66. Ageing

I was right all along. Ageing would suit me fine. I knew that if I ever made it past 50, I’d be ok. I just had to wait, holding on to thin air whenever the world shook, hoping to make it through.

I disliked every minute of my youth. The pretty parts in particular, where being beautiful, appetizing is a precarious condition, where one’s yum-yum pulpy flesh and juvenescence represent a trap – years when the body is constantly tormented between the power of its attractiveness and the unsafe leverage it grants others.

I didn’t appreciate either the imperatives of performance young people often feel they must subject themselves to. Relationships at large used as opportunities to display forms of strength, imaginary and shallow. Building an intricate decorum for luminous fantasies about one’s competence. Portraits of hallucinated selves tested on easily impressed audiences out to seek clear-cut symbols and dazzling leaders.

I was there too, at times a public sucked inside the magic of well-articulated words, hypnotized by impressions of grandeur, a groupie aspiring to be noticed and loved by the future masters of major disciplines. Or, at other times, wanting to be one also, an icon venerated for its matchless pantomime accomplishments. Alternately, submissive or willful. Unsure of my place as if there were only two choices up for grabs. Able to mold myself for one or the other, both within my reach, but always tormented by the extreme posture that had to be left out: The quiet reassurance filling the follower, or the insatiable hunger of the ambitious. At a loss, incapable of deciding which stance was best for me.

I felt there was always something to prove, convinced being young was a long, uninterrupted test. With aptitudes to qualify for both models, I knew for sure I would flunk all life’s exams because I kept running from one end to the other, one day seeking the comfort worshipers are prone to feeling, the next setting my views on becoming a radiant monarch.

It was complicated. And I felt confused. More precisely, exhausted. Guilt from never fulfilling my potential (but which?) assailing my self-esteem. I didn’t have the flexibility to envision anything else between those two poles: that of the docile and gracious servant or that of the categorical commander. Pros and cons unfailingly flashing before my eyes, blinding the path.

It did happen at times, when the clash of these two radical tendencies became too tense, that I chose instead to obliterate the battleground itself: Me. Back then, it didn’t seem such a bad solution.

It took decades to outgrow the conflict. And only now can I say I feel fine. Standing outside. That’s what growing old has meant, leaving behind back-to-back directions and the narrowness of options.

It doesn’t mean though I’ve solved the issue. I simply learned to extract myself from it. Deep down, I still see beauty and intelligence as opposites, as examples of features that do not coexist on the same side, as states of Being that refuse to be simultaneous and can never intersect.

In theory, of course, one can say that what’s intelligent is beautiful. Or that beauty is always an expression of intelligence. We would find what’s stupid quite ugly, true. But it’s reducing the debate to a size that had to evict implications in order to be so small.

Beauty is fundamentally a competitive threat to intelligence. Not just perceived as such, but really one. Intelligence often gives itself the mandate to seek and uncover the menace, in a motion supported as much by fear than by a misconstrued fascination. Intelligence by definition is too smart to deny the danger. Much preferable to acknowledge it and then lay the claim of discovery unto it for control purposes. But beauty is, by definition, elusive, pushing intelligence further in its quest to identify and circumscribe it.

Beauty contains an unacceptable essence for intelligence. An unexplainable spirit, undiluted, escaping blueprints and templates. All the things that make beauty what it is cannot account for what it is. As in the beauty of mathematics, mathematicians can never succeed in rendering it in their equations, always an incalculable impalpable effect escaping the rows of signs, heading for infinity and the incomprehensibility of beauty’s existence.

Unacceptable for intelligence because brainpower implies constructions, reasoning, the manufacture of thoughts as objects to contemplate and/or manipulate as eventual decent substitutes to beauty. If intelligence ever were in a position to lay its hands on beauty, it would either disguise it through diminutives or altogether destroy it, replacing splendor with a splendid product.

So, beauty is a victim. Always. And on the run. The hunted and the hunter.

One has a choice of sides.

You’ll tell me that it does happen sometimes, a beautiful intelligent instance, event, object. Be careful of simulacra. Of superficial representations of ideals. Intelligence and beauty both as ultimate conditions involve their concretion in pain. If it doesn’t hurt to look at them, you’re staring at a simulation. I believe if both were to meet in a thing, the sight would be beyond endurance. And our eyes would melt.

As a young girl, sharp instincts told me that whenever I showed signs of beauty, I did put myself in great danger. In case intelligence roamed nearby, better bend, kowtow, lie low, a position of excessive submission meant to keep beauty out of the line of sight. To live in a subservient way so to never expose qualities. Finding in the movements of kneeling a form of peace and reassurance.

As a young girl, sharp instincts also told me that if I discarded beauty, elevating intelligence to its rightful position, I would have to run too, not away from this time, but always after something. An entire life of dissatisfaction and envy. Of frustrations, endlessly caught in one of Zeno’s paradoxes. Aggressive, because lost in illusions I would have to work so hard without never fully arriving. Destinations constantly moving away. Anger as engine. And only coldness to quiet the rage down, to prevent becoming a monster.

As you see, to be young was not easy. Had to wait for the potential for beauty and intelligence to wear off. I knew that under the influence of time such a disappearance would set me free.

