Image: Annie Konst
I caught myself googling why do my arms always get fat first.
This, along with the growing piles of paper scattered around my desk, suggests I’m depressed. Or somewhere at the entranceway. Untying my shoes, asking for a glass of water.
I also wrote myself this note:
when there’s nothing to do but cry. Hee hee hee.
It’s the three hee-hee’s for me.
“Looking like a whole headshot. And you are…?” My bangs slicked back in finger waves the rest pinned. Green eyeliner dabbed with a wet brush. Velvet top collar bones out. As ever, a look; both sword and shield. I carry myself with me everywhere I go.
On a trip for work so I brought my fun reading: The Alchemist, The Hippie, This Place Could Be Beautiful, Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto, Mary Magdalene Revealed (re-read)
This Place Could Be Beautiful is poet Maggie Smith’s newest book - a memoir about her divorce and new life as a (basically) single mom. It was hopeful. Her description of nostalgia stands out.
The nost in nostalgia means ‘homecoming’; the algia means ‘pain’...Johannes Hofer, a seventeenth-century Swiss physician, named the condition which he identified in homesick soldiers. Symptoms of nostalgia among Swiss soldiers included melancholy, malnutrition, sleepiness, brain fever, and hallucinations.1
In spite of this depression visitation (whether it’s the place or the visitor, I can’t say) I also have the sensation of passing through a portal into the next, on the precipice, discomfort before the jump. I wonder what exactly I am missing and which home I am longing for.
Some proof of my disorientation: The bus felt special.
The water on the floor is a dainty pool. Thunder rumbles in the distance - cozy ambience. The longer I look the wider the front window seems to stretch. Better to see you with. The bus slows. We pass through a natural archway created by trees, their limbs reach for the other across the road. A portal. Their leaves, so green against the grey sky, appear lit from below by warm golden light. As if by lanterns hidden just out sight.
Every car I called did not feel special.
Different drivers, all talking at full tilt. The weather. The government. The rent. Like being trapped in a cage with a startled bird. The Alchemist’s advice is to follow the omens.2 The message is clearly to soothe my mind. This is the sort of thinking people got lobotomized for not that long ago.
Rest Is Resistance had me later that day lying at the end of my bed - body half off. I visualized myself out on a hot rock, water surging past, the gurgling a lullaby.
“I deserve to rest now. I am not lazy. How could I be lazy? My Ancestors are too brilliant for that…I am not a machine. I am a magical and divine human being.”3
Hearsey’s words when read side-by-side with Watterson’s (Mary Magdalene Revealed, also a trained minister) seem to bellow: You have missed the point.
Of course it’s not a competition for most truths told but if it were Hearsey is ahead.4
Detective of my own soul Lover of the unknown Believer in ghosts I don’t find them scary Always resisting because our souls are deep The veil is thin Rest a veil buster I ask my soul: "Give me sight to see what is really happening. Give me a third eye. A heart eye."
I honor myself by remembering that this grief which is costly is also a passing moment. Teetering on unwell to get to best. Depression an interim. Mania an opportunity to punch through. Portals - spirited intervention.
You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Maggie Smith pg 238
The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho, 32
Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto, Tricia Hearsey pg 192
““ pg 129
I like the touching on nostalgia. My favorite author defined it as "unearned emotion."