Passages, January 2021

I Write Passages So I May Make My Own

At the same time, across town, that tyrant was speaking. Or something close to it. I’ve found in my experience that the conversation you or I might have is not the same as his. Liars don’t speak in truths, but they don’t speak in lies either. They form their own languages, of gestures and metaphors. References to other people’s inside jokes and clever wordplay. Maybe “liars” is the wrong grouping here. But maybe I only reject the label for personal interests, not willing to truly commit to a condemnation of a tyrant for fear of being caught in the net too.

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On grammar school buses there was some debate, from boys wanting to prove themselves smarter, of the colors of blood. Was our blood blue, like our veins, only red upon reaching the surface? Or were we “red-blooded” Americans, hiding in blue tunnels and white skin? Clearly, to these boys, the color of the flow mattered, as if it were some moral issue, not simply what boys on buses would call black and white? They argued as if their young understanding had some great impact on how they’d one day bleed out. We only ever argued in as-ifs and hypotheticals. At the end of the day, we only ever argued.

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The topic of this letter is belonging, which I don’t know if I’m familiar enough to write about. What is there to do? List all the groups that could have been, the friends I could have had? Not a particularly interesting read. These letters are predicated on their closeness to things I want to talk about. My skill set, my holy grail of writing, is narcissism. And although I’ve convinced myself that the other, far more beautiful chalices are where I should be focused, I’ve failed to learn the lesson. It’s the ugly chalice, wooden and rotting, that was swallowed up and spit back out as divine revelations. On belonging, I have no revelations to give.

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I know myself by reading my life back again like the works of a wannabe poet. Too many coincidences and too many symbols, words on a page to be read backwards and forwards in search of meaning. All of this analysis, and very little comes of it. The world still spins, and the fire still burns. Living in my own head and staring back at my own eyes, how can I see a world beyond myself? There are benefits to self-examination. I’m a better person than I once was because of it. But it leads to conclusions of grandiosity, Truman shows that nobody else is watching. Such is my existence; She’s my soft touch typewriter, and I’m the great dictator.