yesterday i rested and made:
1. fluffy paper
2. dead blue pig-dog (he’s ugly)
3. tragic bear (held together by pins until i can find proper joints)
4. necklace (my favorite braid to make)
5. thaumatrope

the thaumatrope is an old optical toy: a paper disc spins on a string, merging the two faces into a single image. this thaumatrope demonstrates sleep paralysis [가위눌림].

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during sleep paralysis i’m always aware of being trapped a breadth away from reality. recently i “woke” to see a man hunched in my bedroom. i knew it was just a trick of light, but i couldn’t un-see his body, long and black, dead still except for the twitching of his fingertips, and the wet white light in the corners of his eyes. his lips were slightly parted, and there were no inhalations of breath to punctuate the low, desperate sound that hissed from his throat. i understood this noise came from the plumbing in my apartment, not from any phantom; i knew that once i was fully awake, the illusion would resolve itself. i waited. i could hear my neighbors’ movements, and my window glowed as the pre-dawn blue transmuted into a.m. gold, but i couldn’t rouse completely. i was still trapped between sleeping and waking as the man’s hands started shaking.

the thaumatrope makes me remember… do you remember, when we were children? we would race from one room to another, and understand that the wall we passed was not a single mass, but two faces, back to back, with a space in between. do you remember longing to see the ghosts that lived in that unseen space? we would imagine ghost games, inventing rules and backstories, and at some point the space between reality and play would diminish to the thinness of a paper disc.

i thought of the optical toy again as i tried to keep my body from going into autopilot mode while socializing. i felt worn because i had to be a thaumatrope and spin my mind, words, and expressions into a coherent, consistent personality, and to form responses that were coherent and consistent with others’ conversation. i have no hatred for people; these people were intelligent and lovely; they just weren’t special to me.
i do wish i were a little better with people though. i talked to steve a while ago and he showed me how stupid and gullible i am… except nobody’s mistreated me, nobody’s lied to me, nobody’s made any promises to break to me. i let myself be cheaply used. i have to do better by trusting in facts and actions without superimposing my own baseless assumptions and expectations. i have to see past illusions. so to inspire myself i have been bellowing this song all day:

BE A MAN / WE MUST BE SWIFT AS THE COURSING RIVER
BE A MAN / WITH ALL THE FORCE OF A GREAT TYPHOON
BE A MAN / WITH ALL THE STRENGTH OF A RAGING FIRE
MYSTERIOUS AS THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOOOOOOOOOOOOOON

i love to sing this part in my deepest, most hunky voice because it inspires me to be crazy manly like mulan. i like very much the word “beefcake” so i’m trying to have the qualities of such, as i understand the “beefcake” to mean… i try very strenuously… every day i am trying to be crazy manly and hunky, like a river, typhoon, raging fire, and the moon, ALL AT ONCE…

but…

is hard to be manly.