Drops of Ink

On Waking
On Manias Unattained
On Self-Destruction
On What I Mean
On Beijing
What is a website for?
On International Literature
A Fragment From an Unsent Letter
On Order
On Rain

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A mist emerged from my window this morning and soaked the curtains, the bed sheets, the linens, my pillow case, my hair, and even my belly button. The world outside was dyed red. Birds hopped from leafless branch to leafless branch, chirping in that red glow as I crossed the street to the convenience store. Always seeking convenience and never finding it! All I find is tired men who have been awake since the previous night, waiting for their shift to end so they can go home and leave this world just as everyone else enters it.

On the internet, crawling through the depths of other people’s blogs, I encounter reflections of myself, of my unshaven face in the early morning, and I want to destroy them all. Indices of self-exposure – others expose themselves and, in the process, they expose me. I want to destroy the “me” we all become when we step outside of our homes and stand inside the “public space”, objects in the shared consciousness that fills every available plank-length of space-time stretching from my front door to yours. If only I could enter that world without anyone seeing me – if only I could see “the other” without having to have a physical form myself – a fleshy body that you too, dear reader, could poke with a long tree branch if you so desired.

The world of my dreams, it’s called “America”, and I want to destroy it! Let the whole country become empty space, and let that space shrink itself down into a single point – let the topology of this planet become that of a punctured sphere, which it turns out is just the topology of a plane: this is how we'll make the earth flat. None of this would help my situation very much – I would still be myself whether or not America continued existing. I doubt such destruction would grant me any catharsis, and I know not what it would entail to wipe out from existence such a many tentacled political entity. Yet let me destroy it anyways, just to have a taste of the consequences, or better yet the lack of consequences. I’d like to feel for once a cause that has no effect. If there must be an unmoved mover, then why can't I meet the moved-who-does-not-move?

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Several months ago when I was trapped in the ever-expanding travail of properly formatting my graduation thesis, I kept dreaming of the period of state-enforced unemployment I would experience in March and April while waiting to get my diploma, which is required before applying for a work permit. I imagined how much writing I would get done, how many books I’d read, how many sidewalks I’d walk along, how many revelations about human existence I’d have, and so on.

Alas I have been stuck at the first of these. My only hobby is sitting in front of my computer with a word processor open, hoping to write Great Literature, but instead getting distracted browsing Soulseek in order to fill in holes in my discographies for bands I don't even like. Since I'm massively unproductive, I feel like I have to spend even more time failing at writing, so it ends up becoming an all day activity.

When I watched Long Vacation many years ago, it sure did make the unemployed life in a stagnant economy after giving up one's dreams seem a lot more glamorous than whatever it is I'm doing. Maybe I should be standing on roof tops beneath Konami signs, hanging out at bars, or going to see the Ben Folds Five live in concert — all the while spending away what remains of my savings. Maybe then I’d finally learn something about this world and the people who live in it.

Should I then devote my life to just Having Fun? If I was only allowed, say, 30 minutes a day to write, maybe I’d be a lot more frantic about it. As soon as those 30 minutes are up, I’d have to run out of the house and meet up with my multitude of companions to engage in our shared past time of stalking fashionably dressed old men and snapping photos of them when they’re not looking. Would life have more meaning that way? At least if people asked me what I do, I’d be able to show them my stacks of old man photos.

Instead I've been working on another essay that's actually "about" something, which is always asking for trouble. Why can’t I just learn my lesson and only “write where the wind takes me”? Whenever I have a goal in mind, something very specific and concrete that I want to express, I get too stressed out to approach it head on. Instead I have to an elaborate series of rituals that I imagine will induce a state of mania thereby allowing me to belt out an entire 10,000 word semi-comprehensible piece in a single sitting. Very rarely do I succeed in this, but since it's happened twice in my 10+ years of being a failed author, I'm always waiting for when it will happen again.

When I was younger, if it took me longer than fifteen minutes to make any progress with my writing, I’d immediately give up. There was perhaps some sense to this. I had a lot more hobbies back then. But I sure didn't finish very much writing. I felt like I’d have to "learn how to write" first, and then I'd be able to consistently produce, say, 1000 words in an hour, all organized in beautiful sentences about whatever topic I set my mind to. That never really happened. In fact, I'm not sure if I've improved as a writer at all since I was 17, beyond just having a better idea of what types of writing I dislike and therefore not wasting time writing that way. The only reason I've been able to finish a substantial amount of writing in the past few years is simply that I devote far more time than I ever imagined possible to ineffectually sitting in front of my computer and writing things that I hate and will never show anyone. I've also lowered my standards enough that I basically publish anything that I don't hate, rather than waiting for the day when I’m capable of producing something on the level of Saiichi Maruya's Singular Rebellion.

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You told me you were jealous of my sister — so pretty, so pure, so white — but now my sister's in a cult, you're working for a defense contractor, and I have no way of contacting either of you.

