Wednesday, October 5, 2022 — 7 
Michigan in Color
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

“Childhood is not from birth to a 
certain age and at a certain age/The 
child is grown, and puts away child-
ish things/Childhood is the kingdom 
where nobody dies.” 
― Edna St. Vincent Millay
I remember exactly where I was 
when Alex told me to write. More 
specifically, he said, “You know what 
you need to do. Just write about it.” 
We were crammed on the platform, 
a block or two from Cornelia Street, 
slick with sweat and desperate to get 
on the subway. I nodded and smiled, 
but I didn’t have the heart to tell him 
the truth and still don’t. 
The truth is I can’t. I can’t write. 
I’ve found myself in three of the most 
inspirational cities in the world in 
the last four months. As a girl who 
still lives eight miles from where she 
was born, this experience should be 
the kind of eye opener that connects 
me to my writing, but no, it’s not. The 
thing no one tells you about being a 
writer with writer’s block is that it’s 
not that the ideas and inspiration 
aren’t there. They are there. You 
feel them crawling under your skin. 
Fragments of sentences that are so 
close to perfect, grazing the back of 
your mind like, for lack of creativ-
ity, a broken record. The real prob-
lem is that there’s a disconnect; an 
inability to tune into the frequencies 
surrounding you and communicate 
them. Have you heard the story of 
the whale that was out of frequen-
cy? It’s referred to as the loneliest 
whale in the world, forever bound 

to believe it is alone solely because 
no other whales can hear its calls. 
Sometimes I think about the whale 
going miles and miles in search. 
Sometimes I think about how I feel 
like that whale and I’m struck by 
how terribly uncreative the thought 
is. Sometimes I punish myself for not 
pushing myself harder only to subse-
quently be frustrated by how hard I 
am on myself. 
I can’t remember where I heard 
it, but I’ve thought often about the 
argument that time is not linear, it’s 
stacked. So in theory, everything 
that is happening has already hap-
pened and everything that is going 
to happen has already happened 
and is currently happening. I’ve 
always interpreted it as everything 
I’ve gained and lost is always there, 
just simply with me. This thought 
has always comforted me. My best 
friends have moved away, graduated, 
but maybe if I close my eyes hard 
enough, sitting on the porch we used 
to cram ourselves into regularly, I’ll 
be able to be there again. I’ll be her 
again with all my friends, listening 
to folklore for the first time while 
standing on the table. If I concentrate 
enough, Rita’s hodgepodge collage 
will suddenly be removed from the 
tabletop, as if it was never there, and 
be replaced by bottles and lit candles 
and the needle we had used to pierce 
Hugo’s ear.
But what if I took it further, to 
another place I never wanted to 
leave? What if I never actually left 
New York? Just stayed in the same 
spot for ages through sheer force 
of will? If I stayed on that subway 
indefinitely back then in Manhat-
tan would I eventually go back to the 

start? Travel through time right back 
to the beginning? Do you think if I 
stood here long enough I’d go back 
to where I was, to who I was? Could 
I feel the chill of the New York night 
air pass through my teeth one more 
time? The sun press against my back? 
I bet if I sat on the 4 line long enough 
I would go back again. Would I feel 
time stacking like some overlapping 
thing that piles and piles on? Would 
I feel myself pass right by me, content 
with the life she created? 
I have a hard time letting go of 
things, especially the past. This is 
not necessarily conducive to this 
period of life. I’m currently 21. At 
22, I will be graduating and leaving 
the city and this eight mile radius 
in which I have spent most of my 
life. Life will transition into either 
Chicago or New York, where most 
University of Michigan graduates 
move. At 25, I will statistically have 
the most friends I will have ever in 
my life. The number will taper off 
gradually as I get married and have 
children and move to the suburbs 
and, God forbid, participate in a car-
pool. Between 35 and 55, I will have 
some internal midlife crisis, moving 
to a farm to complete my first novel 
or finally deciding to get my MFA. 
This will be a somewhat successful 
endeavor. At 60, I’ll retire and apply 
for that AARP membership. Life will 
continue on and I’m terrified. I’m 
not scared of aging or the increasing 
responsibility or of how life inher-
ently gets more and more narrow as 
more and more choices are made. 
I’m terrified that I will be in that car-
pool line staring off into the distance 
willing myself to be able to go back. 
I am terrified that I will continue to 

remain disconnected and unable to 
write again. Even more so, I’m terri-
fied that I will always be trying to go 
to where I was and who I have been, 
forever wishing I stayed on the sub-
way back then or on the porch with 
my friends in Ann Arbor. 
You want to know the quickest 
way to feel old? Go to Festifall. See, I 
had been contemplating whether or 
not to smile knowingly at the fresh-
men wandering past or make a run 
to the nearest injectable place and 
get Botox, when I failed to notice a 
bright-eyed freshman blinking at me. 
“What if I can’t produce content?” 
she said in a childlike voice that made 
me sound as if I smoke ten packs a 
day. She seems familiar. Like she 

could very well be me. Not me at this 
moment, but who I was on that Ann 
Arbor porch three years ago before I 
ever went to New York. She’s the me 
that I have to still face as time stacks 
and overlaps. She’s the me who can’t 
write a piece and the me that clings 
to a childish nostalgia. I blink. She 
then asks me, “How do you get over 
writer’s block?” My stomach drops. 
I wish I could tell you I didn’t lie 
to her. I did. I told her some bullshit 
about seeking new experiences and 
finding new sources of inspiration. 
What I should have told her is this: 
“Everyone gets writer’s block. I 
haven’t written a complete story in 
months. My latest piece is getting 
published this month; it has taken 