Laolao

65. When we leave

Haven’t written for a while. I’ve been quite busy at work with the fall term just starting. You’ve also visited me last week. My past days thus being overtaken by levels of activities that barely manage to fit in the 24 hours at my disposal every time I wake up. I’ve cut on sleep. It’s ok. The older I get, the less I need.

This thought crossed my mind this afternoon, and I must share it with you. Briefly, of course, I have to run. But perhaps by posting it now, like a reminder note, I can come back to it later and expound on its virtues.

When does history start? I asked myself the question and the hint for an answer showed up: History starts when we leave.

I like this idea.

I haven't forgotten. Tomorrow and Sunday, your birthdays. Four years old and two years old.

Much love, your Laolao

64. Diane

In the late 50s and at the start of the 60s, my mother was helped by a rotation of maids. House cleaning duties became the responsibility of people that were more or less annexed to our family. One of them was barely 16, a bubbly small girl with an elastic body allowing her to stretch, bend, climb, making her quite efficient at her part-time job. Even when she pressed my father’s shirts, she wouldn’t stop moving, gliding on her feet as the steam puffed out of the burning iron.

We had no radio at home. No one ever listened to music. So Diane brought her own transistor that she would carry from room to room as she waltzed with rags meant to dust the furniture.

I had never seen anyone like her. She seemed always happy and so light, her feet hardly resting on the floor, moving and delicate, a weightless grace that kept me mesmerized. She also sang. She had a wealth of knowledge, like the lyrics of the songs playing all day on the radio. She would tell me who that was, Elvis Presley, or a band. She named the styles, that’s a twist. She knew them all. I was 11, realizing there was another world out there, wanting more than anything else to be part of it.

I had never heard rock 'n' roll before she worked for our family. It was instantaneous. The first measures rising out of the portable radio, and I was sold to it. It took me by the stomach, filled my lungs, an instinctive savage urge to join in, overwhelmed by my very own beat climbing along emotions I didn’t know I had until that acoustic moment. The sound loudly ringing in my head even after Diane had left the house to go back to her place.

I couldn’t believe it. Songs one after the other, for hours, day after day. How could there be so many? Where had I been as they had evolved, expanded to saturate the air to such an extent? Where had my parents been when these musical waves had amplified, taking over almost everything on radio? How come we didn’t know about this massive phenomenon? Was quite perplexed, to tell you the truth.

I couldn’t reconcile in my mind the fact that my mother and father spent much time and energy establishing their cultured persona, but had entirely missed not just on current musical trends, but on music as a whole. How could that be? Was it another sign that adults could be wrong as much about themselves than about the world?

Diane, in her elephant-bottom pants or her wide cotton skirt held by a shiny belt, was an angel. Effortlessly, she would stamp the steps of the newest dances, humming the melodies without dropping the laughter or her ingenuous grin.

The most surprising, I thought, was the interest she had in me. I mean, why did she bother explaining who was who, and what was what? Each of her ironing sessions was like a crash course in popular culture. She would share the rumors about flirts and love among stars, also giving me, as if it was contraband, magazines containing romantic stories like a comic book, but made with photographs of lascivious Italian women and their heroic virile boyfriends. Why the generosity? Not once condescending. Treating me as if I was her age, her friend. So unusual.

I had lots of time on my hands. I had been unable to finish primary school due to my "special circumstances" and stayed home all day with nothing to do except cutting catalogs. No care coming to the front. Diane never asked anything about this. She expressed herself as if I was a normal person. Took for granted I got the picture.

One afternoon, a real wonder: The announcement there’s an outdoor dance at her high school over the weekend. Do I want to go? Flabbergasted. Me? You mean, me? But I can’t dance, did I stutter, panic stricken.

Nothing was ever a problem for Diane. One, two, three, here we go. She’s holding my hand, pushing me to help me turn, and I follow, follow, follow. I’m made to dance. I get it. I understand. It's happening.

And on that Friday evening, I rocked 'n' rolled. Guys, their hair greasy cool, the forelock a bit long thrown backward, inviting me on the dance floor, kind enough to say they didn’t believe it was my first time. Was dark. I loved to be out so late. Timid lanterns around the yard. Music that kept coming. Everything was easy. This is how I wanted to live.

Was it a coincidence that soon after my parents took me for a car ride and happened to drive by a shoddy gas station on the other side of the river, mentioning while slowing down that Diane lived there with her large family, in the rundown wooden flat just above it?

Hi, Diane, I just whispered. Lucky you.

Laolao

63. The fourth level

Again about learning. At 6, I couldn’t lace my shoes or zip my snowsuit. In front of the lockers in the basement of the school, the nun ridiculed me, and quite loudly may I say. Everyone heard. I hadn’t known I was expected to know how to do these things. I felt confused. How was I supposed to acquire such skills? And how had the others learned? It troubled me, thus forcing me, early on, to reflect upon learning.

Up to that moment when I was laughed at, I wasn’t aware that I didn’t know. Only then did I become conscious of my incompetence.

