La parola da casa, Serena Piccoli

in chicago we've a mix of snow and rain today--a dismal day to match my mood. bits of my life are detritus thrown up around me--a fragment of poetry, a bit of fiction, a heart shriveling, some shards of pottery. lao tze says, "the self embodies distress. no self, no distress," but the buzzing in my ear reminds me of virgil's words in hell, "nessun maggior dolore/che ricordarsi del tempo felice/ne la miseria" ("there is not greater sorrow than to remember times of joy in misery"). the space between those two statements is what i try to navigate in life, often with little success, so little that at times i want to say with satre that no meaning exists before i give meaning, yet language frustrates my frustrated cry. i think through and in a system of meaning that i am not entirely in control of; i'm just trying remain afloat within it while also trying to sort the distance between constructed self, self, and no self.