“Sometimes we say that we met people at the wrong time. But maybe we meet them when we are the wrong person…”
From “Before Someone Loves You, You Must Love Yourself” by Chelsea Fagan
“No one wants to be the person who is made fun of for caring too much about something, who treats in earnest a situation that everyone else considers absurd. Even in personal relationships, feeling too heavily invested while simultaneously understanding that the other person couldn’t be more detached is one of the most profound feelings of embarrassment we can experience. Because it isn’t simply the embarrassment of making a mistake or a poor choice, it’s a shame over the kind of human being you are and how you see the world around you. To be shamed for your sincerity is to be reminded that you are dependent on something which is not dependent on you — that you are, once again, vulnerable.
It is perhaps for this reason that I often feel so profoundly ostracized. I find myself constantly feeling my cheeks flush with the possibility of having entered a conversation where I wasn’t welcome, or expressing a sentiment that is not reciprocated, or putting too much stock in something that others find unimportant. There is a deep cultural premium put on the “cool” of indifference in my generation, and it’s a persona that I doubt I could ever even fake. Because I do care, I care so deeply, and I am fairly certain I’m not alone.
I see nothing wrong in wanting to exuberantly proclaim your affection for people, in wanting to say what you like or find funny or emulate in another human being. I wish that friends could be made faster, without all of the elaborate social dances that platonic relationships seem to demand. I find myself always on the verge of asking how people are and insisting, when they respond with the inevitable “fine,” “No, really, how are you?” Because I want to know. I want to find out, and I want to feel that the connections I form with people are not superficial. Few things make me feel more isolated than the coldness I sense in social networks, the endless information we are provided about one another and the etiquette that prevents us from using said information to actually become closer. We pretend not to know something that someone openly posted on their profile because we wouldn’t want to seem as though we were looking too closely…”
From “I Will Always Care Too Much” by Chelsea Fagan
“Fragments of RGB” by onformative
The Sea of Trees (Aokigahara Jukai)-Trailer by Joshua Zucker-Pluda
“The Sea of Trees is a transmedia film exploration of the Japanese forest where the spirits of suicides linger, silence reigns, and compasses fail.”
From Richard Siken’s “A Primer for the Small Weird Loves”
