https://abhinaya.cargo.site Abhinaya Kasagani Tue, 16 Jul 2024 22:45:03 +0000 https://abhinaya.cargo.site en https://abhinaya.cargo.site/From-Memory Tue, 16 Jul 2024 22:45:02 +0000 Abhinaya Kasagani https://abhinaya.cargo.site/From-Memory From Memory JANUARY 11, 2023&nbsp;&nbsp; It is 4 am when I empty the bottle of cough syrup into my throat. It goes down easy, but I am left feeling tired. I remember that we are going out in a few hours and panic immediately. My face feels hot. I am acting like a child. Another thing that has been taken away from me.&nbsp;If you asked me why I was doing this, I could not tell you. I would blame my mother, identifying her as the primary cause of my self-destructive tendencies (She loved me just fine; I have nothing to say about it). I could tell you it was for the fun of it because that is what I say about most things I cannot so readily lie about because I cannot tell you the truth, which is that I am doing it for the story. <img width="2659" height="1652" width_o="2659" height_o="1652" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/986efc8ffb03a960f5606019ccd55d55362314a8de69c4d19e6209aeec7a5f3d/Screenshot-2024-12-29-at-12.06.06AM.png" data-mid="223895413" border="0" data-scale="97" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/986efc8ffb03a960f5606019ccd55d55362314a8de69c4d19e6209aeec7a5f3d/Screenshot-2024-12-29-at-12.06.06AM.png" /> Funnily enough, I am too high to document this clearly, enough for it to be a story at all, defeating its intended purpose. Instead, I am stuck with a bulleted list (relying on underproduced half-baked ideas transcribed from audio clips and memory) to produce a similar effect. 1. I was born in the summer, in May, in the scorching heat left behind by April. I am told I was small and frail at birth, and now, I am afraid I might be that way forever. I like being talked about as someone younger because I am able to place myself somewhere else more quickly, somewhere that is not here. 2. My heart is beating rapidly. 5:06. I think for an image and settle on one of a girl at peace. The girl curls up into the fetal position to kill herself and realizes that she will be undoing the work of her mother. I could almost laugh. I have been hurting my own feelings, and with every passing day, my mother grows older. 3. I have this fantasy where I catfish The Love of My Life (my life has become a pursuit of overcoming this abstraction) until they reciprocate my feelings. I later learn they've been telling other people I have changed their life, world, and reason for existing, to which I agree. I get to be loud and call attention to my personhood, and you think this is making you better. It is true. I am enriching your life. 4. I am currently reading Nora Ephron's I Feel Bad about My Neck and thinking about how a 70-year-old woman is influential to me, an 18-year-old girl. She feels bad about her neck and thinks it makes her ugly; I am young and have a million necks. When I talk this way, I can never tell if I am motivated by a desire to be young or a desire never to grow old (When I was young, I had no desire to be wanted, but now that I am older, I want everyone to want to sleep with me). My behavior, as of late, has been shocking and pitiful. I have been tying my hair with bows and lace, making offhanded jokes about how I am a Nabokov girl. I know this is not true—I am not unattractive, but I am nothing special either—still, I say it anyway, and my friends agree. Loving me makes them liars. 5. I am terrible at friendship and unsure of how I still have the friends I do. I am not a responsible person, and loving someone is all responsibility. I sometimes hate my Best Friends and think cruel things about them, texting them things like "You do NOT know me!!!!" or "Are we even friends anymore LOL." I am committed to this performance because I respect almost no one and think they are all boring. I fall asleep while they tell me about the boys they like (whose names I never remember) and think to myself, "So what? Big deal!" I cannot for the life of me remember when this changed, but the friends I have now are different. These friendships are deliberate and not simply because I fear being alone. I enjoy being tethered to the people I love and am grateful for the friendships I have during this ruthless passing of seasons. 6. I am watching Lena Dunham's Girls on TV, and it is the episode with Patrick Wilson where he is (supposedly) hot but also profoundly lonely. She is telling him she desires happiness, and he agrees with her; only she is so self-obsessed, unable to recognize it is a severely unhappy person she is saying these things to. I am entertained until I realize I can't tell which one of the two roles I most often assume (unseen or never truly seeing), which prompts me to switch the channel. 