Leaving Dakota
“With the energy she put into maintaining the lie, she could have learned to read and write a long time ago.”
“Could I deprive her of her life long lie without opening some vision of a future to her?
The Reader, Bernhard Schlink
Departure
I arrived on the island of Vieques Monday evening. In exchange for 25 hours of work per week, I stay for free at a hostel yards away from the sea. I realize that I could have stayed home for just about the same reasons -- without the work and without the sea. Maybe with time I'll be able to figure out why I've come here, why I've chosen to work when I had the chance to do otherwise. I know that the sea, the island, the wild horses all had something to do with my ending up here of all places. And it is strange that after a month of searching for apartments in New Orleans and planning to finally settle there, I ended up here instead, just as nomadic as I've ever been. Nothing has changed, and, everything has.
I am not the same traveler I was a year ago. All this time, I've begged my travels to give me something, distraction, adventure, solutions, peace. This time I ask for nothing. I simply accept whatever it is she wants or does not want to give me, and I feel like already she has given and I have taken.
If I knew what it is I needed, I'd know what it is I’ve already begun taking.
The simplicity of this island strikes me most of all. Many of the cafes here never recovered after Hurricane Maria, so it's just the very basics. No coffee shops, breakfast cafes, elaborate grocery stores. This morning I went out in search for coffee and I knew before my search began that I would find none. I knew in the end I'd have to use the old French press I found in the pantry, which meant I'd have to figure out how to work the old stove too. And all it took was a morning spent on an island like this to make me realize how deeply rooted my dependency had become. But in knowing I simply cannot have it, not now, not at this time, something in me kind of shifted and suddenly I'm doing without something I thought I could never do a day without.
There's something about this island that's very difficult to describe. It's a feeling, sort of like a smell that you can only understand by taking in. Time moves far slower here. The day feels vast and wide, whereas in Virginia it felt cramped and narrow. It could be the wild horses, or this feeling that the island is holding in a secret. It's a place you can't imagine ever leaving. You also can't imagine what it would be like to stay.
An Island of Resilience
The island lost its only hospital in Hurricane Maria two years ago. They never got the funding to repair it, and it's been abandoned ever since. The airport's more like a large shack, with cats roaming in and out and an exterior that looks like it could come down any minute. It's beautiful, this abandon, this simplicity, the island's honest expression of itself. No where on the island does it appear to be anything more or less than what it is. You either love it for its failure to be what it ought to be, or you leave disappointed and confused for its stubborn will to remain as it is.
An island that's neither trying to flatter your gaze nor cover its faults, and which remains, despite its crumble, so heartbreakingly beautiful... it's something worth traveling to witness firsthand.
It doesn't take much time before you realize that this is an island that has had to fend for itself. They've formed a deeply loving and loyal community here. And it's the way they look after each other here, the way they sit so comfortably and carelessly beside each other, the easy way they show their love, makes you want to leave your whole complicated life behind in the states and nudge yourself into this tender community and do exactly what others my age have done, which is to let the years pass and forget they ever meant to return.
“Now to escape involves not just running away, but arriving somewhere.”
The Reader, Bernhard Schlink
On the Subject of Abandon
Recently, I've noticed something about myself that has really unsettled me and made me regret all the time that has passed without me being aware of it. It may not mean much at all, or it may explain everything.
I have not learned the art of abandon -- that total surrender to everything, to fate, to each hour, to circumstance, to the muse. I'm living my life as if it all took place on the very edge of a high rise. I have one eye on what's taking place and one eye on the distance. It's as if I truly believe that if I loosen my grip on the hour, if I reverse our roles and let the hour carry me, I may find myself in some unfamiliar mental space, a space that may do me a great deal of good.
But I don't allow myself this migration. I choose to stay in this war I wage against myself each day, each hour. If I write, it's with one imaginary hand gripping the real one that simply wants to play against the page. If I find myself at last with someone whose company I truly enjoy, I keep my eye on the time and for no reason at all, announce that it's time to leave. It’s as if I fear that if I were to allow this precious moment one more minute, I may ruin it all.
I realize too that total abandon requires total comfort and to have one, you must have the other. I did have this comfort before, and I did let go, but it just so happened that I was badly hurt when I did. Since then, I've reverted back to the methods that worked so well in my childhood, methods that were absolutely necessary then but extremely debilitating now. And if there's any hope of trying again, I must first discover a permanent residence of comfort and camaraderie. I must find or make a home for my artist. Only then could I hear her again, and she me.
