4* a week with dana

hello! my name is dana, i’m a student at Brown studying Environmental Science and UX Design. but really, on a day-to-day basis i’m studying and understanding myself as a person, relative to what i’m learning. climate change is my issue and design is my medium — i get a lot of joy from talking to people at the intersections of disciplines. i’m a big broadway fan/spoken word poetry lover, but too afraid to admit it. i’m on a journey to speak to myself more gently and kindly; partly why i wrote this! 

this week saw me swinging into midterm season physically sick and emotionally exhausted, but i’ve since made it out battered but alive! thank you to izzy for letting me share something on this wonderful site i’ve long been a fan of, it’s really something special ❤

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INCONCLUSIVELY pt. 3: sunshine

“Yet, I keep on. I keep on. I push light out of every part of my body. I try and try and try to fix everything, and announcing when everything is ultimately fixed and solved. But it really, really doesn’t work like that. 

If you’re reading this, and you believe any of these things about yourself, or you relate in anyway: I understand. I really do. And it fucking sucks. And we can deal with it. 

You and I should not treat ourselves with such hostility. We are deserving of roots and forgiveness and trying again. We can not run away from ourselves. We can not scold ourselves tirelessly. We cannot keep shooting ourselves down before we even try to get up. We deserve hope and multiplicity and not being fixed all the time, but still trying for it. We deserve rest and flexibility and truth. ” (x)

This is the conclusion of inconclusively, part 2: echoes. I wrote this two– almost three– weeks ago. I gave myself the deadline to write for part 3: sunshine. It was supposed to follow a timeline, neatly wrapped up within a month: empty palaces introduced my internal conflict and the impetus to change. echoes represents the guilt and tumult and regret that came with the process. This last song is supposed to illuminate the softness and forgiveness I mentioned above. 

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INCONCLUSIVELY pt. 2: echoes

This is my second time writing this because, honestly, I’m having a hard time writing about guilt and grief without speaking in the past tense. I wish to write in the present tense because as of right now, this story is not about offering solutions or framing it as if my guilt and fear lives in the past. I have difficulty writing about pain and hurt on here because 1) it hurts, 2) I use vague language and hesitate to use specific details (rendering it all to be clichéd and nonspecific), 3) I want to help you, not drag you along with my pity-party. 

So, I present to you echoes, a song I wrote in high school, when feelings of guilt, anger, and regret first became a noticeable theme in the way I navigated myself and my relationships. 

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INCONCLUSIVELY pt. 1: empty palaces

i’ve fallen into myself in the past two years, further and further. i’ve gone quiet, grown more guarded, stopped putting my raging thoughts and developments on full display.

i first wanted to write about this within the context of my blog and how i’ve written so sparsely these past couple years, however, i came to realize upon reading this song i wrote last summer closer; this manifested from a deeper pursuit of isolation. 

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reconsideration

I stood where the tide retreated. The sky turned the wet sand into glass, and the clouds gave way to the sun for a single, golden hour. Wind whipped through our clothes and mixed its song with laughter, as the crisp February air chilled our cheeks and seeped into our socks to freeze our toes.

It’s been months since I’ve last written. I feel like I’ve felt more and more different with every month, maybe even every week, that passes. 

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pont notre-dame

28 november 2018 22:45

i have a very interesting relationship with privacy and solitude. 

i crave it, yet so willingly share so much of myself in measured ways. i have a voice that demands to be heard and find trouble writing music in dorm rooms or, most recently, my bedroom in my homestay. year in and year out, i hate how little privacy i have, spatially. at home i used to sit at my piano well after midnight, my parents fast asleep upstairs with their doors shut, belting and playing to my heart’s content. last summer, i wrote the riverside as i found release in the absolute privacy that nature gave me. a physical escape that gifted me absolute white noise, absolute isolation, to simply be. 

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