#frayed-wind

Good question, and thanks for the ask!

Longtime followers of this blog can probably predict, correctly, that I’ll answer this question with The Great Gatsby, particularly after my Great Gatsby Obsession of 2019™️, well-documented on this blog. It’s just so well-written, with such lyrical and flowing sentences, and every character is such a flawed disaster in different ways and yet I still love them so much*, and Nick and Jay are so gay for each other, and Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald themselves were such fascinating disasters and I…you don’t understand, I just love this book so much, you guys.

*Except Tom. Tom can go choke and also be yeeted into the sun.

Aside from The Great Gatsby, here are some other favorites, restricting “classic” to “published over ~50 years ago”, with very brief reasoning:

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (made me feel Seen™️ as a high schooler)

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (made me feel Seen™️ as a college student)

Macbeth by William Shakespeare (my favorite Shakespeare play, especially since I have fond memories of performing in it, as King Duncan, in my college’s Shakespeare club production! I also love Hamlet, Richard III, Much Ado [although I’ll admit I’ve never read it, just seen performances of it], and Romeo & Juliet!)

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (more disaster humans, gotta love that! We’re also using it as the “foundational text” for one of my grad school modules this semester!)

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (it’s just…really good! I also read it for my 9th grade English class in January 2017, so it felt. Uh. Especially timely)

1984 by George Orwell (did it feel relatable to 14-year-old me because of the internet’s surveillance capitalism, or because I felt scrutinized and like I had no privacy in my home? Uh…yes)

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (particularly the translation by Simon Armitage—it’s so gay and so hilarious)

No-No Boy by John Okada (is it a fascinating, angsty look at Asian American identity post-WWII? Yes. Does it include an “only one bed” scene? ALSO YES)

Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska (honestly, I haven’t reread this one in a while so I don’t remember if it holds up, but I remember loving it when I read it for a college class in 2022!)

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (it’s so sprawling and yet so relatable; any human emotion you’ve experienced, Tolstoy’s probably crystallized it and put it to paper with devastating accuracy)

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (this one rewired my brain chemistry a little bit. The rueful humor, the combination of the sci-fi with the psychological, it’s SO good and SO me. I think it’s the single book I’ve referenced the most in all my grad school discussions so far, and I’m using it as a major source of inspiration for my own novel!)

Alas this is a very difficult question to answer, as my collection of favorite quotes is... extensive

I don't really listen to bands. I'm a strictly video game music type person, truthfully. Listening to songs with lyrics tends to break my focus and immersion.

how do i perceive myself? how do i perceive myself?

well, that depends.

looking in the mirror i am unavoidably, inarguably, unfortunately human. i am my tired, windblown hair. i am my father’s nose and my grandmother’s lips and my mother’s earlobes. i am my very own eyes, cornflower irises ringed by navy. i am unfathomably, unimaginably small and yet i am ethereal and endless and spacious as in of space; i am what you see when you look into the sky at night.

that’s a good start. how do i perceive myself?

i am what you see when you look into the sky at night. i am that vast array of unstoppable, invisible depth. the glitter, the fire, the black holes, the romance.

i am a helicopter seed, dancing and spinning in the wind, on my way to a spot in the earth where i will sprout and grow and age into something new and beautiful.

i am the sparks rising off a campfire. not any campfire, but one surrounded by a reunited chosen family. i am the sparks that float higher and higher until they wink out of existence like a clue.

i am digging myself into a rabbithole where i will find, and learn, the deeper parts of me. i am pushing myself out of that rabbithole until i flower and become an undiscovered new plant, one that is simply too unfathomable, unimaginable, unavoidable, inarguable to name. i am that flower.

that’s a good start. how do i percieve myself?

i am that flower. i am too unfathomably deep, too unimaginably layered to name. i am too unavoidably different, too inarguably changing to label.

how do i perceive myself? how do i perceive myself?

there can only ever be one real answer: