This is my 40th letter! Thank you so much for reading, I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving. This week I strayed from the Ad Hoc format and wrote something longer about being at home for break. ✦
On Monday, I see two people I know on the street. I take a picture of the boy to send to my friends. I pretend not to see the girl. I’ve read somewhere that it’s actually kinder to ignore an acquaintance if you see them in public, to spare you both a few minutes of small talk. I’m not sure if I agree, but it’s a passable justification.
I walk down 5th Avenue to meet my mother, and I am disappointed by the lack of holiday decorations. I peek into the storefront windows and decide to try on clothes at Uniqlo. The pants are too long and the cardigan is too thin, which I am happy about, because I don’t have to debate spending more money. I see a crew beginning to put up the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Plaza. There are a dozen people gathered around the scaffolding, taking pictures.
Grace said the other day that to live in New York, you must really love people, because there are so many of them everywhere. When I look ahead, the crowds are so densely packed I can’t see the sidewalk. I don’t like talking to people all the time, but I don’t mind passing them in public. The weaving footwork and shoulder brushing almost feels like dancing. I practice making eye contact with a few strangers. When they return my gaze, I hold it for a second.
On Tuesday, I make a matcha latte. Then I listen to Evermore, front to back, while walking through Central Park. The other day Zack played a song from the album and said, “What if this was the last song Taylor Swift ever put out?” He was right, I think we’d all like her a lot more.
When I get home I work on a paper for my Korean literature class. A Room in the Woods by Kang Sok-kyong is a novel about a twenty-year-old student who is so depressed she drops out of school. So-yang spends most of her time locked in her room, blocked off from her family, in pursuit of a haven from her pain. Her diary entries are scattered throughout the story.
This room of mine isn’t a room. I need a room that will make this bleeding sheep sleep, that will ease the heart of this startled deer, that will caress the steel-blue blade of this dagger. Perhaps such a room will never exist for me.
So-yang cannot disentangle herself from the evil she identifies in the world, and sees her own youth, privilege, and body as rotten. She isolates herself and then wallows in her outsiderness. She is never able to find her room in the woods.
My parents leave for work early in the morning, before I wake up. My brother sleeps until noon. I alternate between my bedroom and my grandma’s old room. I stretch out on the couch, scrolling through my inbox, watching movies, and pretending to do schoolwork. I feel myself settling back into solitary routines. I think about spending the summer alone in California two years ago and never feeling lonely, not even once.
I used to harbor a lot of bitterness when I came home for the holidays. I didn’t like that I reverted to my bratty high school self around my family. I took it personally when old friendships withered and took root in new places. I sulked. When I stepped outside, my face turned red from the biting wind. On the fourth time around, I am trying to be gentler. And it’s much warmer this year.
My mother makes dinner. I haven’t had someone cook for me in so long. She roasts zucchini, onions, and mushrooms until they are tender and caramelized at the edges. She boils oxtail bones for five hours until they yield a milky, rich broth. We eat the soup with rice and lots of green onion. For dessert, I pick up pints from the new Salt and Straw on the Upper West Side. The most special flavor is the parker roll with salted buttercream. There are fluffy pieces of bread folded into the ice cream.
On Wednesday, my family goes to see Maybe Happy Ending on Broadway, where two retired helper bots who are usually confined to their own rooms decide to take a trip to Jeju Island and end up falling in love. Oliver (the male robot) says that he used to think his room was the greatest place in the world. Until, well…he leaves.
Thursday is Thanksgiving. I make pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. I see Wicked. We eat kimchi and short ribs around a wooden table in Brooklyn.
In my dream that night I am falling and I land on my bed. My feet touch the mattress last. I can feel the gravity, the shock absorbed by the springs, my body sinking. I’ve been having more nightmares this week than usual, but I can’t remember them when I wake up. Maybe it has something to do with sleeping in my childhood bed. Maybe I’m still thinking about So-yang.
At the end of the novel, Mi-yang, the narrator, urges her little sister to give in a little, to stop trying to find herself beyond the world. So-yang thinks that youth is a glittering illusion that inevitably shatters and reveals suffering. Mi-yang knows it is too late to save her sister, but she still tries, because believing in goodness is not foolish. It’s how we stay alive.
You would have found that the springtime of life isn’t a chain; it’s a pair of wings.
Love you…
Lovely. Reminds me a lot of the book “The Lonely City” by Olivia Laing which was great if u havent read
What a magical letter ⭐️🩵