I am twenty-three years old.

Does age amount on paper, I wonder, will fine print live on to defy menot my age, per se, but my experience of it. I am a writer and have looked back already at my hand, thinking that from it were workings of a stranger. There will be things like this that we have to return to, that we will come to cross. This isnt mine, we might say, This isnt me, when it was. What we make of ourselves is sometimes simple. Sometimes we become who we can survive. But if I wish to define myself, I must first of all say: I am a woman. It is often said [we] thinks with [our] glands.1 In the early years, life may have not been defined or reflected on. It was natural. It was an allowance. My diaries then have neatly shown some records, but nothing circular. There must have been no binds. I must have had a fire in me, and thoughtlessness. To have kept myself as nave, I should have preserved that unequivocal stream of wonder. A joyous carelessness, I attribute to youth, to those early years of fearlessness and audacity, of bold unmediated will that wasnt childish but is now unique. If I wish to determine a deviation, must I first elicit a scene? Early on, I had been discovered, I remember, at about the age of eleven, in a ballroom full of gloves and girls. She is stunning, the casting directors said, almost like a boy. Perhaps the freedom I felt then can be tied into theories and phantom limbs, that experience of belonging, which emptied into later years. Perhaps those early years in freedom were a gift of mindlessness, engendering a continuuma beingnot mirrored or interrupted, until the instant it was. Before I became a writer, I was a model. Photographers and light bulbs surrounded those years; those years, that in the moment, I had not looked harshly at, had not prescribed meaning to where a lens would angle itself on or off my face. Was I mindless or incapable yet of judgment? Before I was a woman, I was almost like a boy. It was an energy I had, a way of whizzing through the world, a way of being-in-itself the priority. Eleven years old and already I had championed a singularity, had shaved my head, worn a dress and been billboarded by a brand name. It was modern to have boys crush on me. I marvel because I ran so fast, was voted best in dance; because I cared about history, the legacies left behind; because The Boston Tea Party concerned me greatly, as had shipping Felicity, my American girl, to the doll hospital in her

de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. Introduction, xxi.

colonial whites; because after asking my Episcopalian School approved, and I played John Hancock on stage. These examples are a short moment of nostalgiabut why? I became a writer to map out my history, to chart and characterize. And it has taken years to realize the pages were, all along, a way to locate when I had been betrayed, had taken flight from those early years, lost the spirit, the freedom for beingin-itself. In hindsight, my predicament was an argument for return and relief, was a historical argument2 for a being that had forgotten how in history it had been. In hindsight, writing had been a way of acknowledging the reality of existence, even if that acknowledgement was achieved by detouring through history to determine what is possible. Martin Heidegger requires that philosophy retrace its footsteps through a productive destruction of the history of philosophy. And hadnt writing been for me, that same quest?to question the fundamental problems connected with existence, knowledge, values, mind and language; to relieve my being through philosophia, through a love of wisdom. Before moving forward, Id like to take pause here to emphasize the different trajectories between myself as model and myself as writer. During those early years, my being had taken place in the flow of time. This being could be seen but was yet to judge. This being was not aware of itself yet, was not reflective. I lived in a continual state being-in-itself (tre-en-soi) which for Jean Paul Sartre is an existence that simply is. It is not conscious so is neither active nor passive, and harbors no potentiality for transcendence. Hence my initial feelings of carelessness, fearlessness, mindlessness, and thoughtlessnessan unconsciousness that I will be sure to expound and make room to explain as this essay carries itself out. The instant my stream of being was interrupted, that is the moment my being became aware of itself, was also the instance of my no longer being-in-itself. Because what perceives itself cannot also simply be, just as what cares must also now harbor attachment. And it has always been this becoming the writer which has felt so other to me, which has reminded me that inside me something is still somehow wrong, that something still needs to regard itself. The fact that writing makes issue of being is what distinguishes the being a writer from my being a model. As previously mentioned, writing became for me a way to achieve knowledge of my betrayal, or rather insight into how I had become other than myself. But wasnt
2

Heidegger, Martin. Being And Time.

this desire for wisdom really a hope of retrieving myself? This is one of the problems, Sartre says, of human existence. The being of personswhich does not have to be taken literally, but can be understood as maintaining memories of ourselves, that is how we have been or dreams to become who we were and truly aredesires to alleviate the frustrating and fragmented tension between the being-for-itself and being-for-others. However this desire is rooted in the potentiality-for-being what was itself. Therefore, this desire is more of a mourning, a longing to retrieve what is missing by coming toward itself vis--vis a going back to what has been. This longing, Sartre continues, is for full control over ones destiny and for absolute identity. I am led to believe here that the tension of being-for-others, which we wish to assuage, is more specifically a desperate admittance that one is interrupting his own self and one needs no longer be in his own way. And further, I wish to make the connection between the writers use of language, of constructing a narrative, and acquiring revelation so to achieve the closest intimacy of being back in one self with that same control embodied by the Dasein. Is destiny not the necessary interest toward ones own being? And is the control over destiny no less than having Daseins ability for being-in-the-world determined? If Dasein is the possibility of being free for its own potentiality of being, then having full control over ones destiny would destroy that tension of human existencethat percentage of uncertainty founded in being only yet possible. Without this tension, without possibility, there is no Dasein because there is absolute identity. And it is the absolute that allows identity to simply be. In writing, this return to being achieves to do so by understanding something that since then had been forgotten. And further, something that is able to be understood is something that can be. Therefore, by understanding, the being longs that it will be able to do, not a what, because by understanding how it can be, it will be existing. Let me point out that in not doing a what, one is no longer doing a questing, an asking or retrace, and therefore cannot possibly be writing. In understanding as an existential, one no longer is being a writer.

