I keep saying I want to write about what really matters, but what if that can
only mean what matters to me

That’s the first problem

I have said of other writers that their writing keeps me company. That all I
want is to keep others company too

Any one other

Any one

I have questions

What matters, and what matters to me

And to others

And also

How to know


*


When I translate, I am translating what I don’t know

When I write, when I write and the writing feels alive, it’s because I am writing
what I know but don’t yet know I know

I am writing what my writing knows but hasn’t yet told

What matters to me now, at the time of this writing, is to find a way to write
through a paralyzing fear

This is personal. So personal it’s hard to imagine that the writing that results
could keep anyone company

Any one other, even

Any one


*


I am writing these lines from a low, low place

Wanting to die, or to crawl under the bed forever

Wanting to hide, which is not the same as wanting to die, which makes me
want to know why the sentences arrive in that order

I want to die

I want to crawl under the bed forever

In that order

The second a revision of the first, a backtrack

And recognizing this only makes it happen again, makes me want to crawl
deeper into the hole

Farther under the bed

To disappear, which is also different from dying

Disappear from whom? From others? From every other one


*


I am loved. I am fortunate, even when the hole calls, even when the space
below the bed calls, there is some smallest voice, some smallest flash

“A flash that is not understanding, but that takes understanding’s place”

A phrase I wrote in the context of a fiction about a person who
is barely hanging on, a person

Writing their way out

The flash that is not understanding but that takes understanding’s place says

You are loved, you are fortunate, you are loved and you love

And yet

I’m afraid all the time. Of what

Of everything

Every thing


*


And then sometimes, nothing

There is little in between

When I’m afraid of nothing, it’s not because I feel invincible

When I’m afraid of nothing it’s because I believe in the connection between
people, because I am feeling the connection between people, momentarily

The connection between myself and another person or people

Or sometimes by proxy, sometimes I am sensing or feeling the connection
between other people, and I’m believing it, momentarily, and in the moment
in which I’m observing and believing it

I am not afraid


*


Connections between people are not safe. They are risky

So why does experiencing the risky connection between myself and an other,
or observing the risky connection between an other and another other, make
me feel safe? What is this feeling of safety? What does safety mean

Safety is probably the wrong word. One of the reasons it’s so hard to write
about what really matters is that it’s so easy to use the wrong word

It is always only possible to use the wrong word

We know that there is no right word, but we still hold ourselves accountable.
We both believe and don’t believe that there is a right word and a wrong word.
Who is this “we”

“We” is probably the wrong word too

Safety in the sense of security is not what I mean

Safety in the sense of security is not something I seek or want. Things that are
secure are only secure temporarily. Security as a concept exists only because
insecurity as a concept reigns. Because property as a concept reigns

Safety in the sense of out-of-danger is also not what I mean. I covered this
before. First of all, it’s impossible. But also, risk is inherent in connections
between people. Risk is nothing if not being in danger

What I’m trying to get at is that there is something that feels safe, though
that’s not exactly the right word, there is something that feels “safe” about
certain situations that are only possible because they’re not “safe”

There’s the feeling again, the one about dying, which gets replaced by the one
about crawling into a hole, or hiding deeper under the bed forever


*


The feeling arises when I recall that even if I’m trying hard to write about what
matters, especially when I’m trying the hardest to write about what matters,
and to do so in a way that might possibly keep some other company, any
other, just one

That in these moments of trying to write about what really matters, to me, and
possibly to some other as well, I am not covering new ground

It almost makes me laugh to type the sentence that just came to mind

The sentence is “Of course, I’m not the first to think these thoughts, nor am
I the first to write them down.”

It almost makes me laugh to think that such a sentence would come to mind,
when it is not only so obvious as to be unnecessary to articulate, it is also the
kind of obvious acknowledgment that feels disingenuous, or that risks being
seen as disingenuous, since it contains in itself the possibility of its opposite

It would not be necessary to articulate the negation in the idea “I am not the
first to think x y or z” if there weren’t some underlying belief that it might
possibly be possible that, despite the protestations, the “I” in the sentence—

(I cannot accept that that “I” is me, since I only thought about writing the
sentence but didn’t, until I decided to write about the sentence and its
problems, which is not the same as simply writing the sentence directly as if I
trusted it to say what matters)

—if there weren’t some underlying belief that it might possibly be possible
that, despite the protestations, the “I” in the sentence believes themself
capable of being the “first” to think  x, y, or z