I'm not sure if you actually wanted to become my sister, or if that was just one of those things people say to make conversation. I know for a fact though that I wanted to become you. For instance, that icon of the virgin Mary hanging on your wall, staring down on our naked bodies — you hated it. So I wanted to hate it too. I imagined it on my own wall, I imagined growing up with it as a treasured possession of my own mother — and in the process I fell in love with it.

I come from a world of religion too of course, though maybe you didn't realize it. My religion had no icons. When you visited my house, the same day you met my sister, there wasn't a single trace of Jesus, his mom, his apostles, or even the cross he died upon. If only my brother were still living with us back then. I could take you down into the depths of his room and show you his shelves of Christian metal CDs. Then you'd understand the true nature of this religion we subscribed to.

Now as I sit at my desk, thinking about you, I wonder if you ever think about me when you're designing those missiles of yours, surely intended to descend down on my adopted home like cherry blossoms carried by the wind. The skyscrapers will crumble and our bodies will turn to dust. Two centuries of struggle — East meets West — reduced to nothing. I would die and I'm sure you would too not long after, but what about my sister? Will she be spared from the fallout, in her little cabin in the countryside, sleeping peacefully with a warm water bottle tuck into her sheets with her to keep her warm, blissfully unaware as our two societies annihilate each other? At least we'll all be able to meet again, once we finally vaporize ourselves. Will we still know what to say to each other? Will you even recognize my face?

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Whenever I end up saying something or making a point, whether that be on my website, or just in normal everyday life talking to people, I always am filled with regret. Before anyone’s even argued with me, I want to say “that’s not what I meant!”

Every thesis in my writing is unintentional — something I disagree with. It’s not a matter of me being unable to clearly articulate my actual thesis, or even being unable to find a thesis — it’s more than that: it seems that by arguing for one stance, no matter how strongly I believe in it, I inevitably turn into a sceptic. Perhaps my mind is poisoned by relativism. Sure, I believe that there’s probably something like “truth” out there, but my brain is allergic to it. I’m trapped in an inescapable Liar’s Paradox.

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I’ve finally returned to Beijing. I’ve achieved the dream I’ve had ever since I first heard Led Zeppelin’s song Ramble On as a 12 year old: the dream of going somewhere far way and then many years later once again going to said far away place, walking the vaguely familiar streets and whispering to myself “I’ve been this way X years to the day.” In my case it’s only 6, which doesn’t feel as significant as the number 10 used in the song, but one must admit, 6 has a magnitude all its own.

It now makes total sense to me why those images are so haunting and nightmarish — I thought that memory and the forces of projection had somehow warped what little sense data remained pulsing in my brain into something no longer connected to reality. Now as I once again find myself in both the inner and outer edges of Chaoyang, I can see my past self, sleep deprived, hungry, and filled with terror about the future as I fruitlessly wandered the streets looking for a way to stay in Beijing longterm, never having to return to the United States again, despite not even having a college degree. My mind latched on to these massive streets, convinced that they contained the secrets of all existence.

I forgot streets could be this wide. I forgot that this is where my idea of "the big city" came from. Returning here, I understand now why I felt so instinctually disappointed when I arrived in Shanghai. Everything is so narrow there!

I can't remember enough details of Beijing’s geography in order to, say, find a given location on a map. But now that I’m existing in a sea of place names, walking around and taking the bus (but not the subway — the place I’m staying is on the far edge of Chaoyang, where the subway does not reach), I suddenly realize that, somehow, I remember where these places all sit relative to each other. Maybe this is thanks to not having cellular service when I was in Beijing last time, so I had to closely study maps outside of McDonald’s locations with free wifi and memorize routes or find a map at a bus stop whenever I walked anywhere. The effect this has had seems to be very different from my sense of place in Shanghai.

The dream: live in a massive city, yet never leave my little neighborhood. Live the rest of my life knowing there's the possibility to go on a multihour journey to the other edge of the city, yet never feel the need to actually engage in that possibility.

Beijing, shadow world. I wish I could spend my life here at the edge of Chaoyang, where the city is being constructed around us.

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I want to pluck other weirdos out of the cold dirt, like Pikmin, so that we can huddle together and keep warm through the winter. In this metaphor, I don’t see myself as Captain Olimar — I’m just another Pikmin. Perhaps the origin of all my problems is that there aren't any Captain Olimars in sight to crowd behind — or if there are, they’re all very negligent Olimars — the kind liable to get us killed. What makes things worse is I’m an individual of quite nervous disposition. If I do see a Pikmin stalk twitching in the ground, I’d never actually dare to pluck it like in my abstract imaginations. Instead I just whisper to myself “One must venture forth on their own path...” and continue alone deeper and deeper into the forest.

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By being born in the circumstances I have been, it’s been more or less decreed that if I want to become a writer that anyone actually reads, I will be part of a certain team — the international team of writers using English, dominated by native speakers from the United States and the UK — and more importantly, not a part of any other language-defined team, no matter how much I relate to some other language. The only way to leave the English team would be to achieve a “professional” competency in another language.

