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A spider inches its way from one corner of my bedroom ceiling to the other. It trapezes over the water stain. I can see its light beige coloring which should be hard to make out in the dimness of my room. There’s a burned out bulb in the fixture. These problems require such little energy to fix. Simply standing up on the bed with the necessary tools—a broom, a new bulb—would banish both the spider and the darkness. But instead, it’s easier to stay still. The spider isn’t doing us any harm. The lamp is a sufficient source of light, its soft golden glow nestled in the corner. I can see every feature without straining.
My mind wanders to other corners, during comfortable conversation and alternating silence. Of course, I’m thinking of Leonard Cohen. I’m standing on a ledge and your fine spider web is fastening my ankle to a stone. Around this time last year, I walked around Park Slope listening to that song on repeat. It’s funny to think of that time because I was crushing and crushed, somehow not realizing how unhappy I was. I was making big gestures. Typing long messages to only erase them, then lock my phone and play the song again. The turmoil felt much better than any alternative.
Now there are only imperceptible movements. A slight shift of weight. The flicker of the lamp as I struggle to pull the plug from its extension cord outlet. Adjust the blanket. Not too quickly now. After all, any sudden movements will make the moment vanish. I can barely keep my eyes open. So I stop fighting it.
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I’ve always been attracted to things that vanish. Let me rephrase that—I’m attracted to the ephemeral. Vanishing implies eventually being forgotten. To disappear into thin air without announcement or any rippling effects thereafter.
The ephemeral is brief, but it’s unforgettable. If memory can be tangible, that’s the ephemeral. There’s disagreement over the definition of ephemeral because ultimately there’s no single definition. From the Greek: lasting one day. Some argue that it may not be the object itself that has a short-life, but the attention given to it. It’s, of course, as everything is, a matter of perception.
I disagree about the attention piece. The ephemeral is hard to forget, hard to stop beholding whether it’s present or not. Its eventual and inevitable absence is a paradigm shift. You never saw it coming, and you won’t be the same once it’s gone.
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Ephemeral: a goodbye for a few days. The slit between daylight savings and loss. The ceramic pot of green tea that somehow is drained in under an hour. A story I’ve forgotten I’ve told you. Earrings. A memory of a future that won’t exist. Always losing, never to be found again.
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I post stories constantly on Instagram, even though I often regret being so visible online. I choose to do it. I know. Despite my ritualized oversharing, in these essays and when I fire off a tweet, I really don’t want to be seen so much. In real life, I squirm under certain attention. I have difficulty keeping eye contact at times. Though I contradict myself. I check my appearance in every window I pass. Take precarious selfies walking to the train.
Many sharing features on social media have an internal contradiction: you become highly visible for a brief period to then disappear without evidence. You’re seen for twenty-four hours, then it’s mostly forgotten by the people who viewed it. I will often post something then immediately forget. Disliking your face or mind can be easily be disguised as self-obsession online by posting a photo or a passing thought. We’re all pantomiming self-acceptance through sharing.
Reading what I’ve written, seeing my own face I’ve turned into a meme, or returning to one of these essays can leave me feeling like a clown. People noticed me but then looked away. Who is it for? Do I simply just want to remind people that I exist?
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Last weekend Charlotte and I tried to puzzle out what it means to be a clown. We talked about our tendencies to joke around, be loopy, to entertain and keep conversations going because otherwise we’d have to face some anxiety in the silence. Ultimately, we came to no conclusions because our brains were pickled from our party that extended into the morning hours.
Despite our failure in voice memo philosophizing, I spend the week thinking about the sad clown. A vessel for exaggerated emotion. I’m interested in the archetype but clowns are hard to define because they are ultimately uncanny. They exist beyond the social realm because they’re caricatures not participants. Mirroring, not being. They’re always the shadow, never the realized form. They do resemble us but there’s something wrong. And it’s impossible to name exactly what.