From a pedagogical perspective, reaching that second level is considered progress. For me, of course, it was just pain. But it did set a pattern. Not only didn’t I enjoy not knowing, but I disliked being made mindful of the fact. The first and second stages of learning weren’t therefore suited for me.

I thought of aiming for the third level where one is conscious of how competent he or she has become. Instinctively, though, it didn’t seem right. Such a step might induce bragging and a certain amount of showing off, meaning a form of relationship to people. Why? Simply because knowledge here is an extension, something you’re aware you’re accumulating and using. An appendix. An attachment, therefore visible, attracting attention. Like a nice bag you’re carrying. There’ll be somebody somewhere who, with envy, might go after it.

Much better, I thought, to target straight away the fourth level, a quieter one, where others leave you in peace, can ignore you, for you reach the rank of those who may no longer feel like talking about what they know: the level where you’ve stopped conjecturing about knowledge. No need to ponder upon how to get and then retain skills and understanding, because they have become part of you, they are who you are. And since people can’t distinguish what you know from you as a person, they may decide to leave you alone, perhaps not even notice you. And there’s nothing now they can take away.

You have absorbed. You can cross frontiers. No one will ever find anything in your luggage.

The key, did I think, was to become porous. I honestly believed that my house of thoughts could be the answer. A paradox, I know. Since it provided a perfect environment for in-depth learning, the fact it cancelled the experience allowed for endless acquisition while, at all times, leaving me unconscious.

This is why I kept using the house of thoughts as a child. Confident I had an unsurpassed formula to become the person I wanted to be.

I imagined knowledge not so much disappearing after having thrown myself into its breadth, but transformed and sucked up. I was a sponge-like material. Maybe after all I wasn’t forgetting, I was simply converting knowledge into a diffuse shapeless liquid drank by my pores. It was all there. I just couldn’t separate it from who I was. I was unconscious of my competence. That was it. The highest level learning can lead to.

Equipped with a satisfactory explanation, I not only felt more confident, but dared dream not just of becoming one day a writer, but a great one.

That makes you smile with commiseration? Me too.

Laolao

62. Bang

As you’ve probably guessed, I’ve always been interested in learning. How it happens. Or why it doesn’t. Why sometimes it’s fast and why at some point it slows down. How come there are plateaus that can last quite a while and during which nothing seems to sink in. How do we know we've learned, and how do we measure that. How can we be sure.

Even questions on the nature of knowledge. The kind acquired through experience. The other by means of books. Some with the help of teachers. Are there differences. How is our personality affected. Is there ‘good’ as opposed to ‘bad’ knowledge.

I needed answers. It was of vital importance that I understood the mechanisms of learning. I had to develop alternatives. Work around traps. Compensate.

I explained that I was taxed by learning difficulties. My survival, especially as a kid, depended upon a spotless lack of memory. I couldn’t give it up. I was entirely built around the principle of the fugitive, the ephemeral. A sieve. A conduit. Knowledge enters, I process it, understand it, play with it, and then it leaks through, continues on its tour of the world, caught by another mind.

You must try to see my point-of-view. My learning difficulties were not, as such, a symptom. A problem. They were the cure. They represented the treatment I imposed on myself. It was a decision. Having to make do with what I had at my disposal.

I decided very early on, in my own personal antiquity, to drive out information. It was a conscious move. I therefore had a built-in trigger that I activated. The valve opens up. All gets ejected from my brain. I’m the one operating that machine.

Only in states of profound disconnection am I controlled by a handicap. At the mercy of the rules in the house of thoughts. But when I'm in the world, walking in it, I pull the ropes. I erase. It’s my own doing. So well performed that it eventually became a second nature.

Want to know how it works? It just requires practice. I go “bang” in my head. I use emotions, make them hit the solar plexus. It’s a bit painful, yes, but instantaneous. It’s a blow, physical. An inner punch. I feel it. It hurts. And all that needs to be obliterated in my mind vanishes. No trace. Gone. Not even rewritten by the subconscious. Information that will never be recovered. I can relearn it all over again, and there will not be the slightest hint of déjà vu.

You think, I’m sure, it’s a drastic form of denial and self-defense. Of course, it can be. But I don’t always use the method for such venial purposes. I have more creativity than that. Give some credit to your laolao.

Imagine that the discovery of something fills you with an amazing and unique joy, an incredibly deep excitement. Almost euphoria as you grasp, elated, the beauty of what you’ve come across.

Wouldn’t you like to relive that moment again and again?

I can.

Sometimes I’m so transported by what I see that I desperately want the experience both to last and to stop. I go bang. The happiness so intense that it’s almost intolerable. So I go bang. And one day, I’ll revisit again that very marvel that’s able to lift me all the way to ecstatic levels. And I’ll go bang. On and on.

Imagine a movie that carries you to such heights. I can watch it anew as if I had never seen it. I have a pile of bangs. I know where they are. When I feel strong, ready, I pick a bang. Read or watch it again, aware there will soon be a moment of vertigo where I’ll go bang.

I’m not using figures of speech here. This is exactly how it happens. I‘m a scrubber. I’m a cleaner. I scour my mind all the time. Immaculate. It’s a matter of mental hygiene for me. No real choice. A sanitary approach to life. Disinfecting the ground for thoughts and feelings. Because they tend to rot if left in the brain too long.

