Ocean Vuong - Blog Posts
From the wind, I learned a syntax for forwardness, how to move through obstacles by wrapping myself around them. You can make it home this way.
- Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous: A Novel (Penguin Press, June 4, 2019)
“The gaze, human or animal, is a powerful thing. When we look at something, we decide to fill our entire existence, however briefly, with that very thing. To fill your whole world with a person, if only for a few seconds, is a potent act. And it can be a dangerous one. Sometimes we are not seen enough, and other times we are seen too thoroughly, we can be exposed, seen through, even devoured. Hunters examine their prey obsessively in order to kill it. The line between desire and elimination, to me, can be so small. But that is who we are. There must be some beauty—and if not beauty, meaning—in that brutal power. I am still trying, and mostly failing, to find it.”
— Ocean Vuong, Survival as a Creative Force
When Sylvia plath said, "why can't I try on different lives, like dresses, to see which fits best and is more becoming" ; and when Ocean Vuong said, "you would tell them that the most useful thing one can do with empty hands is hold on" jwjwuwjwwjwbbevevegehbe im gonna go overdose on chai now, bye.
Ma. You once told me that memory is a choice. But if you were god, you’d know it’s a flood.
Ocean Vuong,One earth we are briefly gorgeous
Because the sunset, like survival, exists only on the verge of its own disappearing. To be gorgeous, you must first be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted.
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
When does a war end? When can I say your name and have it mean only your name and not what you left behind?
"The Bull" Ocean Vuong
He stood alone in the backyard, so dark the night purpled around him. I had no choice. I opened the door & stepped out. Wind in the branches. He watched me with kerosene -blue eyes. What do you want? I asked, forgetting I had no language. He kept breathing, to stay alive. I was a boy – which meant I was a murderer of my childhood. & like all murderers, my god was stillness. My god, he was still there. Like something prayed for by a man with no mouth. The green-blue lamp swirled in its socket. I didn’t want him. I didn’t want him to be beautiful – but needing beauty to be more than hurt gentle enough to hold, I reached for him. I reached – not the bull – but the depths. Not an answer but an entrance the shape of an animal. Like me.
So I entered. So I lost. I lost it all with my eyes wide open.
Ocean Vuong, Threshold (via: skinthepoet)