{"id":157733,"date":"2022-03-18T15:52:49","date_gmt":"2022-03-18T19:52:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=157733"},"modified":"2022-03-18T17:29:42","modified_gmt":"2022-03-18T21:29:42","slug":"walk-worthy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/03\/18\/walk-worthy\/","title":{"rendered":"Walk Worthy"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Eloghosa Osunde\u2019s column\u00a0Melting Clocks<\/a>, she takes apart the surreality of time and the senses.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Artwork by Eloghosa Osunde.<\/p><\/div>\n

Back then, one of my favorite leashes to use on myself was a Scripture from Ephesians 4:1. Paul wrote: \u201c<\/span>Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God.\u201d I loved his words there because they spoke to something already on the inside of me: a sturdy addiction to a set standard, height marks on the wall. There was something in me already easily seduced by the faith other people put in me, because to be believed in is to have the best of oneself amplified, and what could be better than that in terms of fortifying one\u2019s right to a body, right to a life? So there was me, always\u2014on the way to class, in the shower, on the bus, in my room, in my sleep\u2014reciting it to myself, confessing it over and over in my head: <\/span>Walk worthy. Walk worthy. Walk worthy.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

When I fell short of what I thought that meant, the whips I sent to my back were fearfully and wonderfully made. I’d left church\u2014the place that made that kind of thinking possible\u2014for a reason, but some of the lessons stayed. When I started writing my way toward the freedom that\u2019s now mine, it was because I wouldn\u2019t have survived otherwise. I was coming from a life of “must” and “should”; such teachers those words are, reminders that letters can keep you stuck, can make it too hard for you to show yourself mercy, and that we die without mercy. There are Scriptures for mercy, and for everything else. When I was younger, the ones we memorized at home were called confessions<\/em>. We\u2019d say them over our heads in unison: <\/span>God fights for me and I hold my peace. G<\/span><\/i>reater is the god in me than that which is in the world. N<\/span><\/i>othing can separate me from the love of God. I flourish like a palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon<\/span><\/i>. I learned quickly that to memorize the Word was to be guided by its content\u2014to be, always, in a state of prayer. To find Scripture I trusted was to be kept company from the inside and, one is likely only to obey what one knows and what one can easily remember. \u201cThis is the best thing I can give you,\u201d my parent would say. I still agree. It was. The Word was always there, and so, inside my body, I never felt alone.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, postchurch, I turn to poems and songs in place of Bible verses, reciting words I trust over and over in my heart, assimilating slowly. Toni Morrison\u2019s \u201cYou are your best thing\u201d is a handy hook. A quote from Toni Cade Bambara\u2019s The Salt Eaters<\/em> is an affirmation: \u201cI love myself in error and in correctness, waking or sleeping, sneezing, tipsy, or fabulously brilliant. I love myself doing the books or sitting down to a good game of poker\u2009\u2026<\/span>\u201d It reminds me\u2014in a Psalm 139:1\u201318 way\u2014that love follows me, that I do not have to be good in order to choose myself, to take my own side. \u201cSomewhere Real\u201d by Shira Erlichman is a Psalm of acceptance. You breathe better, I\u2019ve found, when you remember that you don\u2019t need to go through a thousand divorces from the selves you want to leave behind: you can just accept them. Most of what we fear and regret gets bored and floats off if we just look at it, anyway. Bassey Ikpi\u2019s \u201cThe Heart Attempts to Clear Its Name\u201d is a letter from the heart to my sometimes bratty mind, my body, the rest of me\u2014a reminder that you<\/span>\u00a0do not<\/span>, as Florence Welch has written, “<\/span>beat your own heart”;\u00a0<\/span>that even when I cannot fight for myself, my heart works to make sure that my life remains possible. Sometimes the body\u2014a realm unto itself\u2014insists on being remembered, and we\u2019re blessed when this insistence can come through language instead of force. The tone of Ikpi’s poem shakes me the way Job 38 used to, with its self-spinning questions. When the shame appears, when forgiveness seems elusive, when the truth around the fatigue is dark, Morgan Parker\u2019s \u201cSince I thought I\u2019d be dead \/ by now, everything \/ I do is fucking perfect\u201d on repeat does the work. It reminds me that the tunnel I used to be in was too everlasting for me to forget that it took great strength to exit it in the first place. On the rough days, in the tough times, when nothing in the world makes sense, I marry Gwendolyn Brooks\u2019s \u201cTo The Young Who Want to Die\u201d with some jazz\u2014and together, they make me from scratch. Some songs say what I\u2019m thinking before I can find the words. Msaki and Sun-El Musician\u2019s <\/span>\u201cTomorrow Silver,\u201d for instance:<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been thinking about peace and how to keep it once I\u2019ve found it
\n<\/span>I\u2019ve been thinking about money and how to keep it once I have it
\nI\u2019ve been thinking about love and how to keep it once I\u2019ve made it<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve been my friend on days that I\u2019ve prayed, and nothing has changed for me
\nUntil the end, you have my heart with no defenses around it
\nOh, no fences around it<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Because lyrics can be Scripture too, in that quicken-the-body way, there are songs that remind me of my previous resurrections, like all of those on Ibeyi\u2019s Deathless <\/em>or the one on which A\u1e63a sings, \u201cI\u2019m the one with nine lives, you only killed me three times.\u201d When the Cavemen\u2019s “Teach Me How to Love” comes more and more to life over an arresting build in volume\u2014\u201cTeach me how to love, show me how to be\u201d\u2014what\u2019s not prayer about that?<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Artwork by Eloghosa Osunde.<\/p><\/div>\n

