what a natural!
on befriending professional jealousy and disappointment and the such
In the midst of my writer envy, which does exist even if I would prefer not to admit it, I remember my first day at the barn, coming eye-to-eye with the tallest gelding in the stable. Was I in fifth or sixth grade? I was tall for my age, which stopped being the case just a few years later. His name was Oscar, he was dishrag gray-white, and he was gentle. The instructor assured my grandmother of this, when she doubted that a girl as young as me should be on an animal as big as him.
I remember that prior to signing up for riding lessons I read so many horse girl books: Black Beauty, and Saddle Club, and Thoroughbred, and King of the Wind. In those books there was often a disregarded girl meeting a disregarded horse. Between them was a magic, the magic of recognition, I suppose. They saw each other for who they were, and allowed themselves to imagine what they could be together. The girl, on the horse, rode with the natural cadence of river water cutting through earth. The world parted for them.
It took me a moment to mount Oscar from the riding block. And then we plodded along. He was a lesson horse, an old one, who knew how to be kind to first-time riders. We were not magnificent. We followed instructions as they were given to us, sometimes poorly. I wasn’t even sure if I enjoyed the feeling of being that high atop him, sure he could take off at any moment.
And still, at the end of the lesson, I waited for the whispers to begin. For someone to say, Did you see that girl? What a natural! For the instructor to tell me she had never taught a student like me before.
It did not come, of course.
I am unsure about riding horses these days, worried as I am about the ethics of it. But that feeling, of waiting to be acknowledged as great, is one that has persisted with me. It colored writing my first novel, and colored the aftermath of it too, when I worried about what reviews had been collected, what accolades the book would carry with it into the future. Worse, the Internet made it all too easy to compare myself with every other writer out there.
In his essay in Electric Literature, Benjamin Schaefer discusses this “professional jealousy.” He redefines it as disappointment, then suggests befriending that disappointment. But a friendship requires tenderness, which I find I cannot give to another until I have a sense of their shape.
Only today, when I remember this story, about my first riding lesson, do I feel my disappointment has provided me the first entry into our friendship. Here it comes, like a roommate during those late nights in a college dorm, finally sharing about their relationship with her parents, and what her most embarrassing moment is. Can you believe it has taken so long? Disappointment and I, we have been the most contentious of roommates, ones who took months to warm up to each others’ schedules and preferred air temperatures.
I did not love riding horses, but I love writing. I love the feel of crafting a sentence. I can taste it, you know, in my mouth. The taste of the sound of cold marbles clinking together. That may not make sense to you, but know this: it is satisfying.
And yet, underpinning a thing I did not love and a thing I do, is the same sense of loss. The loss of a greatness that isn’t about wanting fame, but rather about craving a coming into the imagined self. The self that would be easier to be. The self that turn skin-and-bones into magic. That self that is defined as good, and not bad, and also the monochromatic color of that which is expected.
Oh, my friend, disappointment! Here we are now. I imagine us sitting on a twin-XL bed in a shoddy college dorm room. I imagine myself promising to take you riding again, one day. I imagine that you may not love the riding, but I want you to focus on how it feels. Heels down, eyes up. The sweat on your inner thighs. You are moving through your own world. You are remaking it by consequence of that movement. Look how it expands. Look where you could go.
Disappointment, I hope you will one day see, that you do not need to be an easier version of yourself, but a more curious one.
A Dose of Updates
BOOK: Ravishing paperback will be out on November 10th of this year, you can certainly preorder and get a copy for your favorite friend(s).
OTHER WRITING: I will have work in the Thirty Cabins series soon. Read my essay on Kathak in Grove Atlantic’s newsletter.
WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING: It’s my birthday this coming week, and I’d love for you to consider signing this LIFT petition to help make Philly taxes more equitable, especially for freelancers and gig economy workers. I might be going on a new medication for my ulcerative colitis. Just finished watching Search Party. Am reading many things, including Sunaura Taylor’s Disabled Ecologies and Richard Powers’ The Overstory.
Wow for this - The taste of the sound of cold marbles clinking together. That may not make sense to you, but know this: it is satisfying.