7. One thing about me is that I love going out. I didn't know this about myself until very recently, and once I did, I learned I did not have the same feelings about being outside. I hate being outside and find nothing beautiful. It is not that I find nothing beautiful, but if you were to tell me that it is warm outside or that the sunset is breathtaking, I would no longer feel the same. Maybe this has nothing to do with beauty and is simply indicative of my impulse to have an original thought. Wanting this is not original either, and I feel the need to give up. 8. I am a dog with a bone, a bird with a fish in its beak. Wanting and then getting. I slip in and out of these roles frivolously because I am a child, and this is still allowed of me. Toying with the idea of rejection, I drive myself crazy. A hot-headed stir-crazy sad girl. Why can't you want me? Am I that hard to want? 9. There is such newness to everything I encounter that I stay silent. I am regularly dumbfounded. It is funny how in order to say a thing, you must refrain from saying so many more. 10. I am in town for a wedding, tired of the work it entails. I slip out, glad that you are happy, distressed by my incapability for it, my fingers itching for a job. I look over at the man you're marrying and feel betrayed. I begin to entertain myself by listing his shortcomings (there are none; he is the kindest man I have ever known). I don't know him until much later, of course, and when I do, we're on the roof sharing a cigarette, and all I see is a world that is wildly not mine, yet it is the only time I feel rooted. He tells me I am deserving of love, and I am nestled in his shoulder within seconds, grateful that he has chosen me, glad that we are family. It is shocking that there is no record of it because I record everything to death. Everything I do must be told to someone or written down because if it isn't, it is a waste of my time. It never matters if I had fun during (fun is fleeting! biography is eternal!). 11. I always say the last day I had a good time was sometime in May. Last week at the lake. With someone who wrapped their arms around me. I can only say something worth hearing, and so everything I say is a lie. 12. I do not want to give you the satisfaction, but it is hard being easy like this. I try to pace myself; I learn I cannot. My sweet surrender to your unflinching cool. I send you a text. You are still red-hot and abrasive. Eventually, I resort to petty name-calling—which I've learned is a surefire way of getting what you want—but you are smart and impartial to my behavior, so you do not engage. 13. I no longer have anyone to hurt me, so I have begun hurting my own feelings. It works wonders until I am aware of what I am doing and feel ashamed. I am young and thus impressionable. I should be exempt from blame. Defeated, I take myself to bed. My last thought before I fall asleep is that I am high and should be writing. https://abhinaya.cargo.site/On-a-Day-Trip-to-the-Hatfield-Reservoir Tue, 16 Jul 2024 22:45:02 +0000 Abhinaya Kasagani https://abhinaya.cargo.site/On-a-Day-Trip-to-the-Hatfield-Reservoir On a Day Trip to the Hatfield Reservoir November 05, 2024&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;do not let the knowledge of this being something i wrote after a trip sully what i am saying. i talk a lot and am often out of line but this is the most truthful thing i have ever said. hop skip jump trip take a bite of your fresh, handpicked fruit and rejoice.&nbsp; On a day trip to the Hatfield Reservoir, the lake is green and sultry and everything sings. Hatfield Reservoir 2 is the first thing we see. It is so easy to giggle like girls. It is so easy to love. The lake is aglow with flies buzzing that one is unable to shy away from the presence of life. The photo, however, is deserted. Everything green is disrupted by a tiny house. One house, many trees, not a person in sight. Hatfield Reservoir 1 is more inviting. It is a louder green, a friendlier blue. The water is clear, almost drinkable. The wooden walkway reminds me of a bed frame. I am so occupied by the inside that I reject the outside without meaning to. I have this immediate desire to be someone who lives in the moment. We both bring up visiting. I mention to you that I am not as flexible as I’d like. That making a plan to visit is only the promise of a better life. You agree with me. Maybe, in the future, this will be different. <img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F894125e4-3644-44c4-97bf-49f6eff8930a_2940x1536.png" width="1456" height="761" style="width: 475.165px; height: 248.352px;"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc2269d95-54b1-40b4-9f70-7c544ae63c48_2940x1545.png" width="1456" height="765" style="width: 475.165px; height: 249.658px;"> I enjoy doing things for myself that I think are bettering but can never discontinue things that are not. I am always hoping they cancel each other out. Having and eating all the cake in the world only makes me nauseous and too full for things that can sustain. I never have too much fun doing something I forced myself to do, and so, pushing myself out of my comfort zone achieves nothing. I sometimes forgo my ego and decide to seize days as if real estate. I am so territorial despite having nothing to offer. Last weekend, I went to the John Natsoulas Gallery with my best friend. Thea Hudson and Genevieve Ryan’s exhibition 'Friends Are Everywhere’ was on display. I had never read a truer statement in my life. We sat there for hours trying to work with an interactive mixed media piece that ended with two girls reaching for the other’s hand and flying away. Their world then restarts. Hudson and Ryan live together now in a studio apartment in Davis, California, where they went to college. The work is beautiful and the thought placed into it is so kind. There is always something so fascinating about the ability to create, to put your hands to use. We leave the gallery, taking the long route home. Moving off campus has been so hard. There is this feeling of being untethered that you cannot pinpoint. It is almost as if, just as it were when one moves to college, there are no consequences to your actions. The