09 - Losing opacity and a big reading challenge
(Illustration by Bill Crisafi)
HELLO! I'm a little late but I'm back as promised. Writing #08 gave me the push I needed to write more. The responses to the previous newsletter made me cry. You folks are truly the best. I couldn't ask for more.
I wrote two incomplete mini essays that I will send you soon. I wrote a short-ish essay-story-creature when I was feeling a tad burned out. I felt like I would literally burst into flames if I didn't let it out of my brain. So here it is! Enjoy.
🌊 Hi, I'm Sachi and this is Currents where I talk about many disparate things. If you want to unsubscribe, click the link below. If you like this newsletter, scream out loud from your rooftop/ terrace. Bang utensils out loud. If you're the subtle kind, send it to someone who you think will enjoy it.
(Illustration by Bill Crisafi)
👻 Disappearing People
It’s not like they were ever mean to her and it’s not like she disliked any of them.
In fact, she loved them. She was totally okay with the near constant need to pour herself into satisfying their many small emotional needs. She tolerates conversations where the other person talks about how hard it is to hire or how challenging their work is for hours until their conscience awakens enough to ask her how her life is. By then, she is tired. She has given this person all her energy and has nothing more to give. She nods and says nothing is new in her life. It is noon, and she has already managed to assuage the fears of someone about a new presentation, read countless messages, responded to reels, told people she was there for them, asked one person if their health is better and wished someone else on their birthday.
She woke up feeling unusual one Wednesday. It was the middle of the week. She loved her job and her coworkers. Even though she did the work of two people and was paid for that of ⅔ a person, she enjoyed her work. She loved beautiful things from the time she was little. Making things more beautiful, in any way possible, gave her joy and filled her up. She looked at her hand that morning and something looked awry. She looked a little translucent. The only time this is known to happen, in pop culture, is when you travel backwards in time and get in the way of your parents getting married. Her parents were happily married at that moment. Probably preparing breakfast or watching a video that someone sent them on Whatsapp. She had no intention of undoing that for indulging her curiosity about time travel. Despite being stretched very thin and slowly losing opacity, she still enjoyed living.
Okay, she’s translucent. On any software, her current state would be diagnosed as 80% visible. She was being photoshopped out of her own life. She didn’t have time to waste. Countless people were visiting from other cities and countries and it was on her to make sure they had a good time. Like a good tour guide she ferried many people to restaurants near and far for knick knacks she thought they may enjoy. She was now adept at planning itineraries for other people. There was a party coming up and she didn’t feel quite up for it. ‘Come on, it’s an important day for us, the least you can do is come.’ Of course, it’s important to someone so she must go. She went and she enjoyed herself. Despite that gnawing feeling that she was losing opacity, she went out with people every week. She was deeply tired but she loved them. Isn’t the least she could do? She didn’t mind visits and celebrations, she loved them. But so many of them in a row feel lethal.
It was a regular Monday and she had lost more opacity. She attended a wedding, a brunch and a dinner the weekend earlier. She was cheerful throughout. She loved them. Did she want a weekend alone without having to speak or tend to anybody? Yes. Absolutely. Being left the fuck alone was the medicine she needed but too many people had important days in their life. Her need for medicine did not matter. How does one compare the importance of a wedding and the desperate need of a single person for alone time? You know who wins. She knew she’d lose. Every time she’d lose. So she put a smile on her face and took someone else out while repeating the story of how she loved her job and was vaguely hoping for a vacation in nature, alone.
There was someone’s birthday, someone's engagement, and someone's bachelor party the coming week. She didn't have the heart to tell people celebrating their lives that she was disappearing. That she just needed rest. She didn’t want to be rude to the people who texted her and wanted to meet her but she simply couldn’t do it. She deleted dating apps because what were they but more demands that she had to fulfill. To be charming, to have to call, text, and accommodate more people would diminish her opacity further. She filled her gratitude journal, in which these people had a prime spot because no matter what she says, she loves them. Her body may be at 40% and she may be as visible as worn out cloth but her heart loved them fully. She proofread something, redesigned something, suggested edits for friends in the time before a meeting. She juggled the needs of many clients while she thought of birthday presents. She called a few doctors for appointments on the days other people weren’t celebrating a milestone but those days were booked out. It wasn’t an entirely thankless affair, she thought to herself, with a big chunk of cake and a glass of vodka which she was really sick of drinking.
