Isolation

Me. Day 46.

Height: 5' 6"
Weight: 105 lbs.
chest:: 34"
waist: 24"
hips: 34"
Wrist: 5"
Shoe size: 6 (US)
Hair: 24"
Age: indeterminate, possibly ancient

From here on my patch of ground, I measure things. The length of the grass. My body. Time. It all changes gradually, like cloud shapes on a still afternoon. It's not that I mind the isolation, I don't. It's an opportunity for quiet reflection. Sometimes, however, there's a risk of equating this with helplessness, and so I measure things, assuring myself of some gradual progress, like the sun across the sky.

I try not to think about stilted dreams and unfulfilled longings. No, that's a lie. I think about them all the time. I think them quietly to myself, where I don't have to defang them with humor, or make them pretty for public consumption.

 I think about jealousy, and envy, and how I sometimes suffer them myself even while trying to deflect them from others, even though I know all this competition is a social construct that's been ingrained in us, and lacks much inherent value of its own.

I think about philosophy, and psychology, and the strictures that come with studying the mind when it doesn't account for the soul. I think about the soul, too (do they think and feel, can they be quantumly entangled like diamonds?) all the while knowing that all of our best answers are guesses.

And then there is reality itself, and the perception of such, and whether reality changes or only our perception does. ("Reality" according to Nabokov, being one of those words that mean nothing without quotation marks.)

I think about these things during chores and in between lessons, and while I'm conditioning my hair and polishing my skin (because expectations of beauty are still high even in a quarantine) and hoping that I will understand more by the time this is over, but knowing that I may not ever understand anything at all.

At the very least I will keep on with my measuring.

We Have Always Lived In The Castle

I came across this book over the weekend. I was familiar with much of Shirley Jackson's other work but had never read this one. It's astoundingly good (and the cover art of this edition is pretty awesome, too) In some ways I identified with the eccentric narrator, Merricat, and her strange ways and sympathetic magic - I often did the same as a child. With her conscienceless-ness and affinity for murder, not so much. But the state of being outcast and suffering harassment at the hands of the villagers is easy enough to understand, probably is for many who live in small towns.

I did have a struggle with the story though. It was extremely triggering to me - nothing to do with the madness or death or cruelty like one would imagine, but the elements of agoraphobia and fear of intruders made it difficult to read without panicking at times. This isolation and fear of certain people, I understood all too well. Watching, waiting, checking the locks on doors, being terror stricken at the sight of a visitor or sound of a knock - this is the sort of fear I live with. It was so vibrantly described that it was almost intolerable.

After I'd finished (and as I said before, it's an excellent book) I decided to see what literary critics had had to say about it. I had not known much about Shirley Jackson's life, except that she had died relatively young. I was surprised to find out that Jackson had suffered intense agoraphobia toward the end of her life. This had indeed been reflected in the book. Jackson had done what I can't bear to do - look directly at the thing that frightened her.