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Stations by Audre Lorde

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on graduating, grieving, and believing

My DLSU journey is coming to an end…

And it all began in one anxiety-fueled night, up past my bedtime, crouched over my laptop among my pillows and blankets. I had been procrastinating (as with many other things) my enrollment to university. Through one simple Google Forms link, an assortment of digitized & signed documents, and the click of a button, I submitted my requirements and secured my enrollment as a first-year student in the midst of a global pandemic.

The COVID lockdown was one of those events in life that causes one to enter into a state of limbo— 

A kind of grief, a languishing of the soul and will. A time where no one knows what’s going on, where all prior plans and expectations have become null. You can’t plan for the future with certainty or make decisions with any real security that all will be well. But you have to make those decisions anyway. You have to make peace with all you can’t do and can’t have. 

Waiting, wondering, and ultimately avoiding those big emotions. forcing yourself to not feel, excusing yourself from any hard work or decisions.

It is no wonder— or maybe it is a wonder— that I ended up awake at 3am after who knows how long slothing and sulking around, officially a student of De La Salle University.

I had made the decision— whether right or not, whether it would turn out how I wanted it to or not, to move forward.

Over 4 years later, I am in a very similar position. A different kind of grief and an altogether more personal experience of loss pushed me once more into a state of limbo, one that lasted considerably longer and cut much deeper. Things did not go as planned or envisioned during my college career... I lost a loved one, and soon after, I began to lose hold of my own desires and will to push forward. what is a good grade, a stacked resume, or a bachelor's degree when placed next to the vacuum of a sibling's death? Grief, I should probably call it...

Nothing sudden or dramatic (I rarely am either of those things), but a subtle deterioration that lies beneath a facade of "okay." Supposedly grieving, but growing detached. a weight of questions unanswered and emotions untouched builds up, making it harder to keep up with deadlines and easier to make excuses. grades are not an accurate measure of learning or worth anyway. i value friendships and memories more anyway. yada yada yada

false start after false start. finally healing, then sputtering to a stop again.

it comes as no surprise that, as I am ironically faced with another google form as I approach the end of my degree, I find myself procrastinating the necessary submission of documents.

there's no global pandemic, but the events of the last couple years has left me feeling as I did back in 2020-- carrying the weight of uncertainty. i may very well mess things up, make the wrong decisions... but in the end I just have to go ahead and move forward.

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The world is held together, really it is, held together, by the love and the passion of a very few people. Otherwise, of course you can despair. Walk down the street of any city, any afternoon, and look around you. What you've got to remember is what you're looking at is also you. Everyone you're looking at is also you. You could be that person, you could be that monster, you could be that cop. And you have to decide in yourself not to be." (Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris (1970), dir. Terence Dixon)

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starsxxlullabies

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Glimmerati, Claudia Keep

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“Rich kids should go to public schools. The mayor should ride the subway to work. When wealthy people get sick, they should be sent to public hospitals. Business executives should have to stand in the same airport security lines as everyone else. The very fact that people want to buy their way out of all of these experiences points to the reason why they shouldn’t be able to. Private schools and private limos and private doctors and private security are all pressure release valves that eliminate the friction that would cause powerful people to call for all of these bad things to get better. The degree to which we allow the rich to insulate themselves from the unpleasant reality that others are forced to experience is directly related to how long that reality is allowed to stay unpleasant. When they are left with no other option, rich people will force improvement in public systems. Their public spirit will be infinitely less urgent when they are contemplating these things from afar than when they are sitting in a hot ER waiting room for six hours themselves.”

— Everyone Into The Grinder

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from letterarii

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So how we all doing so far

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Marya Hornbacher // Maya Angelou

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drinking n dining out costs way too much...

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bell hooks designing her dream house for high school art class

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tokyo google maps

edit I’m going to try to find the exact location somehow since everyone likes this picture haha

edit: i actually found it— it’s 5-chōme-4 Higashiōi in Shinagawa City, Tokyo

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matildadjerf

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miffy ceramic set by baby.ceramic

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Strawberry vendor in Gaza, Palestine, January, 2019 @Aya Isleem