It's all or nothing

On how binaries trap us

Hello,

I’m currently consuming art at a pace that defies any kind of record keeping. I gave up on Goodreads long ago and when sharing on Instagram and X became a slog I tried to keep a list of books, films, exhibition and life experiences on post-its within my journal to share with you here. But right now I’m going through my notebooks too quickly for the post-its to all be in my current journal. Yes, the whole point of post-its are that they can be moved. But in my current phase of feeling overwhelmed by even the smallest of tasks, the act of moving post its from one notebook to another is also too much.

It doesn’t help that I’m an obsessive character. It’s zero or hundred with me, there’s no in between. If I don’t list every book I’ve read between now and my last letter to you, I feel like the list is a lie. If I don’t name every feeling about something I’m experiencing, then it’s not truth that I’m speaking. Somehow I’ve convinced myself that if I don’t share everything about something then I’m not allowed to share anything about it. It’s all or nothing. This binary is so limiting, so isolating, SO unnecessary. And it’s how I got to a place where I believed that somehow being a life writer and also maintaining privacy is some kind of hypocrisy that I need to immediately distance myself from. I’ve been thinking a lot about this, not just in my writing, but in my life. How I overwhelm myself with things I feel I should do, and how this sometimes pushes me away from my core values, and also the joy of being alive, being here, being me.

It’s been five years since my memoir was published. I needed to write that book because I needed something tangible to anchor me to this life. I needed an undeniable object to remind myself that I’m real, that I’m here, that I matter. But now I see that it’s only one of the many things that I need to do to ground my self to this reality, to my truth. It was my ‘I am I am I am’ refrain. And I thought my purpose was to prove to others that I exist, but really, it’s myself that I’ve to keep convincing. And these lists are part of that convincing, I think. I don’t know. I’m still figuring it out.

I’m writing to you from my desk. It faces a wall plastered with my collages. To the right of my screen Fiona Shaw’s portrait by Victoria Russell peeks through. I love this portrait of her and have used a postcard size image in one of my collages. And I find myself projecting on her often. Sometimes I can see fear, dismay, self-doubt and even anxiety in her eyes. Today I see self-contentment, self-containment and a coyness. An invitation to be gazed at, to feel worthy of being gazed at.

I’m reading Roxana Robinson’s biography of Georgia O’Keeffe at the moment. It’s such an atmospheric book, I’m enjoying making my way through various American landscapes of previous centuries and how they culminate to create a young girl with a strong sense of self. Last night I finished In Therapy by Susie Orbach. I read it quickly, in three days. For a book that covers so much, it felt surprisingly light. It’s rare for me to think this way about a book but I felt strongly that everyone should read it. There’s so much there for those looking to understand themselves and others.

A book that I’m not sure I would want everyone to read is Liars by Sarah Manguso. It’s a divorce story, something that has become a fascination of mine as I stumble through my own divorce journey. I don’t think I’ve ever got to the end of a good book and still wanted to throw it at a wall, to want to see the book (object) being impacted by something strong and violent to match its subject. I can’t decide how I feel about the book. I know it’s good, I am glad I read it. But it isn’t one that I want many people to read. As I continue to unpack my feelings, here are two pieces that discuss it. The first one is about friendships that are unconditionally affirming. And another is a review by Parul Sehgal.

Sehgal’s review mentions some of my own recent reading around the subject but her take on this book specifically is fascinating to me. I’m hoping it will help me get to the core of my feelings about this particular narrative of marriage and how wifedom can take over if a woman isn’t braced for impact, isn’t prepared to go to war for herself. What an exhausting way to live. I’ve always looked for softness and mercy in my family life and I think it struck a nerve. This seemingly impossible task of maintaining a dignified sense of self around people who are meant to love you. This brings to mind a recent favorite: Love’s Work by Gillian Rose. It’s a slim volume but brimming with depth, with difficult truths and oh so much character.

Yesterday I watched How To Have Sex by Molly Manning Walker. A beautiful film, full of sadness and hope. There’s hope in youth, in being young. I nudged myself to feel this hope when the credits started to roll. The film takes place between that dangerous territory where you know what you want/deserve/need but don’t know how to get it. And more worryingly, you don’t know how to avoid what you don’t want. There are many things going on in there, but I was most interested in how friends can sometimes become our enemies because of their own insecurities and the way they see us. Friends and enemies is one of the other binaries I’m trying to break in my thinking. To just see everyone as people with pasts who sometimes act in an unbecoming manner and our right to choose how we deal with other’s intentions towards us. I’ve also been thinking about this essay on friendships by Weike Wang.

The dynamic between the protagonist and one of her female friends in Walker’s film reminded me of another great film I watched recently - About Dry Grasses by Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Ceylan’s film disturbed me. It got too close to the bone, so precise in depicting how cruelty unfurls within our interactions when we are feeling unappreciated, when we feel entitled, when we become unable to empathize with those around us and can no longer see how our actions are impacting those we are meant to love and care for. When all we see is what we want, and are so focused on doing whatever it takes to displace the feelings of unworthiness that blooms within us from time to time.

I left the theatre feeling exactly the opposite after watching The Years, directed by Eline Arbo and based on Les Années/The Years by Annie Ernaux. I found a lot of meaning in Ernaux’s work over the years and this play managed to really distill the essence of her work and existence in a moving, powerful way. I don’t go to the theatre often, I find the experience overpowering, and it takes me weeks to process and overcome what I saw. It doesn’t matter so much what the storyline is, I think it’s the bodies on stage, what they go through, what they are put through, and being in the same room as them, to watch them be at such close quarters. I still remember how depleted I felt as I walked out of the National after watching Three Sisters. And how I could only examine the themes once I had overcome my overwhelm at what the actors went through to create these scenes for us.

Another work that’s been richoteing around my mind is this essay by Akshi Singh: Unlived Security - On Marion Milner and Vigdis Hjorth. It grapples with some of the things I’m grappling with around love and cruelty, duty and values, family and foes. Also on Parapraxis is this thought-provoking essay titled Elements of Anti-Semitism - The Limits of Zionism by Jake Romm.

Leaving you with a series of collages I made recently to help contain some of my thoughts and feelings. I’ve titled this series The Difficulty of Being, after Jean Cocteau’s book. The text is from several places and the images are from Kinfolk Issue 16, which I bought for myself a few weeks after my wedding and I remember reading in a cafe on Bourton-On-The-Water with N sitting across from me. I remember the feeling of contentment of that moment and I remember it fondly.

Best,

Zeba