A page of my own
By Jasmine Siswandjo in writing
August 25, 2024
Farm Tomita
Aside from some blogging in my childhood (where I unfortunately typed out my email and now receive unceasing junk mail), I’ve not been particularly visible on the internet. Now I realise that came from a combination of not wanting to take up space or be seen, and also from being an incessant and effective stalker — I’ve come across a lot of random things on the internet that I feel dire secondhand embarrassment for.
Maybe I’ve just come to the point where I no longer regret things I’ve done recently (thanks to a fully developed prefrontal cortex!) and am now comfortable sharing who I am and what I think out on the internet. Maybe it’s because I want to write (and use my words) more, now that I’ve noticed it’s hard to verbalise thoughts or even recall interesting words I want to use in conversation. Also highly likely that it’s because I now have a [pretty and easy to maintain] blog ( hugo-apero) that I get to use RStudio and VS Code for!
Reading bookbear express has also made me feel things I haven’t felt in a while. Some of her posts make me wonder why I’m even reading her writing, but some of them are just so relatable and on the nose that I can’t stop. She’s open about her insecurities about writing on the internet, and even wrote a helpful post about why you should write more. Not everything I write will be relatable to anyone/everyone or even good, but just writing feels like something I want to put effort into. This page having no audience (thanks to Google Search Console for letting me know that) also helps with the not writing to any audience aspect.
Despite all these reasons and a desire to actually write, I find myself avoiding the writing. Literally while penning this, I’ve picked up my phone 4 times to scroll through Instagram, Facebook and to read messages. I look at my nails, I pick at them, and I read other people’s writing. That underlying fear of actual people reading this is still scary, but there is also an oppositional desire to be seen.
A while ago I took a Grab back home, and the driver opened up the conversation by asking me what I do for food at night. I said I’m never awake at night, since my bedtime is super early. The conversation then moved onto the topic of relationships. Because he’s ethnically from Pakistan where arranged marriages are common, he opted into finding a match through a matchmaker. People are shown to other people with printed fact sheets, basically a dating profile with their picture, personal information, expectations, family background, etc. He apparently wrote a very lengthy essay in his About Me, including entire paragraphs about Star Trek and gaming, so that whoever he finds has to actually vibe with him. The first two girls did not seem to have actually read his essay, but the third did and they got married! It sounds like he found a winner. They apparently game late into the night together, which is why he was curious about supper options in my neighborhood. That’s the power of writing.
Cicada shells cling to the white birch trees at Farm Tomita. Their distinctive “song” fills the air, a hallmark of summer in Japan. After shedding their exoskeletons, the cicadas leave behind these delicate remnants, symbols of rebirth, renewal, and the fleeting nature of life.
Where the cicada casts her shell
In the shadows of the tree,
There is one whom I love well,
Though her heart is cold to me.
- Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji, 11th Century