The world is on fire.
And, yes, there is luxury in all of this uninhibited time spent thinking about myself and my own life. Somehow, unfairly, I was born into safety. Not my choice anymore than it is for others to be born into chaos and violence and trauma they’ve never been freed from. And that feels cruel.
And, excavating my depravity and also my heart seems to be a way of dealing with something uncontrollable and heavy. Like a diving into humanity. A communal level of grieving, of loss, of unspeakable pain. We want to embrace each other. We want to weep and thrash about and wail with those who are mourning so deeply there is no reprieve. We want to raise our fists and scream at the unjustness of all of it.
What do we do?
Creating art sometimes feels like the only bridge between any of it. The only way we do what we can to still be here after we’re gone. To try to feel it. To try to see in the midst of it. To try to embrace others in pain. I would say, to try to make sense of it, but we all know none of this makes sense. And we can’t hold onto any of it.
It is a perpetual slipping.
The duplicity I feel is near constant. Feeling like a ghost and a whisper. The layers of internal dialogue passed somewhere between the not-yet-has-already-been versions of myself seen crypted in messy double exposures on old film in an old camera. I’m not able to put words to it completely or coherently and that feels scary to me. But, as I wrote recently, ‘Words are worthless. They flutter and die and blow away with even the slightest mention of a breeze.’
Not always, but that feels true right now.
I keep telling myself it’s temporary, but it doesn’t seem to be going away. So, maybe temporary is new normal which is not normal at all and I need help.
And, I’m getting it.
But, also, maybe, that doesn’t feel like enough.
