“Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
                of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
                The art of losing isn’t hard to master.” -Elizabeth Bishop, from “One Art”

                On November 1st I got to hear Alexis Pauline Gumbs talk, and I wanted to write tonight’s post about something she said. But I’ve lost the paper with my notes. It’s been a frustrating day, anyway, and running around my house those notes felt like something I had to find. And Gumbs also talks about loving whales when they’re close so she can see them, and when they’re far, deep, awash in a place she’ll never know. That made me think about having.
                So much of graduate school is predicated on having more and more. More knowledge, more expertise. So much of the American idea of success is predicated on having more and more. And losing isn’t very hard to master. I was so upset, as a kid, when I lost the mechanical pencil I used to do my math homework. The pencil was how I worked, working was how I did well, doing well was—was what I had to be doing, wasn’t it? And it’s so easy, sitting here and thinking about losing, to turn losing into a kind of having. I still have my memories of Gumbs’ wonderful talk. I still got to see her. (US media likes this losing that is a having. We’ll always have Paris, says Bogart in Casablanca). But tonight, instead, I’m thinking about whales deep beneath the waves. I’m thinking about friends I’ll never see again. Friends I’ll never get to make. Somewhere along the way I learned to keep every scrap of paper, every line of writing, like catching at seaspray. I don’t think this is a post about “letting go,” or something simple like that. As a kid I was terrified by the depth of the sea. Pulling at my feet. Endless. Tonight is sitting with the kid who can’t bear to lose a pencil. Swimming with the kid who’s frightened by the depth of the sea. Swimming with me. And feeling something sink down, away. Losing. None of this was ever mine. How can I stop trying so hard to “keep” a touch of the waves?