I’ve been here before. It might not have been the exact same space, or even the same city. But the situation feels familiar. I get swamped by a subtle whisper that this time, it might be different.

 

Nervousness crawls under my skin like ants. They find a tiny opening in the middle of my chest and spread evenly from my center into my arms, my stomach, and my throat, until I feel as small as one of them. Instead of resisting, I embrace the loud, hot, wild event happening beneath my skin. And so, our first encounter begins.

 

«I began to feel like a ghost, a stranger to myself. It wasn’t quite as bad as The Shining, but sometimes it felt close. At least Jack Nicholson had a family to witness and rue his descent.» This was before I shifted. Now, the shift has already happened.

 

That’s the thing about impatience. It, too, is a loud, hot, wild event that plays out beneath my skin. Wouldn’t we all prefer to find an immediate answer to the questions that wander through our bodies? Alina always says I just have to wait long enough—eventually, I’ll see the answer.

 

I feel caught in the contradiction between how I see myself and how I am perceived from the outside. Reflection only sets in afterward—my first response is to analyze my observations. I’m moved by the human closeness among the others. It’s the kind of collective I imagine, and I try to practice myself. When I leave, I still feel like an ant—but perhaps the kind that momentarily moves within a superorganism. The sense of belonging flickers, but it doesn’t rewrite the story.

 

I find myself beginning to slip out of a story I know too well—the story of cherishing the moments I spend alone the most.

 

Although that wasn’t the case for a long time, I am starting to contradict Maggie Nelson when she writes: «For as long as I can remember, this has been one of my favorite feelings. To be alone in public, wandering at night, or lying close to earth, anonymous, invisible, floating. To be ‘a man of the crowd’ […]. To make your claim on public space even as you feel yourself disappearing into its largesse, into its sublimity.»

 

 

At the time, I was becoming something composed not only of myself, but also of proximity, tension, and resonance. The process of the exhibition echoed that shift. 

 

Jeanette Winterson writes: «Once upon a time there was a brilliant and beautiful princess, so sensitive that the death of a moth could distress her for weeks on end. Her family knew of no solution. Advisers wrung their hands, sages shook their heads, brave kings left unsatisfied. So it happened for many years, until one day, out walking in the forest, the princess came to the hut of an old hunchback who knew the secrets of magic. This ancient creature perceived in the princess a woman of great energy and resourcefulness. ‘My dear,’ she said, ‘you are in danger of being burned by your own flame’.»

 

And one of the things the whole story teaches us is this: read yourself as a fiction as well as a fact.

 

By Louisa Behr