[from the archives] holding paradox
from November 2020. on holding multiple complex (and sometimes conflicting) truths. feat. Aracelis Girmay and Joni Mitchell
Hello friend,
2020 is a ruthless teacher. Or maybe she is just a mirror. Held up to reveal what we knew was there all along but didn’t dare to inspect. Reminding us of things we may understand cerebrally and now are being called into praxis. I, for one, have never felt the contrast between knowing and doing so acutely as I do this year.
Something hit the week of the US election, that week which condensed years of political-emotional rollercoastering (and gaslighting). If you felt heavily in your body—exhausted, drained, disoriented, confused, giddy—you are not alone. The day after Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were declared our next president and VP (hallelujah), Within gathered. We practiced holding complex realities (and emotions) simultaneously, in two palms turned upwards. Radical joy and sorrow. Hope and haunting. Relief and exhaustion. We tuned in to what it feels like in our bodies to simultaneously hold these seemingly-contradictory experiences.
Many pedagogy, leadership, and therapeutic frames encourage “both/and thinking” as opposed to “either/but/or.” Thinking with multiplicity and embracing paradox has also been advanced by important work in feminist critical theory and intersectionality. Leaving space for the possibility and richness of contradiction, but not necessarily sliding into the easy space of dichotomy, of opposites, or into the trite adage of there “always being more than one side to a story.”
Light is both particle and wave, at once. This reign of terror is over and pain, trauma and disregard persist; we still have so much work and healing to do.
I’m less interested in the fact that multiple complicated realities can coexist at once, and, as an anthropologist, more intrigued by how we humans approach and live with that complexity. What it stirs within us. The discomfort. Feeling torn. The ways we unwittingly (or wittingly) betray ourselves, the tension we hold in our bodies faced with the illusion of having to choose between one or the other. Consider the words of poet Aracelis Girmay in “Voice” below — “One hand against the trapdoor, the other hand knocking, knocking.”
And what happens when our multiple conflicting realities interact, or collide, with those held by another?
Issue 11 of T H E | L I M I N A L explores just this—the act of holding of multiple complex realities at once, the difference between knowing and doing this complexity, and the collision of our complexities in relationship with others. This issue is a little different than usual in that I’m hoping it invites you in more dialectically (multilectically?) & interactively, so we may be in conversation with one another.
VOICE
Aracelis Girmay, via poets.org
WRITING PROMPT
What complex realities (truths, emotions, perceptions) are you holding? Draw a line down the center of your page to represent the center meridian of the body, imagining that the left and the right sides of the page represent your two hands.
Without thinking or over-analyzing, flow through complex realities that you feel yourself simultaneously holding. They do not necessarily have to be contradictory or opposite.
Then, take one or two of your holdings and write into the space between them. Write into this space. See if you can expand the space between the two, or perhaps bring them more directly face-to-face.
What is the relationship between the two? What does their conversation sound like? What do they have to say—to each other, to you?
MUSING OF THE MOMENT
two hands: holding complex truths
Sharing with you here a snippet of my own free-write response to the above:
I’ve never felt more physically disconnected and socially distanced from the humans I love / AND / I’ve never felt more connected in ongoing conversation and creative acts of care with the humans I love all around the world, now that geography and “distance” have been flattened. Space: connection means something different than I thought it did.
I know too much time spent immersed in technology drains my life force /AND/ technology feels like a lifeline these days. I resent it / AND / am indebted to it. Space: can you find a state of tech-neutrality/indifference? maybe time to build some boundaries.
I so desperately want(ed) Sweden to feel like home /AND / I have misplaced frustration with the ways it may never will. Space: confronting a hidden resentment that I have to expand (or radically redefine) my definition of home in the process.
I can be in pain / AND / I can be healing. Space: are the two one and the same? can I have one without the other? (inspired by a participant in Within)
I can be on the balcony /AND / on the dance floor (a metaphor my father uses for self-observation and zooming-out, unfortunately no dance floors or balconies as of late).
Space: I miss dancing (*takes dance break to this song*)
This multiplicity grows even more complex when you introduce more humans in to the mix—what does a relationship among two or more beings do to the holding of multiple complex realities? (many of us are experiencing this living in lockdown with loved ones) How do we extend to ourselves the same empathy we may more readily give to another’s act of holding?
Realizing (knowing) these complexities is one thing. Living them is quite another. Maybe living them requires us to come up against how much we really don’t know, what escapes our control.
I’m thinking here of Joni Mitchell's 1967 hit Both Sides, Now, where, in examining multiple sides of love, friendships, and life, she ultimately realizes “I really don’t know life at all.”
I feel like in many of my letters to you, each of the myriad detours leads to more or less the same realization (though hopefully with layers of nuance): the liminal space of not-knowing and messiness and interstitiality is a fascinatingly overwhelming, sometimes heartbreaking, and alive place to be. What I am learning: The space in between what you hold is actually pretty big, if you let it be. It doesn’t always feel cozy; it rarely does. It begs surrender to the ebb and flow—not knowing or predicting when the next wave of realization will strike. Our hands can hold a lot. It is also okay to turn them over and let whatever you’re holding spill out. Releasing can be an act of holding, too. You’ll still be there. So will your hands.
RESOURCES
TO WATCH:
Oh my goodness. This spoken-word poem in video form—How to Be at Home—by poet Tanya Davis, is an absolute gem that shoots straight to the heart. It put into words and imagery so very much of this year of isolation, anxiety, stillness, and learning. If you click on one link in this issue, let it be this one (I almost put it in the welcome note to avoid burying the lead, but alas, here we are…imagine twinkling string lights around this text block to guide your attention instead!)
TO LISTEN:
A good literary podcast is one of my love languages, and I’m so thrilled to have just discovered Thresholds. This interview with physician and writer Laura Kolbe on medicine and writing, knowledge and not-knowing, care during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the limits of language in conveying experience—landed so deeply this month.
TO READ:
What do mermaids have to do with our conversation on both/and thinking and holding multiple complex realities? A lot, actually. A fascinating meditation on human-nonhuman assemblages (a literal both/and—not just human not just fish), myth, feminism, and humanity.
TO GIVE:
Reflecting on the colonial history of Thanksgiving founded upon Indigenous genocide and confront ongoing realities of dispossession and disregard of Native communities, please consider donating to the First Nations COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund — working to “minimize the risk of Native communities becoming collateral damage” in the pandemic.