Fish In the Afternoon

You don’t have to be a hero to save the world
It doesn’t make you a narcissist to love yourself
It feels like nothing is easy, it’ll never be
That’s alright, let it out, talk to me

Cavetown, “Talk to Me”

CN: mention of disordered eating, drug use, loss, grief, death

Memory is a way we relate, difference-in-repetition. I know you from somewhere, what’s your name? I can’t write my name. I don’t know why. Nothing expresses what is named (you, uniquely, you); names speak sideways. Ashes to ashes, we all fall down. I don’t know what my name is. I guess it’s whatever I want it to be (what do I want it to be?). Names mean nothing, they follow, an unending conjunction: {x & y & z & …}. To encounter another is to breathe meaning into their name. I just want to know my name: {Ashton & Babo & Noah & Ash & Cygnus & ash & Penelope & ash & …}.

I’ve paused my estrogen. Ended my estrogen. I don’t know how to feel about this yet. I no longer know hat is mine; what does it mean for a body to be mine? (What did you mean I own you? Why wasn’t I allowed to say no?) Every place I find myself in feels wrong. I know when I feel right: on a walk, giving a lecture, cooking, holding, playing, fucking. I know what I do. But what body am I? Am I anything? I’m a thinking thing, a walking thing, a teaching thing, a loving thing, a fucking thing, a thing. The thing that does whatever I do. (I do, I do). Penelope turtledoves you-and-I in innergaia, the empty-fullness that forever waits, wades, weeps, wilts, and wills, wild and weary in the wilderness of whys. Why? Fated pair in eternal return, the seed that oaks the seed that oaks the seed. Here, in the breath before things change, let me go (before I have to let go). I’m sorry. Things change. I don’t want them to I need them to they have to they must. The fire of time consumes all freshly-hewn wood. Rest, tree, rest. And all the rest.

Morality remains empty so long as it is caught in the circulation of signs. What can I say? The closest I can mangle is: I’m afraid, I can’t be with you, I love you, please be okay. I try to speak the weight of enfleshed time, emotion curled like a snake heavy in the gut. What I’d like to say is good morning, sweetheart, how are you? What I’d like to say is you hurt me, how could you, don’t I matter? What I’d like to say is everything and nothing at all. Is my being scared hurting you? (I can hide it). Does that help? I understand, you need it, just don’t… I understand, you need it, just don’t… I understand, you need it, just don’t… I understand, you need it. (What can my words reveal and what can they hide?) If I don’t eat, will I feel less scared? If I… maybe I won’t want to anyway. Don’t worry, I know you don’t mean me. I know the kinds of bodies you hate. (I know my body is one of them). I know you don’t mean it that way. I know. I’ll die with you. I’ll die with you. I’ll die. I’m sorry, I can’t, I’ll die. Please, just, be okay. Please, I’m sorry. Please.

I never said how I’m doing. I thought it’d be too much. The locust is a devouring angel. May was a month of abyss. I relapsed, but I’ve been clean for over a month now. (What do I mean by clean? What is wrong with soil?) A few days after I saw you for the last time, I met God (again). She showed me the sequence of creation, but I brushed it off. Yeah, yeah, I’ve seen that before, but what about me? She took me deep into the interior, to a corpse, rocking at the bottom of a volcano. I did not want to go in, but I did. Smoke. Oak and pine. Deep green. Ash, soil, soot. Sickness. (I am too old for this). It taught me what I needed, but for the next few days my organs had to stop screaming. Imagine your body stretched into a thin film, splayed out over a cosmic landscape. Now imagine it twisting, writhing, seizing. Imagine all you can taste is bile and fire. Imagine sulfuric sweat and tachycardia. I don’t want to do that anymore. Maybe it was easy for Deleuze to imagine a body without organs; all I can imagine is my organs without a body. I’m slowly repairing myself again, sewing back my flesh like quilted thread. I don’t know that I have a choice anymore.

There is much I want to write, that I’d like to say here. But words scatter too quickly, blown in the winds of significance. Sometimes silence speaks more clearly. Instead, I’ll return to myself: {Ashton & Babo & Noah & Ash & Cygnus & ash & Penelope & ash & …}. Unique. Myself-in-myself and irreplaceable with any other. No one will ever replace you. No one will ever replace me. No one is ever replaced. And yet we grow new petals in the spring and lose them in the fall, the wild strawberries appearing again-and-again, an endless unfolding story, every pain and no regret, forever and always in eternal return. And far, far longer.

All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all… bugs in amber.

Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

Image: Gray Tree by Piet Mondrian (1911)