Putting all my words here for safekeeping. My name is Tara. Non-binary, anarchist, life-giver, learning how to be a person.
Schools are closed for 6 weeks. We are still in limbo, standing on a plane with so many possible futures laid out before us. Some are still hopeful. The Earth at least is getting a rest, too.
Already we are getting better at not wasting food.
Work continues. Trying to find a routine.
It snowed today My brain is imagining entire lifetimes in the pauses between things
Remember to slow down
Now is the time of the virus. It is March 13, 2020.
A state of emergency has been declared. Schools are closed, daycare is closed. Offices are closed. Events are cancelled. A went out today but we are starting quarantine now.
Now is another moment when there is a before-time and an after-time. The before-time is already gone, but some of us don’t know it yet. I don’t know yet when the after-time will come.
This is a story about your birth. You are 4 and tomorrow I will be 41 years old. It has taken me this long to find it.
Before you were born we were given a baby journal. A little blank book to be filled with words about the first 4 years of your life, starting with the day you were born.
When you were new, I’d open the book with pen in hand, ready to fill it with the tender and sweet words I knew were meant to be written there. But the words I had were only coarse and awkward, and they strangled in my throat and withered at the tip of my pen. So the pages remained blank, a question waiting to be answered.
I am still a little resentful of this book – its presumption that I should so easily find a story of tender and sweet words, as if the work of being born is not coarse and awkward and terrible, and filled with all kinds of stories.
The day of your birth was filled with stories. A maelstrom of words filling the rooms where you came into life, and very few I think, were tender and sweet. In all of this somewhere is your story, but it is so wound up in my story that I can’t tell which parts belong to me, and which belong to you. I try to find the individual threads and tease them apart, but when I pull on one the whole thing unravels, words falling into my lap in a pile without shape or meaning.
I will grow my roots through the suffering earth and join with others in the darkness
We will grow our branches up into the joyful sky
And turn our leaves to face the sun
It will not be enough to lift up the world
But it will be enough
I will not do resolutions Goals Objectives For the new year
My life is not a project to be managed My heart will not be filled with checkmarks
(well, maybe a little, but certainly not enough)
I will not fool myself into thinking my life is a house that can be built brick by brick
(only worthy upon completion)
And not a painting I have already made by flinging brushes and tipping paint in my rush to build walls
I will write self-indulgent poetry that no one will read and take selfies that no one will see
I will let the dishes pile up and pat my husband sweetly when he blames himself for the disastrous state of our house
I will speak too loudly and listen too quietly I will replay conversations in my head for 3 days after a party
I will not stress about how much I have to do until suddenly I realize how time has passed
But I will still take naps
I will judge myself too harshly for things that bother no one and forgive my sins too quickly
I will fail to be the person I want others to see but I will succeed at being a person
I will learn to speak where people can hear me
I will find joy and hold it close
I will stand still in space and time and let my atoms flow into the cracks and crevices of the universe
(My heart will be filled with life)
And I will marvel at this freedom I have found