Paradoxical Intent

and reading Where the Crawdad Sings and screen time (for good?)

I’ve struggled for months with my screen time. If it isn’t Instagram, it’s Pinterest. Or Depop. Or Farm Tycoon on my Switch. I’ve struggled with screens in the past. I haven’t really wanted to engage with the world at large; so often there’s just darkness living there. The shopping for antiques and vintage stuff on Depop and Facebook Marketplace is new, though. The saving things for creative inspiration is new, too. Feeling too exhausted and scared to go outside is also new. I wonder sometimes, where it came from. And lately, I find myself getting bored with Instagram. I keep whispering, Why can’t I control these stupid screens and what I want from them?

A million years ago, I tell my therapist that I watch violent historical dramas not because I enjoy violence, but because sometimes, I need to remind myself that the world has always existed with varying degrees of violence. She calls this paradoxical intent, a cognitive therapy technique where you are encouraged to engage with your fears or behaviors with a degree of exaggeration or humor. I watched so many period dramas as a child, it would’ve been easy to say it was that I liked the romance of it, but it wouldn’t be true. I needed the comfort of reading Jane Eyre and knowing that humans are often quite good at surviving. They are also good at finding themselves a place to rest. They are good at developing relationships with time. They can repair broken things. They can weave together new stories and new cloth. They are good at collecting flowers and rocks and bones and making beauty wherever they are. They are good at finding their cousins randomly on the moors after almost dying (a very Jane Eyre joke, you have to read it to get it and it’s not funny). Humans are so good at subsistence living, at getting by, and I think we forget that more often than we should. (And when I saw “we” and “us” here, we know I mean me.)

I’ve been reading Where The Crawdad Sings as an audio book. It’s the only thing that’s kept my attention more than scrounging the internet. I keep being curious that the world has made an app (or seven) that make it so easy for me to find beautiful things to inspire myself with. And I want to be clear that, while I’d like to buy things", my initial experience is I can’t wait to make it. Which isn’t consumerist or escapist. It’s inspiration and abundance. It’s made me realize the root for some of the things I am doing.

Kiya Danielle Clark (or Kaya? who knows! I only listen to these books) from Where the Crawdad Sings — is a queen of subsistence living and all the horrible, lonely, awful, no-good things it can be. But also is a testament of all the beauty you can have when your world is so close to the earth. And, yes, the earth can be a scary and violent place. So can people. And you can find ways to be both soft and scary. As a kid who grew up obsessed with Foxfire, I also feel strongly that this is the inheritance of my region. As a girl who grew up in Florida, but Actually Grew Up in Pittsburgh — I feel really close to Appalachia. I wildly adore the Appalachian myths, the Appalachian mountain men, the stories of old women who lived in a shack, deep in the mountains. It’s not that I don’t think it was hard. It’s because I know that if I had to, I would probably figure out how to.

The world feels desperately dark these days, and I am reminding myself that I have long admired the creativity of those living through darkness.

I admire the Ukrainian embroidery traditions of my ancestors — because, often, they did it as a form of rebellion. And, if we follow that thread — we have to account for how much work that was. It isn’t just a simple rebellion of needle and thread. It’s making things that people want to trade for beads, for red dye, for blue dye, for white cotton woven into cloth, for needles, for thread, for wool. And if you didn’t make something worth trading, you had to make the thing yourself. You were the fountain for the red dye and the black beads, the sheep wool finding it’s way into fibers. Fiber arts inspire me on a regular basis because, as a traditionally female art, I admire the patience and creativity. I admire the survival. I admire the stubbornness they absorb in their desire for beauty. I delight in their understanding that what makes something special is that it took time, love, and practice. Plus, you have to be so incredibly dedicated to the rebellion to wait for all the elements to come together, just as they should.

I’ve been thinking about how the price of living is skyrocketing. It all makes sense, this pendulum swing to greed. Isn’t this what we’ve lived through before? Aren’t these all lines from a book I read a long time ago? I see our current life in Great Expectations, I see it in Jane Eyre, I see it in All Quiet on the Western Front. I see it in A General Theory of Oblivion. I see it in The Kite Runner. I see it in every Mary Oliver book. I see it in a thousand books that I’ve read since I could hear the words and since I could read them for myself. I see the stubborn will that humans have to survive everywhere. And it doesn’t depress me. In fact, it just feels right. That’s the way that humans work, isn’t it? I don’t know why it doesn’t make me sad much anymore. It makes me feel resilient. It makes me feel like I’m tapping into the lineage in exactly the way my ancestors hoped for.

Of course, it’s also right to feel the sadness when it comes. There will always be sadness too.

Anyways, so I’m reading this book, and it’s the first time that I’ve gotten close to finishing a book in six months. I’m doing shows again (!!!! — terrifying really. I’ll write a whole other piece about that soon). I keep my hands busy. I go to the Center for Creative Reuse because it’s cheap as hell and it’s also like treasure hunting. I’m forced into creative movement. I feel it all the time now. I feel the body and bone and muscle aches that come with HSD and — ugh — chronic fatigue. I feel the way my knees hurt when they get cold.

And yet, all I keep thinking is: This is just right. Like this is the Three Bears, but I’m right and I know it.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the idea that all this progress is supposed to be leading us to a perfect life, but it’s just not true. All this progress is to give us the tools to make a creative, rebellious, innovative future. It’s so that you know how to light a fire when the darkness comes. Darkness is dependable that way. You have to learn and know and get comfortable with experimenting. It’s half science, half art.

Fuck anyone who tells you otherwise. This is a revolution and you’re here and right on time, I might add.