Loss FOR WORDS

my final will and testament

It is my understanding that, in honor of having ever lived, a person is entitled to one final request. Therefore, I request that after my death: a self-appointed trustee rifle through all the books on my shelves and tear out any pages upon which my handwriting appears. These annotated pages will comprise all of the works in my final exhibition. Yes, that’s right. I ask you—whoever you are, my dear, trusted confidante—to curate my final art show.

Now sadly, I won’t be able to physically see what a fabulous job you’ve done (for I will be dead). However, my presence will never be more authentic. For who I am has always been most clear in the thoughts, reflections and epiphanies that occurred to me with a book in hand. Among these realizations is the divine organization of my life:

Neither reading (nor authenticity) were of any importance when I was a child. Performance, extroversion, and sociability took precedence over any sort of activity that might foster solitude and introspection. I was never encouraged to read. What I knew to be true was this: to be loved, I had to perform. For the first twenty years of my life, this maxim would lead me away from reading and from knowing/being who I really am.

When the importance of reading was finally being impressed upon me (come college), my reading experience was largely stunted by an acute sense of anxiety and shame. I had no idea what it was like to get “lost in a book,” because I spent most of my time dwelling on my own inability to do so. No part of me believed I was capable of reading a single book cover-to-cover. The best I could do was act as though I had.

Then, in the wake of a heartbreak that psychologically butchered me, I happened to read a book called The Unbearable Lightness of Being (by Milan Kundera). I wouldn’t qualify it as being better than any other book, but it was the book at the center of my first joyful reading experience. The voice in my head and the words on the page emulsified. I knew what it was like to be engrossed. To lose my self and meet my self at the same time. A book became like an amulet, or a talisman—a conduit through which my creator whispers the Great Plan For Me in fragments. To read is to bewitch a piece of paper. To activate space and symbols with energy from my mind. Conjured meanings rise to the surface. My softest, most vulnerable voice grows audible in the substrate of the text it vitalizes. This method of getting to know myself would become a pattern as I went on to read thousands of more books throughout my life.

To share these sacred pages before I die would be performative, inauthentic, and hazardous to my own well-being. But to share them in the aftermath of my existence appeals to me. Nothing in this life is sacred, secret, or shameful enough to hide for all eternity. Let me take nothing to the grave.

On a logistical level, I believe these works should be for sale. Capitalism has been the theme of this party all along anyway. Just because I stop dressing up doesn’t mean you have to.

The rest is up to you.

Yours in pieces,

Alley Horn