Saturday 15 June 2013

Rapunzel does not live on this street

The Princess is ready to claim her own Castle!! 
In lay terms, this means that one of my very good dear wonderful friends is moving into her very first on-her-own apartment. I wish her all the best of moving vibes, from good weather to good-humored and prompt moving helpers to good pizza and good sleep. (Which is less that she has earned as she has helped me move more than is reasonable. Usually in heels. I am thinking specifically of the buffet.)*

But that’s not really the point.

I kind of don’t mind moving, at least I didn’t. The packing and cleaning and sorting and dusting and sneezing and throwing out of things worked as a kind of identity therapy. I got to touch all of the things that made up the world that fit into the set of |Me|**. Journals, letters, books, shrines, ceramics, mementos, missing laundry – all of it active and real elements of an entirely self-created self-definition.

Conversations at work have included an ongoing debate with my friend about the spectrum of introversion and how to apply it. He spoke a thing that I think I’ve been missing about the world for a really long time. The conversation went something like this: Me – You don’t get to define me. Him – We are all defined by other people! Me – stunned silence *eyebrow up*

Well, but I’ve always been that way, right: “I’ll be my own self!” foot stomp “No one else is the boss of me!” “You do not get to define me!” (I have said that one a lot)

It smacks so cheerfully of childishness, doesn’t it? How easy to dismiss are claims that do not fit the dictionary definition.

Because I have moved a lot, and I know the difference between |Me| and ‘hippie’, ‘free-thinker’, ‘snob’, ‘sweetheart’, ‘original’; the list is long and I am not alone in having one.

(I do not credit this attitude problem with tens of moves, but the inventory is part of living in this space around me, and that is directly connected to moving.)

And yet…

We learn how to behave based on outside expectations. We frequently only see our actions as they are reflected or refracted in other peoples’ lives. Our class system maintains itself with rigidly defined behavioral policies and expectations. The social constructs we are taught to accept without questions are predicated on outside, not self-control, as well as predestination not self-determination.

Every day brings more support to the dangers of stereotyping: externally imposed definitions – diminishing by definition. Every day there is evidence drawn in blood that it is not safe to fail at accepting external definitions. And every single day individuals still make the decision to escape the social constructs, the naysayers be damned.

So, I guess what I really wish for my Princess is the time to see what her life looks like on the inside. What the last years have made, hidden and lost. Find the absolute value of yourself in the silence and chaos of boxes, bags and Moving Day.

This year, I’ll settle for deep cleaning.




*Apparently the move has already happened, but whatever. The sentiment is the same.

** |Me| denotes the absolute value of whatever is listed between the bars, in this case: Me. Math is cool.

Thursday 13 June 2013

Shivering Barometric Pressure

Friends, I find me in a deeply dangerous situation.

The wind moves. The keyboard is warm and welcomes use. A blank page: unused file space. What delicious adventure.

The world is filled with broken tree limbs, gardens filled with clay, air still as algae, the body made of sweat at the very edge of a heavy terrible headache. Summer becomes.

Sleep may be a dream tonight, waiting for the cool to land.

I crave books of walks, long conversations, politics, morality, food – ah, food – dusty travel and bitter endings.

It has been more than a month since I read the review copy of The Art of Joy and still I cannot face fiction that is uncrowned with the name ‘canon’ – how I relished it!

It would be a lie to say that to be surrounded by Beauty makes noticing that which is beautiful difficult to see. It would be more correct to say that there are different ways to see Beauty, because it takes every different form. Sapienza’s great work shocks, titillates and provokes as it draws you in almost tenderly without care or gentle caress. This novel, much like its protagonist, does not need to care for you, but does need you. I do not remember the last time that I jumped when addressed by the author. (I am sure that it has happened before. It is forever a shock to be seen instead of safely invisible, regardless of the circumstances.) When Modesta calls out the fourth wall, it is destroyed. Such is her power and the strength of her narrative.

The constantly shifting routines of work and life have begun to be familiar, and now there is time for getting into trouble again. Trouble in my world is in story, fairy tales and odd little sestinas. The USPS and I occasionally are on again.

This evening my fingers found themselves in motion on these keys, with nothing else to add but what they themselves created.

I am out of practice, but the habit and muscle memory are well established. I do not miss the troublesome rush of creation or the conflicted afterglow: exhausted exhilarated stiff with stillness and incapable of the moment, whatever moment it is. I am terrible at drugs, even the ones that are the same as just being me: learning, connecting and occasionally creating.

It’s strange and unwholesome, I tell you.

How do I know this?

I’m still typing.