THERE ARE TIMES when I think my life must have begun with a No.
I take this thought, which is also a feeling, with me everywhere I go. It is nestled somewhere deep in the grooves of my past. There are people who notice I carry around this ancient negation. They become curious the way I have seen certain adults become curious about wild animals that are about to go extinct. How terrible to know that a creature that has been there all along, suddenly, on the verge of its disappearance, becomes visible. I allow these people to approach me, but I don’t always answer their questions. I pick and choose. Over the years I have become more deliberate in my ways. If I tell an overly constructed person about my negation, they become uncomfortable. I interpret their discomfort to mean that their own void has suddenly become palpable to them; their gaze turns glassy, they detach. They look disturbing to me then, their eyes vacuous as if they have been unplugged from the world…
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