One of my favorite installations is Greer Lankton’s It’s All About ME, Not You, because it really was all about her (“trapped in (her) own world in (her)/ head in (her) tiny tiny/ apartment”) and not at all about any of the rest of us, and in that defiance and/through ego(-)centrism– in “artificial nature/ total indulgence/ dolls engrossed in glamour and self-abuse/ the vanity/ the junkie/ the anorexic/ the chronic masturbator”– there is such admirable anger. I admire anger so much because I’ve tried to be sincere with/in my anger for/in my work, and I’ve consistently failed. I return to begging and hurt too often like the small thing I once turned myself into and now regret having done so. Which is why, of the very few early poems of mine that I still think somewhat hold up, my personal favorite to return to is "my own private nonexistence", whose first lines go “too much begging in my poems i’m sick/ now, i say of it | decoy to hear me my bio/ -organized mess | orthogonal in all my/ repositories all tributaries to All”– that was the first time I kind of just let myself “have a crashout” in poetics, so to speak. I really, really was sick of how I had started resorting to apologies and laments as semi-effortless conclusive bows-on-top of/for my poems. I was/am sick too, in its literal meaning, all the time, so I let myself get used to the idea of death at a certain point– and that does wonders, wouldn’t you know, for the untranscended ego: I guess I thought, if I really could die at any given moment, I wanted to have been a poet who was a bit firmer with their voice; a writer who, perhaps, did more than just channel the sorrows everyone must already assume their t-slur life is plagued with; I wanted to have been poetically angry. So “my own private nonexistence”, for a change, was very much just “I’m a mess, this is what my mess is”, and letting said “mess” of pain/anger situate with/in itself without resorting to the easy, lazy ego-narrative frames of hurt and sorrow– which are as real as pain and anger, don’t get me wrong, but for me, they exist as dilutions of the more offensive but perhaps more truthful intensities of pain and anger. I've realized I sometimes need to be a bit angrier... anyways! I'm saying all this just because an essay I've been working on (on glamor-(ous/ized )pain as expression of sick transfeminine anger) made me think of Greer again. Love Greer.

Someone whom I admire very much, this Shakespeare fanatic, this theatre director, wrote to me recently in anticipation of my leaving, that I should remember to send her a copy of my first book. I had no idea she knew I wrote at all. I don’t think she knows how much that small line means to me, really, but at the same time I felt incredibly small and stupid and like a disappointment-to-be– what happens if I never (get to) write that first book? Or maybe, more aptly framed, what happens if she never gets to read that first book? I know I’m young– very young, actually– but I’m in a rush always, because I’m sick and ill and transgender. I could disappear any moment. I’m not a careerist– I swore to myself that I never would be; even if I wanted to be, I could never comfortably play into what that would demand from me/ my artistry– but I feel this urgent ghost behind me always trying to push me a little further. The ghost of forcible production, so to speak, this capitalist phantom wedded to feelings of inadequacy that I’m at least (self-)aware enough to know have never existed in a vacuum– anyways, the question is, when will I get to send her that copy of my first book? I don’t know– in a year, in two years, in twenty? I should, theoretically, be fine with having her read my work only in twenty years’ time (or more). Art can’t be rushed, et cetera, all those lofty ideals. But I’m not fine with it. I really want to write now because I want to live and have to live, and I really want to have evidence of having written soon because it’s evidence of having lived and having wanted to live. I want to be successful, and soon, sue me. Sometimes I wonder if I picked a dead-end route for myself, writing in my third language of English and getting a little too fond of the comfort of poetic (self- [and meaning-])obfuscation that significantly transforms my work into something “inaccessible”, for lack of a better term, but I guess I won’t know until I walk that route for a little while longer.

There is a building– I won’t say what, or where it is– and for reasons I won’t articulate, yesterday was one of my last days at/in said building, where on the rooftop there is a tennis court. It has been a while since I went up to the tennis court. Yesterday, at 5, I did– and there was a friend tennis-coaching a kid, though I feel guilt and regret calling him a friend. I think I have failed him as a friend many times. I did not interrupt him– he’s getting paid for this, and the kid seemed so happy and invested; instead I leaned on the railing and took in the city. The city shook three weeks ago, though Bahan– where we are now– suffered no extensive damage: even the bamboo scaffolding in my line of sight on Shwedagon’s structure, held together with coconut coir rope, remained stable. I've been involved with mutual aid efforts for victims of the earthquake in Mandalay and Sagaing, and it breaks my heart daily how Tatmadaw cruelties pile on even more problems for the mourning, suffering public, but a small, selfish part of me was relieved that I had to mourn no friends– I don’t think I have it in me any longer to mourn more friends, especially not now. So it was an ugly gladness. I was also hyperaware of how strong the wind was up above– it was like I was at sea; understand that it is also the height of summer, a day after our first summer rain: wind at all felt like a miracle; wind that strong was alien. I felt so strange.