Clearing out what I know so the unknown can slap me upside the head…what is mine, liminality maybe?
This is another thinky one; I finished one section of the current book and, while it went well, there’s a big mess of plot threads to clean up in its aftermath and I don’t know where to start so I’m starting here, I guess.–I just got an email that a tarot deck that I’ve been waiting on for over a year is out for delivery. Maybe I’ll run a spread or two for myself to help clarify thoughts, too.
I’ve found myself holding back on things over the last few days, second-guessing myself, trying to shut down or at least keep a tight rein on myself. Part of me is just scared to write the next section of the story (what if I don’t live up to my hopes for it?), but I’m *sure* there are intense, overwhelming internal and personal things that go with whatever it is that’s next. Just trying to sneak up on the thought of whatever it is that’s bugging me is making me tear up.
I keep talking about how this story is a “therapy book,” well, here I am, trying to resist going to my next session, as it were.
Something I did when I was in actual, real-life therapy was to journal a lot the days before the next session, so I could clear up everything I knew how to handle on my own, or at least drag the known unknowns into view. I’d write until I thought I knew what was going on. And then I’d get to the next session and have everything flipped over on its head somehow.
I didn’t *dislike* the process of therapy. I was embarrassed and cried a lot; I resisted it every time but eventually gave in. That’s what it feels like today. I’m afraid. The muscles in my ribcage ache. Everything’s twitchy. Like I’m waiting for something I know is good for me, but I know it’s going to suck. A vaccine shot. My turn to go down the tallest waterslide.
Today’s task: clear out enough of my thoughts that I can write fiction, then use fiction to overturn whatever I’m bullshitting myself about.
Part of the problem is that my conscious self isn’t smart enough to write this story. My conscious self is barely smart enough to write an awkward, novice-level short story. It can’t do fuck-all with a poem. Everything else is obsessive practice in learning to trust my gut instincts, while figuring out things on a conscious level in the most laborious way possible. If you’ve been watching me teach myself photography, you’re seeing the same process. Take ten thousand pictures, post one thousand pictures, repeat. I don’t pick the pictures based on logic but on which ones make me react somehow. The only reason I learn rules and techniques is so I can use them as tools to ask myself better questions. “Do you like this composition or that one?” “What do you think about the sense of depth on this? Deeper or flatter?” “What is the part of this image that makes you react? How can we make that more obvious for people who aren’t us?” My conscious self has to deal with the camera settings. That’s about all it’s good for.
The part of me that answers is *really* good at this and can get brutally insightful. Sometimes I wince at the stuff that comes out of my mouth, which I often hadn’t realized I was going to say. I’m trying to trust it more for myself, but WOW most other people need to be protected by a filter or two. I have to be super careful when talking to people in person, because I’ll get excited to be talking to them, pick up on things I’m not supposed to know, and my subconscious will be like, “Let’s just skip past the small talk and talk about really uncomfortable stuff!” I have had to cut myself off in the middle of saying a ton of stuff–or find a way to cover it up afterwards–and I always sound like an idiot. It’s one of the reason I’m shy around new people, and almost unbearably extroverted around people I know.
I’ll miss surface-level shit all the time, though, and if it’s something I don’t want to hear, you can shout it in my ear for years on end and I’ll still miss it. (I’m working on that.)
I value this part of me. I want to encourage it.–No, that’s the wrong way to put it. I want to serve it as best I can. Something like that. I don’t believe in a higher power, but I myself have one; it’s not a “god” but it’s mine.
What is it, though?–I recently figured out who was “mine” (in short, who I feel connected to, why, and what I get to do about it), but I never did answer *what* was “mine.”
My mind latched onto that question last night. I don’t have it fully answered.
I do know that I value surprise, the unknown, learning new things, questioning things, doubt, change, growth, just plain being wrong–chaos. I don’t trust things that stay the same all the time. What had to be given up, in order to keep it that way?
I like spring.
One of the things I dislike about Florida (aside from the politics) is that it doesn’t give me a clear sense of spring. I don’t miss the sunny days of late spring, where the lilacs are blooming and the grass is green. Those days are nice, but no. What I miss is the storms, the first early, raw edge of spring. Half-frozen mud. As color comes back into the sky in the mornings. The ducks having a bigger and bigger hole in the ice to swim around in. The first day I stop zipping up my coat when I go outside to walk, which never coincides with the last day I zip up my coat.–It takes a lot to keep me indoors. I am more likely to go outside *because* the weather is bad. I love storms, the whipped wind at the top of a ridge as I look down into a valley. The rumble of thunder. Fat flakes of snow melting on my face and running down my neck. There’s a point where I’m more scared of the storm than I am enjoying it, but I’m generally in a basement with the power out at that point. I’m not a storm-chaser, but I think it’s cool that there are some who do.
I secretly love seeing crabapple blossoms get knocked off trees in the spring. Sorry.
