"The world is so big, so complicated, so replete with marvels and
surprises that it takes years for most people to begin to notice that it
is, also, irretrievably broken. We call this period of research 'childhood'.” Michael Chabon on Wes Anderson's Worlds, here.
Explaining is one of the things I don't believe we have to do, an inalienable right, so my connective leaps, which may not make sense to me but I trust them all the same, are not expected to make sense to you. Hooray if they do and if not, we press on regardless.
Earlier I posted about what resonates and remains, the way in which all we are, all we seek somehow connects to that "period of research" to which Chabon refers.
Since then a 4 a.m. thought threw its opaque cloak over me and hissed that we get to rewrite our story. A classic of duality, the thought spoke of all that we previously experienced being everything and nothing: every loss, trauma, disappointment, conversation, prayer, lover, child, dance, story - all of it fitting together inside the skin shaped like us, while simultaneously falling away like the boosters that carry spacecraft just far enough so that additional oomph can be discarded and the craft can navigate on its own. If being asked both to retain and jettison our childhoods does not represent the model of contradiction and ambiguity, then I guess I'm more confused than I believed.
Again, all the words have not yet come into neat alignment, again it is more of a sense than a prepared lecture. I have no proof, other than my split-screen image of how all the history exists and is the cumulative everything and is something we leave on the other side of the closed door as we move on.
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6 comments:
yes. this is it exactly. it's an empowering thought in the end. thank you.
Angella - Thank you. And Chabon's essay haunts, as does a Joseph Cornell box. Haunting and empowering - I think I have to concede it is all paradox. xo
Such an interesting and well-expressed post. I've been thinking about these things a lot lately as I examine my memories, relationships and obsessions. Letting go is SO hard.
wish i had thought to check your blog when i was roiling around for hours last night, marylinn. memories, relationships, obsessions, as kass notes. and then i look at the photograph on the front page on the NYT this morning of Afghani people who live as exiles in a Pakistan slum, and i think what the hell is the matter with me? exactly what problems, what big bad wolf problems am i ruminating on at 2:30 am?
Kass - Thank you. If letting go was easy, everyone would do it. It IS so hard, as though our pasts are our training wheels. Perhaps they are. xo
Susan - It it that old monsters cast big shadows? These seem to be ruminating times, a period of re-evaluation when perhaps we do find the door and, at last, get out of this poorly-lit hallway. Nothing fun, though, about 2:30 a.m. over-active brain. Sleep is my sanctuary. xo
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