#18
On your walk the other day, you listened to this conversation between Elif Batuman and Merve Emre. One of the things you loved in it was Batuman’s response to when people ask, “Why would this character do that?” which is, “I don’t know man, trace the entire history of their life and find out!” This makes sense!
Then someone spoke about a character whose lover had left her, after which her days didn’t seem like they were going anywhere. She’d only felt alive as long as she was perceived by the other. So then you tried to remember the last time you were by yourself in your head, and could not recall with any certainty. Maybe a brief period in February?
Then someone said that it’s sad but true how passion fades and that it’s painful how “the object of our affection changes.” You hummed in agreement, and were reminded of this exchange today while foraging for the leaves/seeds of the Glory Lily. You couldn’t find them because it turns out its leaves “disappear” once the season is over. They will sprout again next year, after the rains. About the plant, this article says, “If the flowers are showy and solitary, the leaves end in well-shaped hooks. You’ll see them locked in a strong handshake.”
It’s shameful to admit this, but a few months ago you started doing something personally unacceptable. When you came across a poem online, sometimes you’d read the first line and skip directly to the last line, looking, as though, for the Moral of the Story. As if that is the purpose of a poem at all.
To find joy is work. It’s work that you have always revered and prioritised but sometimes one is simply too tired. Reminds you of Steve Brooks’ poem “the breakfast show” in which the speaker says, “when i’m in someone else’s new york style apartment / i like virtually anything that’s playing on the fm radio / when i’m at home i can’t find anything that i like […] instead of filling my room the radio is a hole / strange winds blow through / i move to escape through the silent unsealed radio / but someone’s pushing buttons / and strange winds blow into my room like hands.”
Realise, when you open the front camera and a stranger’s face pops up, that you are loneliest when you run away from yourself. Not reading is death, not writing is death, complacency is death, death is when you stop trusting yourself. One morning you scribbled in your Notes app, “Dreamt that I killed a scorpion with a lot of effort,” which is when the last straw broke. Remnants of the dream linger. It did take a lot of effort, and it was so messy. Good thing you woke up.
You read an Ask Polly column and it gave you some clarity. She writes that there are people who are horses and there are people who are hawks. To the hawks, she says, “You have to work hard to stay fed. […] you also have to ask big questions and tell the truth a lot in order to feel everything as much as you want to feel it.” (The recognition of difference in the degree to which one may wish to feel things was really a novel relief.) She knows what it means to look for hawkishness in others. She writes, “And the truth is that I only crave an enlightened hawk when I’m tired and I don’t want to be who I am.”
Co-Star tells you to “Love something and tell everyone.” This is what you’ve always done—it cannot be helped. See these lines from Anne Sexton’s poem “Small Wire”:
“As it has been said:
Love and a cough
cannot be concealed.
Even a small cough.
Even a small love.”
Important to remember something a dear friend said recently—to hate is easy but to love is so difficult.
Some things you love: this poem by Jill Osier, this album, the following paintings by Noji Mikiko:
There was a show at the NGMA in which you thought the light was coming from within the paintings. The other day, when you read a poem that you’d fallen in love with a few years ago, echoes of it issued almost from inside your chest, just like the light in those paintings.
At the present moment, you’re happy after spending time with people who look at broken glass and say things like “See how the light falls on it,” and “Look at the texture!”
Overall, you’re getting lessons in play. A few sweet people believe that you care for them, and return the sentiment. There are important things to think about. You’ve been told that the way you do one thing is the way you do everything, which is quite concerning. Something is awakening, though. It’s almost unbelievable, but it’s happening.