intimate distance
this time is different
I’ve been struggling to write lately. I keep approaching the page with apprehension. Everything feels tight. I am too aware of an invisible audience. I write three sentences then immediately turn back to edit them, chasing my own tail.
The ideas are beginning to form. I write down random facts, transcribe bits from podcasts and films, jot down new rabbit holes to follow. But when I try & map them, the ideas are miles apart. I have little sense of how they will coalesce. how the parts will become a whole. how they will begin to take flight. I need more parts I think.
In the past, creative ideas have burst onto the scene. I’d fumble around in the dark and *BAM!* they’d rush in, almost fully formed. From there I had clarity and would get to work.
This time is different. The path is vaguer, quieter. Luckily, I’ve been listening. My logic brain hates this. useless it rings out, baring its teeth. But I keep listening.
“writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” ¹
What has been clicking lately are these sewn sketches. A mix of machine and hand sewing. They are repetitive, weaving in & out.
I’ve been sitting with the phrase “intimate distance”. I read it in a book last year that I did not finish. This term was used to describe how colonialism maintains relations of intimacy across great distances, an intimacy critical to the structure of empire.²
I think about the Global North and South, one “thriving” by pilfering the other. I think of the company I work for; a company that would not exist without the outrageously low prices paid for goods made a world away. goods that travel three weeks to get to American soil by sea.
I think there’s something here. I can’t quite put it into words, but I wonder if that’s the point. I am trying to capture a feeling. How does one catch a cloud?
I am finding my way in the dark.
¹ E.L. Doctorow
² The Intimacies of Four Continents by Lisa Lowe