Emotional baggage

“Itching is a natural part of the body's healing process.” – CityMD

Dear friends, 

Five days ago, my school sent an email to my personal mailbox (!?), announcing that they would reduce the alumni storage to 20GB. 

“We noticed your current storage is near or above the 20GB limit. Not to worry: this is a great opportunity to revisit your digital space, streamline and organize your digital files, and make room for what's truly important—you might even rediscover some forgotten gems!” the school’s IT Dept wrote, in a vain attempt to mimic Marie Kondo. 

For some time, I’ve set it up as my back-up unlimited drive to which photos, sound bites, video footage taken on iPhone are automatically uploaded. It has been where I keep friends’ script drafts, rough cuts, miscellaneous designs, soft copies of books or even presentation jams – a suffocating cabinet of goodies belonging to unspecific old days that keep my presentiment of loss at bay. 

From time to time, I browse Google Photos to see what I did on that day last year – an unfinished dish, a screenshot of someone’s Instagram story that listed out watch repair shops in Hanoi’s city center or a kind message which might have saved me from the starvation of external affirmation.   

20GB of data is not a lot. 

Roughly two decades ago, the iPod I started using at grade 5 already had 60GB memory. I broke it on a fine day in Miami, 12 years later, after clumsily searching for a song that my then impatient spring fling requested. 

By that time, Apple had discontinued the Classic line. I bought a 2GB iPod Shuffle in replacement, spending a whole night curating the overflowing iTunes to fit the tiny newly acquired device. 

One year later, Spotify entered Vietnam. The playlist which had comforted me on morning walks, long train rides and flights for the major part of my teenage and young adulthood was soon forgotten. 

Then why has the announcement bothered me that much? 

I’m going through inconsolable grief. In response to my recent emotional outburst, the therapist advised me to keep it within a daily 15-minute window of breaking down. It has been two weeks since our last session and I’ve no longer cried uncontrollably. Instead, I find myself staring at one point on the person’s picture – a mole, an iris – while releasing my mind to float somewhere else. As 15 minutes are up, I gather myself and resume my work. 

Those images are not on my phone anymore, they are up on the cloud. Might this be the chance to send them away for ever? 

It was a strange housewarming party six years ago when I invited people who were closest to my heart at that point in time over; a bunch of camera geeks yet we didn’t take any photos. Some of them exited our lives in such devastating manners. It took us a long, miserable time to recover. Now, when all the wounds are closed, the rest of us sometimes wonder whether the party really happened. Without visual evidence, the event might just be a product of our collective imagination. 

“Only heartache is big and real,” a friend told me. 

Big and real like the human-shaped hole a person can leave in our heart, enough to fit our coffin and bury it within, one might think. However, like a mystical forest door, one day, you will realize it has closed without you knowing. 

I should just buy a new SSD and download all those remnants. 

“Proust says memory is of two kinds.

There is the daily struggle to recall
where we put our reading glasses

and there is a deeper gust of longing

that comes up from the bottom

of the heart

involuntarily.

At sudden times.

For surprise reasons.

[...]

Before leaving the library

I turn off the lights.”

– Anne Carson 

Till next time,

T. 

P/S: 

The demo tape Lou Reed mailed to himself in 1965 and never opened. The act was once considered as “poor man’s copyright” instead of filing and paying fees to the US Copyright Office. It contained earliest versions of the Velvet Underground’s iconic songs including Pale Blue Eyes and Heroin (my favorite running songs before the knee injury). Taken at NYPL in October 2022.

This week’s top picks

As I was thinking about this letter, I was reminded of this movie – not necessarily an excellent one but I always find Aokbab captivating. 

I watched this documentary for the first time with my roommate in our East Village apartment, not so far from Ryuichi Sakamoto’s place in the West Village. About this time last year, I (and probably she) watched it again after he had passed away. Still a great source of comfort and inspiration whenever this life feels unbearable and hopeless. 

New song by Fujii Kaze. I like this tiny desk concert version better. 

For folks in Hanoi next week, 

Hồi sóng at Manzi 

A talk on Middle East at the Cricket Project, co-hosted by my favorite writer Đỗ Kh.