I think there must be an act of claiming that corresponds with discovery; the word that seems to appear everywhere after we first learn it, does not - perhaps - draw that brisk recognition of its own freshness but due to some fresh component of ourselves that we have subtly named in engaging the word. I cannot say that I survive on words, that I eat and drink them - although I do find myself drawn to flavors, textures, and even nutritional value. Having been one who spent too much time eating what wasn't food, I can't use that image easily; I can't use it at all. And to call words the dessert, the freely-intended indulgence topping off a meal, trips me up as well; these words I claim - quietly discerning, defining, and defending self - fill me too entirely, give me too much. Their sweetness is not the rude awakening of a girl, sick on candy, suddenly craving potatoes. (Irish there.) Their substance is more complex than sugar, something upon which an entire dimension of self can survive. One dimension only but totally maintained.
And why bother saying so now, when I could be sleeping or reading or eating, cleaning even, or taking a much-needed shower? Because I've been reading in gulps lately, scrawling down notes in the most recent journal handed to me by one of those godsend "oh, she writes" friends of Mutter. (And the German.) Notes of life that don't need to follow transition, private for privacy's inherent value alone, notes on the dialogue between the book and me, with less and less thought (bless love) to what a ghost of a teacher might ask in class and what answer I'd damn well memorize now. Because I've been paying attentions to Sarah-Dela's "published dead people" as if I care to have them court me. Perhaps I do. I know my own tendency toward a safe seduction, one that promises to stay elusive and illusionary, but by some small degree. And certainly I'm thinking on relationships and relational identity now; the current flame (and oh, that spark ignited quickly) is the scandalous Lolita, which may prove fatal through an inspired overdose on self-indulgent thought. Mary (better say Mary than Mary Brave this time, better remember the blue words on black screen, the blackbird in blue false-fairy light) reading Lolita; how will the world continue its rotations, not hiccup to a sudden stop or spin off its axis and across the milky way. Mary with Lolita - isn't that a little Beth March with Mein Kampf, or more even, as it reaches past my main sensitivities into my fears and desires, mixing the shadows (and highlights) of an inverse self, an enemy, or just an alter-ego...? Oh, the thoughts I could think, will think - if only in those moments I'm unfit to avoid them. No. To see something of my shadow in time to heal the image makes my fear hopeful, makes my thoughts no accident. I continue typing here, knowing the words pour out in a voice this journal rarely meets. It's not a false voice. A girl learns to speak, whisper, imitate, sing choral and solo tunes. An infrequent voice nonetheless mine, and therefore, more myself in using it. I become more myself in claiming it, whether or not I realize the case.
Just as I become more myself in claiming words I had not yet discovered, stirring the steam over my cauldron of names, the one that sparks up again and again with new insistences. Be Olga, find Henry; Zinnia and Jell-o will meet you at the oak tree in the back. Insisting bits of poems have just as much right to stick in one's mind as bits of music, and so do bits of bits. Tap that syllable; turn that phrase. Last week, I could not for the life of me push myself up out of quagmire (admittedly a fitting word to be stuck in); it slid in my head, heavy and fluid. Now, the cauldron insists jumanji (lowercase) is a name of high repute, and all I can see is Kirsten Dunst - back when she was Amy March, when we held real hope for her - and some giant snakes. Will the library have the book, and is it mute, as I remember it?^ What does it have to tell me, to push up inside me, to offer or to snatch away - this newest word? And will I get by without signing my name with it, for awhile, without christening a character in its honor, or buying a journal on its behalf?
Even the wind has had its stormy way. Weathered me, sufficiently, not to abuse the storm. I'm fundamentally aware of wind now, its actual presence, absence, its mention in a song. I'm aware of even, also, the qualification (I can hear my father, stunned at my development into a prodding, mischevious being, say, "Even Maris!"), the steadying act: to even the wind, to lay it calm before us. I'm aware of Eve in the wind nearly every time I type the word; our carelessness for letters (we'll spell words with 8s these days) brings her here as well. Not a far travel; we saw Eve at chordchild for a stint. The invitation, the introductary reference to the song Tori wrote for me - Tori who would save me in a pink Mustang, who knew I was a netted butterfly - to our relationship, active again after years of sacred storage, has become one of many meanings. Never simply the sort a girl can describe in speech. I'll design my own sign language before we've finished here; I'll be telling stories directly from the veins in which I experience them. Never a meaning so separate from me; it couldn't work that way. To understand the word I must understand it in me; it must trip the switch that leads to a longing to express just that. To toss my hair with Olga's confidence, to have my Zinnia-self known. I must find the longing which, discovered, (even without understanding) provides reason.
The truth of course is that I don't care enough for reason; it's relation I seek, ever more outlets inside of me, ever more cords (and chords, and atoms, we know, we know). Did I come here as Eve in the wind, with the support of it, intent on smoothing its wrinkled bluster self - all three? Mom said last night the greatest genius can proove a theory with all the evidence of experimentation and as the world accepts it, still say, "Maybe not." Albert Einstein continued to question gravity, she said, and I decide this sort of discovery, this sort of science will be mine. Too many years of therapy; I mimic my models and answer questions with questions.
(As for the heritage, that last recognizes the remaining third: The Brave of me surfacing.)
There are always more names than space on the line, more words than will fit in a sphere. There are always more languages unfurling, and I pity myself on the days I know only 26 letters. I have a few handfuls of different a's; compare that to your handwriting, we'll soon have buckets-full. The point? There is none. Everything is too large to draw into a point, or rather, there are a billion points, chaotically organized as Einstein said, and all the center of the universe.
~wink
^I have foraged to the amazon; jumanji is not mute.