of It is here that the being-in-itself can be contrasted with the being of persons, which Sartre describes as a tension between being-for-itself (tre-pour-soi) and beingfor-others (I'tre-pour-autrui).

At some point does interruption happen to everyone? I wonder, will we all have our turn in life and become conscious thereon. Maybe these questions arent practical. You think, maybe, they dont concern you. Maybe there are situations beyond control. But beyond intention?, I am led to figure otherwise. This ambivalence is evident in the way a woman regards her body. It is a burden. She feels endangered by her insides. And I have become a chatterer, a scribbler to divert my idle hours, get my teeth more deeply into reality and tame the flowers, to dip my hand in a stream. Maybe. Maybe this is being a woman occupied with herself, but should that necessarily suggest a preoccupation? Is this my own anxiety, shame or regret of wastefulness and time? Maybe it is only my care, a faith I have adopted in my process. Cant one merely deem a woman in pursuit? Maybe a pleasure is found there, a harmony. As a woman writing, can I afford to see my concentration as a floundering avoidance, to agree that in a sense my whole existence is waiting? Why, when in persistence there may be strength and accountability. By returning to the origin, and for the Other, maybe revelation results, rewarding an independence from that which narrows. After all, maybe there is survival. Before a garden was laid, the hands dreamed of how they might offer new life. I have become a scribbler, as soon as I am writing I am also looking back; to divert my idle hours, I tame the flowers, I dip my hand in a stream. Many women are trying to achieve individual salvation by solitary effort. It is a glittering novel. It is at the heart of the masculine world itself, it is in herself as belonging to this world that she comes upon the ambiguity of all principle, of all value, of everything that exists. Woman finds more verity in a garden, in a malady, in a birth than in a revolution; she endeavours to re-establishto become again the essential in face of the inessential. She can give value to that domain where she is confined only by transfiguring it, by transcending. Before a garden is laid, woman bends over and pulls at the earth, at what man has left her to play with. Let the future be opened to her and she will no

longer cling desperately to the past. Instead of acting, she sets up her own image in the realm of imagination: that is, instead of reasoning, she dreams. How might her hands offer new life? [When women] recognize their interest in the designated goals, they are as bold and courageous as men. It is a glittering novel. I align the text this way intuitively, intentionally, to elicit an element of novelty, of creative flow that Simone de Beauvoir insists woman is without. Here repetition hopes to be unbinding, and has no intention of mocking character. If a woman clings it is not to remain or to be powerless but to master and move on. Here repetition hopes to be heard in a similar vein as a mantra, an aid that concentrates and is capable of creating transformation. For the adult woman it is not merely a matter of dreaming her life through symbols, but of living it out in actuality. Such ambition refutes de Beauvoirs notion of woman go[ing] round and round without ever leading anywhere[being] occupied without ever doing anything, and thus indentif[ying] herself with what she has. Womans dissatisfaction is with the present moment and the devastating chance that the future will hold no such relief. Whether one longs to embody a past state of self or desires to become a dream, each preference is inspired by an ambition to be otherwise than now and to become what is possible or has once been true. Even though both cases attach importance to becoming other than the self, one cannot deny the ambition for becoming, rather than remaining. However, while dreaming may be inspired by an ambition to be otherwise, how can one be sure that it actually lifts one from a state of stasis into a mode of change? To actualize oneself, to not be doomed to repetition, one must make a shift from remaining to becoming, from dwelling to doing. Resignedness is only abdication and flight, there is no way out for woman than to work for her liberation. Before furthering ourselves into a resolve by implementing Heidegger, I must return to what prompted this analysis. I must return to the point of interruption. The details of my lifesituations, consciousness, and various roles in beingwill help shape this paper, and will hopefully provide a linearity and interior logic.

Maybe I have taken up a position, have been tracing my way back. I regret whats therapeutic because it admits a far cry from totality.

I miss existing without judgment. Being actual and thoughtless. Do you know how many endorphins I had at the age when there was no rumination or concept of return? I should tell you then what stopped me. An isolated incident that was only the beginning of what has felt like an other relationship with myself, an others way of being-in-the-world.