Sometimes you read something and a thought that was floating around in your veins organizes itself into the sentence that reflects it. This might also be a form of dreaming.
- Claudia Rankine
This month I wrote down all of my dreams. Barely awake, I reached for the notebook and wrote them down and then, upon review, days later, it was like reading an unknown and rumpled kind of opera, with no idea of what was coming next, even though the plots were meant to have come from my own psyche. Three of the dreams featured elevators. Something about shafts (lol)? Or something about inner passages - things are going places inside of me.
We are always making something of our experience. We each come into the world with some kind of energy, and the energy wants to go somewhere! We come into the world this way and we continue on our whole lives! Life is not only happening to us, we are happening things! The arrow is still flying through the air! Experience is now! There is still some kind of life in each one of us, and it is going somewhere!
I had a breakthrough this month. I’ve been able to access the counselling service at the local marae, just a ten minute walk from where I am living. Each session we meet beneath a tree. It’s inside with masks, or outside without, you choose. Kids at the kura shriek and laugh right next to the meeting tree and big birds swoop in from the bay. One time a small boy called out to the tree from the swingset, oi girl who are you? I’m Hannah. Hannah who?
This month I felt droll and fierce, and nostalgic for the divine, for the numinous things of our forebears that got written or wrenched out of public life for so many of us sometime in the last half millennium. These current enclosures and foreclosures are temporary. I might not see their end in my lifetime, but they will end. I read Trashlands by Alison Stein, and I imagined a future world of semi-nomadic bands of salvagers, united by ritual. Not a dream, exactly, but not a nightmare. We’ll get there.
One night this month I was home alone and made a big pot of white bean garlic green broth to accompany the long, dark evening. I settled in to read a library book but became distracted and opened my phone. I saw someone talk about turning thirty and starting to use retinol and I didn’t know what it was all about so I looked up skincare products and started reading reviews. I came across a review from someone named Anne. Excellent. I am a great fan of the XXX range. My skin is hyper-sensitive and has been even more susceptible since I was diagnosed with terminal cancer. However, the XXX range really does keep my skin soft and reduces dryness. Highly recommended.
And I thought oh no! Anne! Anne, baby! Don’t spend your terminal time on earth writing product reviews! And then I thought oh no! Han! Han, baby! Don’t spend your time on earth - prognosis ultimately terminal! - reading product reviews! But I suppose in her writing and in my reading Anne did get one of her deepest wishes, which a wish shared by each of us, which is to be seen. I see you, Anne! I’m glad you got some relief! I clicked out of the products and didn’t buy anything. I’m useless at planning, including planning any age-defying skin regimen. I'll take getting old, thanks (no, please! Thank you, Anne!).
I like to say I’m bad at planning, but maybe I am good at improvisation and play! Maybe I simply don’t like having plans, because they reduce the incidence of improvisation and play! Not only in the moment, but in the lead-up: free space crowded out by the mere knowledge of the existence of a plan. Or maybe, for all my dreaming and moving-arrow talk, there is a part of me that fears that the concept of the future has nearly completely hollowed out. I’m in the ‘business’ of education and it is hard to see teachers and students alike struggle with motivation and connection to any sort of why right now.
Climate-capital-covid complacency will do that: steal meaning and futurity, make a case for life as a chemical accident to wring some pleasure from; extract and dash and leave the rest of us - and the next of us - to languish. But we are not consumption machines! The ability to think about long time is a human gift that I will not give up lightly! I feel rage that previous generations acted in such a selfish way that reasonable things like having a house are not available to me. But I will not let their lack of futurity-thinking steal our access to meaning. I can afford to have a bad day where nothing matters, but the next people - and the people next to me - can’t afford for me to act like that.
The other day beneath the meeting tree the counsellor asked me what lies beneath depression? Loneliness I said. And what lies beneath loneliness? The fear of never being seen. And what lies beneath the fear of never being seen? Being unloveable. And what lies beneath being unloveable? At this point I laughed. I don’t know! And what lies beneath I don’t know? Absurdity! And what lies beneath absurdity? The sky! And what lies beneath the sky? The lightness of being! Exactly, she said. Exactly.
The arrow is still flying through the air! Experience is now! There is still life in each one of us, and it is going somewhere! I left the island and received hospitality in Puhoi and in the centre of town and in Sandringham. I couldn’t believe my luck. I resisted a bunch of skincare products and got back to reading a bunch of books and I met a bunch of new people - still mainly online, but new nonetheless. I hung a weaving on the wall that had been in storage for five years. We haven’t had a home that felt like ours in that long. This place doesn’t really feel like ours either, but I’m not wasting time worrying about it.
Until next time,
H x
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P.s. I am open to hearing your good retinol stories 😏