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2006-04-11 - 12:01 a.m. With reluctance, I add a new entry, pushing that beautiful photo of Mark and Guruji and I into the archives... I've been considering a lot lately the many ways in which we (meaning I) construct ourselves (meaning me). The ways that I archive memories, the ways I reinvent them, the ways I hold onto some with a fierceneness and a stubborness that defies explanation. There is the matter of my poetry. It seems to me that memories exist for me in a fluid, mutable way until the moment when I put them to poetry. Then suddenly they are constructed, worked and reworked, reordered in order to create a mood, a theme, a meter. There is consideration of audience, of what details will best convey the overarching emotion while staying as true as possible to the events. The truth is given up, distorted, very often for poetic effect. This is art as I understand it, but it is not Truth, and yet some of my most cherished memories have been processed in this way, digested and regurgitated in a palatable form that conveys a beauty and a meaning beyond the scope of the actual event, but in doing so loses that temporality, fragility, that very fleeting quality that makes of a memory something so ... special, so tender. Is there a better way to say this? It seems to me that I alter the very moments that I wish to celebrate in writing them into poems. Perhaps I confuse the purpose of the two, and should make more of an effort to rehearse both the poem and the actual moment in my head, to retain that evolutionary nature of the moment. But how do I retain those nuances, after reading and rereading my poems so often (searching for the perfect way to express, for the more purposeful metaphor, for the subtle internal rhyme) that I begin to confuse them with the truth? And what is the truth of those moments anyway -- the ways that I recall them, the details, the physical existence on this plane of how the moments play out to my five senses ... or is it rather the more ethereal impression, the construction, the perfect sign of the memory and the moment? Is there an essential way to express those imperfect moments? I trust that I am making sense, although my thoughts on the matter seem as yet garbled and new. (Perhaps I should singlefile them into a sonnet.) Okay, and then the issue of memory itself. I want to give examples from my own life, but so many of them seem too raw, too close to my heart. And while there is a certain exhibitionist quality to a blog, I loathe the thought of taking that too far. I guess what is coming up, in broad and vague and general terms, is the question of what hindsight really means. If I can look back at my age now and see that there were things done to me that I would not wish upon another woman, that there were motives from others much in conflict with my own desires and hopes and dreams... but that, AT THE TIME of the moment, I was very much present and feeling empowered and controlling my side of the interaction and my purposeful participation... I guess I wonder what that all means. I guess I wonder what it means to be able to look back at all the little cruelties in one's life, done to me and done by me, and to wonder if I would make those same choices again. And whether that knowledge somehow invalidates those choices, or if instead it makes them more solid, for the knowledge and growth they gave me.
I began writing this evening in the book that C-Light gave me for Xmas. It's a beautiful handmade notebook from the Farmer's Market, with a black and white photo of the two of us, taken at the Heebee's dining hall at Burning Man '05, on the front. It's interesting, how much of our relationship is being constructed through language -- phone calls, letters, e-mails... It sometimes feels as though we're writing a fairy tale to come true in the near future. Then I hear his voice on the phone, the sharp intake of breath when I say something that resonates with him, the slow exhale and the expressions of compassion when he acknowledges my hurts, the beautiful joy I can hear curling the edges of his lips as he talks of his nephew, of a wonderful potluck, of the snow... and I know that the fairy tale is now, and I am happy. It is a deep and intimate sense of appreciation and recognition that amazes me in how little time it took to evolve. It reminds me of Melissa, grade ten, me shyly approaching her on the first or second day to tell her how much I liked her outfit, and our vanity binding us together as best friends after that. It sounds so superficial but it wasn't, isn't. I adore her, in all her idiosyncratic little ways. Instant recognition. And back to the construction, as we speak of best friends... What about the legend that is my meeting Levi. We have told the story so many times that it has taken on a life of its own. We sometimes take turns relaying it to new friends, to hear how it takes on different tones of the same colour when one or the other of us is telling the tale. The key phrases have stuck, many of them words of my own devising. In no way do I wish to belittle Homer, but it feels like "swift-footed Achilles" or the many descriptions of Dawn -- those perfect phrases that helped those reciting recall exactly where they are in the tale, helped them fill in the spaces between the action, helped them memorize those many moments of love and battle and tragedy. Is this what all these stories are meant for -- to help me relocate myself within the cosmos, to help define where I begin and end and how I fit in? To help me construct my place within this world of my own devising? Perhaps, having read so much as a child and a woman, I am simply lost in this more tangible word, and recognize myself only when I place myself within a narrative, when I construct the meanings with which I am surrounded. So much navel-gazing, when one is learning to be a counselor. I feel starved for news of the Real World. I am planning to work for Community Outreach this summer, collecting donations and doing office work for various non-profits, just so I can get a grip on the world outside of my heart. There is so much.
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