A thinking woman sleeps with monsters. – Adrienne Rich
Cherish your wilderness. – Maxine Kumin
It’s thesis day around here, clearly, with Anne Sexton this morning and Adrienne Rich and Maxine Kumin this evening. I know I have both monsters and wilderness in me, and I know I share Sexton’s view that there is nothing uncomplicated about love.
Have been sort of heavy-hearted today, feeling an inarticulate and undefined cloud of vague sadness hovering around my head. I find myself wondering if I am even capable of happiness untouched by this melancholy that is just part of who I am. Actually, I know I’m not. So what I wonder, I guess, is whether I care. Of course this thought exercise is not very practical since I can’t change it, even if I wanted to, but it is interesting.
I am incapable of experiencing joy unlimned with loss. I am always, achingly aware of the imminent farewell that hovers around any happy moment. I am simultaneously in the moment and already grieving its passage. I am a palimpsest whose first layer is one of deep sorrow, and no matter how much paint I apply on top, that orientation towards sadness always shows through. This is okay with me: some of my favorite expressions of beauty, like the deep blue of a hydrangea or the fire of a summer sunset, seem to share, somehow, this underlying sense of joy’s intractable connection with loss.
Despite my endless ruminations, I have actually accepted this part of who I am rather peacefully. I struggle to relate, in fact, to people whose outlook on life is more simply sunny. These people are often a breath of fresh air to me, and a positive influence, but I am fundamentally unable to understand the way they are wired. Surely my life would be simpler if I was able to live my life without preemptively mourning the fact that every day will pass, without dwelling on my inability to capture and hold the things I love most dearly. But it would not be my life. So instead of wishing I was someone else, I will try and try, as summer fades into fall and the world again reminds us so viscerally of loss and time’s passage, to embrace my own complicated, squirrel-like mind.