Notes on remembering, forgetting, and learning.

A place to put my thoughts.. too many of them all the time. Not good enough, not formed enough, not old enough. I’m not learning anything here. I know I will, I am. I learned a lot in New York, I think. But what is learning really? I sound silly. Is it remembering? I start to remember when I learn, I remember when I study someone’s movement and it opens a world inside of me. Alison Bechdel wrote something about making the unknown known. Her comics show the life and movement of lesbians.. In Fun Home there is a moment where we see young Alison watch in amazement as a masculine woman walks into the diner her and her dad were sitting at, “I recognized her with a surge of joy”.

Is this remembering important? I can’t decide what’s important. I remember sometimes, like how Bechdel remembered herself when she thought there were no other options in woman-ness. (maybe there’s not, but there exists something else, I am something else). But is something else (butch, outside, nonsensical) a creation or a remembering? Is abolition a creation or a remembering? I know it’s both.

I do a lot of active forgetting.. I think we all do. You must forget yourself, your boundaries, that you have a choice. I have moments of panic I when I feel I’ve lost all glimpses of myself.. This usually happens when I force myself to let go of my body for some external reason. Maybe it’s school or work or caring for others. After whatever task is done that I deemed more important than the sacred connection I have with myself, I feel empty. What am I going to do? I don’t know anything about myself or the world. Everyone is so much more prepared, more engulfed in this world. Where am I? I don’t want to be prepared for this world because this preparation includes a continuous denial of life. I will not prepare, I will not work towards a world where I will not find love. To take my precious time and energy and use it to work towards something that is not of the interest of myself or my loved ones… how did I forget? How did I forget this is not something I want. It is something I refuse. I take a look around myself, at my books, at my garden, at my love. I fall back. But it is not always that easy.