(yet another interlude)
Back then I wanted to live long enough
to tell the stories of what I had no way
to put into words, because it was also
impossible to float somewhere outside
of myself in order to see what people
like to call the “big picture” of what
is going on, of how sick I’d become.
How emotionally—how mentally—ill.
It was a pre-pandemic deterioration
the worst of which I can now say
occurred before I was literally kicked
out on my ass. Kicked to the curb then
wait what turns out to be this extraordinarily
long duration and then kicked out into the
elements. The worst had already happened
by the time I got to the second part, being
literally removed from my home, and the
trauma (I would like it to be understood
that I do not take that word lightly) that
would accompany it, until I realized (even
considerably after this less harrowing set of
events began to occur) my memory, that
dried up orange wedge that had always already
made retrospection something so unlike, that
seemed so seductively distinct, that I had taken
to saying I write to remember...and...that’s why I
take photographs, too, had begun to malfunction,
just as it does for those whose memories are normal.
And I had already been weaving these facsimiles
together for a decade, into what has evolved into
this particular project, which, since that time which
I call the worst of it, years before the pandemic,
dozens of months before losing my home of
nearly thirteen years, I’ve spent yet another
near decade building this quilt made of me,
all slapdash, wherein I can dive into at what
ever point, if for no other reason than the
fundamental one of understanding illness
as I never had, of the incredibly long process
of healing, and the physical deterioration of
simply living that can go on in simultaneity.
One comes of age. One experiences tragedy,
one gets sick and (at least in this case) even
tually heals, slowly, is always healing. And at
the same time, one —usually completely un
aware of the pace, much less that ALL OF THIS
is ever happening, it is all so significant, it is always,
yet, indefinitely, meaning, also, infinitely for you,
me, the one who is involved, the victim(?), albeit
finitely, in the whole grand scheme of things,
perhaps, or, in theory, because one can
