In Reading and in Writing

by Masha Tupitsyn

Before my reading yesterday, I sat there and sat there and sat there (nervous, sitting through my nerves, the life of nerves, the work of nerves) waiting for my turn to read and thinking about how I now know there are things we can only say to each other, about each other, about living, in writing. That we can only respond to certain things in writing. And how we can only know and recognize certain things when they’re written down. And even once we’ve learned those things about someone, about something, we can only retain and access that knowledge as a feeling in writing. How writing is an interstice of knowing that we enter in/through writing. And when the page isn’t there we are somewhere else, again; with our knowledge, with our understanding, with our feelings. How we go back to not-knowing, not-feeling. Again. How this used to bother me and bother me, how it isn’t enough, shouldn’t be the only way, but how I now feel at least we have this.

Piece crossposted with Love Dog