Sarah Swinwood
See Your Own Face
WHAT STAYS.
The Mother. The other. Not wanting to stare directly at the wound. Loss of self through placing all power and control in the hands of a confused captain. A childlike woman who keeps her own pain at bay by aligning with the suffering of others. No real connection to a deeper, personal drive. Do you even know my name? The impossibility of knowing anyone. If you don’t want anything, you’re dead. Toss the slacks, rollers, and lipstick. Chuck it out the window. Stop inhabiting a role. Why have intimate, stable love when you can get on that roller coaster? If all you know is PTSD, that unstable place seems like home. It’s self-indulgent. There’s what is being presented and there’s the lens it’s being filtered through. We are at the precipice. It’s a choice, to walk the path of the razor’s edge requires courage.
WHAT EXPANDS.
Do you seek the eternal or the transient? In the scope of eternity, what is there to fear at this moment? Can you think in terms of the eternal, beyond time and its measurements? Look toward the obelisk, one here, another there. The point is not to answer the question but to take what you see and put it into words. Articulate the ephemeral, so that other people can see it too. Take the complicated and make it simple. Allow what is vast to become accessible. You’re at death’s door. Push past the pain. What is the spectrum? The spectral? Who is the spectator? My photograph for you of what I see is these words on the page. I hope it’s not too abstract. Sometimes, when I sit silently on a park bench, inside my heart I am screaming at the top of my lungs, giving it all over, throwing down the whole gauntlet at the gate, flipping the table of the universe. I overheard some schoolboys talking about energy, about reiki. One guy didn’t believe in such a thing as energy. The other guy believed in energy and wanted to know why his friend went for the reiki if he didn’t even believe in energy. I wondered if they could feel the lion in my heart roaring as the phoenix of my soul slowly rose from the ashes. I didn’t say anything, not out loud at least.
Who is going to die? How does it work for you? I like the way Schwob puts it in The Book of Monelle, “Say not: I live today, I shall die tomorrow. Divide not reality between life and death. Say: now I live and die.”
NEW INSIGHTS.
Private versus public versus paparazzi. What is your perspective, what is your angle? Am I in the right light? How do you capture and present me to the world? Do I present myself, or do you? Who has ownership? I’m thinking. I’m feeling. I’m processing. I’m developing. I thought I wanted to see myself as you see me but maybe I don’t. There’s a man behind the mask and a ghoul behind the man and nobody but the baby is tender. I am raw. I’ve been hollowed out to a husk when the invisible appeared with an ice cream scoop, scraping out what was left of my insides. Maybe this is what they mean by die to live, what they are talking about when they say dweller on the threshold. Do you think about these things? Do you ponder on this? I know I ask a lot of questions but it helps me feel closer to the answers, pondering the questions. Letting the questions look at me long enough for me to look back at them and eventually see something. This is me attempting to tell you how I feel, what I think, I’m extending an olive branch. I’m not being frivolous at all. I can’t be, this is like a moving sidewalk through distant stars. You’re born naked and the rest is drag was that Ru Paul or Baudelaire? I constantly wonder lately if I am being trolled and by whom. There’s my personal life colliding with the administration. Maybe this is my hot take, zeroing in on the missing link, the bridge between self and reportage. I think I’m losing touch with old ideas of success, of what it means to be successful. I’m going to keep being voluble because that’s who I am. I talk fluently and incessantly, even when I sleep. I wonder if I have what it takes to find the willingness to be uncool.
NAVIGATING THE SHIFT.
I’m allowing myself to move forward as I switch lanes. It could also be that I’m straying away while circling back to the same central questions. I want to know more about who I’m becoming rather than what I was. My skin has been itchy after a hot bath, maybe I’m shedding my old skin but with it come up buried wounds. There are parts that need to die, the parts I put to sleep in the living room, I let them live here instead of asking them to move on and out. I know I have courage, but do I have restraint? I trust everything openly, instantly, but lately I have been mostly alone. I dreamed of an oceanic inlet this morning, teeming with dolphins and whales. They were communicating with me, I hope it was real somehow, that they came to help me.
Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
Lines from a poem by some guy named Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
Some of it shows up in my notes but not exactly. Whatever was there on my page led me to it and I guess that is how life goes. I don’t need to feel so lost or unmoored. There is a line, an invisible thread of direction. I know I can’t think my way through and keep thinking it through. Part of me will just need to stand my ground, fixed in this moment with purpose instead of drifting into emotional exile. There’s something else in my notes about worn-out shoes, the firm step of someone who doesn’t give up. I guess it’s in choosing what to give up that shucks the corn from the husk, separates the wheat from the chaff. Wondering how much of any of this is optional is a waste of time. The options shrink as commitment increases but the quality improves. There’s a texture to the heightened frequency, it’s much softer, much more gentle yet intense. Do you even want to know my name? What is your obsession? Give up all that is false and as you do so, find your voice. Don’t be afraid to listen to the narration of your most positive dreams. It’s OK to find joy amongst these tombstones. In fact, it’s recommended. Step away from the form or image. Let the finest characteristics of the mystery embrace you.
About the Author
Sarah is a multilingual Canadian songwriter, comedian, translator, and mentor for children in the performing arts. She is currently completing her MFA in Nonfiction and Literary Translation at Columbia University in New York City.