How supremely narcissistic would it be of me to say that one of my favorite things to read is my own journal? All 30+ volumes of it. This past weekend, I was at a literary reading and one of the people I met there asked me who my favorite author was. I prefaced my answer by saying that I felt like a poser saying a few of the names I was about to say because I’d only read one of their works. I should’ve just said myself: Chris Jesu Lee. I’m intimately familiar with his oeuvre.
My first serious journal entry dates back all the way to the early 2000s, around the beginning of high school. I believe within the first three sentences, I fake-scoffed at the whole endeavor as “fruity” or whatever. I could go to my shelf right now and check, but I’ll leave that verification for another time, when I inevitably do a re-read of that era. I only wrote in it about every few months in high school, if even that. It wasn’t until college that it become a more frequent thing, maybe 2-3 times a week if it was a particularly eventful week (undoubtedly, girl-related).
That’s what I’ve found to be the most fascinating thing about journaling. Provided you’re not a psycho who lies in their own journals, it’ll keep a much more honest account of what you were thinking and doing at a particular time, whether it was last year or 20 years ago. Our memories are incredibly unreliable and self-serving, which makes them ideal for delivering delusions.
Once, when I was living in Philly, my friends and I had our place broken into while we were out. None of us had much to steal, especially since we’d had our laptops with us. Still, some things were stolen, and when I was taking account of what was missing from my room—camcorder, film camera, passport—the things I was most crestfallen over were a couple of volumes missing from my journal shelf. How twisted a criminal would have to be, to steal something of such utter worthlessness to everybody except for its owner? Luckily, I found those books tossed in my laundry hamper and my collection remains intact. Sometimes, I think about if it’d be possible to digitize them so that they won’t be obliterated in a fire or other such disaster.
But then there’s the risk, however infinitesimally small, that they could get leaked somehow. Not that anyone would care, though we all secretly wish that any exposed private writings of ours would generate massive consequences, when the harsh reality is that nobody would care. Still, one time, a woman I was seeing kept trying to convince me to read just one page, at random. Never in a million years.
I’ve long been curious about Anaïs Nin, she of her famous published diaries. I finally decided to read them, though I had to start with volume 2 because volume 1 was still checked out at the library. I’m only about a fifth of the way through. She certainly writes more like a novelist in her journals than I do. Not that I’m a florid or stylish writer in the first place, but with journalling, there’s a reporter-like drive I have: what, when, who, and mostly importantly, how I felt. Because that’s the one thing I won’t be able to verify in the future by checking a calendar or credit card statement or witness account. All I’ve got is my memory, and I don’t trust that fucker one bit.
Fear of the world produces crystal in writing. One seeks the faultless, crystallized phrases, perfection, the hard polish of gems, and then finds that people prefer the sloppy writers, the inchoate, the untidy, the unfocused ones because it is more human. To jewels they prefer human imperfections, moisture of perspiration, bad smells, stutterings, and all the time I keep this for the diary and give the world only jewels.
- The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume II
I’m not stymied by the pursuit of perfection in my public writing, but I am always having to fight against the usual constraints of ego-preservation and image-crafting. The reason I loathe those aspects so much in others, especially Asian American fiction writers, is that I sense the same weakness in me. Takes one to know one.
So many people I know go to therapy. I’ve often joked to them that they can save thousands of dollars and hours of time by just dropping $20 at their local stationery store to get a notebook every few months. You’d get to maintain the art of handwriting as well.
The mysterious theme of the flavor of events. Some pale, weak, not lasting. Others so vivid. What causes the choice of memory? What causes certain events to fade, others to gain in luminousness and spice? My posing for artists at sixteen was unreal, shadowy. The writing about it sometimes brings it to life. I taste it then. My period as a debutante in Havana, no flavor. Why does this flavor sometimes appear later, while living another episode, or while telling it to someone?
- The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume II
I definitely did not model for artists at 16, nor was I ever a Cuban debutante. But I understand what Nin is saying here. Some parts of our lives are immediately and obviously important. For me, that’s college, the two years in Korea afterwards, my last summer in Philly, or the first few years in NYC. But you never know which time periods will end up unexpectedly mattering.
There’s a little playlist I made in 2021, mostly around summertime. It’s become the playlist I listen to the most these days. Why that was, it wasn’t too apparent at first, because 2021 wasn’t that great a year for me (was it for anybody?). There was still the social freeze of COVID and I was (barely) working part-time, somewhat by choice, but also not. Trying to take advantage of COVID rental drops, my brother and I had upgraded to an apartment that had been vacated by recent NYU undergrads, probably because it was too small. It was still bigger than our old place, but I quickly realized what it had in slightly more space than our old apartment, it lacked in a homey quality. I’ve moved too many times in New York City, and that apartment is my least favorite.
So why the fondness for the playlist, which is really a fondness of the memories of that time? Now that a couple of years have passed, it’s clear that that summer was the end of something for me, a particular type of Asian American Millennial mindset defined by adolescent-level angst buoyed by a child-like optimism. Not coincidentally, I would write my last Plan A piece in May of that year as well. Amidst the frenetic hanging out and dating around to make up for a lost summer, I’d go back and forth with literary agents, with me responding to manuscript requests for a novel I’d been working on for a decade, a project I regarded as a time capsule of my 24-year old self. For a heady few months, I thought that novel was finally on the road to seeing the light of day, until in the early fall when I received my final rejection. Now, it resides in my utility closet, which is the best home for it because it was guilty of almost everything I now hate about Asian American literature. A bit of a hypocrite I would’ve been. Still, I think of it as having been a necessary process. As cringe-inducing and outdated as he may now be, that 24-year old version of me had been a real person. The summer of 2021 was his last hurrah.
What and who comes next, I’m still unsure. Even this Substack, I’m not entirely who it’s for. That was one of my primary reasons for starting it, to hopefully find out in the process and even get to know them. At least when my friends and I started Plan A, we had a decent sense of who our audience was: 2nd generation Asian Americans who were fed up with the usual cowardly constraints we placed on ourselves on discussions of politics, race, gender, etc. Times have changed now, though, and I like to think we played some part in advancing discussions. It’d be pretty sad if the things that were fresh and bold 5 years ago were still at the cutting edge.
Our whole culture seems to be stuck. At least Trump, despite his own insanity, made things make sense. You were either for him or against him, and he was the gas giant that everyone and everything revolved around. When he won the election, so many (including myself) feared that he would be the end of the world, but the bigger disappointment has to be that he wasn’t. Not even close. He’s come and gone, barely having made a noticeable difference from another replacement-level Republican president. Nothing really matters, it turns out.
Or there is something happening and forming right now, and we—or at least I—just don’t know it. In a few years, when I read back on my accounts of this summer, I may finally see what that was.
I love this! It's really funny and feels like it speaks directly to me, or what I've seen in other people. The juxtaposition between Nin's super super MFAesque writing with your casual and bitterly true insights is very memorable. Particularly:
All I’ve got is my memory, and I don’t trust that fucker one bit.
Fear of the world produces crystal in writing