HiveComb

This morning, I happened along to a journaling workshop. I'd signed up on a whim the day before, never done this sort of thing before, but I figured... let's brave the storm, shall we?

"You can not doubt that I care for you, that my whole life hangs on your breath and that there is in my being the right to choose, the organic right to choose you. And I am for you, beyond a doubt, something I will never be for anyone again, and not because familiarity pushes me towards you, but because you've uncovered me once and for all and made me come towards you with all my ancestors, the same way you came towards me with all your life. This isn't solely about trust, but also identity, the common breath of the soul and mind. You see and feel all this, and yet you constrain me." (French artist Antonin Artaud to his muse, Genica Athanasiou)

We were given cards that had this quote on the back and it really resonated with me. It was, overall, a morning of resonance.

The workshop was a bizarre experience, one I was willing to write off as a bit of a disappointment. Not worth the alarm I'd set. Not worth the puddles I'd have to walk through to get back. But then, suddenly, it was. We went from thinking to doing. From reading famous journal entries to crafting our own.

What did September 29th, Sunday look like for us?

We were given 10 minutes to pencil some thoughts, then asked to read aloud what we'd written. I wasn't sure we would be, though I admit I kept some details a tad vague.

It felt... freeing. Extremely so, sharing my innermost quandaries and worries with this assembly of strangers that I would most likely never be held accountable by. Unlike with my friends, they wouldn't meet me next week and ask "but what about so-and-so?" or "How did everything end with X situation?".

It was liberating, certainly. But then, I had no qualms about reading aloud. I had beforehand embraced the possibility of reading and more so the potential for liberation. I went into it anticipating and longing for a healthy experience, and it certainly was. How do I present myself when this one page is all you'll ever have of me?

It's a fascinating experience, one unlike intimate confessions or blogging. You, after all, will be there tomorrow. I hope, at least. I tend to like the people who bother to read all my nonsense, so I do hope you are.

But you know what I mean.

It seems not everyone was angling for this experience in quite the same way, though. I was struck, sitting there, listening to 20 or so strangers read their "journals", by all the unguessed emotion and turmoil that each carried. I know we say it a lot, but it's one thing to be aware of it, and quite another to process and witness it.

No one was overly detailed or graphic about what they were going through, and yet, they managed to sketch all this great vastness of feeling. Lovers, pets, parents, work, moving house, the shame of being too yourself or not enough.

One woman talked about it being the first time she goes to a public thing without make-up. About being thirty-five and still not feeling beautiful enough (or perhaps not anymore, I don't know).

One talked about a difficult conversation she'd had with a man in her life the night before. Her lover? Her son? Her brother? There was no way of knowing, but she cried quite a lot.

One talked about a day trip with her mother and how it impacted her mum. How banal it seemed to her in her youthfulness and brimming-with-interesting-things life. She, also, cried.

Yet to look at them, they all seemed so normal. So boring. The sort of people you sit next to on the bus or at a random workshop and sort of assume they're NPCs. We never guess the myriad of tragedy and joys that populate other people's lives, do we? We never mean to.

We become involved if it's someone we love or think we might love. Or if they press their stories into our palm. But mostly, we just drift along, assuming ours are the only interesting lives because ours, the minutiae of self and a handful of others, are the only ones we're privy to.

And of course we do. We couldn't handle knowing all the time all the complex and heavy emotion everyone around us carries at all times. But man, it sure is good to be reminded sometimes.

After everyone shared, I left knowing I'd made the right choice coming. That maybe I'd been meant to find this little interim both in mine and other people's stories. Like a great big changing room that actors from different simultaneous shows find each other in during the break.