Permanent Record

by Mary H.K. Choi

To this day I have no inkling as to what I care about the most. I care about everything equally until I care about so many things I get overwhelmed and care about nothing at all.

I only know a few of their names, and they sure as hell don’t know mine. You’d think there’d be a word for it. That city-living intimacy where you know the minutia of their routines, rituals, and clothes but absolutely nothing else.

It is honestly so terrifying—so intolerably humiliating—to want anything and to declare it.

Restaurants wring you out. Running around for punishing stretches. There’s no dead time. It’s like playing a really aggressive video game with a ton of screaming and fire. You never know what customers, or the staff, will throw at you.

“Nothing that is a manifestation of your creative energies is stupid,” he says. “Doing nothing is the only stupid.”

Life isn’t a destination. It’s the continual practice of things that make you wiser and happier.

Find joy in the learning, Pablo, not in what it will get you. It took me so much searching to stop searching. Art is fueled by longing but you must learn to want what you have, not get what you want. It’s the only way to stop suffering. I pray that you’ll know this meaning by the time you’re my age.”