The passage I am at though, the one I was thinking about that made me want to start writing, is near the end of the book, where the main character, David, who narrates, is leaving Giovanni, whom he's been living with and sleeping with for some months: His body, which I had come to know so well, glowed in the light and charged and thickened the air between us. Then something opened in my brain, a secret, a noiseless door swung open, frightening me: it had not occurred to me until that instant that, in fleeing from his body, I confirmed and perpetuated his body's power over me. Now, as though I had been branded, his body was burned into my mind, into my dreams (p. 144).
It's terrible and I think it's true. Somehow in leaving something (in fleeing it even more so) we make it more a part of us, if only just in the negative space of its absence- we acknowledge it in those grand terms of having to leave because it is something we cannot tolerate, and this gives it power. When something or someone is suddenly not there, their absence takes on a presence almost larger than life. Often where we are not is more important than where we are. In a way, hating someone or fearing them puts them on the same pedestal as someone you love- in this way, hate and fear and love become the same, strong, over-powering thing.
This is all a tangent off from what Baldwin was saying. What he was saying though, this is perhaps more terrible. It seems like we unknowingly build our own tethers, either this or we have no say at all what we're leashed to. You think you can divorce yourself from something, you think you can go from something and call it leaving, but who's to say whether that crucial part of you will still be there when you've walked out. David never leaves Giovanni's room, I nearly chewed through my cheeks last year trying to leave New Zealand. It's very difficult to be where you are, maybe more so to be grounded in what is present, not to be ruled by something you left a long time ago. Today, talking about the concept of past, my friend Drew said he thinks the most important thing to do is respect it. I had a therapist awhile ago who talked about having to integrate the past, which at the time fit beautifully with my theory that self was everything you'd been or done, that self = past. Thinking about it now though I think I prefer Drew's idea. You obviously have to acknowledge what's happened, and its effects on you and everything else, but this doesn't mean it has to become you. It can exist separate from you, stay in that past place without being laid constantly out at the surface.
Perhaps the passage from the book would argue otherwise. Perhaps I've just made a huge circle around myself and this whole maze of a concept. Oh it's so late. This is such a long rambling. I know I've established nothing save for the difficulty of the whole thing...if you are reading this, if you've made it through to the end, please tell me your thoughts. Goodnight.
first let me say, i am in awe of you.
ReplyDeletei am sitting here, in the retreat of vassar college, and i almost started crying. be it what you were saying, or the way you said it, i don't know. but it was really fucking beautiful.
what do i think? i think the past, and the people in it, haunt us in a way that does define us in that present moment. we cannot be who were are without the memory of them. especially situations from the past which have never been resolved. relationships which have not been mended. these things very much define us.
my friend ben was telling me about how he believes that there is no such thing as the present moment. all there is is the future and the past. we are constantly coming from somewhere, and going to somewhere else. the moment itself is defined by nothing more than the concepts of future and past. and it's true, isn't it?
we are in a perpetual now, of course we are, but this perpetual now is entirely dependent on the past. and the illusion of a future.
i can't wait to see you.