Some decompose faster than others, contaminating the lot, even the kind of daily information you need to function normally. How to dress yourself. How and when to eat. How to behave in general situations. You start rocking your body back and forth, staring at a void, reacting to nothing, deprived of the most basic instincts as thoughts and feelings get imbedded in the mind, poisoning their surroundings.

Of course, I can’t afford that.

So I throw recently acquired knowledge down the garbage chute. Wash the mind with a flow of cold, crisp amnesia. Efficient.

In primary school, a problem I had was to separate information. Whenever my inner storage went bang, all the content disappeared. Not practical. That made me look like an idiot. An image I resented.

I had to learn to make boxes. To label them. Things to throw away. Things to keep. Useful. Absolutely needed.

I struggled with those subtleties for years, making mistakes. Not controlling my gift so well. By the time I was a teenager, things had gone from bad to worst. I had periods where fundamental distinctions seemed clear and obeyed me. But often, they didn’t. Unable to sort out the shambles. Stuck with data on Althusser, but at a loss on how to get from one point to another in the city. Wandering aimlessly, momentarily not knowing what to do, where to go. Even my speech functions affected. Shit.

It took a great deal of time to introduce some order. At least, to give an impression of order when, below the surface, there were still lots of confused items.

Basically, I had to understand how learning occurred. It’s process. Create solutions. True, had to wipe clean sections of the mind, but I also had the certainty that some of the stuff could be retained, reused. Built upon. That’s the part I didn’t know how to inact.

In other words, I was getting tired. In mathematics, for example, I could excel. But it was a strain every damned time to relearn from scratch. All I ever did in school in those days was from a blank slate. I had to reconstruct the whole environment. No previous knowledge as a base. Everything forgotten. Not a trace to rely upon. And I would go all the way back to the beginnings of the universe and retravel the path to where I should have been at that point. Tedious. Exhausting.

But I managed. A solution to a problem taught in class. Of course, out of my mind it went. So I would stare at the problem. New, because I couldn’t remember. And I would tell myself that I was capable of figuring it out. Just use your brain, would I order myself. Be logical. Deduct. You don’t need factual information. Just reason. And most of the time, I would pull through. Creating the solution out of thin air. Maybe not the right answer, but a well-developed rationale. And as I improved, I got away with it.

And then, I entered full-fledged adulthood. Much upgrades were called for. I needed a job. I couldn’t walk in an office not remembering where the coffee machine I had been seen using the day before was. Had to remember names of colleagues. That of my boss primarily. All sorts of little details that truly made you look like a fool if you'd missed.

God, did I work hard. Developing methods. Systems. Structures, and inner structures. Devising complex networks of reminders. Refining arrangements of elaborate cross-referencing techniques to cover as much as I could. Orderliness, planning, procedures. They were all there, stretched to the limit, operating at their full potential, never slackening. Absolute tension and focus. Tremendous attention given to the systematization of actions.

You have no idea how many procedure manuals I wrote in the companies I worked for. That’s the first thing I would do. They loved me for it. But I did it for myself. Developing update action plans. Methodologies for data input. Information quality control methodologies. Fact checking processes.

Evenings, nights at home writing cards, filling notebooks, indexing particulars. Even conceived exhaustive lexicons almost everywhere I went, because I couldn’t remember the words I needed. Translation dictionaries for the staff, my way of building tools to make up for my own deficiencies.

I was so precise, thorough, well-organized. An exemplary employee. Taking upon my shoulders the full mandate of improving EVERYTHING. Creating circles to review time and time again the same information. Expert at flow charts, diagrams, connecting all the dots on paper, tables filled with verified figures, columns and lists. I loved it. I had found my world, my place, my playground. Somewhere I could be, exist, as I was. Blooming. Operational. Extending ad infinitum my mnemonic instruments.

To classify is to think, wrote George Perec. Indeed. And I made it. I became a ‘knowledgeable’ professional. Even had fun at it. And one day, the bangs became not so much a necessity, but a hobby.

Laolao

61. House of thoughts

As I reintegrate work after the holidays, what do I think about?

I coerce my mind. Forcing it to fit into details. All energies first plunging, then tightly packed into trivial activities such as making photocopies or updating students’ schedules. The strength of compactness. A necessary density not to leave any part of my being at bay, a part that would be leaping alone, detached.

Bringing the entire artillery to catch a fly, I know. All of me together, the wholeness of my components dragged along, for this is the rule: We abandon none of us. We stick together.

This is called focus, concentration. Amateur psychoanalysts would instead see, I’m well aware, retention and a fixation somewhere in one of the various possible degrees of an unsurmounted anal stage.

For me, this ability to invest one’s totality, even into what does not require such an intense input, is nothing more than having a point of convergence in lieu of mental wanderlust. An adequate voice to support a rallying cry that cannot be ignored. Concrete moments when inventories can accurately be drawn to ensure we’re all here, nothing gone missing.

And also, dear ones, it’s how I nursed myself, year after year, decade after decade. An extraordinary focus I’m quite proud of, I must admit, despite drawbacks.