Now another sentence comes to mind, regarding this hesitation to accept that
the “I” is me—the sentence “The lady doth protest too much”

Which is a sentence I have known as if always, a sentence I don’t remember
learning, that I don’t recall being taught

A sentence among the many sentences that were fed to me somehow and got
tagged in my brain as worth remembering, but for whatever reason the origin
of the sentence did not get tagged the same way, so I don’t know the origin of
the sentence

I don’t know the origin of the sentence as it was first presented to me, nor do
I know the origin of the sentence as it was presented to the person, or text,
that first presented it to me, nor do I know the origin of that presentation, or
all the way back to the person who may have, in the first place, made the
sentence

For the first time, I mean. If a person can make a sentence for the first time

I don’t even know if the sentence as it was presented to me was a sentence I
received, as they say, in translation

I know that I could find out the history of the sentence “The lady doth protest
too much”

That I could find out very easily what the agreed-upon origin of the sentence
is, according to the people who believe the sentence matters. But I am
beginning to suspect that there is a problem with this ease of finding out
agreed-upon origins, agreed-upon meanings

The oversimplicity and ubiquity of this idea, of this suspicion that there is a
problem with the ease of finding out origins and meanings, makes me want to
crawl farther under the bed

But now that I am on a train of thinking

Even if it’s a bad train, a train that is on the wrong track, a train on a track to
nowhere

Now that I am on a train, any train, it’s a little bit easier not to want to die, it’s
a little bit easier not to want to preemptively die while on the moving train

Thinking about this almost makes me laugh

Does being on the moving train create a feeling of safety, or of “safety”? Even if
the train might crash? I once wrote about the feeling of relief that comes from
giving over my life to a stranger, to a pilot or a surgeon, even if I don’t know
whether the pilot is competent or whether the surgeon has my best interests
at heart

This feels dangerous to write because I don’t want to suggest that this feeling
is right or defensible. I don’t want to suggest that I have company in this
feeling. I am afraid that having such feelings is bad. That having such feelings
is a luxury. That being a person who has feelings that are a luxury is bad. The
space under the bed calls. The hole calls. Death calls

So many others have written about the ways in which death calls. How can the
thing that matters most to say be something that also has mattered most for
so many others to say

But also how can this not be the case


*


In the metaphor of tagging that I used above, in the metaphor in which things
that enter our brains get tagged as worth remembering or worth forgetting or
worth remembering but not consciously (a label that could be translated as
worth repressing), my tagging system is all fucked up

My tagging system seems to be calibrated in exactly the wrong way, so that
the things that matter most, the things I wish I could remember, are tagged
either worth forgetting or worth repressing, while the things that are useless
or worse than useless, the things that are toxic, even, to me and to others, are
tagged worth remembering

Because my tagging system is fucked up, I am constantly ashamed. I am
ashamed of what I remember and of what I don’t, of what I forget and of what
I don’t, and if I were aware of all the things I repress, I’m sure I would be
ashamed of them too

When I look at the tag cloud that represents my mind, I cannot see a picture
of myself that I can live with. The picture I see is one I am afraid of. It’s a picture
of a version of myself that forgets love and remembers fear

A version that forgets the things I have read and seen and heard, the things
that have kept me company over the years

A version that forgets company matters

That company is among what has mattered most over the years

A version that remembers only the fact that I forget and am ashamed of
forgetting, and only the things that I don’t know I repress but am ashamed of
nonetheless

It makes me laugh

I see a picture of this version of me

Version is probably the wrong word

A “version” of me that makes me say the sentence

I want to die

And then revise it to I want to crawl in a hole, or

I want to hide under the bed

I mean

In the metaphor in which my mind is a tag cloud, what matters

Is not what really matters

In the picture of this version of me

That is unrecognizable to myself, I don’t care what happens to myself

I don’t keep company with myself. I disattach

From my self

Let the pilot take over

The surgeon

I say to myself

Whoever

I’m some

I must

Or

Any

Anna Moschovakis’s recent books are They and We Will Get Into Trouble for This
and Eleanor, or, The Rejection of the Progress of Love. Her translations from French
include David Diop’s At Night All Blood Is Black and Annie Ernaux’s The Possession;
a collaborative translation of and with Ethiopian poet and artist Mihret Kebede is
forthcoming. She lives in the western Catskills where she is a member of Bushel
Collective, a community space for art, agriculture and action. She is grateful to the “here
i am again” virtual reading series at which she first shared from this work in progress.