I love the crackle of hail, the swirl of cream in a cup of coffee, mazes and labyrinths–complexity–a certain level of messiness that shows life in progress rather than the detritus of being stuck in place. I hate dirty dishes that I don’t wash because of ADHD dysfunction. I love dirty dishes after friends come over. I’ve been known to swipe up the last bit of frosting off a plate of cake, or to eat an overlooked olive. If I had to entertain every night I’d probably hate it.
I crave novelty, but not always. I crave experience, but not always. I crave risk, but not always. I crave sharpness, sourness, acidity, lightness, and humor, but not always. I crave questions more than answers, but not always.–In college there was this thing my group of friends did where they’d boop each other’s noses to see what sound they’d make. I eventually centered on saying “maybe later” in a sultry voice, because someone else had taken to saying “no!” and “stop that!” and I felt a push away from that. (Oh, hey, note to self: next time [if ever] if I’m with a lover and I can’t use the sultry voice because reasons, maybe I can just take that as a sign to leave.)
I also used to say that I didn’t feel like I had a soul, not because I didn’t believe in them, but because I just couldn’t see any kind of commonality in my own behavior. I can’t even tell you what my favorite anything is, other than the Alice in Wonderland books (but particularly the Annotated Alice by Martin Gardner). I like teal and aqua and lime and gray and olive and silver and black. Lots of black.
In short what I like is all over the place. I’ll obsess about something, and then it’ll fade into the background when I’ve examined it to death. I’ll still like it, and it will have changed me, but I have consumed it. I like stuff that’s broken, dirty, dusty, rusted, incomplete, experimental, flawed, fake (“Oooh! Plastic!”), flimsy, insightful but completely incorrect, annoying, undercooked and overspiced, pleasantly scummy. But what I’m looking for isn’t the brokenness. That’s not what I love about it; what I love is its transcendence. Perfection can’t transcend itself; it take something flawed and broken to become more than it set out to be. Transcendence is when the broken spots get filled in with love, care, concern, attention, softness: when a little kid is pissed off at you and you grab them and blow raspberries all over their face and they yell louder but they’re not mad anymore. When you laugh about how fucked up a situation is, not because you like to see people hurt but because you’ve been there too and you’ve learned to laugh at yourself about it–and, in your sympathy, forget that other people are not you. When someone makes you something and it’s *terrible* and you hate it and then you literally want to strangle the person who gave it to you, but not for whatever it was, for saying “It’s no good; you should probably just throw it away.”
What is mine?
The bad part of spring is mine; minor storms are mine; pointless arguments that nevertheless leave you smiling are mine; the phrase “yes but no but yes” is mine; so is “maybe later”; all things foolish are mine; itty-bitty flowers and leaves and mosses are mine; finding the one good thing in a pile of bad things is mine (but optimism is not); hope is mine; cuteness-aggression is mine; discontinuity is mine, complexity is mine, irony is mine, mine, mine; once upon a time is mine, but only the times where it only happens that way exactly once; dance is mine, but only the kind that feels like navigating a thin and shifting line; things that are lost or forgotten are mine (even the things I myself have lost or forgotten). The cat who stands in the doorway is mine. The person who is scared to go, scared to stay. The moment of hesitation is mine; the sense of falling–o fuck it’s too late!–when you do act is mine. Mine are the secret doors in dreams that lead from bad to what looks like infinitely worse, but is at least not the same.–Meow Wolf is mine. Alice is mine; so is Corwyn of Amber, walking his new Pattern. Zagreus going from sarcasm to compassion and love via the process of beating the shit out of, and getting killed by, the dead, over and over again, is mine. Jade Pearl from Bridge of Birds is mine. Cumberbatch’s Sherlock is mine; so is his Smaug and even his version of Doctor Strange (but not the comic-book version, oddly). Lord Peter is mine; Miss Marple is mine. Tom Waits is mine, and Laurie Anderson, too.–I wrote a line in a poem the other day, “everything that breaks but then heals you”; those things are mine. Pratchett’s witches are mine, most of all Granny but all of them, all. Delirium is mine, who used to be Delight; Door is mine, too. In fact, *all* manic pixie dreams girls are in my purview. Persephone is mine, every year a new cycle, never the exact same mood twice. The space between The World and The Fool, in between knowing the “everything everywhere all at once” and not knowing that you never knew it at all. Mirrors aren’t mine, but reflections are. The phrase “what the hell IS that?”–that’s mine. Semantic decay is mine; froth and bubbles are mine, too.
But how do I sum this all up? Not a fucking clue.
–Except to say I adore all things liminal, and those who stand in doorways just a little too long, nervous and complaining.
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Midjourney image for “liminal library.” AHHHHHHH I want one.
The new tarot deck!!! Of course when I saw The Fool as the top card, I ran around the apartment singing:
I AM I DON QUIXOTE THE LORD OF LA MANCHA MY DESTINY CALLS AND I GOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
Actually I kept singing “I am I Don Quixote the Man of La Mancha” until I looked up the lyrics just now. As you do.