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| wild, sweet child |
By Michelle Zauner
I've spent the first weeks of the new year loving on myself, nurturing all parts, including the parts I find hard to accept and/or want to change (think less rose woman, more thorn). Repeating "I forgive myself" over and over for what's found in the abyss.
My 2023 reflections are a jumble of words and phrases building in a note, waiting to be organized into coherent sentences, and in an ideal world I'd share them soon.
I spent the holidays in Houston immersed in lots of quiet, in familiar love and also in the discomfort of feeling out of place in a space that's been my go-to for 10 years. Reclaiming objects and mementos that are mine for safekeeping, and leaving behind something intangible. Thinking about what happens when home shifts. When I shift. How I've grown immensely and how sometimes that means widening a gap. Feeling some guilt and sadness.
Going through old photos, I experienced pangs, but what was hurting me? The love lost that existed in the taking of the photographs? The little girl in the photos, so spunky and radiant (who I am trying to get back to)? Saying goodbye to a "home"? Probably all of the above. And yesterday I remembered I went through this exercise nearly 10 years ago when I was moving out on my own for the first time. But now I have a decade's worth of layered memories and losses to compound the ache.
I read "Crying in H Mart" in the fall. She was so honest and flawed and brave. I knew Michelle Zauner as Japanese Breakfast first, and I played "Paprika" during my 33rd birthday photoshoot to feel more dreamy. I saw her perform at Radio City on October 4, where she announced she would be moving to Korea for 2024. I love that her journey has culminated to her current reality, despite a devastating loss. I'm so stoked for her year and the subsequent second book.
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She was my champion, she was my archive. She had taken the utmost care to preserve the evidence of my existence and growth, capturing me in images, saving all my documents and possessions. She had all knowledge of my being memorized. The time I was born, my unborn cravings, the first book I read. The formation of every characteristic. Every ailment and little victory. She observed me with unparalleled interest, inexhaustible devotion.
Now that she was gone, there was no one left to ask about these things. The knowledge left unrecorded died with her. What remained were documents and my memories, and now it was up to me to make sense of myself, aided by the signs she left behind. How cyclical and bittersweet for a child to retrace the image of their mother. For a subject to turn back to document their archivist.
I had thought fermentation was controlled death. Left alone, a head of cabbage molds and decomposes. It becomes rotten, inedible. But when brined and stored, the course of its decay is altered. Sugars are broken down to produce lactic acid, which protects it from spoiling. Carbon dioxide is released and the brine acidifies. It ages. Its color and texture transmute. Its flavor becomes tarter, more pungent. It exists in time and transforms. So it is not quite controlled death, because it enjoys a new life altogether.
The memories I had stored, I could not let fester. Could not let trauma infiltrate and spread, to spoil and render them useless. They were moments to be tended. The culture we shared was active, effervescent in my gut and in my genes, and I had to seize it, foster it so it did not die in me. So that I could pass it on someday. The lessons she imparted, the proof of her life lived on in me, in my every move and deed. I was what she left behind. If I could not be with my mother, I would be her.
(pp. 223-4, "Kimchi Fridge")
I awoke from dreams of untying a great knot
It unraveled like a braid
Into what seemed were
Thousands of separate strands of fishing line
Attached to coarse behavior it flowed
A calm it urged, what else is here?
How's it feel to be at the center of magic
To linger in tones and words?
I opened the floodgates
And found no water, no current, no river, no rush
How's it feel to stand at the height of your powers
To captivate every heart?
Projecting your visions to strangers who feel it
Who listen, who linger on every word
Oh, it's a rush
Oh, it's a rush
But alone it feels like dying
All alone I feel so much
I want my offering to woo, to calm, to clear, to solve
But the only offering that comes
It calls, it screams, there's nothing here
How's it feel to be at the center of magic
To linger in tones and words?
I opened the floodgates
And found no water, no current, no river, no rush
How's it feel to stand at the height of your powers
To captivate every heart?
Projecting your visions to strangers who feel it
Who listen, who linger on every word
Oh, it's a rush
Oh, it's a rush
