an infinite jest of, well jest. I want to keep both worlds, in that I’m very much a fan of the critiques of language of postmodernism, while at the same time seeing the special snowflake of everyone.
The problem is that the collective drowns me. I see such a beauty in a world where every person has an individuated opinion that can be accessed and then made active thanks to the Internet, and I think that’s going to be one of the touchstones of the global era. I just think of, as we continue to be compressed, as we continue to become closer together to the point that we merge, to the point that the networks that currently relate us begin to unite us, physically, mentally, emotionally, that it will be hard for people who are frustratedly individuals, even in the most collective of societies, to create worlds that are accessible only to themselves, that later become accessible to the rest of the world as they crack the eggs of their interior and reveal their splendidly yellow brim. I’m lucky. The 21st century still rewards individualism. I just worry for people who have the “Kiran” gene in the 24th century.
December 25th, 2011: “random thoughts that both have everything and nothing to do with Christmas…”
I was working on my novel before my parents called me towards the Christmas tree-> I don’t know what to make of my first novel. It’s a work I’m very proud of, but I fear that no one else will like it. I really like that the stories are so mellow and human, but what if no one else gets it? What if they tell me that I’m not writing the true narratives of poor regions, even though I’ve made it clear that these are regions I made up in my head, regions that don’t actually exist in this world, but reflect truth onto ours? And, then, there’s the fact that something feels missing from it. I don’t think the thread that connects my being to language is in it. I think that some of the stories are weaker than others. I think the transitions could be even smoother. Yet, I also feel done, that this novel is over, and I’m ready to begin my next one (in fact, I wish I had begun it even earlier; that voice feels dying to me as well). I feel like I want to wait until someone else at least sees it (no one else has read the novel except myself) before I make changes that might not even be needed. I might be being a tough critic on myself. I just hate that I grow so quickly. I have become even more self-conscious of the fact that I write so prolifically, because people make it into something strange, that art should be created every ten years rather than every ten months. It’s part of the reason why I’ve delayed What Remains of Monstropolis, feeling that I should wait until I at least finish my first novel before starting a new one. But, it’s not about starting a new one versus an old one. It’s about entering into a new door of yourself that you suddenly find unlocked, the moment before that door closes. You end up spending hours thinking about how great it would be to have entered it, and that maybe you can still enter it; the door is closed, but certainly not locked. But, now, there’s so much more effort in getting that door unhinged; you try to push it, but it pushes back. You bet it would have been so much easier had you just done it when you should’ve. So, now I’m about to start this second novel, but it feels closed to me. Yet, I know I have to write it. The problem is that I have too much to say, and I’m dumping it on the page, to unload my anxieties, to feel like I don’t have to have so many worlds, so many characters, so many emotions, stuck in one body. Yet, it makes my work feel undisciplined, that I don’t have the energy to stay with something for a few years and perfect it. But, how do I stay with something when, in three months, not one, but five doors will open, and I have to choose which one to enter, if I even enter one at all?
My parents put a picture of myself in Indian formal wear as the front of my Christmas car -> I feel ugly. I hate the picture. I thought I had gotten over the fact that I hate my facial features, that I hate the way that I look, that I hate things about myself that are out of my control, that I hate there are things that are out of my control, that I can’t choose my race, I can’t choose my skin tone, and I can’t choose the way I look. I can, however, control how I see beauty in myself, and I have learned this last semester to begin the process of saying that I am good-looking, because others who aren’t as biased against my Indian-ness the way I am, others who don’t automatically think ugly the moment they see South Asian features, others who don’t look back in the mirror and think “why do people think of me as good-looking when I’m so average looking?” can somehow see something worth enjoying at my face. What hurts me the most is that I really thought I was over it; I had stopped thinking about my hatred of my Indian-ness this entire semester, and now it is back. There is something deeper here that I have yet to understand.
Sitting with my parents as they open Christmas gifts -> I am hyper self-conscious. I hate always thinking back and forth between infinite chains that only plunge deeper into self-destructive banter. I hate feeling like, the reason why I always forget people’s birthdays or find myself incredibly out of sync when everyone else is in a moment is because I live in my head. Being a person who lives in his imagination, I can’t connect to the outside world. I feel sorry for the people who care for me, that they have to care for someone so unconsciously and unintentionally narcissistic.
December 27th, 2011: “personal facts about literature I love…”
1. I think Dubliners is Chekhovian realism. I think A Portrait of an Artist of a Young Man is realism becoming modernism. I think Ulysses is modernism defined. I think Joyce transformed with an era.
2. I think realism is an artistic aesthetic highly over-rated. It’s one thing to create representations of humans that are realistic and complex; it’s another to waft in 19th century writing style (third person, dry, detached narration) as if it is still a part of the 21st century.
3. I secretly want to marry a Yukio Mishima look-a-like. I have a thing for biracial Asians, and I think that type of detached sado-masochism is kind of sexy.
4. I rejoice when I read Flaubert’s letters to George Sand. There’s a letter in which Sand tells Flaubert to basically calm the fuck down and enjoy life. I’m glad he didn’t. Flaubert is considered one of the greatest writers of the 19th century. Sand, as Tolstoy succinctly said, was forgotten and replaced by Zola.
5. I have incredibly Western taste. Even my love for Japanese literature and Indian epics could be arguably considered Western. I hope to become global in my taste.
6. I need to stop obsessing over modernism. Like, seriously.
7. I do think Romanticism, however, is incredibly under-rated. Pushkin? Melville? Hullo!
8. I want to write like I’m dipping a feathered pen and starting a pillow book.
December 28th, 2011: “Argentina?”
Recently, I’ve started working on a love story. When I was in the American embassy in Madrid, trying to get my passport pages re-filled, I ended up making small talk to this woman who was going to the States to marry a boyfriend of hers for thirty years. The catch: they hadn’t seen each other since they had been exiled to other continents because of the Dirty Wars of Argentina. They kept in touch through letters, calls, and now, probably Skype and facebook, but they didn’t need face-to-face to keep their love in tact.
Now that I’ve ended a moment of freckled ecstasy with another human being, and old loved one has returned to my life, almost as a blip of what was once the beauty of the tip of our sea-covered iceberg, I want to write this story. The catch: I’ve never been to Argentina, and I know very little of the Dirty Wars. The good news is that, so far, the story is writing itself very smoothly. It is, after all, a story of how communication may change, but that love will always remain constant. The bad news is that I just feel so unqualified to write something that’s a representation of a place I don’t know (damn you postmodernism for making me