Remember what I said earlier: I started out in life with a serious handicap. A strange illness with physical and behavioral symptoms that truly impaired my functionality. I was an ambulant disaster during childhood, and detonated with some delay during adolescence. Bits and pieces of me scattered everywhere. A real mess, destroying the quietude of denial anchored all around me. They hated me for the disturbance, but that’s another story.

You ask, why the delay? Well, because I could, to a certain extent, temporize the inevitable. I did it, even as a very young child, by magnifying concentration to extremes. Locking my body and feelings into a position of absolute availability for a task.

I became very good at it and can still, even to this day, with a wink petrify my entire being and push it as a block into a narrow channel of vision. It’s magic. It’s like taking a large sphere and making it fit into the hollow shape meant for a tiny square. I can do it.

In a state as dense as the one I’m describing here, there’s nothing I can’t understand or perform. Give me a hard problem. Something I know nothing about, and let me figure it out. Or let’s look at Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. Or do we want an explanation of the proof that 1 + 1 = 2? I’ll manage it.

The problem is that outside that bubble of concentration, when I read myself back, the mathematical demonstration which was correct, or the austere post-modern philosophical essay, I don’t understand them anymore. It’s like reading the work of another person. I don’t even remember what the words or signs I used mean. But I’m sure I knew a minute ago. I juggled with them so well, I vouch for that. An in-depth perception. All gone now. Vanished. Even the souvenir itself of having written this or that. I can’t recall any of the details. Just a vague impression of having been there, in the text, in the problem, in the “house of thoughts” as I often used to call it. The place where I can go, but cannot sustain nor remember.

When I was hospitalized, they submitted me, and more than once, to extensive tests. At 16, the shrink explained that intellectually indeed there was nothing I couldn’t do. There was not a discipline in this world I could not understand if I tried, but only if I went into my “house of thoughts.” And that’s when he added I would never be able to study.

What can a girl do when faced with such a verdict? Learn to weave baskets?

Believe it or not, they did teach me. They were not baskets though. They were chairs. Weaving the seat and the back. And I was good at it. I pulled on the bulrush like crazy, the tightest weaving in the class. Resistant, undeformable chairs. The best.

I didn’t argue. I didn’t fight the diagnosis. I knew it was the right one.

I could not export my “house of thoughts” into the real world. I could not operate it in a normal context such as in a discussion because it was completely cut off from me.

As I told you, it was a place where I went. It was not a part of me. Some inner secret world. No. It was outside, but to be reached I had to cross all of what I was, all my depth. And it stood at the other end of me, over on the other side. It had a sort of address. Entering a space that had no connection to anything. Just waiting for me. Just there for me. And it could not be described. It had no visible appearance, although I would say it was perfectly smooth and neatly empty. None of the content I would develop in it could be translated into an audible format. Because once out of that “house of thoughts,” I could neither understand nor remember what I had done in it.

How did the “house” came to be?

At first, it was a game. I would let myself fall. Incredible inward distances. I had somehow discovered that I could write an assignment for school this way. I just couldn’t answer any questions about it afterward, that’s true. In my normal state, I was dumb. I could impeccably prepare an exam this way, but I failed completely in the classroom once in front of the questions. Knowledge had been left in my “house of thoughts.” Even if I could go back in the house during the exam, all had been erased the moment I had pulled out.

So I taught myself to stretch the house. Study an hour before exam time, just the main stuff, learn to walk, take the bus, enter the classroom without leaving the house of thoughts. This is exactly like being blind. You cannot be at two places at the same time. You’ve got to sacrifice one. So I did.

I would forget people’s names, my home phone number, how to simply chitchat, unable to carry on any distracting activity. I would walk in an affected way, almost a robot. Rigid. Eyes, the gaze weird. Way, way before I ever took drugs, my parents and school authorities thought I was constantly stoned, out of my head. And they would yell, threaten. But luckily, I couldn’t hear very well either. And I went on stretching my house of thoughts.

The issue with my house, I think, had to do with the air it encountered as I entered and left. Somehow there was a mental draft. A gush of wind that would shake my mind, and which grew bigger as I grew older. Eventually, I had a tornado between my two ears. What a plight. It razed everything. And I snapped.

The young girl who was admitted in a psychiatric ward, as an example, read books in her house of thoughts, but couldn’t remember afterward what they were about. Sometimes, not even the title or the author. But she had read with intensity every single word. She knew she had felt powerful emotions as she read. She was absolutely certain she had developed ideas and comments along the chapters she had gone through. She had no doubt about having understood implications. She had inferred. Analyzed. Decorticated the writing. But had totally forgotten. A perfect blank.

The house of thoughts grew. It helped to survive, yes, but its side effects were devastating. It came to a point where the blankness covered most of the things I did in a day. I had succeeded in extending it quite far, but at the same time it prevented me from having a natural behavior. I didn’t sit, I had a poise. Fabricated. Artificial. An aspect I had to give myself to try and resemble a person while I was busy elsewhere, in my house.

I had to write tons of notes to remember what I had done or said.

