Invisibility

I have the dubiously useful talent
of being able to make myself disappear.
In the midst of a group
I can make myself invisible,
fading in and out at will.
Invisibility used to bother me.
In this moment I seek it out,
create the barrier I need
to separate myself, gain the 
inner and outer space required to
draw a deep breath
amidst the chaos 
surrounding me.
05/29/10, written at
Folk Life Festival, Seattle, WA


I've been feeling invisible this past month.


The feeling has made it difficult to rectify the posting of blog entries.  A blog seems a way of shouting 'Look at me!' to the world at large, and I haven't felt in need, or deserving, of attention.  


I tell myself to suck it up.  I'm a writer, damn it, writers put their work out there whether they feel like it or not.  Putting my work out there was the whole point of starting the blog in the first place.


Still.


This is not the sort of selective invisibility I mention in the poem above.  I cultivate that purposely as the situation warrants, as a means of preserving my sanity.


It's also not the fun 'Invisible Man' kind that would allow me to mess with people, floating spoons across the kitchen before their disbelieving eyes.  Moving their things to confuse them ('I'm just sure I left that book on the table next to the couch, not on the floor underneath the piano bench!').


I would characterize this as ghost-invisible.  It's a sense of being only partially present in, and to, the world around me.


I leave bare hints of footprints in the grass, and the air almost ripples around me when I walk.  Others looking my way only glimpse the faintest outline of my shape, the dull, shimmering mirage of a human.


I move about as quietly as possible.  I take up the smallest amount of space I can.  I try to leave no traces of myself in my wake.


I find myself unwilling to look people directly in the eye.  I am surprised and momentarily flustered when a store clerk or passerby casts a pleasant remark in my direction; it takes me a minute to remember that they can see me.


I speak rarely.  I have opinions, of course, but rarely share them even when asked, because who cares what a ghost thinks?


So it goes.  I watch this ghost-version of me with curiosity.  I inhabit her gently and carefully, with none of my usual impatient restlessness.  


I am writing as a way to begin to backfill that which has vanished these past weeks.  Engaged in the work necessary to regain the corporeal, I bear in mind that part of pilgrimage is the shedding of the self in order to regain something more, something that lies much deeper than the flesh.