Fairfield Porter, Anemone and Daffodil, 1965
Do you ever have a song lyric loop in your head? I should tell you the song: "Gold Soundz" by Pavement. If you know it, you could probably guess the specific lyric but just in case, it is and you can never quarantine the past. Because of course that's the lyric that's haunting my brain right now. I wish I could though. "Gold Soundz" is on Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain and in the liner notes for that album's reissue, Stephen Malkmus calls it simply "a self-doubt song". The looping lyric comes right after one that feels bleak: so drunk in the August sun and you're the kind of girl I like/because i'm empty and you're empty. Someone I dated once put this song on what was supposed to be a romantic mix for me and I went back to the thought of being empty a lot; maybe it was true but only because we had both pushed down so much of what had happened, what we were feeling, so that we just looked like blank slates. But then the past comes out sideways, right? It seeps out no matter how hard you try to absorb it.
Do you ever have the feeling that the only belief system you've ever had, that was instilled in you so early that you thought it was just who you were on a cellular level, is actually just other people's stuff that they put on you? More than just feeling that, do you ever see yourself realizing in real time how isolated it keeps you, how scared it makes you all the time? I was raised to be suspicious of everyone, to never be anything but perfect in front of others, to be an island rather than ever admit I needed help or love or kindness; because no one is ever just kind without wanting something. I try to be kind but I've realized recently that so many parts of those earliest lessons are still my gut reaction when I'm tired or stressed or overwhelmed. I'm aware that it's not my stuff but it doesn't erase what's there and what's been... absorbed. I keep thinking about the Ram Dass quotation about suffering being sandpaper shaping you and I wish growth didn't have to hurt. I understand why it does but I wish so badly that wisdom and peace came without pain. Immediately my brain remembers the other Ram Dass quotation about suffering: resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of suffering. And maybe that's it? You have to sit in muck and mire as much as you have to sit in comfort and ease; you're supposed to feel everything, not just what feels good.
Do you ever think about how to be in your body? I can never seem to get the feeling completely right. I'm either too present and absorbing too much or just gone, looking down on myself as I get further and further away from my physical form. I think a lot about how to not judge my body for what it can and can't do, what it does and doesn't look like, what it's been and becoming. There's a strong sense of wishing I was less visible, that I could escape everyone's gaze, even my own. I wonder what I would think about my body if I'd only ever known it in a vacuum.
Have you ever mistaken talking about something vulnerable as actually being vulnerable with others? I've only realized this in the last few days but it's made me feel like I'm that otter holding someone else's hand through a small hole in plexiglass, sharing what I want to share when I want to but not really sharing myself fully. I'll tell you this story about something messed up that happened to me but I'm not going to show you my authentic and messy reaction in the moment before I've had time to go back to my cave and process alone. Safely. Without you seeing that I am in fact sometimes a wreck. I'm learning and it's hard. I want to come around to the other side of the plexiglass. I want to feel what I feel and express that; I don't want to be afraid anymore.
Do you ever feel like you don't know how to leave things in a state of not being done or ok? Me too. I wish everything had a neat ending or like a bow on it. But just like the Pavement lyric, I don't think things completely go away. Maybe we don't entirely want them to.