I didn’t want to write, but in writing’s defense, I didn’t want to do anything. I didn’t want to go outside for a coffee, condition my hair after washing it, or unpack my luggage to repack it again. Yet, I do it all, moving slowly like the drying earthworms in search of a patch of wet dirt. When I wasn’t sleeping earlier in the year, staying up too late reading the news and then people’s opinions on the news an old mantra of mine infiltrated my brain again: nothing matters. But I know now, that everything matters, everything from the number in your bank account to the way iridescent trash peeking out of the garbage can illuminates in the sunlight we get in the winter. Yesterday, wiping tables and closing down the bar, we turned off the music to hear the patter of the hailing rain on our skylight and against the deserted cars parked outside.
I don’t want to feel this way, I don’t want to not write. Instead, I want to wrap my wet hair underneath the only wool scarf I have, the one that’s the color of fog and has one big pocket, ideally for a phone but I use it to store pieces of gum and scraps, a lighter to burn the candles with at work, a piece of hangnail I tore off with my teeth. I want to take myself and my pocket to the nearest Square, walking through the parking lot behind what once was a deserted warehouse and is now a soon-to-be-open gym. I am thinking about joining this gym (moving my body matters), but I know the parking lot better — in 2020, I skated here by zig-zagging back and forth between the cars, holding on to their metal bodies in fear of falling. I learned later how to fall correctly, never on my knees or hands, yet always at the mercy of the concrete. Let your body be limp. Get to the Square to touch things but buy nothing. The cool of the ceramic. The thinness of the plastic. I go back home with their sensation on my fingerprints and sit by my computer to wait for something to come from them.
Perhaps it’s not that I don’t want to write, but I don’t want to write under these conditions. I write the sentence: I want the singularity of time at my disposal. In reading about the singularity of time, I changed my mind. Black holes can’t exist in nature, the scientists argue, as in, they won’t appear in a field of rabbits or on the island eroding in the ocean, but they occur naturally — as in, one day there was a star being watched by a You and a Me camping in the open elsewhere, and before we zipped into our orange tents the star collapsed under its weight and sucked us closer into our sleeping bags with its faraway pull. This wasn’t even the universe we know today, where I eat only oranges for breakfast, and You may not even exist, not yet, not here. What I feel might not be coming from the explosion of a black hole but rather the impending cosmic collapse swelling in my body. Is there a small chance, even, that the inside of my body is fine and all I need is a small room and a wooden desk, nothing on the walls, other than my black and white postcards? In what universe can I have that luxury? How does it work? I want to ask the particles I share with the growing weeds outlining the sidewalk and the hazed white clouds, how do I accept what is given to me? You’ve given me the rain that fell above our heads last night, so how could I have the recklessness to ask for more?
In the week I unwillingly wrote this, a silver hair appeared at my temple, so I understand this universal whisper as it says to me, more will come, whether or not you extend your hand to greet it. I let the hair be just another object to touch within me. I shake hands with whatever schism revolts in favor of darkness; I let it be limp. I can’t carry a tune when I whistle because I’m not controlling my breathing. When I hold my lips the wrong way, I can hear the small echoes of more coursing through with gravitational force in my body.
I can’t believe I’ve written 55 issues of fotocopy! I started this project last year in an attempt to write more frequently and it was so good for my soul that I’m not sure why, in retrospect, I stopped. Taking a break at the beginning of the year was not the move for me, because it feels like I lost all that muscle I developed in writing every week. That being said, I did what I thought was best for me at the time! Thank you, like always, for sticking through this with me. Issue #54 was a dark one, but I feel like with this one, which took me about two weeks to finish, I’m finally coming into the light. Seasonal Depression? I don’t know her!
𓆸 These past two-ish weeks, I re-read Siddhartha by Herman Hesse and started to read Albert Camus’ The Stranger for the first time. Siddhartha has been one of my favorite books since I first read it in high school, and every time I re-read it, I find something new to love. When I first read it, I didn’t understand why Siddhartha needed a true independent journey to self-discovery, and now that deeply resonates with me. I also used to love the parts when he was out in the material world, and now I was more intrigued by the ferryman and him hanging out. It’s a great book, and if you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend it!
𓆸 I’ve been listening to a jumble of stuff lately, like Smerz’s latest single You got time I got money. Now I am digging through their discography and I like it a lot! Their song Versace Strings from their 2021 album Believer, makes me feel like I am underwater in the very best way. Dina, Simone, from the Opus soundtrack has been playing in my head non-stop. I watched Opus when I got cut early from work and had nothing to do the other night. My review: sometimes a movie is just a movie and that’s okay! I’ve also been listening to the Arthur Russell 2004 compilation album, Love is Overtaking Me, (especially Close My Eyes which I wish I had written,) and the new Men I Trust album.
𓆸 I’m also into making my bed every morning, the Tatine Kashmir candle gifted to me by A some months ago (Life is short! Light the bougie candle), and playing Neko Atsume again. More on that later!
Sending u love, happiness, and a good night of sleep —
Gabo <3