It was a Thursday night and she was at 15%. She watches an Instagram live of a rich white woman who tells her how important boundaries are. We are finite. We must live our lives for ourselves. We must build lives we enjoy living. It is on us to ask for what we deserve. We must ask for more money, we must ask people around us to treat us how we want to be treated, and we must stand up for ourselves. She nods in fierce agreement. Then again, nobody was mistreating her. They were loving her in a way they thought best - by including her in what mattered to them. What does it mean to stand up for yourself when you want to love yourself in a way that you want? I’m happy that you have reached a milestone but I need energy to sustain myself and reach milestones of my own. She would change things. She would do so tomorrow morning because her eyes were closing. She slept to the blurry face of the rich white woman.
It is a Friday morning. The weather is beautiful. She was ready to take charge. She had a vague awareness of what was around her and that she had a consciousness. She was 1% visible. Well, shit. She couldn’t see herself anymore. She looked at her lock screen, requests kept piling one above the other like bricks. Needs to be soothed, invitations for coffee/ drinks, updates about their life, engagements, promotions, wry comments on how dating is hard, a GIF, one stray question asking her how she is really feeling (thank goodness for this rarity) , one birthday, one completion of a big gig, some bits of good news, ten asks for recommendations and one forwarded video.
Someone wrote on a Whatsapp group, ‘Huh, where did she go? This is unusual. She must be asleep.’
0%
.
(Illustration by Bill Crisafi)
📚 BOOKS
I set a goal of reading 100 books this year instead of my usual 60-70. Will I get there? I don't know.
⭐️ Marquez EMS Gulam & Others by Benyamin - I won’t lie, I bought this book because I took a liking to its gorgeous cover at the airport. My self discipline is at its lowest at airports. Books and baked goodies sneak their way into my bag.
A common thread throughout the stories in Marquez EMS Gulam & Others is how we, as humans, build walls between ourselves in the name of identity and reinforce them over generations. Benyamin portrays the many ways in which we accept some and reject others poignantly. I enjoyed this collection of short stories. I didn’t mind that most of the stories didn’t end with a clean conclusion. It felt more real this way.
(I was the first one to rate and review this on Goodreads which makes me oddly happy.)
The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow - I LOVE fantasy plots that involve portals. Like Starless Sea and Narnia, TTDoJ uses doors as portals to other worlds. I didn't mind that this book took a while to get to the point. The prose is absolutely stunning. Even though I wasn't a fan of the final showdown in the end, I enjoyed the chase and the turns the plot took.
This book will stir your imagination and make you look at the world around you differently.
Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson - Another book with STUNNING prose. It's messy, beautiful, and complex. A young man grapples with falling in love with his friend, his place in a world that's increasingly hostile to black people, and what it means to realise that you are more than your trauma.
Happy Hour by Marlowe Granados - If you are seeking shallow yet mildly entertaining characters who charm their way into and out of situations paired with writing that evokes a strong sense of place then this is the book for you. I was transported to all sorts of apartments in New York, to parties big and small. I have had those trite conversations and bad attempts at flirting not unlike the characters of this book. I enjoyed some bits and skimmed through some others. This book is a mix of Instagram reel vibes and the sad girl starter pack playlist on Spotify.
One might argue this book doesn't have a lot of substance but, then again, what is substance in contemporary fiction?
An interview with Granados about Happy Hour.
My Evil Mother by Margaret Atwood - This book is a short one with only one short story. A nice one but also something you can skip?
Authentically Izzy by Pepper Basham - 👎🏼 eh, skip it. It was cute in parts but I skimmed through A LOT of pages. You can get your dose of warm fuzzy feelings elsewhere.
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield -👎🏼 not worth the hype. He makes being an artist sound so painful, that you'd much rather give it all up and become an accountant. If you want to extinguish your enthusiasm for creating art, read this needlessly violent outdated sounding advice.
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⚡️ PODCASTS
⭐️ Is ethical AI possible? on the Gray Area
(What Really Happened When Google Ousted Timnit Gebru)
(The Exploited Labor Behind Artificial Intelligence)
A new way to understand LEARNING and KNOWING + more with Tom Chi from Google X
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🍭 Eye Candy
An Ode To Vietnam And Its Women - This project is stunning.
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👾 Interesting things you probably should check out
History maps - history explained through maps
Rocumentaries - a directory of documentaries
The Body at Work: Why Self-Control is the #1 Rule of the 21st-Century Economy
Shein is the best thing that happened to the sustainability movement
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Until next time,
Sachi