Preface: Maybe this is the beginning of my madness
"...[A] manic boldness carried me forward" (Cvetkovich 57).Maybe this is the beginning of madness.Maybe it’s your conscience:a knot of life in which we are seized and knownand untied for existence.So in cathedrals of crystals not found on earththe prudent spider of light raws the ribs apart and gathers them againinto one bundle.And gathered together by one thin beamthe bundles of pure lines give thanks.One day they will meet, they will assemblelike guests with the visors up,and here on earth, not in heaven,as in a house filled with music,if only we don’t offend them, or frighten them away.How good to live to see it!Forgive me for what I am saying.Read it to me quietly, quietly. (Mandelstam, Poem 3)
When I sat down to write this reflection I had just finished reading one-half of Depression: A Public Feeling by Ann Cvetkovich, an appropriate text for a time when I was questioning my mental state, academia, and the tumultuous marriage of the two. I thought a lot about the liminality of mental health, the use of manic energy, and the depression nestled in my body. I was fascinated by my study: writing my inquiries in the blank margins and corners of the book. I fervently journaled in my notebook and jotted afterthoughts on sticky notes and scrap pieces of paper. I gave space to all the voices in my head. When I sat down to write this reflection I also stumbled upon a poem by Soviet poet Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam on the blurred borders of sanity and insanity. With creeping honesty, his poetic exploration invited anxious minds like mine to find words for the ineffable
This reflection, written to reverberations of both Cvetkovich and Mandelstam, served as the accompanying text to a fundraiser I launched on GoFundMe to help support my graduate studies. Admittedly, with just over a month left until I started my program at Columbia University, the timing of things was horrible. Despite this constraint, I gave this try the best of my efforts. In the pursuit of practicing radical vulnerability, I challenged myself to share my hidden parts of life—my inner thoughts, anxieties, and inhibitions—with my community and those adjacent to it. The writing that followed emerged from a deeply guarded state. O, the comfort in angst! O, the anguish in being seen! At the same time, isolation did not offer the respite I craved. In the same breath: O, the discomfort of angst; O, the anguish of not being seen! The reality was that I was still sick. In addition, the scholarship I received could not cover this academic endeavour in the ways I hoped: debt-free, stress-free, gentle and forgiving on the body, soothing to the mind, and easy on my pride. Sometimes it can feel like we are mere puppets, manoeuvered to and fro by the forces of string and hand. To think: had these various events not been presented as fait accompli, I would have preferred different outcomes. Had it been my decision initially, I would have chosen a different way to navigate this chapter in life. However, things work out as they work out. I had no option but to pull language from the deep pit of my stomach.
The people who help carry my dreams and aspirations are often more sure of my wings than I am; their hopes for my future are resolute even through the realities of clipped wings. I know this to be often true: you live in the way you grow. In other words, the trajectory of your life is greatly influenced by a willingness to reflect and evolve. Bolstered by the firmness and resolve of women in my life—women more fearless than I, who have long thrown caution to the wind—I opened the door, letting everything that came with disclosure enter. In my culture, we say “na tie mutú ba kata”* —after all, the one who risks nothing gains nothing either.
As I reckoned with the weight and cost of disclosure, and my boundaries and terms, I reworked my thoughts. In the process, I revised, adapted, and turned the sections of the original text into standalone entries for this blog. The entries are vignettes of the structuring and restructuring I have undergone in the past two years. I write each entry as an invitation to myself to stay the course and capture fear amid the wilderness of the unknown. If you choose to step into my words and let in whatever you may find here, then I extend the invitation to you too.
Notes
A Lingala idiom loosely translates to “I offer my head to be cut off”. Figure of speech: (1) Used to reference reckless or risky behaviour by yourself or others; (b) used to reference risk-taking without prior awareness of variables or information.
Works Cited
Cvetkovich, Ann. Depression: A Public Feeling. Duke University Press, 2012.
Mandelstam, Osip. “Poem 3.” Translated by W.S. Merwin and Clarence Brown. 6 Poems by Osip Mandelstam: a poem, The New York Review, 1973, www.nybooks.com/articles/1973/01/25/six-poems-of-osip-mandelstamm/. Accessed 19 July 2024.
