Culminating streams and the yellow-orange continuum
Article and Art by Anonymous
A stream of consciousness, late at night:
I held a lot of shame when I first started masturbating as a ten-year-old. I imagined Gran and Oma looking down at me from the afterlife with revulsion and disappointment. For a while, I believed I was the only person my age who did it; I am too young to have sexual desire, I thought. I used to think I was “fucked up.” It wasn’t until the later teenage years that my friends started talking about masturbation, and the fact that some of them, too, had been doing it since they were little. Parts of me still feel shame when I masturbate.
A memory of stepping on ants: I stood over a crack in our driveway, filled with ants, quickly hopping, then smudging them with my shoes. Guilt. I killed them, thought I shouldn’t do this, then promptly stepped on them some more. This happened several times. Eventually, I told myself not to do it again.
A memory of creating houses: jungle gyms and tree houses for ants out of small sticks and leaves.
I have compulsions and superstitions sometimes. I will be overeating, for instance, and tonight it was a pint of ice cream. I told myself I should stop, but didn’t, letting my mouth quickly lick the sweet (yet not fully satisfying) Dutch chocolate cream until one bite-sized portion remained. Stop. If you eat this, something bad will happen to Opa. Why did I think that eating the last bite, after having eaten like 50 bites, held enough power to harm someone 800 miles away? I hesitated. I finished the pint. Because: A) my therapist told me my superstitions hold no power. B) I had already eaten so much — what more would 1 bite do? C) I really wanted that fucking ice cream.
I do not use the word ‘fuck’ or ‘fucked’ or ‘fucking’ (or any further renditions of the word) much in my vocabulary. If I do, it doesn’t feel natural coming out of my mouth. If I do, it’s because those around me seem to be using it, and I feel the need to conform. If I do, it’s to empathize with someone who’s gone through something really fucked up.
A wise person once told my friend Ella: “Feeling guilty about overeating will only set you up to think you have a problem, which will only further the guilt and the problem.” You ate it. It’s no big deal. It’s uncorrelated to other overeating times.
The thing is, though, that it is correlated. Sometimes I overeat because I’m bored, but most of the time it’s a reaction to stress and fear, and my way of easing that pain. It always, however, results in shame.
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Cipher Editor Meeting Notes:
DJ: Think about the theme/ what you’re trying to convey.
DJ: In what direction does your story head toward? Hope?
Me: No happy ending. I want the idea to end in the present.
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A later night, a later stream of consciousness:
🎵What’s it gonna take? What’s it gonna take? What’s it gonna take to free a celestial body?🎵
Music sometimes: The lines and the chords and the waves and the build, a heart-aching, move-sending intensity!
There’s a certain warmth that spreads in my chest when I notice my own beauty. Like the crinkles next to my eyes or the way I smile. Sometimes I just grin and laugh at myself in the mirror.
It’s beautiful when things are touched by a golden orange warm light — like how my bedroom is illuminated right now by the most gentle of creams, dimly lit, so soft and grounded.
As I’ve let what I want to write marinate, I’ve noticed my material shifting depending on my current mood and outlook on life. Right now, I’m in a mood of seeing things as highly adorable.
I was just looking back at all the photos on my computer — photos since 2017, almost ten years ago — watching old videos and photos of myself, noticing how young I looked. Recognizing the trace of a different body and lived experience.
🎵When I took another look, the past was not a history book, there was just some linear perception 🎵
I looked back at videos of sitting on Sunset Rock, experiencing the sunset; something I’ve done at least a hundred times. I love my grown ability to sit spaciously, admiring beauty around me. These videos remind me that even six years ago, I would sit through it all, acutely attentive to the shift in shapes, the wisps and shades of cloud; enlivened by the brisk wind, in love with the different bird calls.
🎵Everyone knows to dance, even with just one finger 🎵
When looking at these photos, I also noticed how much thinner my thighs were. How hot I used to be. How unhot I feel now in comparison. Yet today, I rejoice in the goofiness of my chin, or in how music can rock my mortal soul in a way that makes me feel incredibly alive.
I want to paint myself in a way that makes you, audience, see me as right. And if not as right, at least well-intentioned. I don’t want to highlight the parts of myself that feel disgusting, inhumane, monstrous, “fucked up.”
It was Halloween recently. And I wrote in my journal: “monsters, zombies, witches… the things we are afraid of. Why do they scare us? I suppose monsters eat us, zombies try to kill us, witches cast spells on us. But do we ever question their character? Who are the monsters in our day-to-day lives? Who do we have strong resistance against and fear towards?”
It’s such a good sensation. The buzzing. The high. The tension, and desire to scream, followed by a relief, a contrast in tightness with a soft ease. What a delight! And there is no way we are to talk freely about that sensation!
[You can clearly tell that I am in the middle of understanding. In the middle of processing. In the process of becoming.]
And I am becoming during every second. And that realization makes me smirk, closing my eyes, in deep gratitude (can you tell I’ve read a lot of Ross Gay?).
🎵Kiss the ones you are right now, kiss your body up and down other than your elbows! 🎵
Realizing I’m self-centered, art-encapsulated, short-attentioned. I wish to be more attentive to the communities and work that is built on coalition. That is built on love. That is built within life. The life of vulnerability, of bravery. I love you. In the bravery and vulnerability of “I love you.”
A memory of confiding in Ella: I told them I’m sometimes ashamed to feel love, admiration, aesthetic satisfaction when looking at myself. They grumbled eloquently about how negative connotations of words like “self-absorption” and "vanity" cause people to shift their self-love to the periphery. They reminded me that if we can see the beauty in ourselves, we can see the beauty in others. And vice versa (“You are a part of me I do not yet know” ~ Valarie Kaur). And that’s when I remembered we are all made of the same clay; we’ve all been water, we’ve all been sunbeams. Acknowledging our own beauty is acknowledging the beauty of a golden sunbeam tickling a leaf. It’s rejoicing at the way swallows fly in packs, in freeing swooping dives. Icy lakes. The guffaw of a friend, their head tilted back in an uncontrollable release; cathartic (the feeling of infinite goodness).
It also means that these cages I find myself in — hyperfixating on my thighs, a revulsion toward the self, a revulsion toward others — a squashing of ants — they are a product of everyone and everything, too. I’ve gathered these pieces from around me. These pieces tell us who and what to be afraid of; they tell us that our world is filled with monsters, and that the scariest ones can be found within ourselves.
🎵Cuz as for your elbows, they’re on their own, wandering like a rolling stone, rubbing up against the edges of experience! 🎵~ “Spud Infinity” by Big Thief
I don’t mean to be grim. Or pessimistic. Or, optimistic, really. I acknowledge the intense beauty of it all. And the “what the fuck is happening, why is life so hard and complicated?” nature of it all, too. Often, I just feel like screaming. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Insert: all the love I have, ever.