Way Down to the Very Bottom of Everything

This has nothing to do with the post. Looking at the ocean just makes me feel better. Photo by me.

I do this every year. I indulge in the game of time and I reflect on the previous 365 (or 366) days. I don’t think a new year is something to celebrate. For me, it’s a time to reflect.

2016 has been being called a terrible year by many people in my circles—a lot of death, a lot of loss in other forms, what seems like an increase in violence and destruction in the world, a baffling presidential election in my country.

In darker moments, I fear what is to come. I spend too much time thinking about the consequences of capitalism, about war, about bias, about how often it seems people misperceive the shared world around them. I tend to use my intellectual fascination with the ugly aspects of humanity to shield myself in numbness, but in my bleaker moments, I feel that fear and frustration deep down in the pit of my stomach. I fear I’m running out of time.

I wonder sometimes if I live in the same world as other people. I wonder if it’s not the condition of alienation that comes with capitalism, with being defined as a woman, with being a philosophical thinker, but something else. Something active, sinister. I’ve been ignored and silenced and not taken seriously for most of my life, partly by my own doing, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. Sometimes screaming into the void is all I can do.

But it doesn’t help. So I feel like I’ve started to disappear.

Longer Than We Have Words to Describe

If I had to sum up 2015 in a word, it would be “loss.”

It’s a euphemism for death, and this year seems to have had a lot of it. Former teachers, professors, colleagues, and friends of mine are absent now, and my sphere of existence is dimmer because of it. Stepping outside of my own circles, it’s a fact of our world that death touches everyone–through violence, through disaster, through disease, through happenstance.

“Life and Death have been in love for longer than we have words to describe. Life sends countless gifts to Death, and Death keeps them forever.”

I’m not an alarmist or a fear monger. And I can’t evaluate the world in terms of better or worse, because to pass value judgments is to have an evaluative standard I don’t possess, but sometimes I can’t help but be afraid for myself and for people I love, because of where they live and how others judge their race or their gender or their culture. I don’t like being cynical, but I also can’t fathom feeling particularly hopeful in this chaotic world.

Redemption Year

(source)

Sons of Anarchy finished its seven-year run this December. I used to love the show, though the last couple seasons seemed needlessly violent and mostly served to make me hate all the characters (except Chuckie and Venus–may Tig and Venus ride off into the sunset together).

At some point last season, I realized that Jax wasn’t going to get a redemption arc. What happened at the end of season 6 was the nail in the coffin. And that’s the thing about human beings that is hard for me to reconcile sometimes. Not everyone gets redemption.

We live, we work, we do shitty things to each other, we might make a few people happy, and then we die. And when I look back on this year, I see a lot of these shitty things, and I can’t help but think.

My Body, This Blog, This Fire

[1] In keeping with my annual tradition, I’m sharing with the internet what is on my mind as one Gregorian year closes and another begins.

In some ways, my life changed drastically this year, but in other ways, it did not. It’s those lack of changes that trouble me as 2013 closes. Moving, changing my physical location, my job, did not change me much, because these things are external to me. I’ve always been very good at keeping to myself when the world changes around me.

But, I ask, who am I?

I have spent a lot of time resenting my body — that I I have one at all; that I have to take care of it, cut my hair, exercise, eat; that other people judge me for it, my perceived gender, my size, my clothes; that I don’t like the way it looks; that the older I get the more it seems to hurt and ache.

I feel trapped inside it. I feel weakened by it. It is a limitation and a hindrance.

I prefer to think of myself as filled with gears and lights and wires instead of fragile organs and bones and tissue that will eventually  wear down and die. As I start 2014, I am sick with a head cold that has knocked me flat, and I wonder if this is my body’s way of telling me something, telling me that it matters, telling me that resent it all I like, it’s still just as much a part of me as my sense of humor or my intellect or my friendships or the rest of existence reflected in me.

Any Road Will Get You There

[1] I don’t really understand New Year’s, but I do understand that there’s something in the switching of the calendar year that gives people hope, and maybe that’s why I do this every year.

There’s a shading technique artists use called chiaroscuro. It’s a blending of light to dark that gives two dimensional objects a three dimensional appearance. The word “chiaroscuro” has been in my head lately, and I’ve been thinking about the way things blend into each other.

Sadness into joy. Fear into hope. Light into dark.

The longer I live, the more I understand that life, the world, our relationships—it’s all a blending. Of people and ideas and life and values and things. My goal has always been to understand everything in the entire universe, which is silly, I know, but sometimes I do understand everything in the entire universe, which is also silly. But I do.

Past Shadows Dark and Deep

[1] I’m not big on resolutions.

Even though I like the idea of having a clean slate and a fresh start, I never really have one (what with the shackles of language and measurable time), so I’m always defeated before I begin.

I’d love to write more, to get in better shape, to start a new career, to learn to read Russian and get better at German, to move to London, but I’m not going to do any of those things just for the sake of the Gregorian calendar.

I’ve changed a lot in the past two years, and I like to think I’ve learned a few things during that time.

One of the most important things I’ve learned is to never, ever apologize for who I am. I’m still guilty of doing this at times, but I’ve made a conscious decision to never change myself or be someone I’m not for anyone or anything. I genuinely like myself. I’ve already done far too much compromising in my life, and it’s never led me anywhere good.

Let’s Hope It’s A Good One Without Any Fear

[1] The thing is, no one knows. When it comes down to it, no one knows anything and everything that points to the contrary is all a ruse.

I read this fantasy series – The Wheel of Time – and ever since I started reading it as a teenager, I’ve found myself wanting to be in that world. It’s probably more a tribute to likable characters than anything else, but the fact that I would rather be in a situation where the end of the world is immanent than here surely says something about me. When faced with the fate of the world, none of the characters gives up. Sometimes they make stupid choices, but they never choose not to act.

They never really stagnate.

I think maybe this is why I read fiction. When you read a good story, you get absorbed in the world; more specifically, you get absorbed in a world already full of meaning. You don’t have to make it for yourself. Meaning is already included, told to you by the author, and in a good piece of fiction, you accept it.

I used to think that the appeal of fantasy to me was the character traits exhibited by people faced with a world gone mad – courage, honor, pride – things that seem to be lacking in the world today.

But it’s the meaning, I think, that I am lacking.

I don’t know if most people just accept the meaning they find in this world. I don’t know if they simply don’t see it as a burden or if everyone feels the pressure of carving out a life. One life. The only life you’re ever going to get. I’ve had conversations with my dad the past week about the limitations of human knowledge. Human beings are capable of knowing what they don’t know, and for some reason, I take this on as a heavy burden. It weighs on me. These limitations frustrate me more than I let on and there’s nothing I can do about it, nothing I can do about it at all, but let it go.

Let it all go.

The only things that make my life worth living, I think, are tears and laughter. I’m good at the tears. Tears come in solitude and solitude I have. It’s laughter that my life is lacking. Real laughter. The kind that comes from the absurdity of living in this place. The kind that comes from engaging in a world with others.

If you know me at all, you know I laugh a lot when I’m around other people, and I like making people laugh. My sense of humor is probably my most valuable possession, but I waste it by trying to navigate what can’t be navigated.

As another year ends and another begins, and many people make resolutions.

I only have two – to laugh and to let go.

Nothing else, really, is all that important.

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[1]Title taken from “Happy Christmas (War Is Over)” by John Lennon.