***<\/span><\/p>\n

My whole life, I\u2019ve received questions from people\u2014inside myself and out\u2014who are baffled by the way I happen. Though it has hurt me sometimes, it hasn\u2019t surprised me, since most of my life I\u2019ve been asked similar questions\u2014sometimes nonverbally: Why would <\/span>you<\/span><\/i> do that? Isn\u2019t <\/span>that<\/span><\/i> beneath you? Why didn\u2019t you move like this or that, when that\u2019s what <\/span>a sane person<\/span><\/i> would do? How come you can\u2019t see that this is inconsistent with what someone who has the things you do <\/span>should <\/span><\/i>be? Why are you acting so clearly <\/span>unlike you<\/span><\/i>? Ever since I was born people have decided for me what is like me and what is not, what is beneath me and what is too good for me, what I do and don\u2019t deserve based on who they hope I am. For a while, this helped me. Being <\/span>trusted<\/span><\/i> to be good helped me carry myself with what people refer to as dignity, which in turn opened certain doors for me\u2014because good behavior is, after all, currency. But as the years have swelled, as the hourglasses do their thing, I realize that the people who define me in absolutes have begun to grate on me in unbearable ways. What used to free me is now a trap; what was once a long corridor for me to stroll down is now an obstacle, the thing standing in my way. Some people want me maskless and <\/span>consistent<\/span><\/i>. Others want me masked and omissive. I\u2019ve been that way to other people, too: terrified about the parts of them that fell outside of what I\u2019d thought was possible\u2014because it feels like turbulence sometimes, doesn\u2019t it, when you\u2019re convinced you\u2019ve understood a person and then they act outside of that understanding? There, just like that: your perspective, in pieces. A disorientation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Years ago, seas away from where I live now, I learned\u00a0what a schema is\u2014\u201ca cognitive framework or concept that helps organize and interpret information\u201d\u2014and I learned why people need their schemas to feel safe. (To have a framework is to be able to decide what to gravitate toward and what to stay away from.) All of us live by schemas. Most of us keep ours fixed, because, again, who wants to change all they know? But what we refuse to know shapes what we will fear, shapes what we will label dangerous or wrong, or unsafe. Fear has its roots in our lived experiences, and does not have much to do with what\u2019s outside us, staring us down. Time teaches us, if we\u2019re lucky, that shame is durable in useless ways, that grace is the strongest arm alive and yet it forces no one. Grace transforms us simply by being itself. It’s what we’ve all always needed to survive. It\u2019s what I\u2019m trying to get better at giving, and getting, because our capacity to rewire what we know when we receive new information also rewires our nervous systems, also widens the world in our minds. It is both hope and grace that make editing, learning, and adjusting possible. True. But sometimes I want to run from grace. I want to pretend I have never met it. So I do, and it lets me leave it whenever I feel like. It stands patient, refusing to unintroduce itself. When I return, it doesn\u2019t punish me.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s because of grace that some of my schemas currently look like this:<\/span><\/p>\n

What is discipline? The ground floor of freedom.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

What is a floor? The thing that mirrors the ceiling.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

What is a ceiling? Wherever your imagination ends.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

