i.
Am I a camel or a cactus? I am sitting in the middle of the sofa. The cream-colored covers are a desert. I have not felt this way in a long time. A camel with no humps, or a cactus with no thorns? I really don’t want to go out. Everyone outside is a far more decent human being than I know myself to be. I don’t want to attend any social gathering. When it is lively I fear I will be too quiet, but when it is quiet I am afraid I will scream. Just half a glass of something to drink makes me exceedingly slick, I’m so slick I might slip at any time, roll down the stairs like I’m doing aerobics or calisthenics. In moments like these nothing is more comforting than feeling the black and blue of every bruise on your body. Every mark or scar is a pill. Once pain takes the shape of a concrete form, I am no longer frightened.
Why don’t I just keep sitting here, with my back to the TV (which isn’t switched on), massaging my calves and my insteps with the remote control. Why don’t I lie down? I can spend up to 15 to 20 hours a day in bed. Sometimes I feel like I’m lying on top of the mattress, sometimes I feel like I’m lying under the mattress, other times I feel like I’m lying inside the mattress. Surrounded by a labyrinth of bedsprings, I’ll never find the way out. Getting out of bed is just as difficult as falling asleep.
I harbor the constant feeling of the door being unbolted, and I am always hearing someone ringing the doorbell. But my house doesn’t have a doorbell; I’ve never installed one. I am always hearing my cellphone vibrating. Once I took it in hand and I saw with my own eyes that it was not vibrating, but still I felt with my fingers that it was vibrating. I don’t want to pick up anyone’s calls, but the truth is that no one is calling me.
Nothing is happening, nothing has ever happened. Ardency and hysteria are merely two sides of the same coin.
ii.
Shut up, Shut up! Different things can be sad it’s not all war.
iii.
Here, where the lonely hooting owl
Sends forth his midnight moans,
Fierce wolves shall o’er my carcase growl,
Or buzzards pick my bones.
No fellow-man shall learn my fate,
Or where my ashes lie;
Unless by beasts drawn round their bait,
Or by the ravens’ cry.
Yes! I’ve resolved the deed to do,
And this the place to do it:
This heart I’ll rush a dagger through
Though I in hell should rue it!
iv.
You will come at a turning of the trail / to a wall of flame / After the hard climb & the exhausted dreaming / you will come to a place where he / with whom you have walked this far / will stop, will stand / beside you on the treacherous steep path / & stare as you shiver at the moving wall, the flame / that blocks your vision of what / comes after. And that one / who you thought would accompany you always, / who held your face / tenderly a little while in his hands— / who pressed the palms of his hands into drenched grass / & washed from your cheeks, the tear-tracks— / he is telling you now / that all that stands between you / & everything you have known since the beginning / is this: this wall. Between yourself / & the beloved, between yourself & your joy, / the riverbank swaying with wildflowers, the shaft / of sunlight on the rock, the song. / Will you pass through it now, will you let it consume / whatever solidness this is / you call your life, & send / you out, a tremor of heat, / a radiance, a changed / flickering thing?
v.
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become interesting.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again;
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands.
vi.
At such moments I don’t think about all the misery, but about the beauty that still remains.
vii.
The world is not a settled gift
Words: Ren Hang, Greta Gerwig, Unknown: Sourced via Joshua Wolf Shenk, Anita Barrows, Galway Kinnell, Anne Frank, Teju Cole
Photographs: Fatoumata Diabeté, Hans Bellemer, Vincent Ferrané, Eloghosa Osunde, Claude Cahun, Ren Hang, Vivian Maier.
Edited and Curated by Adeola Olakiitan.
SOCS 