Letters to Echo
March 29, 2025
Echo,
我们共谋的一定都会如愿以偿。
March 21, 2025
Echo,
通常我不愿多谈流离失所，尤其人处在一个，大家都要聊得当代的环境里。一般你清楚表演什么话题比较符合趋势，我是说，时髦。学科化或市场化的结果。首先要承认现在无家可归对我的影响的确几乎要抵达峰值，可内心还是抵触严正以待地围绕它产出什么。尽管如此感到有的东西还是该存下来，临时的办法就是慢慢地写，到处写。当然有时你试图表现得不与某个东西为伍的时候事实上承认了那个东西的影响，害怕成为附和某种趋势时它佐证了自己在你身上凿刻的痕迹。上一周在柏林参观工作室时遇到一个美国艺术家，在芝加哥住了多年甚至在前校任教过。空间的断裂和弥合感一下又涌现上来。最近发觉在被问及你住在哪里时成了一个难以回答的话题，我只好还是回答芝加哥，一方面难以解释彻底，一方面自我说服其实还有一个会回去的地方。与她稍微解释了现在的状态后被回应道对美国政治影响到我的生活感到抱歉。我想，是这样的，又不只是这样的。无论如何我最终没有了进行这个话题的兴趣。
从柏林回来后再次持续在房间独处，当每日步行轨迹成一个受限的环形时，个人知觉仿佛后退陷入无限的空间。这张迷你地图上也被我做了标记，厨房，浴室，桌面，床，试图组织起微型的变幻。在空间环境越简单时感知越发错综——不愿意使用某种病理性话语来解释它——每次思维都转弯都只能让我窥见冰山一角。当独处的时间大于群居时，流离的影响成为了一种纯粹生理的疲劳，只有当记忆的轮廓叠加时它们才复合为有叙事的多愁善感。梦境早为我揭示了这一点。
你曾经向往的四海为家的生活在我这里已成为一种尖锐的形势所迫。偶尔也会收到羡慕可以四处游荡的感慨，我本想说现在它不是一种主动选择，转念一想所有的选择何尝不是都被自己安排。我不想为自己找任何借口了。我总是发觉我们在相异的动机之下达成了相同的结果，这让我开始怀疑动机，这也是我不想总是下意识找借口的原因之一。
Erica a cafe, Vilnius
March 12, 2025
Echo,
i felt that feeling again this afternoon when i woke up. i should stop looking at the evil. it’s been about 2 weeks since last time. now i know why you said it always happens when you awake in the morning. the person i don’t wanna dream of any more has been dippeared for a while, which was a good news to me. but now, a similar fear struck me. i need to figure that out through another way.
how did you survive all that fear in a row?
Erica
Vilnius
March 11, 2025
Echo,
it’s my second day in vilnius, lithuania. i took a walk to the republic of uzupis, where used to built by a hippies group, as they said. it looks pretty commercialized nowadays already, but i was still into the small rivers alongside. this afternoon i was sitting by the sound and the pattern of those tiny ripples, almost tearing out. i remember you were not interesting in water, wasn’t it? but i believe you’d still like some part of it. so far the city is vivid in my sights - not stark at all like some ppl said.
later i’ll go to berlin for a couple of days.
moving again to a foreign city restores my routine of going grocery, cooking, walking, and watching. there are three bright windows in my bedroom in proper sizes. i put the exhibit ephemerals i got from netherlands and my books by the windows (two of them), on the massive table. i also have a studio downstairs, but i don’t think i’ll use that so often. my table and my body are my studio indeed. i’m truly hoping to make authentic things now.
i took a picture of the constitution of that republic. i’m sure you’d like the last three lines.
do not defeat. do not fight back. do not surrender.
Erica Vilnius, Lithuania
March 1, 2025
Echo,
i’ve been away from the united states for almost 3 weeks. now, netherlands. being outside of north america brings me massive relief far bigger than i imagined. the only reason i’m writing in english is to soften the shame of what’s in my life and my mind that im gonna tell you here.
it wouldn’t last long, i knew that clearly and transparently. while we were still together i hadn’t forseen that life could be shattered by sudden, absurd catastrophes - in fact they may still be imploding inside me, streching across the present and the future. every time i try to think back to you it takes efforts now. the iconic events, the sensations, your face, your words, are all silently dissolving. but i can recall the room we stayed in, the darkness pressing around us - only that color is vivid today. at the time i knew you, you were a ballsy, reckless species. you must be surprised at the vulnerability and the cynicism and the hesitancy of me in front of people if you see me（however im playing nice to ppl now, huh？）the person you know, the ruthless and decisive and never-look-back version of me has been unrecognizable for a period. but we still share the blood of gamblers - something critical that i can dig out from the history. regrettable episodes stacked up day after day as i moved to uncountable waystations and through more calamities, except for the every single reckless gamble i made, even though the immeasurable pain emerges in the end frequently, a substance that rewrites itself every time i think it’s finally over.
in the past few months i’ve been playing games of money and politics — the very things we once mocked together. sometimes it pulls me back to that self-inflicted season: the autumn when i rushed into the bathroom to puke until i started hallucinating, without real physical illness. by the way, i cried once or twice before leaving chicago, still not sure if it was separation anxiety or sheer hatred; since the new year, i’ve been seriously sick twice - once because i skipped the flu shot, once from food poisoning (or alcohol poisoning?). i know you’ve tasted fear too, like that massive wave of dread crashing down the moment you open your eyes in the morning. but i have to say the places we’ve ended up could not be more different now. and yet, there’s something else i need to say: lately i’ve been thinking about you more often. i realized that the things you once chased — or pretended to depend on to stay alive — have somehow found their way back to me, looping around in this twisted form like a mobius strip. they’ve reappeared in my life. for the first half of our time apart, i cut those things out of me, even sneered at your obsession. back then i craved revolution, resistance, reason, and a kind of work i chose for myself — work that deliberately veered away from what we once shared. it’s only recently that i realized these ghosts never really left - not blaming you, nor am i condemning anything - i’m just surprised. and surprise is the only word i want to use here. i understand, fully and deeply, how fake and destructive those obsessions can be. but now i’m translating them back in my life, your ghost is offering me nostalgia.
i have no idea if we’ll ever meet again, i mean really meet, to actually talk. soon i’ll be heading to lithuania to make something new — i’m trying to build up some kind of anticipation for it. there was even a brief period recently when i felt a strong urge to go back to china (that impulse faded within a month). i can already picture your expression reading this line, even though the reasons we can’t stay there are not completely the same. i also have no idea what kind of truth this constant moving is supposed to reveal. and i feel ashamed to use words like wandering or drifting. i just tell people something flat and unremarkable that i’m moving. moving sounds like putting together a jigsaw puzzle with children’s attributes. i run from place to place like a kid who refuses to take responsibility. i get pissed off more often than i did before the new year. sometimes because of the absurd rules of the game and sometimes because of the endless chain of lies and sometimes because of specific assholes. but when darkness pulls over my eyes, all these things settle quietly into place, segment after segment, like lotus roots with no texture. that’s when i always think i’ve finally figured out the pattern - there should be a coherent story behind why I’m always irritated. to prove some thoughts i try to think about what you would’ve done. but in the fog of memory, i can no longer see what you really thought back then. turns out i’m the one who’s forgetting.
the only way i know to save myself now is to throw my whole being into work. not the work for survivng or acting, but the kind of work where i actually exist. where i might finally understand something, instead of always harboring my weapons facing people (them). i still hope to see you again someday.
Erica
The Hague, Netherlands