Jumping Off Windows. Or, The Necessary Hunt For Safe Spaces

Image credit: Erda Estremera Unsplash

I spent the weekend filling up moving boxes: Shoes, cleaning supplies, spices, books; all the usual things that make up a life, including that shoestring lying careless at the bottom of the suitcase, unpaired, should probably go in the trash but what if I need it urgently in ten years? Small moments, big decisions; what do we take when it’s time to move, what do we leave behind?

In three and half years, I have moved apartments four times, once after a changed job, and very shortly after, to leave the country. Twice again because I found myself in spaces where my skin no longer felt like mine. I have a structured routine for settling in somewhere new—first, update home address for Uber and Amazon, other places like your bank can wait. Map out the environs, find a running trail; make sure the path is not too secluded, because well, you might get murdered. Check how many times the internet goes off in the first one week. Find a window you can jump out from, you know, in case there’s a fire, or a snake; remind yourself that jumping will break your leg, and that would be inconvenient for moving to the next place. Realize that despite how cozy you make the room, you will still not sleep for eight hours straight.

When I started writing this piece, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to write about moving (which I am) or about home (which I’ve been searching for) or about the things that make me pack up in the first place, the loosening of skin, the idea that you have somehow shrunk, grown too small in your own flesh, or grown out, bigger than your current host, wanting to burst loose. Moving can feel like running, it can also feel like starting again. I am neither good at starting over or running, yet here I am, moving, rehearsing old motions for settling in. What I will write about instead, is, control. At this point, it feels like the chorus of a long song, no matter where the verse leads, I am coming back to this one recurring rhyme: Control. #Deep Sigh.

Moving these days, to me, feels like practicing control: how much of my life can I hold in this pulsing, trembling, hands? What do I take? What do I leave behind? I change houses with a fixed outcome in my head, something as simple as ‘no wicked’ roommates. In pandemic-eaten America, all you need to stay sane is to be surrounded by ‘normal’ people. But what about me? What about the margins of my own dysfunction? Sooner than later, you have to sniff out your own life, find the patterns, poke your fingers, see if you stand the test with which you gauge others.

I used to think if I could just have quiet housemates, I might finish my novel. Or, if I could just have people who showed a little courtesy, who wipe the kitchen counter when they are done cooking, maybe I would not feel the need to fume in my room all day. Because what can be more mood altering than finding breadcrumbs on the center table? Ugh.

I cannot control how people behave, but I still like to try, even though no one has ever treated me kindly based on my compulsion. Have we ever, with our hands, shaped a human person? Do we really think that we can mold a person to see and feel us the way we desire?

On the flip side, (flip has such a flimsy feel to it) When a white woman tells me that my food ‘stinks’ I want to build a custom-sized hell for her. When she pushes the margins of my humanity, I want to tell her that I am an igbo woman and we do not take rubbish where I come from. But my friend says to me: do not respond, this is America, she could get you in trouble. It can be exasperating to see how much control you have to surrender just to survive the day.

It is tug of war—knowing when to give and when to take, when the problem is within you, an open wound festering on your skin, and when the problem is simply just the color of your skin. “We cannot control how people treat us.” I swear this cliché, is a tired trope. But it can still be true. There are days to look within and adjust the margins of your own behavior, to breathe, calm down, hold your tongue as a thing that belongs to you, feel your thoughts pulsing in your head, eat your words. And there are days to say no, this is how far it goes. Sadly, I do not always know the difference.

Books, Thoughts And Vibes

I read Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Silencing The Past: Power and Production of History and it shifted my mind in a way I cannot begin to explain. I admit, this is an academic text, and I admit, I picked it up for research on a presentation I had due. Still, I’ve been thinking about specific threads, such as Trouillot’s formulas of silence, and the ways erasure and trivialization affects our access to history.

For my presentation, I borrowed from Trouillot’s chapter: An unthinkable history and put it in conversation with Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno Look, it’s not the greatest book in the world, but it had me thinking about writerly agency, and how we decide whose story the work becomes. In this case, the story was narrated from the point of view of an American captain, and I thought the shape of the story would have been decidedly different if the inspecting slave, Babo as written as the novel’s protagonist.

I started reading George Saunders latest craft book: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain I’ve never really been a fan of craft books, especially in the way that it tries to contain and legislate, but you can’t really argue with George Saunders, or the book. I haven’t gone far, but if fiction is your thing, I definitely recommend it.

I read the narrative of Frederick Douglass, then that of Harriet Jacobs, and I keep wondering about the precolonial literature of the Southeast.

Also, at my brother’s prompt, I watched Behind Her Eyes on Netflix. That ending messed me up so much. If you’ve watched it and want to vent, please reply. Let’s be mutually discombobulated. :) (Is this the right spelling? I’m too lazy for Google.)

Also again, I didn’t forget to send pictures of my toned arms. I just, um, haven’t used any of the exercise tools. #Sigh.

Wishing you the best of March,

Tochi.