becoming

dance, nausea, painting, the same old

Denis Lavant transforms from a hunched-over frogman into a bird with a leap. Dancers can float on the air, become it. A gesture like that has power over me, swoops me in the breadth of its wing, makes me burn with envy for the grace of another. But I know what it’s like to run the way he does in Mauvais Sang, to be overtaken by feeling, explode into a sprint. And not trip over my feet even in exuberance. Now I have to catch my breath. After I left, I listened to Modern Love for months.

I am still becoming. There’s not much left to do but love life, love the people in it. I know this and still it feels like something I fail to do: to listen attentively, to care deeply. Too easy to get caught up in the stream of worries and wondering if I’m making the best use of my time - but it’s never about time well spent. It’s just about time passing and how well it passes.

I’m in a department store feeling nauseated. Department stores nauseate me. I keep ending up in an acrylic pale metal shopping aisle because my apartment begs for things. I reach for bottle openers I don’t own yet, things like that, wonder where I’ve put my dust rags - Oh, I don’t have any. But once I’m in the store, listening to the music they’re playing, a man doing a grotesque and Target-commercial cover of Joni Mitchell, I look at the factory-ware and wonder if I do actually need anything. There are things I do really need, and I can’t get them right now. Like a garden… I need a garden. Worms and a shovel.

I’m so worried about the mediocre life and the things we accept as placeholders. You can’t have placeholders in your life, I decided. They’re what leave you unsatisfied. It’s better to wait. Just have nothing - you can’t be unsatisfied with nothing.

My copy of a portrait of a young man has a similar cover to my copy of the motorcycle diaries, which I first read in high school after our Spanish teacher showed us the movie. I think back on my teen years and wonder how many covert Marxists I knew, and I’m thankful for their invisible influence on me. Breadcrumbs are left out for wanderers. I’m learning how to come of age as a young man, as a 28 year old lady. To become feverish and get the engine going on a machine that’s falling apart. In the beginning: just get really sick, be cunning in acquiring wine and money, spend too much time in one place, have plans made to be dashed, expose yourself to the unseemly reality. There’s violence everywhere. It can upset your stomach. It can change you if you decide to do something about it.

There are times when I’m certain and I think of myself as a believer. That there’s a narrative to life, that there’s some destiny I’m winding toward. At other times, it feels like life is a string of nonsenses. Something happens, and then there’s a pause, and then another thing happens, and they’re not connected at all, and none of it really makes sense, there’s no logic or story magic behind it, just randomness. What was it I just experienced? The things I do become memories in seconds. Nothing ever feels purposeful in the moment and I’m cognizant that you can create fictions if you just want stories to tell, like I do. In the same way, words and ideas occasionally elude me. It’s nausea, restlessness, to me, it’s gnawing.

I stagger in and out of certainty, the feeling of a path and a purposeful God, and it has to do with trying to grasp what’s really true. That’s the main thing though, to do your best not to convince yourself of anything, and just remain open to what you’re feeling, because truth feels solid. To not delude yourself because you want to force yourself into solidity. In Jon Fosse’s Boat House he talks about restlessness the same way Sartre talks about nausea, these bouts of feeling sickening and confused, and being unable to relent against it. These phases are only relieved when I land on something that feels so searing and crystal clear that there can be no other way. But I can’t make them happen. They - and belief - they find you.

I tell my friend about when I first read To Kill a Mockingbird, at eleven or so, I started calling my parents by their first names the way that Scout calls her dad Atticus. After a few years I switched back to mom and dad. Mitch & Amy just felt too impersonal, they didn’t introduce themselves to me that way. She laughed and said that’s such a Cecilia story - to be captivated by a book and want to live it out in some way.

I miss them so much and I keep feeling like I just want to go home. And when I’m home, I want to be far away, making a home for myself.

All cities are hard but I believe you can make the most of any place you’re in. Especially because the greatest pleasures in life are companionship, art, learning, creating, cooking and reading. You can have those anywhere. But Los Angeles does not leave much up for chance. And I forgot how alienating it can be. You can have anything you want in LA, too, but LA makes you work for it. Happiness does not chance upon you. A life comes from the force of will here. You have to go against the routine, the cars, the loneliness. It makes you stronger.

