amoeba

diary entry from early may

Two or so days ago I was sitting under a tree with S and we were right by some pagoda-like structure on the field. Something about the structure reminded me so much of my childhood neighborhood. And I guess I had been thinking about it recently, due to one of my grandparents falling ill, and talking about Korea with my professor, who is also from Seoul. To be honest, I couldn’t help but tear up. I really thought I would cry, but instead I heaved a deep sigh and it passed right through me.

Last night there was news that a student, a sophomore, had killed himself on campus. Now there are rumors about a body found in the gardens. This week is reading period, so it’s likely that what drove him to do it was academic pressure and/or mental illness.

The professor and I, walking through the gardens at night, missed it by a few days only. A classmate and I watched the sunset in the gardens recently, too; we missed it by even fewer days. I texted my mom about it and she said “[my] life is long and bright” ahead of me. I imagined it stretching out like a skein of threaded light before my eyes, but it felt so distant, like I had nothing to do with it.

I told K about it. I said that I was freaked out. He asked me if I was afraid that I'd end up like him.

Later I emailed the professor to say thank you, and he responded with “I believe things will pan out very well for you”. All of these things happening around the same time make me feel strange, like a pit in my stomach threatening to open up. He couldn’t have been more than twenty, right?

diary entry from one week ago

I was searching for sources for a class assignment when I stumbled upon the condition called "cluster headaches", also known as "suicide headaches", and I almost hate to say it, but it made me think of you.

Last time we spoke you sent me an excited pile of text and image and sound to which I didn't really have the heart to read, observe, and listen. It's been a long time since our paths diverged. Maybe it had already happened back when we still were corresponding with each other, but at the time it wasn't practical or pleasant for either of us to address the fact that we would probably never see each other again, despite our respective, repeated exclamations that we could always visit each other. It was never even a long shot.

About the cluster headaches, you probably haven't gotten them, and I'm happy for you. I still remember when you told me that your dad had them (do you still call that man "your dad"?), that the condition was highly hereditary, that it affected more men than women, and that with your shitty luck, it was more likely than not that you had inherited it from him. Cluster headaches tend to appear in the late teens, early twenties. And like its colloquial name suggests, you said that you'd be better off dead than having to deal with the pain. Well, you're in your early twenties now. Are you feeling OK? How have you been doing? I'm still in school. And I have an idea, however vague, of what I want to do afterwards. I've changed so much and I haven't changed at all. It must be the same for you.

excerpt from report on max sebald's death

> Sebald has some beautiful words in “Austerlitz” about how, just as we have appointments to keep in the future, it may be that we also have appointments to keep in the past, “in what has gone before and is for the most part extinguished.” We must go there, he writes, into the past, in search of places and people who have some connection with us, “on the far side of time, so to speak.” That last phrase puts me in mind of a famous passage from “Middlemarch,” in which George Eliot says that if we were truly open to all the suffering in the world it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we would die “of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.” Most of us, she finishes, manage to live by wadding ourselves with stupidity. We survive only by ignoring the faint but terrible roar. In his great work, Sebald visited that far side of time which was also the other side of silence. He could not ignore it.

excerpt from letter

A lot of the things he talks about is not worth worrying about now, as a high-schooler, but I think it's still eye-opening. Back in February 2024 when I started all of this, I had plenty of misconceptions and naivete about the whole ordeal. That's not to say that all enthusiasm is misguided, of course. I just wish I knew about the things he mentioned when I started out. (I guess I knew someone who tried to warn me, but that's a whole other story.)

Thanks again for your emails. They help me think and untangle complicated feelings about my field and about myself (unbelievably, I'm about to turn 21), so it definitely goes both ways.

Feel free to reach out about anything.

Best,
Imya

e. m. forster

Study has a very solemn sound. I am studying Dante sounds much more than I am reading Dante. It is really much less. Study is only a serious form of gossip. It teaches us everything about the book except the central thing, and between that and us it raises a circular barrier which only the wings of the spirit can cross.

snow country

But even more than at the diary, Shimamura was surprised at her statement that she had carefully catalogued every novel and short story she had read since she was 15 or 16. The record had already filled 10 notebooks.

You write down your criticisms, do you?

I could never do anything like that. I just write down the author and the characters and how they are related to each other. That is about all.

But what good does it do?

None at all.

A waste of effort.

A complete waste of effort, she answered brightly, as though the admission meant little to her. She gazed solemnly at Shimamura, however.

A complete waste of effort. For some reason Shimamura wanted to stress the point. But, drawn to her at that moment, he felt a quiet like the voice of the rain flow over him. He knew well enough that for her it was in fact no waste of effort, but somehow the final determination that it was had the effect of distilling and purifying the woman's essence.