I Cannot Say I Did Not
I asked, with everything I did not
have, to be born. And nowhere in any
of it was there meaning, there was only the asking
for being, and then the being, the turn
taken. I want to say that love
is the meaning, but I think that love may be
the means, what we ask with.
— Sharon Olds
I’ve been feeling my way to this moment over the last few weeks, and tonight, conviction, that strange kin of prophecy, stirred awake in my body to tell me that the way through might be around and around. There are no straightforward answers anymore, she said to me, we are too far into catastrophe for that. So we will go from the beginning where true was first cast. Étumos.
Catastrophe:
from the Greek katastrophē - overturning, sudden turn
kata- ‘down’ + strophē ‘turning’
So now we are down-turning and turning. We are turning over and over. We are suddenly, once again, turning.
Okay, hear me out.
Some days, right? I wake up feeling like a coward in my own life, turning from my own time with shakey eyes and shakey breath. The package deal.
Other days, I wake up feeling like I am ready to continue the painful walking on grass more real than me and so much itself that it hurts me.
And then still other days, I wake to the way the light enters the window telling me that I am the realest thing in my own life and that’s all I’ll ever be.
What a thought. So strange and comforting.
Hear me out again.
Once, I longed to go as far as my body would take me and then found myself alone and uncertain.
Once, I longed to pause for a time to become familiar with the sound of air moving through the doorways abandoned and ajar.
Once, I saw an image of a field of boxes scattered as far as the eye could see and felt deep grief for my time that would run out before desire ran dry, and yet, their abundance flushed my skin red and warm and itchy.
Once I longed for longing that wasn’t always also laced with fear.
The turn to writing is the turn to the burn in the chest that is not yet a question and is disinterested in an answer. The turn to the writing is the moment solitude gathers itself, snaking into its own dark mouth and suddenly, I can hear the sound of trees. Down turn. Turn over. Turn again. Turn again. The turn taken.
The turn to writing is the turn from catastrophe. The way through that is around. I turn and I turn and then before I know it, I am dancing again and there is joy every which way shaking the boughs of the trees and then I am dancing and dancing and the shaking is the sound of my teeth knocking in fear.
Maybe I am too obsessed with circles and spirals and the things that come and go around and around: Ouroboros; The Moon; Sunstone; Believe in the me that believes in you.
New question: Is there a way around obsession? Is there anything else to do besides surging forward and anticipating blowback? Is there a way to live eclipsed but without regret?
These days I have been learning to breathe with my belly. And if the atmosphere is a repository of all the words ever spoken, then this explains why I have been so full to the point of vomit.
So here is me throwing up. I am taking my turn. The revolution of catastrophe. Just but not just another asking for meaning and the practice of means. Practicing again/st. Practicing until. The turn to writing is the wildest thing.
and when he came to the place where the wild things are
they roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth
and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws
till Max said “BE STILL!”
and tamed them with the magic trick
of staring into all their yellow eyes without blinking once
and they were frightened and called him the most wild thing of all
— Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak