Evening Conference (1949) by Leonora Carrington

Don’t fall to your knees. Rest and mourning sound good but don’t believe the hype. Even your body wants to trick you into stopping. When you stop, you crumble, fall to pieces, decompose into the ground. Don’t let that death drive win.

Get up and run instead. Put on some headphones and crank up the fucked up club music and hurtle into the day, leaves falling around you like a shower of blessings from the demon god himself, briefly anointing you with his lust for life, just for fun, just to see how it hits, the motherfucker.

Let him have his way with you. This is no time for purity. Let yourself be seduced by this shiny, merciless fall morning. If the birds sound like they’re laughing at your despair, that’s because they are. Fall in love with them as they mock you. Surrender to their contempt, surrender to all of the messy bitches in the heavens, who live for the drama and don’t disguise it, gods and birds alike. Feet aching, face sweating, hips wobbling like an unsteady table, back bent and nearly broken, not a vision, not light on your feet, never sexy again, smelly and insignificant, huffing along the sidewalk with a dance floor vibrating in your ears: Never stop.

Stumble forward, into this wicked autumn hour, almost defeated, every awkward footfall a resolution, every inch of progress a clumsy victory. You are an ugly catastrophe, an old house collapsing, a fury of limbs and longing, rage and regrets, windowpanes and doorknobs, nails and splinters, whipped up into a tornado and carried into the future, ass over ankles, fridge over floorboards, daydreams over despair.

Feel yourself break into pieces but keep moving. Feel your heart collapse but keep going. Feel your breath quicken, deepen, lengthen, shorten, and keep trudging through the leaves, keep staggering hotly over the crust of the earth, keep feeling the insults of the catbird and the cardinal, the trunk and the limbs, the scornful blue sky and the sullen sun and the nasty moon hiding like a thief beneath the horizon, all chuckling in chorus over your bad form. And behind the haughty sky looms the dark vacuum of space, which doesn’t care a bit and never will, not about you or anyone else, not about teacups or queens or wars or eggs perfectly cooked.

Tumble forward like a heap of garbage tossed from a dump truck at the edge of a steep cliff of trash, gaining momentum as you fall, and even the trash below you will say you don’t belong here, you are ignorant, your efforts were all wasted, you are the problem, mistakes were made and they were all your mistakes, not theirs. Even the worms will say it’s all your fault, you fucked us but good, just by trying, just by putting on those cheap running tights, just by lacing up your fat shoes, just by hauling your greedy ass out of bed this morning, just by believing that the arc of the moral universe blah blah blah you predictable old whore, you practically conjured the whole shit storm singlehandedly. Even the maggots will roll their light-sensitive cells at your unworthy efforts, your unruly hair, your calamitous spine, your unoriginal mind, your soggy pits, your limp spirit.

Your hope made you a fall risk. Put this yellow band on your wrist and feel the shame of your inherent unsteadiness, your fragile nerves, your imbalanced soul, your vulnerable heart.

Your hope makes you a flight risk. You crave an escape from the agony of optimism. You want to stop and sink into the ground until your molecules are one with the silent earth, one with the indifferent vacuum of space.

Hope anyway. Your forward motion makes you a fall risk and a flight risk. Keep moving anyway. Your awkward staggering is a seduction. Because retreat means talking like a god or a worm, one and the same, mocking and rolling their eyes from on high or cursing and cringing from below, becoming a part of the dark storm, a death drive disguised as a humble desire to survive, nihilism disguised as honor.

And when you are so tired that you really do want to collapse, the leaves will ask,

Are you an adult yet?

Because this world is full of children who need to feel safe.

Are you a grown up now? Because

the adults could use your help.

Growing up makes you a fall risk, a flight risk, a risk in motion, unsteadier by the hour, crumbling before the world’s eyes, more fragile and vulnerable than ever, more invested than ever, more exposed yet less and less ashamed, aligned with the salvation of suffering, attuned to the crunch of dry leaves and splintering bones, the end always in sight now, the bitter end never out of sight but

never stopping

staggering into the unknown like an avant garde dancer, explosive and alive, exposed and alive, sad and alive, brimming over with love for every living thing, every cackling bird, every demon god, every sniveling spider, every wistful moon.

You risk and risk and risk and risk some more, you risk everything, and it hurts, you are stunned and alone, you are stunned at the sight of the sky, bright and cold, stunned to discover that

the sky is on your side.

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