world is your oyster but it bites, so beware. Living off campus can make you a stranger to a place you had established a friendship with. This is quite possibly why it hurts so much. My relationship to campus now is less with a building and more with the Silo Terminal. How does one come back from that? Decidedly, the key is that you mustn’t forget what people or places have done for you in the past, and recognize that they are meant to be mobilizing. If bogged down by something that is inherently vehicular, you are doing a disservice to that same friendship. In a taxi cab on the way home that same day, our Uber driver sang along to handpicked country music and I said to myself that the world is wonderful and that I promise to never forget. Now that I have written it down like this, feel free to hold me accountable. At the heart of this exhibition is the idea of meaning. Being connected to someone or something enriches you and should not be taken lightly. Friendships are born in these spaces, these vacuums, that are hard to renege on. Things are still meaningful beyond their longevity. I follow four girls on the internet that have lured me in so easily through the gift of their friendship. One of them wrote the foreword for a photo book the other published. One of them directed multiple music videos for another. They all went to college together and now live separately. Some of them have long term partners while others write about how unlucky they are in love. They frequently collaborate on their projects like this yet very rarely do any of them work with the same medium. Trivialities of form needn’t stop you. Friends are everywhere. Thea is an oil painter and Genevieve is an illustrator; they are both multimedia artists. Friends are Everywhere can be found at the John Natsoulas Gallery until September 28, 2024. https://abhinaya.cargo.site/2024-Reading-Log Tue, 16 Jul 2024 22:45:03 +0000 Abhinaya Kasagani https://abhinaya.cargo.site/2024-Reading-Log &nbsp;Reading LogJANUARY 9, 2024 - DECEMBER 30, 2024&nbsp; <img width="3024" height="4032" width_o="3024" height_o="4032" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/222705da41824e30504c5d5b5d4994f0e03807daad66543781ee6fa383810552/IMG_9735.jpeg" data-mid="223896062" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/222705da41824e30504c5d5b5d4994f0e03807daad66543781ee6fa383810552/IMG_9735.jpeg" /> <img width="3024" height="4032" width_o="3024" height_o="4032" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/cca1bc1b9b340516712d0f2cdb13faee9600d2d7521b3bc484daf2846f266e98/IMG_2365.jpeg" data-mid="223896052" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/cca1bc1b9b340516712d0f2cdb13faee9600d2d7521b3bc484daf2846f266e98/IMG_2365.jpeg" /> <img width="1732" height="1630" width_o="1732" height_o="1630" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/10f55ac2d8f259afed00c58aa3450ed59bb781f95ae02d5f3064eaf709b38279/IMG_9581.jpeg" data-mid="223896031" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/10f55ac2d8f259afed00c58aa3450ed59bb781f95ae02d5f3064eaf709b38279/IMG_9581.jpeg" /> <img width="3024" height="4032" width_o="3024" height_o="4032" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a250080994b1c3963176c3b7ae8610458b6f581db22fa950d09833a94d9182e9/IMG_8173.jpeg" data-mid="223896060" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a250080994b1c3963176c3b7ae8610458b6f581db22fa950d09833a94d9182e9/IMG_8173.jpeg" /> <img width="3024" height="4032" width_o="3024" height_o="4032" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5f4016ae34ff05e99bae0d84b3d0a0a61ab449356f1eeeb31dc7efd41791b2b1/IMG_8246.jpeg" data-mid="223896061" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/5f4016ae34ff05e99bae0d84b3d0a0a61ab449356f1eeeb31dc7efd41791b2b1/IMG_8246.jpeg" /> Beowulf by Unknown Mr. Chas and Lisa Sue Meet the Pandas by Fran Lebowitz Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Unknown Hamlet by William Shakespeare I Used to Have a Plan: But Life Had Other Ideas by Alessandra Olanow Scenes from an Impending Marriage by Adrian Tomine Us by Curtis Wiklund The Fall by Ed Brubaker So To Speak by Terrance Hayes Happy Endings&nbsp;by Margaret Atwood My Dear You by Rachel Khong The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu The Young Man by Annie Ernaux Speech Sounds by Octavia E. Butler Quicksand by Nella Larsen Funny Story by Emily Henry Under the Feet of Jesus by Helena María Viramontes Exit West by Mohsin Hamid The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot Trilogy by H.D. On Women by Susan Sontag A Man’s Place by Annie Ernaux The Laugh of the Medusa by Hélène Cixous Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History by Art Speigelman The Dirty Kid by Mariana Enríquez La Perdida by Jessica Abel The Awakening by Kate Chopin The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant House Work by Cindy Juyoung Ok There There by Tommy Orange Marigold and Rose by Louise Glück The Wild Iris by Louise Glück Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel Black Hole by Charles Burns Love You Forever by Robert Munsch The Book with No Pictures by B.J. Novak Just Kids by Patti Smith The Night Eaters, Vol. 1: She Eats the Night by Marjorie M. Liu Ward Toward by Cindy Juyoung Ok The Old Neighborhood by David Mamet I Would Leave Me If I Could by Halsey Dream Work by Mary Oliver It by Alexa Chung Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein Love That Dog by Sharon Creech West Wind by Mary Oliver Evidence: Poems by Mary Oliver