Telegraph Avenue

waiting room

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“’You got the good heart. Underneath all the other stuff. Good heart is eighty-five percent of everything in life.’” –Telegraph Avenue, Michael Chabon

But… what about the other 15 percent? A mess? Evil? An eternal waiting room.

Cold never bothers me, but the snow. My god, the snow. Watching each morning dawn earlier, light filtering in before 6 in the morning, I want to squeal with delight. Even if it’s -20C. It’s bright! Is anything sweeter than the combination of early, ever-lengthening light and the slow promise of warmer days? Just a matter of waiting for it to change completely.

I keep thinking of something I want to write, but the thought slips away from me before I write it down. So I wait.

I keep finding myself having to say to people, who ask me supposedly simple questions about myself, “We are people. Not elevator pitches.” Yet, every day we are asked in one way or another to reduce ourselves to 30 seconds or less. Take up less space and speak fewer words. I patiently wait my turn, only to be told to hurry it up or be interrupted; no one has time for more than 20 seconds of your face and words.

Presence is, after all, just waiting. I am just waiting.

“…’isn’t it strange that we don’t know who we are? I mean, we know so little about ourselves it’s shocking. We tell ourselves a story and we go along believing in it, and then, it turns out, it’s the wrong story, which means we’ve lived the wrong life.’” –The Blazing World, Siri Hustvedt

I am waiting (waste of time) to see if I have lived the wrong life by choosing never to decide anything. Never to involve anyone else in the decisions I have made. I am waiting to declare that my prime has passed (“‘One’s prime is elusive. You little girls, when you grow up, must be on the alert to recognise your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur. You must then live it to the full’.” –The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark).

Perhaps there never was a ‘prime’ – and even if there were, I lived it within the wrong confines, the wrong story or context, afraid to embrace it and afraid even of myself. Until a cascade of waiting rooms and endless waiting became the definition of life. Was the prime of life eaten away slowly by waiting – for something to happen, for something to go away, for something or someone that could never fit into the context I was hiding myself in? Waiting, still waiting, be present. It’s only later, in some new reality, that this waiting feels as though it was tedious. The waiting, as it happens, feels full of questions, urgency, anxiety, imbuing each moment with the feeling that something is happening, – or will, any second now – good or bad. Only much later, if I make it, does the perception change.

“‘Why are things as they are? Must they be as they are? What might they be like if they were otherwise?’ To ask these questions is to admit the contingency of reality, or at least to allow that our perception of reality may be incomplete, our interpretation of it arbitrary or mistaken.” –No Time to Spare – Thinking About What Matters, Ursula K. LeGuin

Photo by Martha Dominguez on Unsplash

woe, o faithless foe

Standard

“You could damn yourself with silence but never so effectively as by running your mouth.” –Telegraph Avenue, Michael Chabon

We are taught to stay quiet, so quiet, so as to remain nearly invisible. We hope that we will be noticed in some way despite the enforced, expected silence. Sharing, trusting, talking too much, revealing too much is trouble. To listen is to learn. To be quiet is to fulfill what is expected, to behave in a demure and controlled fashion.

But what if the story you have to tell is important? What if it will save your life, or at least redeem it? What if giving it voice – or life – restores your posture, finally lifting the invisible yoke of self-blame, doubt, responsibility, guilt (whatever it is) from your shoulders? What if finally speaking up frees you – finally – finally – finally?

But the consequences! How well we know and how bitterly we anticipate, and often, feel the consequences. The inevitable (?) backlash, the (un)expected wrath of hostile reactions, even if there is no hint of regret for having unclipped the tongue.

It makes no difference if the self-censorship hides your own feelings, wants, needs, experiences or shields the actions or feelings of others. It makes no difference if silence weaves its cocoon around systemic injustice. It all ends the same if it is never spoken or shared.