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A few days later for Halloween, I dress up as a mime. Albeit a bad one because it’s put together at the last minute. And I talk all night. When we pass out Halloween candy on Tompkins Avenue, some of the kids are scared of me. I don’t blame them. I’m scared of clowns, too. By dressing as one, I guess I’m doing exposure therapy for my child self. The rest of the week I paint my cheeks with lipstick the way Charlotte taught me. I don’t know why I keep wanting to do this beyond getting funny looks and more compliments. (Funnily enough, Walter Benjamin wrote in the Arcades Project that fashion is an expression of the ephemeral. A constant cycle of change to keep up with the means of production. The attention wanes, the object persists.)
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The clown draws attention, both wanted and unwanted. Ire and amusement. Fear and loathing, ambivalence and laughter. They continue existing, on the periphery maybe, whether they get attention or not. Walking in my neighborhood one day this week, I had my face painted and I was singing out loud. I saw a man on a stoop talking to me. He was smiling, so I took one ear bud out.
Great day for singing and walking, he said.
Oh, I’m always singing, I said.
Heard you coming. Keep it up, he said.
Today, when I was walking home from the co-op, a man followed close behind me for five or so blocks. Not until later when he screamed “hey” at me then spat in my direction, did I realize he was probably trying to talk to me the whole time. I jumped at the sound of his voice, but then smiled and waved. I wasn’t sure what reaction was appropriate. He turned on the avenue. We ran into each other again on a different street. He threw his hands in the air, speaking again though I couldn’t hear. For some reason, I said, I guess we were meant to cross paths.
Whatever attention he wanted, I couldn’t give him. Whatever attention I didn’t want, I got anyway because I made myself entirely too visible. Careless until I got caught.
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We talk about the difference between carelessness and recklessness. To be reckless is to put yourself only at risk. To be careless is to implicate other people, including yourself. Both recklessness and carelessness are choices, but their impacts vary tremendously. I’m sure others would disagree with these distinctions. I’ve been both, and in either case, have suffered the consequences.
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I want to define things because ultimately I want to be right. I want to be the one who finally figures it out. I want to move beyond intuition and into the concrete. At one point, we disagree about what it means to be interesting. I said I didn’t think it was a real quality. In the cafe, I’m trying to make a distinction between being interested in someone versus someone being interesting. One being interesting is entirely dependent on having certain experiences that other people find compelling. No one is born interesting. It’s a collection process.
The disagreement isn’t anything serious. It’s all a fun thought experiment that once again leads to no conclusions. My argument has holes that are held up to the light. I’m laughing at my own insistence, my own stubbornness to see the other side. Little games. There’s no winning or losing, because at the end, I still get kissed.
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Of all the things that are undefinable, romance resists containment to a few frail words. There is no single definition. Formless because it’s often a whirlwind. Formless because every single romance manifests differently. Other people worry it’s too fast. Too much, too soon. Quick to thicken, quick to thin. Maybe you should take it slow. Maybe you should think about what you’ll do if it ends badly. If it’s this good now, it can’t sustain itself. The brain wants to press some imaginary fast forward button to know what happens. It’s some way of trying to protect the self. If you know how it ends, maybe you can save yourself from getting hurt. You probably know better. Whatever it is now won’t resemble what it will be.
Then you’re up at seven, an indescribable force moving through you. Buzzing. Call it insomnia but it’s not that, not quite. The biological becomes something else entirely. You’re no longer embarrassed by the facts of your body. Everything is permissible. You don’t quite know what everything is yet. It’s a discovery. A process of unearthing that feels like being split open every single time. It’s not too fast. Wanting it is enough. You move through the world and the world moves through you.
What you’re describing is letting go. To be cracked open means you’re no longer allowing yourself to be fenced off. That you can be moved without explaining exactly why. These words you’ve levied at experiences you weren’t having, all this theorizing distracting you from experiencing. All along, you were busy defining when all you had to do was not overthink. Big surprise, all you had to do was let yourself feel.
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How do you make something that is formless and impossible to define last?
Maybe ask yourself this, are definitions required? What is it that you actually want to name? The attempt to put words to something that doesn’t require overthinking just yet—or maybe ever. You don’t have to worry.
Talk all night if you have to, but don’t talk the beautiful thing to death.