salt to cleanse

musings on writing

Heaven Is Not Verbose: A Notebook by Vera Pavlova (tr. Steven Seymour), Letters Home by Sylvia Plath, MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood, A Breath of Life by Clarice Lispector, Isak Dinesen quoted by Raymond Carver, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath, from a letter to Max Brod by Franz Kafka, Conversations with Kafka by Gustav Janouch, The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

If a person can’t get out of bed, something is making them exhausted. If a student isn’t writing papers, there’s some aspect of the assignment that they can’t do without help. If an employee misses deadlines constantly, something is making organization and deadline-meeting difficult. Even if a person is actively choosing to self-sabotage, there’s a reason for it — some fear they’re working through, some need not being met, a lack of self-esteem being expressed.

People do not choose to fail or disappoint. No one wants to feel incapable, apathetic, or ineffective. If you look at a person’s action (or inaction) and see only laziness, you are missing key details. There is always an explanation. There are always barriers. Just because you can’t see them, or don’t view them as legitimate, doesn’t mean they’re not there. Look harder.

— Forfeiting My Mystique, Kaveh Akbar, in '100 Queer Poems, an anthology' (2022)

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