Through fire I am clarified into ash

Epistolaria 2.10 July 2026 / About the project

I am forged by unremarkable suffering. Striving, but falling short. Wanting, but being unwanted. Rejections great and small that carve little caverns of unbelonging.

The desiring which knows no bounds is thwarted by the body, limited in its capacity and resource, and the world which knows neither punishment nor mercy, only indifference. In this collision, immovable against immovable, a great invisible fire unleashes a violence against delusions and illusions — all the lovely scaffolds of my safety and comfort, false they may be, fall away, and this loss hollows me. Necessarily, yes, but necessity does not stop the bruising.

I am twenty-nine now. Far still from old, though the shine of youth has gone dull under the weight of decades. Enough time has passed for me to build beliefs, have them questioned, and witness their destruction. Made and unmade. I once dreamed of becoming a journalist, then a scientist; believed that there was no God, then that Buddhism was the only religion that really made any sense; decided I was never going to marry, then did, earlier than most in my generation. In the mirror I see the Ship of Theseus in my strange, familiar eyes.

And of the world, what can I say about it that you do not already know? At any era, it requires of us great labor, first to survive, then to aspire beyond the satisfaction of our own thirst; and in this laboring I become most myself and an absolute stranger, humbled by the banality of my existence as well as its miracle, the friction sending out a shower of sparks — you, insignificant speck and lighthouse both. You, mere girl and force of nature. There is no right way to live. There are infinite ways to live. Fill your belly, for not everyone can. Not everyone can fill their bellies, because you can. You are a beginning, you are the bearer of original sins.

This humbling, this fiery clarification — I accept this state, stay in its heat, so that I may both arrive at some truth about myself (What is it that I want? What is it that I am?) and disappear in the process. "Self-assertion is motivated by the aspiration for self-annihilation. The creation of the self is driven by the desire for decreation," writes Simon Critchley about mystics [1], an echo of T. S. Eliot's sentiments on the role of the poet from over a century ago: "The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality." [2] Reduced to ash, I become a clearing for — who knows? All I know is I must bear it brightly.

David Cronenberg haunts the end of Charli XCX's newest album with a reverberation of they are dead, they are gone, no one lasts forever. [3] Ephemerality as gift and warning, permission and curse, temporality crushes even legends into fine powder. But something of them — the countless dead, their actions and utterings — linger. Atoms of them continue on in my bones. [4] In flames, I can sometimes hear them humming just there beneath my scarred skin.

Notes.

[1] On Mysticism, Simon Critchley (2024)

[2] From “Tradition and the Individual Talent”, T. S. Eliot (1919)

[3] “No One Lasts Forever”, Charli XCX, David Cronenberg (2026)

[4] Echo of “Every atom of me and every atom of you...” from The Amber Spyglass, Philip Pullman (2000)

[5] “CALCINATIO and the Alchemy of Honest Suffering”, This Jungian Life