“The ambiguous identity of the second interlocutor lends wonderful multidimensional facets to the relationship between the text and readers. However, the absolute knowledge of the identity does not particularly matter, because the actual ignition of a self-conscious path towards meaningful responses holds more value than the means by which the speaker advances herself. The means can change, yet the journey and its lessons always remain steadfast in their consistency. Powerful writing, and the deployment of various poetic devices, with the pristine skill of a surgeon riding the high of two Red Bulls, can certainly be found in this chapbook….”

–Domenic Scopa in Misfitmagazine.net/ w/ a lovely & insightful review of my & Elizabeth Schmuhl’s collaborative book Q/A. Thank you

http://misfitmagazine.net/archive/No-16/xertareview.html

When people come to me I want them to feel like they are standing at the edge of a lake. I want to be reflective like that, cool like that, calm like that. When they touch me I want them to feel infinite and not because of me but because of them. I want you to love yourself, why don’t you love yourself, who’s been stopping you all these years?

I study neuroscience and know we are infinite. There are a trillion neural pathways in each of our brains, it’s no wonder we feel lost, it’s no wonder we always find ourselves anyway, blinking up at the light like the children we fear we still are.

We still are.

I want to love myself but first I have to find her/ what was ever found that wasn’t fueld by love? Curisoity/ the desire to know/ to know/ to undo the fear that keeps us from ourselves/ each other.

I got so close to you, it was like living inside you, all those chains rattling against your insides. I picked so many of your locks/ you let me touch everything except for you.

I gave you everything, including me, like a mother I loved you unconditionally/ is there any other way to love/ if there is I don’t want to know it/ I need to know it.

I cannot let you rape me I cannot let you rape me I cannot let you rape me/ you raped me/ I won’t unsay it because you can’t undo it.

But still. This bundle of axons I’m always toeing along, this imaginary tie to you/ madness/ how are these feelings any less real than when I said I loved you/ how are you actually any further away? So much of what we built was invisible/ so much of what you destroyed was invisible/ still, all of this matters.

I am tired of not being known/ touched/ able to exist in all my human parts. I keep telling people I am mangled from the inside out but I never actually show them/ myself/ hold myself.

I’ve clung to my truths as a way to avoid other truths. This poem was once as true as this poem and I am both of them and neither and more all at once. “I contain multitudes” lol but really it’s true. There is no room for nuance and there is room/ I have to make room/ secretly/ I am it.  

Everything I do is in service to someone else, an addiction to being needed/ useful. I try to break this cycle and all my illusions break away/ I am left with myself/ nothing.

I slip into this pain and think of you curled up like an infant on the floor in your apartment because the cap to your water bottle didn’t click three times/ or maybe it did/ how can you know/ I don’t know/ the water/ the water/ the germs. They really are everywhere. I used to suspect you were magic for being able to sense them/ this magic thinking of mine/ this is how I built you/ loved you.

Don’t mistake these words as me saying yes. I refuse to be ping-ponged from one side of the dichotomy to the other/ I am not an object, after all/ I object/ I am infinite.

I am a person. The danger is that I project my inner self onto others/ when I humanize myself I cannot help but humanize you/ love you/ myself. I need all of these things to be okay/ I need to have my needs met/ I need to learn how to say no as a way of saying yes/ to myself/ you/ the part I never reached.

I write as if you are inextricable from me/ maybe this is a truth/ a lie to distract me from other truths.

I don’t actually know.

I sit down against the wall and hug my knees to my chest like the child I feel that I am. This is what she needed/ needs/ this is where she is. Go there, I say to myself, and I realize I say it only to myself.

For most of my life I didn’t know how to say no to anyone because I imagined everyone as the babies they once were/ everyone as innocent/ everyone as hurting. This is selfish pacifist thinking/ this was me projecting/ this was a cry for help coming up from the depths of me/ every person became a mirror for the unloved self in me/ I just never learned how to recognize her.

Still sometimes I don’t recognize her/ she is not always a her/ but she is something/ she is holding me now. I hug myself and become her/ she becomes my guide. I close my eyes and show her my thoughts, how often I think about leaving, those thoughts like fiberglass, they insulate me.

She looks at me and says No. She doesn’t even beg, her voice still like the lake I want to be/ she knows I want to be/ she knows I will listen. She just has to say it/ I just have to listen. I will listen.

I am listening, still. Stay.

I know a lot of people are saying this has been an awful week for the writing community AND IT HAS in terms of the issues we’ve been discussing but for me personally I’ve never felt more sane and validated and unsurprised – like, this toxicity is what I deal with almost constantly in terms of flashbacks, processing, memories, AND private conversations with so many of my girlfriends, both in and out of the writing community, who have endured similar abuse. And it’s not because we’re obsessing or “choosing to focus on the negative.” This is reality right now. Internet breaks are healthy but this week feels more like reality surfacing than anything else. This week feels like the truest week I’ve had in a long time. Like all my private thoughts and conversations are suddenly public. It’s exhausting and exhilarating. If someone wants to come over for a dance party and/or cigarettes later that’d be cool.