What is an ending? Necessary. See also: inevitable.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

What is normal? Not compulsory.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

It\u2019s because of grace that I am open to change. When I edit my schemas, I can sit inside myself and not run. I can stay with myself, without needing to fly out of an ear or peep into my body through a nostril, or to beat against my back asking for a door. I can live without wanting to climb my spine and hang upside down. I want, finally, to happen to myself; to happen with myself, as myself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

***<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Danielle Mckinney\u2019s paintings keep trailing my heels. I\u2019m thinking now, of specific paintings of hers like Let\u2019s Be Real<\/em>, like Thin Line<\/em>\u00a0or Spare Room<\/em>:\u00a0all reflections on what it means to be still, to give time to <\/span>being<\/span><\/i>.<\/span>\u00a0A painting is a decision\u2014a painting being an amalgam of permanent choices\u2014and a meditation, and is a collage of many tiny faiths in every stroke and line, every curve or curl, every hue or shade or texture. My favorite pieces of art are about simply <\/span>being, <\/span><\/i>more than they are about capturing something in motion, because <\/span>simply<\/span><\/i> is how I want to live\u2014peacefully, too; joyfully, wholly. My favorite artists are the ones who think it worthwhile to sit for hours painting a figure asleep on a couch or quietly sitting down, lying down reading a book, \u00a0smoking a cigarette in a room. Khari Turner. Elladj Deloumeaux. Delphine Desane. I\u2019m thinking of Kerry James Marshall\u2019s Nude (Spotlight)<\/em>\u00a0and Untitled (Beach Towel)<\/em>. Kudzanai-Violet Hwami\u2019s Dance of Many Hands<\/em>\u00a0is important to me, for its depiction of a person who stands like she knows what she wants to take away from life. A figure who isn\u2019t ashamed of happening, no matter what shape that takes\u2014one who reminds me of the ex-lover who looked at me one night and said through her red-lipsticked mouth: \u201cI\u2019m terrible, and you love it.\u201d She was absolutely right about that. Swami’s Hard Light<\/em> reminds me of what I need the most these days, as it becomes even more important for me to be the kind of person who lets the people I love be free to fail sometimes, to falter, and be told to \u201ctry again\u201d; the kind of person who lets myself receive this care, too. It reminds me how often an embrace is the salvation, the amen\u2014when we\u2019re beautiful, sure, but especially when we\u2019re ugly, have been ugly, are tired in places far deeper than we can point to. It\u2019s what we often need; what we are sometimes given and what sometimes makes it irreversibly clear what we\u2019d never had before. Chinazo Agbor\u2019s painting Pink Shoes<\/em>\u00a0is the type of work that calls you close to its world but makes you stand by the door, thankful to be a witness. Girl With The Green Hoops<\/em> and Westwood and Cigarettes<\/em> travel the same self-assured vein, smeared with bright colors, unforgettable hues that remind me how free I am to shine. And Mercy Thokozane Minah\u2019s paintings, depicting queer and trans people living their daily lives: simple miracles; lushness and leisure; dyed hair and eyebrows; books and tattoos; lovers on couches, braiding each other\u2019s hair, feeding each other food, resting lazily in bed, loved and worthy, loved and chosen, loved and together. May there be more.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

