Can You See Me?

 The lag. I feel it the most when I’m in therapy. How to explain to a stranger in less than an hour the disconnect between mind and body? I felt the lag for the first time when I took mushrooms after drinking vodka and doing bumps of coke all day. I was 16. My mom came in my room and asked how my day was. How to respond? Her curly hair is moving in a way that defies all manner of logic. I waited. Are you okay? She asked. I shook my head yes. Fuck. I’m still tripping. She walked out of the room and I didn’t see her again when I was sober until 10 years later. You’re either on the bus or off the bus and you can’t be on if the lag lasts longer than the drugs do. 

Don DeLillo knows about the lag. I sense that the dead are closer to us than ever. I sense that we inhabit the same air as the dead. I carry trauma in the folds of my hips. I feel it when I do yoga. But my mind doesn’t bring me back to the people who inflicted the trauma. I don’t think of them. I don’t speak of them. But I still feel them. The lag- a disconnect, a death of the self. I don’t have a dog in this fight. I am both the dog and the one who bet on him to win. Both the one in control and the one who trained me to be in control. Somehow the odds got stacked against me, and I lost the fight before I even knew what I was fighting for. Everyone has control except me. 

I write, I told my friend when she asked me what I do with my free time, thinking this gives me a sense of control over my life. If we have free will, which at this point it seems that I don’t, what we do with our free time is the touchstone for a joyful life. But Kesey was right. Writers are trapped by artificial rules. We are trapped in syntax. This is why I feel the lag the most when I try to talk about it in therapy. Words can’t describe Borderline Personality Disorder in less than an hour. 

I had a dream last night in which I was in some sort of psychedelic world similar to the ones Rick and Morty visit on their adventures. I was staring at the solar system in front of me, the earth orbiting at a much faster speed than my college physics professor said was possible. Look at that, I said to no one, our planet is hanging on to the bounds of space by a fucking thread. I awoke fearful. The earth spins out of my control, out of our control, out of the control of the entire human race. We all are under the control of the lag. It manifests in language. It manifests in all the ways that words fail us. Grammar and syntax and vocabulary changes faster than one person can keep up with. It’s impossible to learn every single language in the universe. Yet language is all that we are armed with to protect us from the uncertainties of life. 

Annie Dillard- for what is significance? It is significance for people. No people, no significance. The body fails us all the time. The trauma that lives within it makes us say the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong person. We are like Heinrich in White Noise, debating whether or not it’s raining because we can feel it on our skin, we can see it on the windshield. What we mean to ask is how do we find out the truth when whether or not it exists depends on the language we use to explain such truth? The body knows before the mind does. We all feel a disconnect between body and mind. The lag haunts me to this day. 

When I took a writing class after college, I wanted to learn how to make my writing align with what I really mean to say. We discussed the importance of grammar and how it creates logic in sentences. The more logical your sentences, the more coherent your ideas. When you have a coherent idea, your readers will be engaged. Makes sense. But where do you feel logic in your body? I want to explore ways to say what I’m thinking in the hope that some of it lands in the body. Maybe it makes you smile, makes you laugh, makes you cry, makes your dick get hard. Can you see me? Octo Octa asks with one of her songs. I know exactly how you feel, an anonymous voice answers throughout the song. This is what I want when I write, and what I meant when I said to my friend writing is what I do with my free time. I want to use my limited vocabulary to my advantage. I want to string together sentences that might not mean anything on their own (remember the lag?) but when paired with a series of commas and periods and paragraphs they can convey some sort of emotion deep within me that someone else can feel in their body. I’ll carry the weight of the lag so that you don’t have to feel it for yourself. Language, and the way it’s ruled by the body, fails us. The only way we can overcome these failures is by making each other feel something. The body knows before the mind does. 

One sentence is not enough to save the world. Our universe is hanging on by a fucking thread. One thought cannot thoroughly explain my fears of not being understood. I need an army of sentences, an entire bookshelf filled with them, to help save me from abstract ideas (the lag!) that misses the mark of truth. Words are how we survive, but it isn’t enough to only speak them to ourselves. We have to rely on people, and the way they experience language in their bodies, just as much as we have to rely on logic to have our words land the way we want them to. Keep talking not to fill the time, but to create a connection that will help me understand the truths of the world and the uncertainties. I can’t complete my sentence without your help. I’ll always be off the bus. I’ll always let the lag control me. This planet is hanging on by a fucking thread. Feel me before you see me. Let’s get on the bus.