When trying to read classical Chinese literature, I can’t help but feel how far behind I am compared to anyone who grew up in China or Taiwan. Much of what I’m struggling to read now is at a level that would appear in standard high school curriculum. The standard Classical Chinese courses in college for literature and history majors would go far beyond where I’m at now, after already having studied fairly seriously for quite awhile.

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I didn’t go out with my girlfriend last night. She was out at her friend’s bar until 2am, imbibing on free drinks. It’s a bar for connoisseurs of gothic fashion to dress themselves up in layers and layers of black fabric, do their make up, and come to a place where they feel at home. I’ve only been there once. I felt like an intruder. After sitting their awkwardly for half an hour, another white guy came in and shared a table with two Chinese girls in bikinis. When they stood up, he put his arms around their shoulders and they walked out together — a single unit.

If you came to visit, if I’d never seen you before, and you stepped into that bar, would I think you too were just another loser white guy, here for sinister sexual reasons? Is that why I’m here?

Whispers fill my ears, and I long to share them with you. I still think you’re the coolest person in the world — in certain moments. Then that feeling is gone, and all I want is to be the opposite of you. That’s part of why I always imagine myself as a girl when I think about you. If I really were a girl, we would be two incomparable objects — apples and oranges as the saying goes. We could exist together in peace, love and understanding. Yet I’m not a girl. I’m like you, but worse? Tainted?

I know you’ve said the same to me though — that you wish you could have the same taste for adventure that I have. I’ve always found that strange though. Can anything I’ve done here be called an adventure? But that’s the word you keep using, and hearing you speak of me that way, I sometimes feel like I need to keep up the illusion. When I write to you, I turn truthful stories, everyday anecdotes, into “adventures” — and somewhere along the way they turn into lies.

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My website’s become too sensible. I have about four different places to put things, each with their own defined purpose. I’m worried that this is resulting in me only writing four different types of writing. When I sit at my computer and start typing, after around three or four sentences I start wondering “is this an essay? or is this a micro-saddle? or could I rework it as one of my pseudo-tanka? Or is there some photo on my phone that I could use this as a caption for and post under my snapshots?” This was exactly what I was trying to avoid when I started making this website. The hope was for a kind of pure chaos and inscrutability. E.g. in November of 2023 I started writing “sentiments”, which could only be navigated by the web of cross-references between them, rather than appearing in a linear index. Once I came up with the micro-saddles, my sense of adventure disappeared. I had one place to put any sort of writing that didn’t have a topic. After awhile though, I started to develop a distinct style for the micro-saddles (reaching maturity around Record No. 17), so the freedom they were meant to promote evaporated. Around the same time, a lot more strangers started reading my website, so I guess I felt an obligation to promote accessibility.

What does it matter though? This is my website, and I am on my own journey to create a brand new world of literature that can serve as a starting point for anyone else trying to understand the problems of Modernity. That is what we’re all doing here when we visit the Saddleblasters Saddle Site, right?

I wish people would give me a harder time about these words I write. I guess it’s my own fault in a way — I’m not very good at engaging in timely correspondence. There is only one person who has emailed me an unsolicited critique of my writing, a critique that pierced to the core of how I view the world, and I still haven’t replied to him yet. Are you reading this? Do you know who you are? I promise to you, I have been thinking about what you’ve said over and over — the reason I haven’t replied yet is that I still haven’t figured out the answer. Your influence however permeates everything I’ve written since your email — especially the writing I haven’t published. So I’m very grateful. I will reply to you eventually, perhaps long after you’ve stopped caring.

(There have been other people who have critiqued my writing only after long back and forth emails talking about other things, and while I appreciate that, I feel like there’s something special about sudden and surprising critiques that come from a complete stranger, something that can never be replaced by the words of a friend.)

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As I write, it’s raining outside.

I long to find music that can represent all the things simple rain makes me feel. When it’s raining, it’s more than just a sound. I can feel it with my skin, even when I’m indoors. It’s as though each droplet contains every rain shower I’ve experienced in my whole life. It all returns to me in a single moment — a kind of psychological moment with no real correspondence to anything that’s ever happened.

I’m listening to Nintendo Sound Selects — an old series of albums given to Club Nintendo members that, as the name suggests, “selects” pieces of music from Nintendo’s history (as of the early 2000s). A peculiar song comes on — peculiar by Nintendo standards at least. A woman sings a standard pop melody as the musical style shifts every few bars. This is a song I’ve heard dozens of times before.

I’ll never sing like her. She’s not a pop singer — she sounds like she’s the wife of one of the developers, or maybe just a female staff member that they bullied into singing for them. I’ll never be anyone’s wife. At best I can be a husband — but that most certainly isn’t the same. It’s a different way of perception. A different relationship.

I hit return twice after typing that last sentence, preparing to start a new paragraph. I pause for a moment, realizing I have nothing else to say. The rain has already stopped. I hear the faint sound of a bird chirping.

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