Things We Don't Understand and Are Definitely Not Going to Talk About (Yet)

Wow. September has been a hard month.

It has reminded me of an event I attended long ago with Miranda July at the helm. It was a performance art piece at Theater Artaud, with a long, slow, audience-infused story about a couple and an adopted cat. There was a lot of bittersweetness in it, so much sadness, too. I have wished, a number of times, that I could remember the exact script of the after-piece. Bic lighters had been hidden under the seats of the guests, and in complete darkness at the end we were asked to answer the most intimate of questions with just a flicker of yes, or no. Thinking back, the only question I am certain was asked was whether we had met the love of our lives. I really can't remember whether I flicked yes or no, I can only remember now that the question gave me -- and, no doubt, much of the audience -- great pause.

I'm pretty sure, if I were asked the same question in the same dark room today, I would flick my lighter confidently. I would tell you, if you asked, that Django is absolutely, unequivocally, and never-endingly the love of my life. And it would be true, in so many senses, that it would be virtually indisputable.

But that exact question is not at all what has been drawing my mind back to that night with Miranda July, oh so long ago. It's the memory of the pause. It's the imperative of the pause. The uncomfortable realization that we sometimes need questions, circumstances, even answers to get so big that there is nothing we can do in the face of them except pause. Think. Reflect. Feel.

And, yet, keep on keeping on.