A Headache

by Sakib Shahriar

I often begin writing in crisis. It need not be a spectacular crisis. It can be an everyday crisis. I have a headache. I’ve had this headache for the past few hours.

I feel that pressure in my habits to write in a literary way, and I don’t know what that literary way is other than a vague, abstract directive to make my pain into something good, something that’s worthy of art. And then I fall back into all my perfectionist habits, which worry about sounding polished enough, or poetic enough—and, what counts as polished or poetic or any other exalted adjective here has nothing to do with what I want or how I feel, it always has something to do with how I attempt to conceal what I want and how I feel. In an effort to hide those insecurities, to present my body as unblemished and lacking in any messy mixture, I try to create something wherein my insecurities are absent. When they are sufficiently absent, then my creation becomes sufficiently polished, poetic, literary.

I have a headache. I can choose to affirm this headache in many ways, none of which are necessary, none of which are better than any other, independent of what I want to write of them, of how I want to write my body. Here is a headache of mine: Last week, I walked past a pond in a park, and the surface of the pond was vibrating, twisting and turning, screeching and groaning as the metal of the water scraped against itself. I walked up to the edge of the pond, and I dipped my shoes into it, letting the metal of the water warp around me, vibrate me, twist and turn me, screech and groan me. Why this image? The image is real; there’s no question to me yet of whether it’s figurative or literal. I affirm this image in light of the fact that I have a headache. The image and my headache are in cahoots with each other: they communicate. The image becomes a remembrance of the headache, and vice versa.

There is a perpetrator weaved into the nerves and muscles of my body, perhaps many different perpetrators in cahoots with each other. Each injects various rigidities into me, securities that are real lies, believed lies. I am afraid that my writing is bad. Rather than moving within ‘my writing is bad,’ I try to murder ‘my writing is bad’ by saying: ‘I will make my writing better.’ Whenever I write something, I will revise it, rid it of all mistakes and inconsistencies, polish it with a wide assortment of chemicals and fluids until it’s as shiny as an abstraction—and only then, after all that exertion of creative policing, will my writing be good. But there are likewise innocents weaved into the nerves and muscles of my body, and at least one of them enjoys that my writing is bad. I have a me that enjoys my bad writing, and I have a me that judges that bad writing as something that must be eliminated. This is violence! This is violence on the level of my habits!

I’m chasing after innocence. This isn’t an innocence consisting in the avoidance of violating prohibitions. If I’m told I cannot do something and, because of that prohibition, I do not do it, I am still not innocent. In that case, I’ve already been marked by the law, I’ve already been restrained in my capacities, I’ve already been coded. I have two options left: I am not-guilty if I follow the word of the prohibition and don’t act against it; or I’m guilty if I act in a way to violate the prohibition. I eat the fruit after God prohibits it. I’m pre-judged by the law no matter what I do. But innocence isn’t the opposite of guilt; it isn’t part of the arrangement of law at all—innocence eludes the law altogether. Reaching the point of innocence: to act outside the clutches of the law, which is to avoid becoming either guilty or not-guilty. And I have all three rushing through my body: I’m guilty, I’m not-guilty, I’m innocent; I’m all three according to different proportions at different times. How do I make the ‘I’m innocent’ more intense, more vital, more arousing, than the ‘I’m guilty’ or the ‘I’m not-guilty?’

Literature has its own arrangement of law that acts on me. Is my writing literary, polished, poetic? Or is it lacking, is it not-literary, not-polished, not-poetic instead? If my writing is not-literary rather than bad, then I’m caught in the lure: I find a way for the body of the law, that abstract being of security, to plug up all my insecurities, and I try to transition from not-literary to literary, from not-poetic to poetic. I try finding the threshold where I can tip myself over and all of a sudden become literary, become literary enough. At no point do I accept the girl who throws paint on her walls with the most aberrant, haphazard motions, with no context of the thousands of years of art that stand before her, with no concern for meeting any standard of quality, her own or that of anyone else; at no point do I accept the girl who does all this and then exclaims “I’ve made modern art!” At no point in this part of the process am I able to accept my writing as bad. I want to affirm my writing is bad.

What do I do if I lose my original crisis over the course of writing? I no longer have a headache. I don’t have to worry too much, for I’ve already introduced many new crises since the first, and I haven’t yet addressed any. I successfully address them when I investigate my feelings about any of the crises on the page and see that those feelings are no longer agitated; those feelings were able to speak and they now return to their peaceful slumber, satiated and happy. I do not want to rely solely on some sort of objective, scientific, outside-me standard to tell me that I’ve sufficiently resolved a crisis. It can always be the case that you read what I’ve said and feel unsatisfied, that you feel the crisis hasn’t been sufficiently addressed. I trust you! If that happens to you, and you’re able to tell me about it, please do! I invite you to move within these crises in your own ways, with or without me, no matter what it is you’re creating. I want you to trust your habits, your desires, and your intuitions. I want you to trust that you’re able to move within your habits, your desires, and your intuitions, even when they all conflict with each other; I want you to choose and affirm your habits, your desires, and your intuitions that bring you closer to innocence.