You have no idea how consuming maintaining the house in operation could be. Energy-wise. And no one can imagine how difficult it was to land back into the world for even a short appearance.

One day, I found I could no longer do it. An atrocious event happened.

That’s the day I crashed. And everybody just went: Oh my God, she’s soooo sick. Because I was shouting at the top of my lungs, and just couldn’t stop doing so.

You see, the most unexpected thing occurred. There had been something in my house of thoughts, a horrible thing. I had seen it, and had ran away at the speed of light. Finding security in the world of people. Suddenly, there had been a presence utterly hideous waiting for me in my house. I saw it twice. And both times, I screamed like hell, unstoppable. And went mad for months.

To this day, I still don’t know what was in the house.

I’ve built since other houses of thoughts. Much smaller ones. As said, lighter ones. Versatile ones. Adaptable to the imperatives of normal life. With many doors for fast escape. And I have also set up ways of, not remembering for I still can't, but retaining enough clues to reconstruct. But I never went back to my original house of thoughts. It’s been condemned. Buried. And that’s forever.

I talked about it with one of the doctors. He agreed. Better leave it closed. Some things should indeed be left where they are, as they are, and unremembered.

I’ve nevertheless kept a few habits. The main one, I still gather all of myself when I move among activities. I focus. Very important. All of me answering in unison: present.

What if I left a piece of myself behind, a little part of me careless and candidly free, enjoying a stroll, and suddenly whatever was in my house of thoughts showed up again, and grabbed it? Hey?

Laolao

60. A spell on grandma

I’m returning to Beijing tomorrow. Ten days already, replenished by your light footsteps, the high notes of your voices, and of course laughter, the twittering that makes my heart dance. Tender hours contemplating how recreation unrolls itself, also the mess in the rooms after you’ve devised new games, your bodies leaping over the furniture, the vibrant animation of your spirits as they recreate themselves at every chance they get. Easily amazed, your minds astonished at the smallest events, noticing joyful details where one would least expect them. Your hands like a caress, open to escapades on the surface of the world around you. So much giggling resonating through spaces you widen, and strong hugs absorbed by my skin as you deploy happiness like a net to catch me. Erasing time. Days transformed into short minutes, never feeling the pressure of existence. Simply beaming, enthralled by the motion of your beings, little pioneers drawing the maps of new coasts so to gambol even further.

I’m sad when I realize I never could enjoy playtime with a similar intensity when my own children were of school age, preoccupied and busy with work, cleaning, cooking, the laundry. The single mother running around to meet deadlines, pay the rent, the groceries. Responsible for rules, studies, behavior, safety, health, transportation, extracurricular activities. Bosses’ demands. Long hours to make a living. Professional imponderables. Extended family neuroses and crises. The unexpected. Constantly suctioned. My body’s strength siphoned by a universe of appetites. Never enough. Daily dictates fully draining energies. Hardly any left at the end of the day to understand what pleasure and relaxation could involve. Beyond my grasp.

So it is a novelty, this adventure as a liberated grand-mother. Free to appreciate the charm of childhood. Treasuring the connection. A presence tailored for lighthearted moods. Myself available, your cheerfulness accessible. Brazen. No where to go but here, by your side, attending to your chuckles and frisky manners. My eyes on a swing propelled by winds of amusement, sweeping across your crystal clear shouts like when you spin and roll, bounce on the balcony, tousled and out of breath, your smiles as large as my joy to have seen you topple for fun, with bravery, a sense of achievement emanating as you wink at me, the accomplice.

In the long itinerary up to your births, there was often that hope. A moment that would come to be, where I would rest, contemplative and satisfied. Annulling trials and tribulations. A clean slate. Lapses of memory, only paying tribute to what’s in attendance. You and my children on their way to serendipity.

These past ten days have gone so fast. I will continue to hear the ripples of your glee once I’m back home. All my brain cells imbued with the brightness of your voices. As only luggage, your touch and jocular gentleness. And your sunny gaze. And your good natures. And, and.

Laolao

59. Expense accounts

The crayons in your hands. Pretending to write. Or with colored chalk on the asphalt, drawing unintelligible, but pretty signs in neat rows as if leaving a note behind for nonchalant passers-by. You don’t sketch faces, objects. A flower, a fish, maybe a butterfly. You play at scribbling words.

Probably confused by the sight of unalike graphic languages, you compromise, outlining various simulacra of the alphabet adding exploded lines reminding the reader of Chinese characters. An osmosis of visual symbols, merging antipodes in your self-confident gestures. Finding no difficulty in inventing a way to unite the approaches of sounds and images into an outlandish written effort at communication.

I write too. And as I watch you have fun with make-believe sentences, I wonder about my own fiction.

Perhaps because I’m much older than you, I don’t possess the spontaneity you display with your writing tools. I find writing difficult. To be honest, I associate the act with a hard-to-endure form of sacrifice. As I select a word, I become acutely aware of all the others that are being excluded on account of this halt, the decisive moment when writing reflects the stop put to a search and its movements. A choice escorted by sadness. A discerning intuition about what is suddenly left out.

