"If I had written about [my mother] earlier, the story would have had the aura of the courtroom, for I had been raised on the logic of argument and fact and being right, rather than the leap beyond that might be love. I would have told it as a defendant, making my case against her to justify myself, who stood so long accused of so many sidelong things. Some of the urgency to be justified in my existence and to survive has fallen away, though the story remains, a hard pit after the emotion has gone."—Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby

I don't want to write about my mother or my brother, although I suppose there is a story, the refugee mother who resented her husband and children, the brother who first disowned the sister and then his parents, not even coming to Dad's funeral and avoiding Mom when she showed up at his art opening in LA two weeks later. But so much of it would rely on "being right, rather than the leap beyond that might be love". So much of the story might rely around justification. And so many years have passed, and I have other struggles and concerns to ponder. I know myself, and my place in the world, however uncertain it feels at times. So there it is, this "hard pit after the emotion has gone", from which the fruit has rotten away, and it sits in my collection of baroque* curiousities, this collection of desires, wounds, and sublimations that makes up my self.

* "bizarre and uselessly complicated"—Montaigne; also relating to “a course and uneven pearl”—1728 Portuguese dictionary

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