For the past couple months, I’ve thought about writing some kind of “moving overseas diary”—and some of you kind souls out there have asked for just such a thing—but the more I thought about it, the more I realized I wasn’t sure what shape it should take. But then I thought about how the past year of my life has been full of lists. Lists of things that have been sold. Lists of jobs that have been applied for. Lists of required documents. Lists of appointments made. Lists of items to purchase. Lists of important dates to remember, calls to make, people to thank. Lists are so much a part of life, and I let my writing reflect my life when I want it to.
Astrology isn’t really a part of my life, but yes I’m a virgo and my birthday is in two days. So, in list form, an essay:
There’s Nowhere to Go, But You Have to Go Anyway
The gift of realizing you’ll never really feel at home anywhere is the additional realization that you can feel at home everywhere. I’m trying to use ‘everywhere’ lightly here. What do I know about everywhere? Very little. But when these realizations happen, I believe it’s best to pay attention to them. Simone Weil has words for this: “The most commonplace truth, when it floods the soul, is like a revelation” (The Need for Roots 116).
There are (at least) two approaches to learning a new language. You can accept the fact that you are limited and finite—an eternal beginner—and you can note your mistakes and failures without clinging to them for proof (of what, exactly, is a bigger question, but a desperate need for proof is somewhere in there). You can play, you can try, you can laugh at yourself, at the absurdity and tragedy of communication. Or you can rage against your finitude—in the ways you typically rage—and you can hate the world for not conforming to your desires, your plans, your goals, your wishes. Look around. You’ll see these approaches everywhere. And by ‘language’ I don’t just mean language. I mean life. I mean communication. I mean love. I mean friendship. I mean everything.
One of these approaches puts you in (and is expressive of) a state of receptivity. The other is not. I’ve spent some time in the one that is not, and mostly it felt small and cramped and boring.
The night before I boarded a plane to Berlin with my two suitcases, I sat in the silence of my empty bedroom and I listened. I wrote a lot that evening and I bet most of it is embarrassing. Below is the most embarrassing (by which I mean honest) excerpt. Forgive the drama, I was thinking about death. And life.
The way you live is the way you love is the way you write is the way you sleep is the way you dream is the way you think is the way you eat is the way you style your hair is the way you pray is the way you sing is the way you consider a stranger is the way you drink a glass of water is the way you post is the way you call your mother is the way you tuck your baby in at night is the way you exhale is the way you chop vegetables is the way you make a friend laugh is the way you listen to the birds is the way you die. Tetelestai. Finished even as it begins.
There’s a pattern in my life that I’m finally seeing. I work night and day, I sell my stuff, I save money, I go far away, I struggle in a new language and write as much as I can in my first language, English—a place where I am committed to making a home, absurd and tragic as it may be. I do it until the money runs out, and then I submit. Some of you know what I mean. I come crawling back to the world of work, in whatever way I must, because I have to. But it’s no tragedy, especially compared to writing. And it feeds the writing.
Years ago, I was advised to prepare for interviews for tenure-track positions by articulating clear answers about how I might prioritize research over teaching. In these prep sessions I always answered incorrectly. I kept saying I wasn’t sure I would prioritize research over teaching, because teaching feeds the writing as the writing feeds the teaching and life is an ecosystem, a matrix, an environment, and the goal of doing philosophy is to attempt to live with a certain amount of awareness about all of it. As far back as I can remember, I’ve been warned against creating (living) this way. Even by the well-meaning women-in-philosophy mentorship support networks. But each of us has to figure out what we can do with ourselves.
When the doctors told Philippe they weren’t sure if Sabine and I would make it through labor, I overheard them and I thought: oh, so that’s what this feeling is. And then I thought: I already knew that. I was at an exit point. I believe in a loose way that each of us has many potential exit points. Sometimes we know it, sometimes we don’t. I understood it was my decision to stay or leave, that day ten years ago in a hospital room. I don’t talk about it much because I don’t need to. It’s the most private language I have.
I make the same decision with each book. Do I commit to living with it, caring for it, staying alive for it? Or do I take the exit? It’s my choice. I don’t have to do anything.
It turns out I just love writing and I just love life. I love the impossible challenge of it, of finding beauty in the horror. Last year, knowing it was time to use my scraps of free time to feed people in whatever small way I could, I prepared meals at a food pantry’s massive warehouse, and although the building was largely ugly and uninspiring from the outside, inside it was a temple. We sang Bruce Springsteen together as we put sandwiches in bags. When my fashionable friends and acquaintances in Berlin tell me I should move to a cooler neighborhood, I’m tempted to say: if you can’t find any beauty somewhere, it’s not the world’s fault, it’s yours. But I love them for caring about where I live. And I love them for sensing and indulging my vanity in ways that are friendly, playful, joyful.
Oh gods of imagination, of time, of money, of compassionate self-regard, of commitment to everything with uncertain outcomes, please bless me and stay with me. Please bless and stay with everyone who calls out to you.
They say a “spiritual turn” is nothing more than a cope—the predictable product of living in desperate, uncertain times. But I don’t know if they’ve stood in the doorway, making the decision to go or stay. And I don’t know where they get their certainty. Ich lerne Deutsch, after all. Day by day. Ich schreibe, day by day. You know I don’t always know how much certainty is worth, but I am certain I made a choice, and certain above all that I must remain thankful for having been able to make it.