march 3, 2025
twice in one birthday
everybody has a birthday. did you know? everybody has a birthday. this large man who just scowled at the rain and walked past the window of this cafe and did not notice me noticing him at all. the old man hunched over himself on the tram the other day – i felt bad for wondering what it must be like to have your vision forced towards the ground – has a birthday too. the woman in the 7/11 who watched me hover over ice creams for 10 minutes, circling in some musical chairs-esque dance with another older lady, has a birthday too. everyone has a birthday, and no one knows when it might be. it could be today. or even better, it could be tomorrow. it could have been yesterday, and deflated like a balloon. it could be the day you give an exam or the day you die or the day nothing happens and no one knows. it is the day you came here, marked by some artificial 365 day cycle, i mean the movement of this rock around the stillness of the light, defined and packaged into some arbitrary significance. arbitrary significance. which is a paradox, but also a descriptor, and a fundamental truth. i write so funny these days. drunk, and amnesiacally, which is how i often feel. i sort of dread, and sort of look forward to, reading this again. i no longer attach to it, and maybe that is why i have let loose. a bit of attachment should do me good, but i like the feeling of exhaling in these words, of letting myself be. like i said, the girl yesterday told me i taught her how to relax. i am teaching myself the same, even though i am not striking a balance yet, between caring and clenching. between giving and grasping, between offering something to the world and letting it own me entirely. i don’t want to strike any balances anymore. i want to be. lazily, horribly, pointlessly, meaninglessly, freely. i want to exist – i want to let myself exist – inside a secret between myself and i. between me and mine. i want to form a huddle between my own shoulders and their own reflection in the mirror, i want to bend and bow and make the kind of circle you make with other bodies when you are in a school playground, or in the NFL, but in no circumstance in between. i want to huddle with myself and whisper myself lies. i want to huddle with myself and discover the only truth. i want to huddle with this body and know it will never leave. i want to huddle with this body and tell it a secret – it is safe with me. i love this secret world between me and my, and i want to protect it from the world by creating this language of gibberish that no one can comprehend. i want to create a secret language so convoluted and nonsensical they will go insane when they find it. they will struggle to find meaning and they will be kept out of the gates of my mind because for once i will not try, to make things make sense to them. in fact, i will deliberately gatekeep this world of mine, i will deliberately shut the gates and build tall fences and draw in sand borders with barb wires that make sure they never understand a thing i was trying to say. have i lost you yet? have you lost your mind yet? have your eyes glossed over, your brain gone numb, your attention span truncated, about three sentences in? good. good. stay out of this world of mine this time. keep out, and do what you want with it. call it stupid, and call it insane, ideally. call it bad, and call it the worst, ideally. call it a name that is nowhere close to mine, nowhere close to good, call it something that lets it be. that leaves me be in my me-ness, whether that is concerned or unbothered, trying or rebellious, effortful or helpless, trying or being, lazy or lazy, or all of the above. it is past that land – of naming and shaming and blaming and taming – that you will find me. it is past that land – that wall that barrier that place that sea – that i will be free. that i am, that i am, that i am, free. finally, finally, finally, free. final.
it is ironic that i am so obsessed with language, and yet, it is only at the ends of language, beyond the bounds where it can and will not go, that i find myself free. inside my language and beyond where yours can go. i will use these words to build a fence, a sword, a shield, and i will make sure it keeps you out. i will use these words to define and articulate and become what is mine, and i will make sure it stays mine. i will exist in the space where my language extends and yours ends, and i will find, in that place, peace. i will fix this language later, but it will be, i promise, i swear, i bet on my soul, for me. i hope, i think, and i sometimes lie. but this time, i will be true. i will stay true, and i will stay mine. i will do this because i must because i love because it is the best thing in the world because i cannot otherwise survive. but i will do this all – for me.
art by jenny holzer