Turning That Frown Into A More Spirited Squiggle
it really cleans out your ... rigid idea of who you are.
—Willem Dafoe (from Wild Card with Rachel Martin)
I found these words to be a magnificently liberating
notion. A new way to reflect on a period in my life
which I have up to now tended to think of as a very
negative space; one in which I dwell unnecessarily, it
turns out. I think Bingo! Why on earth has this set of
unexpected circumstances been handled so pain
fully, with such tension? Why treat it strictly as
downturn, a dramatic shift in the opposite direction
my life had traveled until that point; from a sharp-grade
ascent until to that moment when it shifted downward, in
the direction of, I often imagine, a rock bottom, that has
ever since descended, and into such depths that I think
so poorly about this sad and expanding portion of my life?
Such that I rarely think it living? What a simple shift, these
words create, leaving room for a wealth of possibilities, of
positivities, a new and more mature way to treat that moment
when everything changed, when signs pointing in any dire
ction were all suddenly gloomy gray arrows that sloped
ever-downward; signposts in a swampy atmosphere that,
now with these words, have fresh perspective. I have con
cocted a period of momentum, rife with new ways of think
ing, turning what I had for so long thought of us ugly and
tragic into a space of experimentation that enables
a pivotal moment of relief, of renewal, of progress and
radical growth filled with new ideas and fantastic,
shifting priorities. Just like that, a tedious limbo fills
with electric tension and sprouts a long-flowing
fountain from which creativity and inspiration spring.