Clarice Lispector was born on December 10 (my birthday) and died on December 9 (my birthday, as well – I was born in Germany around 2AM, December 10, and so my birth certificate says December 10. But I’ve lived in America for most of my life and the moment I was born it was still the evening of December 9 here in America, which might explain why I’ve never been able to experience what it’s like to be in one place at one time. And is that a home? Home is whenever I’m with you but you are so far away.) 

It’s not a big deal when I was born. I hate that I try to make it a big deal. I hate that I hate that. My god it never stops. 

I do like that my astrological sign is Sagittarius, for several reasons: S is my favorite letter. Flip it sideways and you have a wave, and I am like that, always either coming or going, always crashing into some shore and then folding back in on myself again. Isn’t this what we love about the ocean? I bet she’s fucking exhausted. It’s good that we love her. If the ocean was a person she’d be very difficult to live with. 

But I am not an ocean and now I hate that I compared myself to that. The existential question Who am I? is really starting to bore me. I’d rather not talk about it anymore. I’d rather not try so hard to exist. Like my therapist says: “You don’t have to try to be a good mother because you already are, in everything you do.”

Is it totally inappropriate to send your therapist flowers? Because I’d really like to. The man at least deserves a bright red poinsettia and a new coffee mug. 

I also like that I am a Sagittarius because it’s symbolized by a half-man half-horse wielding a bow, though I’m a woman so I chose this photo from Google images: 

And that’s hot. I mean look at that – there is nothing she can’t do. And all that fire – Sagittarius is one of the fire signs, and yes I am always burning. I am both ocean and fire. At the same time. One big impossible contradiction but still I am. I burn through everything and I am always thirsty, my throat always parched. And when I am happy my body literally burns –  I burn calories like a madwoman and barely eat or sleep because there’s so much fuel inside me, bursting forth from the core of me, which I imagine resembles the core of the earth, some bright golden sphere of light. In yoga this is the innermost body, this is Bliss: The Divine Body. Anandamaya kosa. I think it’s what people mean when they talk about Jesus, living in God’s light, though I’m not sure if I’ve ever met either, and I don’t say that in a remorseful way. I enjoy mystery. It leaves something to linger on, move your tongue against. 

That core is what burns at the core of every poem I write. It is why I write. What I try to capture when I write, even though I never really will – you can’t hold fire in your hands and not lose them, and I like my hands. They’re good for holding and touching.  

When Greg and I first started dating I was so happy I burned 10,000 calories. I dropped five pounds in a week, just from feeling. I told him this and meant it as a compliment, but he was very concerned. But of course the fact that he was concerned made me burn even more. It just never stops. 

I forgot what I came here to write about. I think I was just going to tell you about the book I started reading this morning, Clarice Lispector's Near to the Wild Heart. I came across some passages that made me sweat (again, the burning):

I was studying math and suddenly felt the tremendous, cold impossibility of the miracle. I look through this window and the only truth, the truth I couldn’t tell that man if I went up to him, the only truth is that I live. Sincerely, I live. Who am I? Well, that’s a bit much. I remember a chromatic study by Bach and my mind strays. It is as cold and pure as ice, yet you can sleep on it. My consciousness strays, but it doesn’t matter, I find the greatest serenity in hallucination. It is curious that I can’t say who I am. That is to say, I know it all too well, but I can’t say it. More than anything, I’m afraid to say it, because the moment I try to speak not only do I fail to express what I feel but what I feel slowly becomes what I say. Or at least what makes me act is not what I feel but what I say. I feel who I am and the impression is lodged in the highest part of my brain, on my lips (especially on my tongue), on the surface of my arms and also running through me, deep inside my body, but where, exactly where, I can’t say…. Sometimes it becomes sharp and wounds me, colliding with me. Very well, thinking now about the blue sky, for example. But above all where does this certainty of being alive come from? No, I am not well. For no one asks themselves these questions and I… But all you have to do is be quiet in order to discern, beneath all the realities, the only irreducible one, that of existence. And beneath all these uncertainties – the chromatic study – I know everything is perfect, because it followed its fated path, regarding itself from scale to scale. Nothing escapes the perfection of things, that’s how it is with everything.

Because there is white space here I feel the need to comment but what is there to say? Clarice Lispector has been dead for years but she knows me better than most people I’ve encountered in my life. Or maybe it only feels that way because she wrote about it. What would I feel about you, friends, if you wrote about yourselves more? 

