A review by ritapontotomas
The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial by Maggie Nelson
dark
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
“At first I tried to keep warm under the crapy motel bedspread by thinking about the man I loved. At the time he was traveling in Europe and was thus unreachable. I didn’t know it yet but as I laid there, he was traveling with another woman. Does it matter now? I tried hard to feel his body wrapped tightly around mine. Next I tried to imagine everyone I have ever loved and everyone who would ever loved me wrapped around me. I tried to feel that I was the composita of all these people instead of someone alone in a shitty motel room with a broken heater somewhere outside of Detroit a few miles from where Jane’s body was dumped 36 years ago on a March night just like this one.
“Need each other as much as you can bare”, writes Eileen Myles, “everywhere you go in the world”. I felt the wild need for any or all of these people that night. Lying there alone I began to feel, perhaps even to know, that I did not exist apart from my love and need of them, nor perhaps did they exist apart from their love and need of me. Of this latter I felt less sure but it seem possible if the equation worked both ways. Falling asleep I thought, maybe this for me is the hand of god.”
“Need each other as much as you can bare”, writes Eileen Myles, “everywhere you go in the world”. I felt the wild need for any or all of these people that night. Lying there alone I began to feel, perhaps even to know, that I did not exist apart from my love and need of them, nor perhaps did they exist apart from their love and need of me. Of this latter I felt less sure but it seem possible if the equation worked both ways. Falling asleep I thought, maybe this for me is the hand of god.”