Summer’s End
Less than a month before I leave for NYC— these are the last days of Californian summer I have left.
This past weekend, I visited Reno with Ila and her family, which was otherworldly. Reno, contrary to what I had imagined, is not flat desert, but beautiful, mountainous terrain. We visited Pyramid Lake, a lake left over from the ancient sea bed that covered all of Nevada. We made ugly sand candles. In the morning, Ila and I swam in the Truckee river, which felt akin to a baptism.
Lately I’ve been in a state of panic and confusion. This is a result of this funny transition stage I find myself in. I’m having lots of really basic but all consuming revelations. In my typical magical thinking, I’ve been seeking out symbols as though my life is an English seminar. I’ll see broken down cars or an interesting tree and I’ll think “Such is life.” I am truly losing it.
MY STATE OF MIND
I read somewhere ages ago a quote by Kafka, who I’ve never read, about his attempts to put into words the inexpressible things that he only feels in his bones. We all are moving through this world feeling things in our bones and hoping that we can know what others feel. As a child, I figured that if I read enough books, spoke to enough interesting people, meditated and wrote for long enough, I would Figure It Out. Whatever that is– the human condition, our purpose, why people are the way they are. That’s the sort of silly, hopeful, mildly true thing a child would come up with.
Ila and I (mostly Ila) have been reading about Gnosticism lately. In Gnosticism, the side of early Christian practice that was eradicated by The Church, you get to make up your own mode of practice, so long as it brings you closer to God. Maybe that’s what all our attempts to Figure It Out are. They don’t have to hold truth for anyone except ourselves, since there is no way to be sure about our guesses. And any knowledge we acquire, no matter how common or esoteric, is colored and framed by our own lives– all that we learn is collaboration. So really, anything that you know will be unique to you, and all communication is translated by our own circumstances.
A brief list of my favorite guessers that I have collaborated with
David Graeber and David Wengrow, authors of a big fat book on misgivings in historiography that I still haven't finished.
“Social theory is largely a game of make-believe in which we pretend, just for the sake of argument, that there’s just one thing going on: essentially, we reduce everything to a cartoon so as to be able to detect patterns that would be otherwise invisible.”
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
John O’Donahue, a priest, poet, and philosopher.
“It is a strange and wonderful fact to be here, walking around in a body, to have a whole world within you and a world at your fingertips outside you. It is an immense privilege, and it is incredible that humans manage to forget the miracle of being here. Rilke said, ‘Being here is so much,’ and it is uncanny how social reality can deaden and numb us so that the mystical wonder of our lives goes totally unnoticed. We are here. We are wildly and dangerously free.”
Anam Cara
Mary Oliver, prolific nature poet and lesbo. I feel the need to mention that because LGBTQ folks are seldom represented in the western literary canon despite their great contributions.
COUNSELING AT NORCAL SUMMER CAMP
This summer I worked with children a lot. Kids are total mysteries. The sort of confusion and wonder at being alive that children move through the world with is what we forget as grown-people. As if we will ever know enough! As if everything we learn in school and life about mountains, bugs, each other, the moon, cultures, the fibonacci sequence, love, arteries, government, and all else should satisfy that wonder. Why do we tire of learning? Is there something that happens when your brain stops developing that makes you quit wondering? Is it like John O’Donahue says, about the numbing effect of our reality, that kills the mystery?
Everything that happens in childhood is so essential to personhood later. I believe that the work we do in these camps, and all of NorCal SOTA’s programming, is extremely beneficial to the development of the child as a person and as an artist. I carried a lot of stress about this, about making sure everyone left with good memories of camp. This manifested in funny ways, like obsessively cleaning the old building for their performances, putting lots of energy into fairy-play, and spending hours water-coloring thank you cards for each child.
Working this job made me realize lots of things about who I am as a worker– I put my entire person into this work, which is so not in line with my ideas about labor. My work style is proactive and detail-oriented, which is probably because of the nature of my work with ReCreate. I spent my free time out of work watching child psychology lectures, reading about strategies in classroom management, and learning songs to signal transitions. While at work, I put all my energy into being effective, fair, and whimsical– because the kids deserve nothing less. Our Administrative Coordinator Caylen told me that my devotion to my work comes from my Taurus sun.
CHANGE, LIKE THE WIND
Friends have begun leaving for college. I wish you all the very best– I wish you beautiful readings and realizations and that you’ll meet with wonderful people and ideas. Recently I saw a friend off for the last time and we were all overcome by tenderness. Why do we have to leave? Why is life, youth, and connection so fleeting? The rest of that night felt awful and attuned to the brevity of life.
Hopefully I will be able to meet up with those of you who will also be in NYC and/or the east coast! A great deal of my 3 months in NY will be for college touring. I would love to peek into everyone’s schooling :-)
Die Barke, Odilon Redon
Soon I will be re-applying to college. I found that my old Common App essay, the sum of my being, had remained in my account when I signed back in yesterday. In it, I claim that my varying passions reveal insights about the human condition. “My studies make up a tapestry of the human experience– a limited though ever-expanding grasp of the world Neve lived and died in.” Neve was a baby who died in the Mesolithic era and was buried with family heirlooms. My paper opened with a recollection of reading about the archeological find of Neve, and my bursting into tears of tenderness about the human condition. What a blissfully vague and melodramatic way to introduce myself.
I still believe that my studies and my art bring me closer to the broader human community, but I hope that my writings on the human condition will be more nuanced. Maybe I’ll ponder the ideas that have been bothering me lately– Aging and Wonder, Empathy and Ethics, and Life as an English Class. These are self-indulgent, silly titles that I will not expand upon. Take away what you will, since all knowledge is collaboration and guess.
Much love,
Sela