Everything I write must be resonances of my own emotional life. This isn’t a standard of writing every writer must meet; it is a standard I like for myself. I will abandon the standard as soon as I no longer want it, but it may turn out that I want it the rest of my life. Sometimes I will step out onto the balcony at midnight, and I’ll hear cars and trucks of all shapes and sizes rumble across the freeway by my apartment. It’s rare, but every now and then some eighteen-wheel behemoth will pass by and sound all the trumpets for judgment day. The wind and the sky break out into cacophony as the End awakes from its peaceful slumber and imposes its deathly desires on the rest of humanity. The currents of sound beat in my ears, starting such a racket that they transform my ears into a hearing-the-judgment-day-organ. The currents of sound vibrate me, twist and turn me, screech and groan me, until all I’m left with is my desire to walk into the end and gain my salvation of eternal rest. When I return with bloodshot ears, I look at myself in the mirror and I realize I’ve forgotten everything. I sense that I’ve experienced something drastic, but I lose the experience itself. I rush to my desk, and I begin to write.

Often, I’m afraid to start writing again. I was even afraid to continue writing this piece any further. I looked at the passages I already created, and I felt that the last paragraph could be torn out from this context, and the leftover piece would be better—it would be more self-contained. Where did that habit of self-containment come from? I take my afraid to start writing again and start writing again from a place of insecurity, from a place of ‘I’m afraid.’ This, precisely, is my dilemma: I want to affirm my writing is bad, and all the same I’m afraid to start writing, because “what if my writing is bad?” But of course, it’s bad; I want the ‘my writing is bad.’ Unless I want to actively select it, nothing I write or create needs to be self-contained. I don’t want habits in my writing that I don’t actively select, that are stuck to my body as the sediment of having written and created for the past few millennia. Why do I need to create self-contained writing? Do I need my writing to be good? No, I do not need my writing to be good.

I set for myself the literary problem: how do I make my writing bad? how do I make it worse over time? how do I make my writing and my body less secure the longer I live?

I remember meeting with my father at his grave a few years ago. I knelt on his soil blanket and picked away at the organic matter until I was able to see his face. I leaned over to let him give me a kiss that consisted of me pushing my cheek onto his lips, which remained unmoved. I sat there throughout the night, telling him stories of the life I was leading, asking for forgiveness for nothing in particular, expressing my gratitude towards him for the way he had sustained my life—even though I hadn’t wanted him to sustain me in that way. Usually, during those visits, of which I had made many before then, my father stayed silent and watched me as I spoke. Even when I asked him questions, he rarely answered them. Yet, when I asked him that time about how and why he decided to sustain my life the way he did, he climbed out of his grave and dusted himself off, leaned on my side, and began to speak.

“When your mother and I first got married, we lived in a little room balanced on top of a thin, steep hill, and we were always at risk of tipping our room over and hurtling down towards the endless valley below. It was an anxious state of living for us both, and we often huddled together at the center of the room in order to avoid any fatal swaying back and forth.”

“One day, there was a knock on the door, and we were greeted by a puppeteer. The puppeteer spoke to us thus: ‘I see that your room is precariously balanced on this thin, steep hill, and I’m sure that the both of you are always anxious about its stability; I offer you, if you wish for it, the kindness of entering into contract with me, and I will make certain, with my wires from on high, that neither you nor your room ever fall off the hill.’”

“Your mother asked: ‘Do we have to pay you anything? Do we owe anything to you in return?’”

“The puppeteer answered: ‘I only ask for your belief in my methods, I only ask that you entrust your lives to me and my wires and inhuman craft.’”

“Your mother and I had nothing left to lose, so we both pleaded: ‘Please, kind puppeteer, we seek a contract with you; please, kind puppeteer, protect us with your wires.’”

“The puppeteer nodded in acceptance of the contract and left us, mentioning he had to gather his materials. The very next day, he returned with strands of unending wires trailing behind him.”

“First, he secured the room: he sewed wires between the walls and ceiling, and he shot the wires somewhere high above our room where, I assume, they anchored onto something or other; this made it so that no matter how much your mother and I tried to tip the room over, the room remained stuck in place.”

“Then, he secured us: entering our newly-fastened room, he sewed wires through our skin and flesh, and once again he shot the wires up to their heavenly anchoring site. All of a sudden, I became quite afraid of the contract we had accepted, and I asked the puppeteer: ‘Will your wires stop us from freely choosing whatever we may want to do in the future?’”

“The puppeteer answered: ‘Well, certainly not, because you’re always free to leave this contract with me. As long as you keep freely choosing to believe in me, I will keep freely choosing to keep you and your room balanced and stable on this hill.’”

“Your mother and I were satisfied with this explanation and asked him nothing further. Once he completed his work, he bowed to us and said: ‘I will know if either of you ever need me, and I will be outside your room as quickly as I’m able to walk up the hill, ready to negotiate any differences in our contract.’ He left us and started walking back down the hill, leftover strands of somewhat-ending wires trailing behind him.”