My god I exhaust myself. And I just learned that December 21st is the last day of the Sagittarius sign, which was yesterday, which was also the first day of winter, the darkest day of the year, and how fitting, that it all falls into the realm of Sagittarius. I hate most the time of year I was born and I hate that I hate that. I just love the sun is all. It is so fitting that Greg is from Florida, the sunshine state. Of course! Right now he is there and I am not there. I also love that Evelyn was born at the end of June, on the longest day of the year, the first day of summer, the brightest day of the year. This is also very fitting. I have so much hope for her. 

And now it is December 22 and we are no longer in the dark realm of Sagittarius and every day there is an extra minute of light. I cling to this desperately. I realize I might sound depressed but really I’m not. I’ve had waves of sadness but I haven’t been fully depressed for some time, which is remarkable, all these cold dark days. I am happy and tired. I didn’t mean to write a blog post. I have so many things to do and as soon as I’m done writing I’ll feel overwhelmed and rush around the apartment, trying to catch up with myself. I’m already sweating thinking about it. But I was overwhelmed before I began writing. And so I write. Even when I don’t mean to. All I wanted was to take 10 minutes to tell you about Clarice. But some things I cannot control. I am learning that. I am learning to let go. I am learning to stop trying so hard. My red hair is not natural and yet it is the most natural thing about me, one of the only true things about me.

Things that I know: My red hair. Writing. It’s Sunday. I am and I love you. 

But I’m tired, in spite of my cheer today, cheer that comes from goodness knows where, like that of an early summer morning. I’m tired, acutely now! Let us cry together, quietly. For having suffered and continued on so sweetly. Tired pain in a simplified tear. But this was a yearning for poetry, that I confess, God. Let us sleep hand in hand. The world rolls and somewhere out there are things I don’t know. Let us sleep on God and mystery, quiet, fragile ship floating on the sea, behold sleep. 

Lately I’ve been so lonely that I’ve considered joining the church across the street from my apartment. The sign in their window says they’re having a candle light ceremony on Christmas Eve and the thought of being in a room full of strangers holding candles is an idea I immediately fall in love with. Which might be part of my problem. I am always immediately falling in love. And it’s always with ideas. This is why I love books. They are full of ideas. I love ideas so much that I haven’t read half the books on my living room shelf; I just really love the idea of them being there, of being a person who has a lot of books on her living room shelf. Of being a person who could, if she chose to, spend all weekend in leggings and an oversized sweater reading Kant’s Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime on the bench seat in the bay window, even though I didn’t know that essay was on my shelf – even though I didn’t know that essay existed until a few moments ago. Even though I don’t have a bay window.

It’s not really a problem being in love with the idea of books. Or the idea of eating tangerines in February. Waking up at 5 AM every day to drink a glass of water and slide into an hour-long yoga session, in the living room full of books. Filling an old leather backpack with two sweaters, a box of Cliff bars, a pocket knife, and 56 dollars cash and jumping on an Amtrak that takes you anywhere West. Going anywhere West. Going anywhere. Following love. Making a meatloaf for dinner. Having a family to make meatloaf for.

These aren’t insane things. They’re simple daydreams. They’re boring, and they’re all things that perfectly normal people actually do.

My therapist says I’m normal. Yesterday he told me I was perfect.

But I’m getting tired of words. 

I refuse to touch raw meat and will never make a meatloaf, but the comfort that’s attached to the image of doing so is what keeps me knocking up against it. I’m picturing myself wearing a red-and-white checkered apron. My ears are pierced with pearls. There’s a dining room table and on it are candles that are lighting themselves. Sitting at the table are my husband and our children but I can’t see their faces and I don’t know their names.  

You think about a word long enough and all the meaning begins to leak out of it. You repeat the same word twenty times in a row and soon all you’re aware of is your dry mouth and the strange sound you make when you move your tongue against itself. You’re vaguely aware that something is missing, that the noise you’re making used to mean something to you.  Something used to be here, is a thought I carry around like a miniature coffin in my left coat pocket.

But there’s an exception to the above rule: I’ve just whispered the word love to myself 20 times and still my mouth feels like the inside of a raspberry. Still I’m thinking of the snow outside and all the kids who spent the afternoon writing letters to Santa. Still I’m thinking about Elizabeth and her long blond hair, even though sometimes I’m not sure if her hair is really blond, if it’s maybe more of a sandy brunette. I don’t know what color her eyes are and want to say green and— does this mean I love her less?

I keep whispering the word love and wonder if the meaning doesn’t seep out of it because I don’t actually know what the word means. What does it mean to love someone?  I love you I love you I love you I love you. One time I texted Greg “ILY” and he asked if that stood for “I love you.” I said it did and he said those words should never be abbreviated. 

Writing: only place I’ve found peace.

(What’s your six-word memoir?)