Part of the Archive.
Except -- self is archive...
While writing I need to write....
I promised myself I would not write about the virus, masks, quarantine, any of the daily conflagrations (however quiet they may be-- --especially from my writing studio on the second floor of a big house at the top of a small hill on a quiet street in a quiet neighborhood, where daily we forget to wear masks when we leave for a walk, because we don't run into people right away.) I promised myself, because I did not feel like privileging my experience, which has been a lot more benign than that of friends living in packed cities. And because everyone else is writing about it, and I always have to be "different" -- right? But I'm breaking that promise because even though I do not live alone (and I cherish my partner), I have been feeling too alone of late, and it's strictly, I think, because of the New Normal. I am still "new" in Bloomington, and how do I meet people? And now the pall on daily life, has thickened, because the current quiet belies the pr
I will enter my own comment, here. Still figuring out how this works: can I make this photo smaller, write underneath it?
ReplyDeleteThere used to be TV shows on, in the background, in black & white in the apartment that we lived in (which was in color: though I remember mostly black and white [kitchen clock], ochre/orange [a little suitcase that housed a portable record player], white walls, black doors, a mother with red-brown hair, a brother like that as well, and a father with black hair. "QUEEN FOR A DAY!" --my mother's always ironing when these shows are on. WAGON TRAIN. I lie on the double bed in my parents' room, where the ironing board is set up and a little TV. I watch. This is part of the archive. But so are these books, papers, notebooks. They keep me company in my writing room. I do not watch them of course, and barely look at them, anymore. Maybe they are turning into relics before my eyes. They were all so important, as were/are the hundred other books (at least, though I gave a lot away before I moved here) -- that occupy other shelves, in this room and others in our house. Touchstones, mementos, keepers of memory: relics? emptied-out? Perhaps writing my book is draining them of use. (Just as turning memories into written words seems to take them from my head.) You are supposed to "empty yourself of self" in Sufi practice; in doing so, you detect what's really filling you, as intimate and impersonal as a vastness can be (but this is not a great description-- ). In writing my book, I work with my self-archivist. She's existed a long, long time. It's hard to picture her retreating, just because of a flood of words...