May there be more.<\/span><\/p>\n

***<\/span><\/p>\n

Writing the best work of my life thus far was an exercise in asserting my own worth. Am I worth telling audacious stories? Yes. Sometimes, I still can\u2019t believe how hard it was to <\/span>believe<\/span><\/i> myself worthy of the kind of freedom I know is possible. I can\u2019t believe how long it took to believe myself worthy of my own imagination. So many ideas get stopped that way\u2014on the way to that belief. It\u2019s such a long road. The other day I felt that I was perched on a tree, looking down. There was something like an animal there, a beast\u2014and it yawned, looking up at me. It was also me: the creature who produced my book, an animal with a wide hunger. That self left me with the ending of the book, which is why I can watch it from afar, from a whole other body. That wasn\u2019t always true. When I looked at it with my full focus, it would yawn. And I can swear it winked a little. It sometimes still baffles me that I am alive <\/span>outside<\/span><\/i> it, <\/span>beyon<\/span><\/i>d<\/em> it, because there was a time when there was more of the book in my body than there was of me. I feel more spacious now, and sometimes I use some of that space to think, What magic, to get the chance to live for whatever it is you were willing to die over. What magic to be able to see that I am worth my own words, that I deserve to enjoy the substance of my own audacity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There is something that finishing that book has done for me. A considerate person has turned down the volume of whatever din lived inside me. I think that person may have been me. I think I woke up one day\u2014without an internal unquietable alarm or the need to phone my head asking for an ambulance\u2014and turned the bass down. Everything is quieter. Because everything is quieter, I have time to detangle goodness from worthiness. They are not a braid. What frees me to accept this fact is a lesson I learned recently about how even God isn\u2019t good all the time. Good is what we say God is when They do something that creates relief, but ultimately, God is free. And freedom is commitment. God can be good when They are committed to it, which\u2014depending on context\u2014might be often, but not always. Because everything is quieter for me now, I remember that my favorite kind of art\u2014the kind I strive to make\u2014doesn\u2019t even pretend to face people who are Good; it is made openly for vagabonds of all kinds, outsiders, unbelongers, and also the Young Who Want To Die. My favorite art wakes all my senses. My favorite kind of people whisper to my life through their life: Forget fitting the mold or being correct, just be, just be, just <\/span>be<\/span><\/i>. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Artwork by Eloghosa Osunde.<\/p><\/div>\n

***<\/span><\/p>\n

The way I’m able to keep my mind is by remembering that no one can take anything from me that they didn\u2019t give me, and that most of the things I have that matter were not gifted to me by anybody with a body; they are mine from the inside, mine from my spirit, mine from my destiny. They\u2019re not anyone else\u2019s to take, and if they\u2019re not anyone else\u2019s to take, I can rest. No one can take me from me, hard as they try. No one can take me from me, fear as I have in the past.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sometimes I run into fears<\/span> that were raised with the same legitimacy as I was, fears that had their own puberties, their voices breaking and deepening, fears that were given meals and affirmations and that grew up on the inside of me. They have voices as real as a sibling\u2019s. I respond to them with language and with art, which is also scripture. When I u<\/span>sed to worry obsessively about being difficult to read or define, it was because people fear what they can’t trust to stay in a box, and what people fear they ultimately villainize\u2014but even at my most tame, people make up their stories anyway. They are free to conclude what they like, and I’m free, also, to simply become more myself.<\/span> Sometimes I, too, have looked at myself with a terrorglint in my eyes, but I know that none of this makes me, inherently, terrible. I respect my silences because of this; I respect my own inactivity and disappearances, remembering that not everything in a shell is hiding. <\/span>It was never fear that made me want to do better, anyway. It was always grace. It was always the realization that I\u2019m free to be anything, so why not choose something generative?<\/span> I\u2019m my longest-standing witness, the keeper of all my archives, the one who knows all the roads inside me\u2014which leads to shame, which leads to rage, which leads to peace; I am the town planner of my internal landscape. Where have you been? I ask myself sometimes, And where are you going now? Ultimately, I\u2019m interested in moving away from right or wrong, and toward responsibility and\u00a0freedom.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, what did it mean back then to walk worthy of my calling? To stay away from sin, to stay away from whatever corrupts the spirit. I saw making mistakes as breaking a hedge that protected me; I thought it weakened my spirit as a habitable place for the presence of God. When I realized how ill-fitting that is for what I know now about why I\u2019m here, about Who I answer to, I remembered myself. We\u2019re in these skins for all sorts of reasons. This is mine: not to be right or to be accepted, not necessarily to belong or even to be worshiped, but to wring my heart out properly, to happen to life as it happens to me, to be <\/span>transformed from the inside<\/span><\/i>. I still recite a part of Ephesians 4:1 over my heart: what used to be a leash is a freedom. When I wake up, when I fall, when I forget myself, when I\u2019m a dream, when I\u2019m a nightmare, in my confusion, in my successes, in my flaws, in my laughter: <\/span>Walk worthy, walk worthy, walk worthy of you<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>which is now to say<\/span>, Walk as yourself,\u00a0<\/span><\/i>a way to say to myself<\/span>:\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Take your own advice,
\n<\/span><\/i>you\u2019re allowed to be alive.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Eloghosa Osunde is an artist and the author of Vagabonds!<\/a>, out now with Riverhead Books. She was the winner of the 2021 Plimpton Prize for Fiction, for her short story “Good Boy<\/a>,” which appeared in issue no. 234 (Fall 2020).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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