we’re not really strangers

a message to you 💌

we’re not really strangers.

we’ve met before, I suppose.

[fujixt30ii, vienna, 2023]

maybe our shoulders brushed on the 4 towards canal street. or your back was uncomfortably close to my stool that summer day it broke a hundred. Or was it that time you came over when I was studying at a café, pointing at my book and saying yes, yes I love this?

tell me about the last time you called your sister & the first time you saw your father cry. tell me about your last breakup, situationship, whatever messy label you prefer. tell me about the cities you’ve passed through & the boys who’ve passed through you. cup the pain you’ve hidden away and pass it to my outstretched palms—i will cradle her with all my strength. i’ve heard this story before, but i keep nodding along, because you don’t remember telling me & every time you share it it’s slightly different.

i see ghosts in you. the way you text—the way you lean on your right side when you walk – the way you plan your day. yet our meeting also strikes an uncanny valley—there’s a past version of you I have in mind, but you two are just slightly askew, just enough to make our connection non-repetitive. just enough to make it special.

when you say my heart is full i’ve always wondered what it was full of—flowers, love letters, pain, feathers, perhaps?

the more i understand you, the better i understand myself and what my heart contains: liquid emotion, slippery and eager to take the shape of its container. my love language is figuring out your hyper-fixations and diving into them just as whole-heartedly.

my heart learns the shape of you. your footprints leave imprints in the sand and i keep it as a mold. when i pour my heart out to you, it pools by your ankles and it amazes you to see your own reflection.

when I say we are made of star stuff¹, this is what I mean: carbon, calcium, hydrogen, they were all borne from the pressure within stars. and when the pressure gets too great, the star explodes into spectacular supernova. isn’t that beautiful, how it flung the human building blocks across galaxies across time, and somehow, they made their way to you & me? that there is some cosmic precedent for why I find myself in you, and yourself in me, and all the people from the past in us?

what if it wasn’t the crash that made us, but the debris?²

gravity is what pulls us together and it’s precisely what pulls us apart. someone moves. a friend of a friend gets into a spat and it’s awkward to meet. or the most tragic of all, our natural orbit moves us to different directions.

even when we become strangers, again³, i carry your heart with me. i hold onto souvenirs that inevitably slip into the hands of the next person I meet. i still wear glitter under my eyes the way you taught me; i share the porter song we once listened to together; i show someone to crush garlic the way you did.

every thread we share is stitched with the color of ghosts. we are frankensteins made out of frankensteins, russian dolls nestled within one another. we are all museums of what we once loved⁴. as a result, we are just mirrors of each other.

every time we meet, i nod along, because each time it’s slightly different.

・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.・。.・゜✭・.・

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this is a piece dedicated to all of you – my new friends in nyc, my old friends from the many cities I passed through, and the many new buds watching my work. you remind me of people I meet, and the people I meet are pointers⁵ to you, no matter how far apart we are. though it’s a short piece, I wanted to express my love for the collective human experience and how it drives my writing.  

there’s beauty in how unique yet mimetic our individual experiences are. i find writing as a way to pull us closer together, almost like a comfy blanket you tug tighter to your chest mid-sleep. my favorite compliments are from people who say my writing feels like the thoughts they’ve always had but verbalized; i want to be your inner voice that’s learned to sing.

i plan to write on a weekly cadence on a smattering of matters—finding connections⁶, navigating a new city, humanism in the face of tech⁷, cultural backgrounds intersecting with globalization⁸. if it sounds vague, it’s because my scope is intentionally left open-ended. my blog is a reservoir for my voice and the things I care about, of which there are many.

my favorite animated short is about the egg theory, where every human to ever exist is simply a reincarnation of you. you hold every memory & lesson from your past & future lives—which means when you meet another person, you are just meeting another version of yourself. it means when you meet a new person, they are a version of someone from your past.

what’s the meaning of life in this case? it’s to meet every version of you: collect every experience, emotion, trauma, success. it’s to learn about every possibility out there in the world. and this is something I can achieve with sharing my stories and learning about yours.

dear reader, you are no stranger to me. for we are all made out of star stuff. you are just me in another life—we are all images of each other. & i hope to keep reflecting your image back at you with every word I craft.

1. carl sagan, here, science explanation here

2. ocean vuong, not even this

3. wong fu, strangers again, here — emotions are timeless.

4. tweet here, tumblr here

5. pointers to memory, seen here

6. cracking the doors of intimacy here

7. think ted chiang/ken liu vibes

8. cultural reflection here