The lie
In screenplays and short story writing, we're taught that almost every character begins with a lie they believe about themselves. This lie is so crippling and so deeply rooted that not only do they not recognize it for what it is, but they also believe that it is such an integral part of who they are that to change or abandon it completely would mean an abandon or change of who they are or who they believe they could be. And while this change is often a necessary one, they nonetheless choose to stay where they are. The lie keeps them somewhere safe, and though it may be a sort of hell, at least it is one they know well, one they could navigate with ease. That is why the inciting incident is necessary not only for the sake of plot, but for the sake of character change as well. The character is somewhere because of a lie he believes about himself. This inciting incident is supposed to rob him of this lie or illusion he's held onto for so long. Now, the character has to ask himself, who am I or who could I be without this lie?
The lie could be mixed with some truth too which makes it all the more harder. For instance, a man with a stutter isolates himself and keeps himself from finally meeting the woman he loves in person. Now it is true that his stutter makes it extremely difficult for him to participate in regular everyday conversations and situations, but the extent of the blame he places on his stutter is exaggerated because of the lie. It is my stutter, the character says, and not what I believe about it that keeps me apart. And while it is true that what we do with ease he does with far greater difficulty, his false belief about himself exasperates what was unquestionably a challenge before and an impossible obstacle now.
The time has come for me to ask myself what is the lie that I have believed for so long that has made me less than I can be and kept me far from who I could be. Who am I without this lie? What could I be doing without it?
In the Artist’s Way, Julian Cameron points out that we often ask ourselves the wrong questions, and in doing so, we're often bombarded with the wrong answers. I've always asked why others and not me, why this unhappiness in the place of the happiness I could have, why this failure, always this failure? I never asked the kind of questions that would force me to work my out of something and into something else far more desirable. It was easier to believe that God had dealt me a stack of very unlucky cards and there was nothing I could do about it. But the moment I began to sense that actually, there's a whole lot I could do about it, well then, it all became far harder to escape. There's work that must be done. It's not longer about something being done to me or against me. This switch from the external, mysterious "them" to the very personal "I" is a very difficult and painful one to make. It means I am the reason for my being here, where I do not want to be. But it must also means that only I can lead myself out, and that the exit is, after all, very much possible.
We all have tremendous will power when it comes to leading ourselves into long-lasting tragedies and romantic tales of regret and losses, and we claim to have almost none of it when it comes to leading ourselves out of it all. But there must be something that could be done, and to know action is necessary, I must first discover the lie, or as we say in screenwriting, the "weakness" that has led me to a mental territory I am desperate to get out of.
And just as I struggle to define that weakness for my characters, I struggle just as much when it comes to defining my own. And it could be that I carry more than one lie, all of which needs to be dismantled if there's any possibility of change. Perhaps one of the most obvious ones that I can point to is that I believe I can only be what I am now, which doesn't add up to much. A few scattered projects here and there, some successful, others not, but there's nothing cohesive about what I do or who I am. Even my personality alters from day to day. Questions like what do you do or tell me about yourself often sends me into these long, staggered, and sometimes, overused monologues that in the end only succeed in confusing both me and my listener. I feel like I am not whole, but a collection of parts, some in harmony with the rest, some completely random and misfitting. I think this has to do with my efforts of developing a new sense of self while not bothering to discard the older, decaying parts of me that are no longer useful and which anyhow were deposited into me by people who never bothered themselves with too much thought about me. So here I was, all along trying to build a new, stronger individual over a weak and crumbling foundation. It's bound to fall, if it even succeeds in standing briefly in the first place.
The other lie, and I do hope this is a lie, is that deep down I believe I cannot be more or other than what I am now. I use a past I am desperate to correct to build a future that hardly departs far enough. There are moments when my mind wanders beyond my grasp and I catch glimpses of a book with my name on it, or a preview of a film I've made on screen. Then I draw myself back, always. I never stray far enough, or long enough. A wise student of mine once told me that I was trying too hard to change my habits without changing my thoughts. The degree of truth in what he'd said struck me, and it's stayed with me all this time. Deep down, I do yearn for what I believe is no right of mine, and often, I do put in the work for it, but my thoughts are just as tangled and unhelpful as they ever were, as if my thoughts were caught in some endless, petty war with my actions. If I can find a way to align the two, I believe I can be far more than I am now, and maybe even close enough to what I deeply desire and dare not pursue with too much ambition.
Over the next week on this island, I'll be thinking of all the lies I've carried, all the weaknesses which I must have resisted changing. I pray that God hears my thoughts circle at night and that he send me the inciting incidents that we send our characters when its time for them to change and carry the plot along. I pray that he send me mine in time, and that I will have the courage to listen, to act.
As I was writing this entry, a brown horse passed by beside me. It was raining hard. He stopped beside me,
said something in his native tongue. It could be that he was greeting me, or, it could be that he was asking me to leave.