Six – at the streets full of people and cars, I wonder where the ghosts are. Are they in their homes? On the street? Are they walking home from a friend’s house, the sky the soft indigo pink of sunset or are they walking to work at the crack of dawn, new sunlight warming their faces. What sounds do they remember? What are they humming under their breath? Who are they thinking about when they look out the window? I don’t understand how it simultaneously breaks my heart and comforts it, to know people loved like we do, cried like we do, that every experience has been felt before. I wonder about what happens to a place when you can no longer return to it. Where does it go?