True to Form
I feel we need more permission to be less conclusive and less defined and to bleed over our boundaries a bit. That approach is even what allows me to shift and change in the ways I do. Any label or title we fit upon ourselves ought immediately feel like a crown of thorns, ought immediately be suspect and deemed temporary at best. When we draw those concrete boundaries, those barbed-wire assignments—even around only ourselves—we are also deciding that others ought be contained in the remaining space.
OFTEN, whenever I set something down in writing—especially when it has to do with “who I am” or “who I’ve been” or drawn from a story mostly kept bubbling below for years—it ends up feeling false…or not as true as when it was but a swirling rhythm of glimpse within my mind, a stew of shifting symphony in my heart. When I lock it down to the verbal, gradually nuance, complication, vagueness, and flex begin to be shunted off, deprived of space, manipulated into surety. This is what I do not like about typical prose (as compared to “poetry” por ejemplo); this is what I do not care for in self-definition. And being able to write well only seals up the illusion with credibility. I think it’s a human tendency, and I’m betting especially a Western one, to smooth out the wrinkles, to make it all fit, to discuss an orderly origin or path of trajectory, to conclude so heavily.
I guess I just wanted to add to my last post. I wanted to say that the change I describe is not entirely as simple as the post makes it seem. Sure, I even mentioned that it was “not a causal line” I was describing and so tried to paint with a bit of fluidity. But reading the post back, I feel as if I describe a shift that is oversimplified. Or that prior to 9/11, I was a hardcore Patriot® ready to rain down death on foreign nations. It really was a bit of a contradictory mix, now that I think about it: pro-communal feelings + anti-establishment feelings combined with American individualism and exceptionalism! But really, my experience/past selves is/are far more nuanced than even that. This is my story, this is making sense of all these pieces and bringing them better into harmony.
Also, taking journal entries from the days immediately surrounding the WTC destruction is not even fair to myself as far as judging my worldview. The lessons and values I learned in my early communities, in the culture in which I was raised stuck with me and have always been with me. But again, we are always moving in and out and to and fro. Sometimes we come back stronger to values that have been our safe shore, and sometimes we test out the ice. Sometimes the ice explodes! And we are busy swinging for that shore again.
I feel we all need more permission to be less conclusive and less defined and to bleed over our boundaries a bit. That approach is even what allows me to shift and change in the ways I do. Any label or title we fit upon ourselves ought immediately feel like a crown of thorns, ought immediately be suspect and deemed temporary at best. Any time we find that people have gathered a group of thoughts and assigned a title, we ought to think about if we want to be contained within that, and if we are. When we draw those concrete boundaries, those barbed-wire assignments—even around only ourselves—we are also deciding that others ought be contained in the remaining space.
At least that’s how I see it. These hard lines and simplified equations trick us into believing we are half the being we can be at any given moment. I am all of that. I am none of that. And between those two half-truths you will find me.
Tags: Boundaries, Language, Linear Thought, Non-Linear Thought, Nuance, Self-Definition, Story, Western Thought
Posted in Palabras
Can I say something?
I’m not sure if it’s going to sound right, or be well written, but here is my best try.
Of course we all understand — we all understand, right? — that we can’t get a full picture of you from your writings, as well-worded as they are, from your art, as well-crafted as it is, from any of your ways of communicating with yourself and others. The reason I can assert this is because of all the writers and artists of the world, past present and future who we just know so little about. That their bodies of work and the work of their bodies and all that, well, sometimes it serves only to make them all the less understandable.
Thus there is Art Scholarship, as derided as it is, all those great people known and unknown, and we sift through their work with the most delicate of scientific instruments and our collective brainpower all to divine the mystery that is their lives.
And we really don’t know all that much in the end.
So, the case with you. Even your own journey of self-discovery by the same means of looking into your words and trying to write about the person. You create an even greater body of work that someday people will look to and find a way to understand you even less.
So, that’s my thought and my assertion and right or wrong there it is.
And I know that’s not the whole of what you were getting at, but if you can’t explain the whole, how can I even come close?
It doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying. Worth trying all the more, is my guess.
I go now.
heya hannah, thanks.
i dont think you are contradicting me…and i dont really mean to say “you cant know me”…just trying to augment some of the well-thought out reasoning and definition in my writing with some fluidity. again neither contradicts the other and actually, are best taken together.
good to see ya!
I hope you keep away from those Art Scholarship investigators Nez! You have enough people after you already. With a little psychic dissection here, a little motivational analysis there, soon you won’t even be the sum of your parts. And god help you if the deconstruction people ever get on your case. I suggest a tightly woven web of impenetrable aliases and Borges like torsions.
One must never fall victim to the hoards of ponderers. Cuidado!
These hard lines and simplified equations trick us into believing we are half the being we can be at any given moment.
Edison said, “If we all did the things we were capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.” and KRS-One reminds, “This is an opportunity for you to rise to your highest self…there it is.”
Boundaries, drawn or linguistic, can either hinder or help us rise and astound. I have no immediate control over the boundaries that have been drawn around me on territory, but I have ultimate control over my own, linguistic boundaries and I can let them trick me, as you say, into a narrow being, or recognize and reorganize them into rungs as I rise.
I am enjoying writing with you this morning.
t
whenever i write on this theme, or usually, someone either defends boundaries or reminds me we need them. and we do. we do we do we do. were there none, i might as well be oceanwater than have my own shape and thoughts.
i have to remember to work in the angle that it is the stasis that is to be avoided. not the boundary. the mistaking a boundary for our boundary.
hey! i am enjoying it too!
RC thanks for the prompt. i tend to agree. and really, i dont think i’m all that amazing to analyze. its more fun to play games in the worlds i make, if you can fit through the doors. its more fun to try on the masks i paint. the cat himself? he’s rather mad and typical in that way.
“sharks patrol these waters, swim, swim, swim, swim like a muthafucker, swim. that day glow orange life vest won’t save you, sharks patrol these waters,”…something like that. anyway, reminds me of a quote i read, “notions crowd my heart like punched pigeons, but fly to cold horizons when i think.” you however nezua, have a gift, and you don’t lose much, if anything in translation. you help fill my heart with punched pigeons.