- There are times I wish I’d had different lonelinesses than the ones I had.
- When I thought of myself as straight (only possible by seeing myself nearly entirely through the eyes of others), I thought a lot about the notion of falling in love repeatedly with the same person, in a different form, replicating an original either from this life or one before it. In my case, there was an Adam, a primary ground of knowledge (Adam/אדם in the Hebrew Bible means red, and adamah red clay, or red ground). We took took care of each other as children, and people I loved after him always had his imprint; even if I wasn’t immediately aware of it at the start, eventually this would prove to be true. I used to wonder where and when, in what time and world, this relationship had started, and when and if it would ever end. It is no wonder I immediately became obsessed with the German show Dark, the way the characters so often seem to be remembering their lives, rather than living them (there isn’t enough of a critical framework left to take this show as seriously as it might deserve, but maybe that’s OK). Now when I begin to feel a tragic vulnerability to those patterns of thought, I also set an intention to spend more time among queer people.
- Straightness was an experience of eternal return. Queerness, of the multiverse.
- I was over 20 when I understood I couldn’t exercise or diet my way into celebrated body forms, the ones I had internalized as beautiful. I was over 30 when I understood the same goes for my intellectual–and then, political–formation. In both cases, however, there is a possibility of aiming for health. And a necessity for examining (not to mean doubting) the function of everything, including health.
- I relish the moments when I can escape seeing myself from outside myself.
- I remember, in a body sense, the political numbness of my youth, knowing that others understood themselves politically, and that I did not feel that dimension of my life, as someone might not be able to feel certain dorsal muscles (the pain, my massage therapist partner tells me, always radiates to some other part of the body).
- Not knowing for so long that I was white was a grievous numbness.
- I have been in a PhD program for 3 years. As far as education goes, it is working. I am learning all the time about the most important thing there is to know: how much I do not and cannot and will not ever know. The trick seems to be to complete the dissertation before I am fully educated.
- Now I am stuck in a loop where I am ritually interrupted by other versions of myself.
feeling is mutual 