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"Nobody Passes," Make/shift, Spring/Summer 2010

I have this sense that if I can be absolutely specific about everything that has failed me, about all my hopes that have now become hopeless, about everything that I’ve wanted that I might still want or maybe I want something else, if I can be relentless even, relentless in interrogating my own actions, the places where possibilities stop, then maybe I can feel hopeful again. I’m writing about the people and spaces and feelings in moments of losses that have made and unmade me; when I’m writing this I get so excited, I start thinking about these different parts of my life all at once these lives really and how to connect them, how to connect them in the way that it’s always everything at once, even when you’re looking back. And then I stop, just for a moment, like today I stopped to go outside, go outside before dark and look at the sun, I love this time of day when the ground meets the sky. I told myself: I’ll remember it all when I get back inside, I’ll remember it all it’s all here now it’s all here buzzing inside me.

But then I get back inside, and inside me it’s this other side, this side that shuts me down or is it the same side, the same side that enables me to think so clearly? If I can just think, think some more then I can get back to that clarity, that clarity that makes me shake with more dreams leading to more endings leading to more. Shutting down. And then: how will I get back to words, how will I get back to writing about this shutting down, this writing, how will I get back?

I’m circling around my political, cultural, and social formations but then when I stop I think wait, what is the point, the point of anything else except this writing or even the writing if I can’t get to that place, that place where I can breathe. I mean where I can breathe, and stop, and I’m still fine. Where I can remember and write and reach the sky without worrying about what happens after: I stopped; I can’t get back; I’ll get back.

On a good day, the writing infuses everything and then even the crash feels okay, as long as I know I can write. More. Until I end up with nothing left, sometimes this happens so fast my face closes off there’s no more energy until hours or days or even weeks later and I’m looking at the words again. Remember: when you’re trying to figure out who the hell you are and you’ve just escaped but not quite escaped your parents and childhood and who you were supposed to be and you’re finally finding people who are struggling to cope, you are one of those people struggling, one of those people finding you are finding everything you are losing everything you are finding. And then I find myself trying to figure out who the hell I am again.