Conscious also that by opting for a language, I discard the possibilities carried by others. The rhythm of syllables in English shut out the resonance a thought might have in French or Mandarin. A voice that precludes other sounds. The idea now limited to one set of phonemes, the musicality bounded, evolving in the restricted area of a single grammar.

So this is what I like about writing: What comes before. Envisioning infinity. The silence as nothing yet is fixed. The waiting period, filled with alternatives. All of them available, interchangeable, frolicking with nuances and harmonic overtones. Slight connotations and variations. Gliding from one meaning to another, everything in that instant utterly feasible.

The minute a verb appears on the screen, it’s all finished. The vast spaces full of promises a moment ago shrink abruptly, now circumscribed to a few vowels and consonants, leaving out the other manners with which an idea could have been conveyed. Thoughts strangled, cemented. Incomplete without their variations, extensions belonging to their potentiality.

The typed word becomes a dry, lifeless choice. Disconnected from the tentacles of other expressions that once gave it the faculty to move and grow at an exponential rate.

I therefore always find what I write riveted, anchored. No longer able to envision the prodigious oceans intention came from. Writing as the narrowing of possible courses of actions. Picking just one. Sacrificing the lot to an isolationist decision. Filled with regrets for what remains unachieved.

It is what has not been said that stays interesting. The ways it could have been articulated. While unused alterations with their multifaceted substances drown fast into unexplored territories. Every time I write, I settle. And except for tiny pieces here and there, I disavow the maximum.

I know the unwritten as the place I’m not heading for. Turning my back. Landing unto the specific, thus eliminating the general and its wealth of undeveloped promises.

A writer in fact who doesn’t like written words. Have you ever heard of that? Somebody who thinks they’re never enough, torrents suspended, unattended to, fixated in forms so much smaller than those that were an instant ago abandoned. Expressiveness constantly elsewhere the minute lines appear on the white background. Blocking the light. Darkening the monitor. An entire translucence jeopardized. The implicit reduced to a few inferences. Heavy toll for a single chosen word.

Obviously not accepting so well that elements are privileged while others are not. Unease, the burden of choice. Finding unfair to name favorites. The amplitude of significance ostracized. Sorrow when sizing up repudiated vocabulary, combinations from now on deprived of a lifestyle.

Indeed for me, writing in essence is about annihilating, putting an end to revolving blends. Hereafter untold. Absent from the text.

So it can be a tragedy. That of what must be forgotten. Relegated to soundlessness. Butchering polyphony.

It is, it has already been explained, in the total moment of silence, when the conductor lifts his arm, when all the musicians are ready, the orchestra stoic, that all that is possible can exist. In the few seconds of instrumental muteness that the immense qualities of symphonies can expand beyond our limitations. It is in a withdrawn stillness that the words can reverberate their infinite depth. When the cadenza of possible pronunciations is still in a state of immeasurability, of endlessness, that all that can be written is alive. The untiring coalescence of phrases that have not yet been traced.

In the heartbeat before a word is laid down, there’s a universe of possibilities. And it is that very moment that I love. Whenever I claim a choice, I thoroughly feel the destruction it implies, an aftertaste of desolation ruining forethought. Obstructing the rest. The writer agonizing, forced to weight the losses. And accused.

I envy your fantasies. The invented words you draw on the sidewalk. Because they do not slaughter potential meaning. They do not have to renounce anything. Unaware of the need to immolate letters for the sake of a few written ones. Signs foreign to decisions. Simply flowing without having wiped out the world they originated in. Your illusive lexicon unfolding, never detrimental, not concealing a multitude of rejected arrangements and items. The marriage of sounds without exceptions or reservations still intact. Unconsumed. Yet wholly viable as long as there are no marked commitments. No favored term to invalidate the macrocosm containing all the odds. Your little hand able to render inexhaustible interpretations, leaving none stranded, no damage spotted in your tracks, no embodiments left behind in the path of writing. Not a soul forsaken. Just a game and no cost.

For years, I didn’t write. Now you know what it was I could not afford.

Laolao

58. Anthems

Many would be gladly excited to remind me that I live in the land of censorship, not comfortably in their “free world.” I will not dispute that.

There are, indeed, a number of topics here I would not approach with a ten-foot pole. But not because of governmental edicts. I would not discuss anything with anyone, from China or elsewhere, related to nationalism, as an example, its blind fervor, particularly in times of extreme febrility, when an inflated pride, almost bursting, in one’s country obnubilates judgment. Reactions become then so dangerously emotional and violent. Some may want to die for ideas, but I find there’s no point in dying for the absence of ideas in others.

Nationalism and fascism can be intertwined so closely, it's hard at times to tell them apart. The phenomenon may weaken by itself, simply a momentary surge in self-importance inscribed in a history of defeat, shame, humiliation – objective or subjective. An intense sense of achievement quickly put into place to repair one’s image. And often soon enough the views of grandeur calm themselves down and are replaced by a more balanced frame of mind.

Or they don’t.