My problem lately is existing in a world that demands definition, and not relating to the things that do actually define me, like what I do, what I look like, where I’m from, what I think. You can’t call yourself a painter and not paint at all, I’m reminded. I pick up the brush in a lurch of anxiety, needing to prove myself to myself. It’s important to make creation a habit and not just strike when you’re inspired. I think about Neil Gaiman’s practice of sitting at his writing desk daily for a certain number of hours. He is only allowed to write, or do nothing, look out the window. I try to implement this but distraction is too easy. I wonder if I was really a writer or a painter if I would accept these measly time wastes, if I wouldn’t just be so compelled to make art regardless of how hard it felt. I am always thinking about the ways conditions could be better to make work, but I know I’m lying to myself, and being somewhat spineless. I made more art when I was pressed for time and had no elbow room.

When it is dark, I’ll paint, I say. I sometimes do. Or I need better lighting, that’s when I’ll paint. When I’m not so full, I’ll paint, or not so hungry, I’ll paint. There are no ideas in my head - I’ll wait for it to strike me, that’s when I’ll paint. I’m clouded by too many ideas, too many ambitions, they’re removing me from my materials and the purity of a blank canvas. I’ll wait til I am calm to paint. So on and so on.

I spend most of my time fretting about not working at the art, and thinking about a different version of myself, in another place, who would be ruthless in the practice. So I’ve reduced all the drama. And now I’m sitting in the fear, the draining, lamenting my energy, all the bullshit that’s happened that’s dashed my creative impulses. There’s no way to erase the time that’s worn through, all I’m left with is becoming different. I have such an abundance of time and should make use of it instead of counting it as stock and feeling rich about my hoarding of time.

The men in my family are very quiet. When I was younger I used to think it was incredibly boring. It is my belief that you need to have party tricks, anecdotes, beautifully made appetizers, sage wisdom, little gifts for nieces and nephews gifted with a winking eye. You can be difficult, brusque and rude. An alcoholic and a nuisance. These are all forgivable if you allow people to love you, and if you love them in return. There’s so much pain and indifference in the world that showing your families and loved ones blank passivity and not taking part in the social dance is a sin. This is the thing in Waiting for Godot- it is the companionship, the talking, the griping, the imagining, the joking, the scheming that makes this unbearable wait for heaven, for a day off, for love, for good luck, for an end to suffering somewhat bearable.

But lately I find myself with not much to say. And I don’t necessarily feel entertaining to be around, and suddenly I understand the stoic men who didn’t want to be hugged at so many Christmases. I am withdrawing in some ways, but I have the inkling it’s not depression as much as it is a slowing down, a re-orienting. Mainly, I don’t want to be talked out of anything anymore. I do enough of that myself. It’s very clear to me what I want and what I have to do, and how much I have to ignore the objections I have, that amount to: well, you don’t have to do anything, so calm down. The obsessive details and my mundanities, of chipping away at larger ambitions with work and study, are not fodder for conversation, but that’s all that’s going on in my mind right now. I don’t want to be the one talking about every-day discipline. But my little practices and routines can make up for my life, quieting everything, slowly molding myself into a clay form I can respect.

So, I have nothing to say, but I’ve read enough to know that you can write about the nothing and its painfulness, too, which is what I’m doing now, and have been doing. Something comes of it: I can’t decide if this is true or just something convenient to believe in. Maybe it’s necessary to believe it.

I find Addison Rae inspiring. I know if she was releasing music when I was a teenager I would have had disdain for the girlishness. But now as an adult I can pinpoint that this feeling would have come from admiration and envy, because in many ways I’m not able to perform and I’m not comfortable with eyes on me. When she dances, she doesn’t seem to have a shred of self-consciousness, and that boldness is how you participate in the world. Aquamarine makes me want to take a jazz dance class, to not be so stiff, to make the beautiful gestures that I find so alluring. Like a leap through the air. Or a rabid sprint through a city. When I feel restless I want to make a habit of spinning on my foot like I’m in a ballet class. You disrupt the stillness with motion and can stop when you feel pointed in one direction. Action begets form. This isn’t something I know, it’s just something I think.