Vessels
She’s Melody’s Echo Chamber.
5/10 “Theseus”
I am thinking about the Ship of Theseus. I have been feeling like a ship. Boats are an odd comparison to humans because they are inanimate, and anything inanimate can belong to a person in a way that it become “not itself” anymore, no longer its own. Humans are not the same, animals and plants even would be too if we weren’t stupid. The most we can do is tell one another that we belong to each other— no one truly does; we just pretend. It’s a positive lie.
Truth: The Ship of Theseus will always that ship which belongs to Theseus. If I leave, then I have the potential to become something new to wherever I once was, because I belong to myself. We are constantly being shaped by our environment in ways that move us emotionally and redetermine our physicality (gene expression is influenced by environment). If we want to say “becoming something new is being completely materially replaced” then humans can never be the Ships of Theseus, returning strangers, not because we carry certain parts of us forever, but because our souls can never be replaced. The part of us that lies outside of time— the part of me that remembers what it was like to be in 2nd grade, getting a piggyback ride back from recess. She is still telling me how to act at (almost) 23. I am her vessel.
Do people ever really change?
Maybe Theseus’s ship was destroyed the moment they pried the first nail. Whatever it used to look like would only become a memory. We humans are vessels of memories, made from memories, constantly changing.
What if the ship is just destined never to come back to port? What if the port has also been replaced? Would the new port recognize the old ship? Would they act like strangers?
5/16 “Inspiration”
Unstoppable forces of creativity flowing through me for weeks now. Despite physical exhaustion and fevers, I feel like I’m flying, which alludes to the metaphor of Icarus, whose fate I am keenly aware of in this moment of manic expression. I hate taking breaks. I would sleep in the ceramic studio if I could. My mind contains rivers of ideas which waterfall and cascade into the pools of my life— ideas for summer, ideas for school, ideas for gifts to give.
I feel married to the work, or at least engaged, in the sense that it consumes the time someone my age might spend seeking a partner. I have no desire for it — the seeking that is. If I were to attempt that pursuit I would certainly feel a lack of satisfaction comparable to creative burn-out. Besides, nothing feels natural these days. Everyone in Seattle is riddled with anxiety and false senses of superiority (myself included). I don’t feel the same urgency to start a family that I had at the very beginning of my twenties — which Susan Sontag says is a double-standard of aging. I’m still aware of the biological clock, but I’m also aware of women who waited to have families and children until their early thirties, who have fulfilling careers and creative practices. Plus, at the moment it seems like every right-leaning man is hell-bent on women having babies early and in quantities which leave no room for anything in a woman’s personal life, and I am certain it is my duty not to succumb to that propaganda.
I plan to wait until I’m at least 90 before I have my first child. By then I will have both settled comfortably into a creative niche and spent multiples of 10,000 hours developing my artistic practice. I might consider having one earlier, but only if I run out of steam with my work. Children are abundant vessels of inspiration.
5/19 “Duck Eggs”
Today on the way to the store, a blue jay talked to me. I think his exact words were: “give me peanuts bitch.” I walked home coolly and now there is a tiny spider on my oatmilk. I sit and wonder what the world looks like at that scale. As I watch it investigate my dining table, I consider moving it to the vase of flowers, debating whether that would be an acceptable home for a spider.
As I walked past the sports bar, a dude speaking loudly almost hit me in the face as he turned and pointed at something. I gave him a dirty look, but only because he interrupted my concentration on the Mariner’s game in my left ear. Now I am listening to the game with Bjork overlaid. I’m really curating a new vibe here.
I looked up at the clouds and watched the light crawl over the sailing nimbi. The ghost of lightning breached my vision.
Sometime before or after this, a rabbit bounded down the path toward me. I looked into its eyes and felt with my entire being, “I am not a threat to you.” It hopped into the road and alongside the bumper of a car and back onto the sidewalk just behind me. She probably knew from experience that her neighbors are kind (to bunnies at least).
“That’ll bring up Colt Emerson…
“Only 7 Mariners 20 or younger have ever homered in a game.” How many Mariners have been 20 years or younger??
He struck out.
I should eat some real dinner.
Yesterday I had home fries. I haven’t had much of an appetite lately.
Fucking duck eggs.
I should have stopped to smell the roses.
