field notes, week of october 1, 2018
a short one today.
two hundred and twenty-six.
can i love non-possessively, permissively -- without withdrawing myself, setting up my own defenses and strategic retreats, on the one hand, or reducing the amount and intensity of my love, on the other?
-- susan sontag, as consciousness is harnessed to flesh: journals and notebooks, 1964-1980
this is, like, the 21st century homo version of 1 corinthians 13.
two hundred and twenty-seven.
the leaves are changing from emerald to gold and i’m changing for the better! i’m changing for the better! i’m changing for the better! i’m changing for the better! i’m changing for the better! i’m changing for the better! i’m changing for the better! i’m changing for the better! i’m changing for the better! i’m changing for the better! i’m changing for the better! i have to believe that i will.
-- keaton st. james, september affirmation (don’t be afraid), 2016
autumn still feels like newness to me, even though i no longer have school to go back to. i love the way the air cools, the colours on the trees get warmer, the world settles down. the air smells different. last year’s september was triumphant, and this one was sad, but i feel new, still, changed, for the better, i hope.
two hundred and twenty-eight.
if you write thousands of sentences that have absolutely nothing to do with what you think or feel those sentences are still what you will become. you can turn yourself into another person.
-- sarah miller, the movie assassin, 2018
[a long wooden cane reaches out from the side of the stage and yanks me into the wings before i can turn this into a 5,000-word essay on don draper’s performance of identity and the self-inflicted suppression of selfhood that follows in the wake of childhood abuse]
two hundred and twenty-nine.
be it depression, or dissociation, or the lack of a god, or the loss of the industry that your town was built around — what happens when you lose that grounding? what happens when your friends are going to leave you, when plans fall apart, when everything becomes shapes, when your own brain betrays you, when the giant cosmic horror known as capitalism grounds you into dust, when those you trusted to make things ok fail you, when you are trapped, when you look down and see only a hole where no one can escape? are we doomed? and what does that experience make us?
…did angus deserve to be abused as a child? no. did bea deserve what’s happened to her? no. did casey deserve to die? no. did mae deserve all the horrible things that happened to her? no. but most of us rarely “deserve” anything that happens to us — good and bad. that’s not how the world works. most of us are doing the best we can, often with things we have no real control over.
…is mae going to be ok?
i hope so. i’m optimistic. one day of feeling good doesn’t change your life, but it can help you get to the next day, and the next day, and the next day. and enough of those days added together is a life. i have faith that mae, with the support of those around her, will get some help. i have an idea of where she ends up years later, and what she’s doing, and with whom. but all i know for sure is today she’s going to play a song and get a pizza. god knows that’s saved me on more than one occasion.
…we won’t last forever, but we aren’t doomed. grab hold of what you can and hold on. let go of things when it’s time, and move on to something new. none of us get out of this alive, and that’s a really great reason to keep on living. and when we go, let’s leave great ghosts.
-- scott benson, four years, 2017
go forth, friends.