On writing

The past few weeks have been a battle between myself and my words. I’m working on another essay. This time, I want to be fully read– or, at least, legible — seen, heard, my point unmistakably clear. For the past few months since starting the Phd program, I feel that I had been flailing my arms, speaking through contorted facial expressions, moving by intuition but met with confused expressions. It’s funny how I wrote this same line when in Korea, at that time thinking it was due to actual language barriers. To be free from restrictions though brings forth a deeper condition which is that of finding a language one desires to speak at all. How should I write? Will I claim to present objective truths or is there a particular subjectivity that’s best left performed? Navigating institutional space provokes both liberatory thought and everyday delusions. Sometimes, it’s necessary to have an enemy to set your agenda straight. Someone who enrages you enough to remember the structural powers that govern daily life beyond your own intellectual space; but while remembering also that this exercise is largely an effort to dissolve that divide and cultivate a creative space that first begins with my own mind…