Maggie Nelson

For to wish to forget how much you loved someone-- and then, to actually forget-- can feel, at times, like the slaughter of a beautiful bird who chose, by nothing short of grace, to make a habitat of your heart.

[H]ow the force of one's adolescent curiosity and incipient lust often must war with the need to protect oneself from disgusting and wicked violators, how pleasure can coexist with awful degradation without meaning the degradation was justified or a species of wish fulfillment; how it feels to be both accomplice and victim; and how such ambivalences can live on in an adult sexual life.

Am I sitting here now, months later, in Los Angeles, writing all this down, because I want my life to matter? Maybe so. But I don't want it to matter more than others. I want to remember, or to learn, how to live as if it matters, as if they all matter, even if they don't.

So far as I can tell, most worthwhile pleasures on this earth slip between gratifying another and gratifying oneself. Some would call that an ethics.

I like writing that puts the needle right into the vein. I don__ think, when I__ writing, __ell a good story_ or __ind a meaning._ I__ thinking phrase by phrase, make it tight, make it good. Get the idea out in language I can bear. I think there__ something musical about being impatient with boring sentences__t__ not that I don__ have boring sentences, God knows I do, but I__ impatient with them.

I truly don__ understand why at every Q and A, someone always asks, __o you have a routine?_ or __o you write every morning?_ Why those questions remain interesting, I really have no idea. But since no one__ putting a gun to their head to ask them, they must compel. They__e probably necessary on a symbolic level more than a literal one, as people cobble together an imagination of what a life devoted to __aking_ might be like.[I think people want a path to follow. They want a checklist so they can say, __lright cool, so if I get up at six and I write for this long and I watch this film and I do that__It__ weird, because I might have wanted that, too. I used to dance in New York. My Lower East Side days. Modern dance, or whatever. One thing I learned as a dancer was that people learn combinations different ways. Some people, if they get the right side, they can also get the left side right off the top of their head. Some people need to be taught both right and left. Some people count, some people never count, you know? I noticed then that, for me, it was really watching the whole person dancing, trying to take in the whole combination at once, that helped me learn it. I think I__ the same way as a reader__ like to take in the whole book, not getting too specific about how they did it, but ride the bigger example.I mean, at the end of the day, the answer to the question __ow did you do it?_ is right there, on the page. They__e showing you how they did it, by doing it. Maybe it__ different with art, when you don__ know if someone had all their sculptures knitted or welded by elves somewhere, but with writing, the answer to the question __ow do you write a book like this?_ is usually, __ike this_ [points to book].

Trans_ may work well enough as shorthand, but the quickly developing mainstream narrative it evokes (__orn in the wrong body,_ necessitating an orthopedic pilgrimage between two fixed destinations) is useless for some__ut partially, or even profoundly, useful for others? That for some, __ransitioning_ may mean leaving one gender entirely behind, while for others__ike Harry, who is happy to identify as a butch on T__t doesn__? I__ not on my way anywhere, Harry sometimes tells inquirers. How to explain, in a culture frantic for resolution, that sometimes the shit stays messy? I do not want the female gender that has been assigned to me at birth. Neither do I want the male gender that transsexual medicine can furnish and that the state will award me if I behave in the right way. I don__ want any of it. How to explain that for some, or for some at some times, this irresolution is OK__esirable, even (e.g., __ender hackers_)__hereas for others, or for others at some times, it stays a source of conflict or grief? How does one get across the fact that the best way to find out how people feel about their gender or their sexuality__r anything else, really__s to listen to what they tell you, and to try to treat them accordingly, without shellacking over their version of reality with yours?

We don't get to choose what or whom we love, I want to say. We just don't get to choose.

Evolution strikes me as infinitely more spiritually profound than Genesis.

This is the dysfunction talking. This is the disease talking. This is how much I miss you talking. This is the deepest blue, talking, talking, always talking to you.

Words change depending on who speaks them; there is no cure. The answer isn't just to introduce new words (boi, cis-gendered, andro-fag) and then set out to reify their meanings (though obviously there is power and pragmatism here). One must also become alert to the multitude of possible uses, possible contexts, the wings with which each word can fly. Like when you whisper, You're just a hold, letting me fill you up. Like when I say husband.