At this point in my father’s story I grew impatient. I was tired of how much context he was building. I felt that surely not all this context was necessary for him to answer my question. Perhaps he simply wanted to share it all with me for the sake of sharing an old story with his daughter, even if it wasn’t necessary to share all that information to answer my question. He sensed some irritation in my posture, however, and started to speed up the rest of his answer.

“…Well, your mother and I lived in our secure room on the hill for a long time, and soon we felt safe enough to have a child—you. When you were born, we invited the puppeteer to our room once again, and we had him sew his wires into your skin and flesh. We didn’t want you to fall off the hill. You were too young to verbally agree to any contract with the puppeteer, so your mother and I agreed for you. You know the rest of the story all too well.”

Yes, I do know the rest of the story. I remember how mad I was at you and Amma when I found out you chose to have wires sewn into me. I never wanted those wires in the first place! I remember how I spoke to the puppeteer myself once I could speak, and I asked if I had to live with these wires the rest of my life, and the puppeteer said: “Not at all, and if you so wish for me to take them out of you, I will take them out immediately, and you will be able to fall off the hill.” I was so happy when he took them out of me. I remember how angry you and Amma were when I did that. How could you be angry that I chose something in my life for myself?

“Faria, you don’t understand, and you may never understand; you are our daughter, and we are your parents. There are some things we know that you won’t understand until you become a parent. It is important to have measures in place so that you don’t go tumbling down the hill. We were afraid of going tumbling down the hill, and so we entered the contract with the puppeteer. We extended that contract to you because we thought you wouldn’t want to go tumbling down the hill either. We protected you.”

Except I did want to go tumbling down the hill! And I could only do that after I had the puppeteer take his wires out of my body.

“You wanted that because you’re young and immature. When you’re our age, you will realize how important it was to stay with the puppeteer.”

No, I won’t, because I want to explore the hill. I want to go tumbling down the hill. I want to plug myself into a little crevice of the hill and discover what scenery I can take in, what movements I can make with my body. I am curious about the hill! I’m allowed to choose the hill. And even if, when I grow old like you and Amma, I suddenly decide that I’m tired of being so free, that I want to go find the puppeteer again and have him sew me together and secure me with his wires from on high, I will seek him out at that point of my life, and I will have no regrets about having followed the different desires that I have now.

Sometimes it happens that I grow tired of writing an anecdote, or at the very least I rapidly lose interest in continuing it any further. This isn’t because I dislike it—I am fond of what I’ve written. Rather, it’s because I’ve suddenly gained an interest in writing about something else. I have quite a nasty habit in me to keep trying to write that which I don’t want to write anymore, because I am chasing after a specter of completion as holy grail, the heaven that I’m gifted after a lifetime of hard work and sacrifice. This is what happened with the last anecdote, when I was writing about the conversation I had with my father. That time, the way I worked around my lack of desire to continue the anecdote was to rush through the rest of it so I could get to the punchline. I want to insert my emotional life into this piece, and my emotional life includes rushing, giving up, growing tired, ignoring the desire to make my writing ‘good.’ How will I insert my emotional life into this piece if I suppress, within the context of the piece itself, all my rushing, my giving up, my growing tired, my ignoring the desire to make my writing ‘good?’ Next time when writing an anecdote, if I all of a sudden want to write about something different altogether, then I’d like the courage to interrupt my anecdote to write about something different.

I have a headache again. This is a different headache than the last one. I do not want to feed on improvement anymore. I want to feed on my headache, I want to extract from my headache words and sentences that I can arrange into this piece I’m writing right now. I enjoy meandering. Is meandering in the middle of writing a lazy thing to do? I don’t want the pressure anymore of: ‘You must make a point, or a series of points; you must have an argument you’re making, or a story you’re telling, and you must properly resolve whatever you begin.’ I would much rather feed on the exigencies of my life than on the paradigm of improvement. How afraid I used to be to make art, because I was wrapping myself in dregs of perfectionism, because I felt the indefatigable urge to become better! How afraid I still am to make art now—but also how much freer I feel to make art, how free I feel to affirm to others that they can make art.

How do I go about feeding on my headache? Every moment that I extend my fingers to write a new paragraph, my headache coats all the insides of my head with its saccharine fluid just a little further, until I’m left with a rattling when I turn my head around and feel all the crystallized sugar shatter and stab into my skull. I want to write my pain. I’m interested in writing my pain. My pain is an antidote to the desire in me for literary-enough, poetic-enough, polished-enough writing. I can build as much flowery language as I want for my headache, and I can thoroughly enjoy the taste of those images in my mouth, and at the end of the day all that literary sensation will have been in the service of what is typically considered a nuisance, an event that hampers me from going on with my life, a must-be-eliminated that draws me to the painkillers in my cabinet. But as soon as I kill my pain, I won’t be able to write with a headache anymore—until I get a new one. What writing am I capable of when I have a headache? this writing is what I’m capable of when I have a headache.