Instead, they may keep mushrooming, answering to a rough need for ferocity, the toxic pleasures stemming from a sadistic attitude. The shutdown of the cerebral cortex, only infantile impulses left to govern the body. Crowds gathering and chanting slogans, moved by a powerful feeling of collective oneness, where not a single individual remains standing up, thinking for him or herself. Waves of ready-made simplistic answers pushing the troops. An overwhelming craving for brutality in a disincarnated context, where no one feels responsible anymore. The thrills of hostility, the magnitude of monolithic beliefs in one’s durable supremacy. You cannot discuss with such people when they are carried by the strength of aggressive communal formulas. You first run, and then turn around and fight back. But you don’t discuss. That may come, but much later.

Of course, I’ve seen episodes of such behavior. Here, yes. Always bolstered by xenophobic fears, a huge susceptibility that can’t handle any type of contrariety. Where will it eventually lead, I don’t know. Perhaps part of a temporary adjustment. The ups and downs accompanying radical transitions. Whirlwinds of hesitations and alarm when faced with profound changes. So rapid that full-fledged adaptation is unrealistic within short time frames. In part supported by ignorance, other parts by a desire to flex and test one’s muscles. It might wear off, it might disappear with a bit of patience, sinking into a more stabilized vision of the environment.

And like I said, it might not.

But such demonstrations are not only typical of the Chinese. Nationalistic arrogance, being conceited, convinced of one’s eminence are quite widespread stances, even banal. You see them in so many places, expressed in so many ways. And in general, no one seems to mind.

So, when faced with such bolstered exhibitions, I keep quiet. I wait to see how events turn out, if they'll choose to repeat themselves in a quest for dominance. I practice a form of self-censorship, finding it useless to argue. But I make tons of mental notes. And I do put forward a cautious, attentive attitude, watching how sentiments unfold. Checking the pulse of thinking, quite worried when it wavers.

The censorship I’m confronted with here is almost always related to apprehensiveness about the outside world. Ingrained. Woven within a long tradition of failures to communicate adequately. Historically justified or not, that’s not the point. The past being what helps to understand causes, but not what can defend and support actual harmful positions.

I admit it: I watch my words, my examples, even quieting down information not to unnerve predispositions to escalate relationships into confrontations. What would be the purpose of moving on strictly emotional grounds, do I ask myself, for I would not be able to maintain the discussion on rational ones. Inevitable clashes would only reinforce feelings of persecution and misunderstanding, feeding anger and calls to redress an obviously deep-running inferiority complex. As mentioned, the issue is not to validate the present using bygone days, but to invoke antecedents to reconcile how one feels today with a sensible destination.

I had a similar position 35, 40 years ago when, in Quebec, fever ran high and independence movements grew into fervent activism. I deeply sympathized with much of the recriminations, finding that their roots were real and that problems needed to be addressed. But I didn’t go along with the mass euphoria, with interventions spurred by puffed up suspicion. Always a fear of what’s new, of the reasons triggering transformation. A society waking up, stunned at the presence of others. Afraid to be swallowed by the gigantic size of life outside its frontiers, beyond its language, surrounded on all sides by divergent viewpoints. Ways of doing things. Shocking beliefs hard to integrate into one’s structure.

So, when it was an imperative back home to only speak French, I went to an English-speaking school. Afraid I would be cornered into a narrow end if I followed the voice of the uniformed multitude. I required space, a tendency towards the miscellaneous. I wanted to confirm my ability to walk away. My aptitude at mixed messages. At the creation of a range of options. I could not stay in one place, mind-wise. I sought emergences. Escape in the form of variety, a surrounding where articulating one’s sense of identity didn’t matter so much and was replaced by identification to the immigrant’s search to counter his sense of lost in an unknown landscape. True, I related more to the newcomers’ struggle on an unfamiliar land than to the desire to hang on to everything that was known to my French catholic background.

About censorship, I knew it also back there, you see. Sanitizing my speech, getting rid of any homemade cultural references, not wanting to fall into senseless situations where I would be accused of treason. Dramatic societal betrayals, my back turned to the genuine and ‘legitimate’ desires of the population. A renegade among pure, faithful citizens adoring their homeland, a deserter, the heretic soul selling out its birthplace. Hideous and untrustworthy.

Thus, I was the teenager without heritage.

And I couldn’t speak my mind on either side of the fracture. Challengers to the French crusade often more short-sighted and dangerous. Replying with uncontrolled brutishness, incapable of empathy, staging ignorance at the forefront of their reactions.

(Self-)censorship is therefore nothing new to me. I cope with the one in China as I did in the sixties and seventies in Quebec. Quietly, waiting for the rage to pass. Evolving without discourse in the margins of popular movements. Hoping for the best as an initial position. Witnessing mutations and social spasms. The hiccups of civilizations as they grab each other’s throat. Weary even of the concept of dissidence. So many met, so-called insurgents, not so much critical of a system, but intoxicated by the prospect of power taken away from others, and falling into their own hands. Deliriously claiming to hold a better quality truth attesting to their unilateral right to rule.

That’s why I can live here and not suffer too much from the limitations put on speech. I find those everywhere. Cyclical. Attached to growing-up pains. As long as they don’t become the nerve center of all civil goals, I’ll just stand by and watch. Ready to move on, my own protest plan up my sleeve. For the fight must always be against stupidity, unassisted by national factors, if that can be.

Laolao