since May to write, since most of it is 
just unfinished thoughts about how 
I’m absolutely terrified about life. It’s 
scary and I don’t know when this dis-
connect with my writing is going to 
exactly end, but I have a hypothesis. 
It’s growing pains. Writer’s block is 
just growing pains. It’s the hurdle 
between childhood and adulthood. I 
bet, if I learn to let go of living in the 
past, then I won’t miss the future me 
passing right by like strangers on a 
subway. If I just stop trying so hard 
to go back to the old me, I will finally 
hear those frequencies again and 
finally be able to piece together those 
fragments of near perfect sentences 
and write. Write something new.” Or 
maybe not.

On writer’s block

Beginnings as endings

In the beginning, God created the 
Heavens and the Earth … and this 
two-thousand word Michigan Daily 
article. Indeed, it is crazy to believe, 
insane to think the piece you’re 
stumbling across at this moment 
might’ve been planned out since the 
dawn of time. And while origins of 
the Universe remain the subject of 
much dualistic debate, there’s no 
denying that our mystifying fascina-
tion with the start stays stuck in our 
mind. 
The start and the end remain 
divinely intertwined. One doesn’t 
have to look any further than Beyon-
cé’s Renaissance to witness how riv-
eting a seamless transition from one 
song to the next can be. Upon first 
listen, I re-call, as do many others, 
feeling uncertain in my ability to dis-
tinguish the beginning of one track 
and the end of another. Such seam-
lessness can place us into a flow state 
so sublime, we apprehend the linear 
experience of time itself. 
Similarly, September is certainly 
a time in which we can see the lucid 
interplay of beginnings as endings 
with the start of school followed 
by autumn’s imbricating advent 
devouring whole the remnants of a 
departed summer. In the enveloping, 
we too are squelched … by school/
work schedules swiftly changing 
and weather patterns vastly re-
arranging. Soon, we arrive in the 
underbelly of adversity, hardship and 
woe — fully estranged from the for-
mer glory of a season past. 
Fall begins, foisting the forces 
of late-stage capitalism onto us in 
full swing. The damning compul-
sions of academic and professional 
life leave us as lifeless as the fallen 
leaves. Sordidly, we flounder in a 
frenzy of applications and audi-
tions, mass meetings and recruit-

ment, harrowing responsibilities 
and harsh deadlines. Summer feels 
like sustained heat and unrestrained 
youth. Fall feels like chills, chim-
ing in exponentially, brisk but not as 
cold as the chains of autumn’s adult-
hood taking hold. For me, this fall in 
2022 happened to fall in the humble 
beginnings of my adulthood — roll-
ing forward toward the end of my 
post-secondary academic career all 
the while laying pregnant with the 
prospects of my future professional 
career. 
All that to say: it’s the beginning 
of the end of my college experience. 
This month has mixed us seniors in 
a slew of last firsts. Last first day of 
school. Last first Game Day. Last first 
shows, last first articles, the last of 
the firsts which shall first and fore-
most last til we take our final steps on 
Graduation Day, having finished our 
formal time here as students at the 
University of Michigan … Personally, 
I ain’t thinking ‘bout that right now. 
Right now, I been staying stuck in 
the right now, the righteousness of 
the eternal, now moment. 
Now, my meeting with the current 
moment is not without significant 
consideration of the past, the future, 
the lasts, and the firsts which shall 
not go unforgotten. Instead, I realize 
that in reconciling our origin with 
our destiny, we can become inten-
tionally aligned with our true self in 
the present, not neglecting our past 
nor future, but remaining undeterred 
by their detriments nonetheless. As 
Indian guru Nisargadatta Maharaj 
asserts, “When life and death are 
seen as essential to each other, as two 
aspects of one being, that is immor-
tality. To see the end in the beginning 
and the beginning in the end is the 
intimation of eternity.”
Many of us have pondered our 
own destiny, whether consciously 
or unconsciously. We are all aware 
these lives are impermanent. We 
may ruminate on after-lives, heavens 

and hells, or opt out of such specula-
tion perhaps out of anxious appre-
hension. Yet, shall we re-call that 
our endings are inseparable from our 
beginnings, then we might find our-
selves not fraught with fear by death 
but in deep understanding of its over-
arching potential to serve as to what 
Japanese author Hiroshi Obayashi 
refers to as the “liberation of noble 
soul from bodily prison.” 
But is this bodily existence a pris-
on? Are we trapped here on Earth? 
Serving time for misdeeds done in 
past lives on previous planets or 
planes of being? What led us to live 
these lives in the first place? While 
ruminating on destiny can lead to 
deliverance, we ultimately must 
attempt to understand our origins 
in order to be fully aligned with our 
true self. 
Pondering pre-existence can lead 
us to be more curious about the ori-
gins of everything in our life. How 
did we arrive where we are at this 
moment? Why this life? Why now? 
What events led up to this instance? 
How might we have ended up else-
where? So often do we set out at 
the start of an experience with taut 
expectations 
and 
preconceived 
notions. Our ego wants us to be in 
control to be comfortable. Ironically, 
it is typically not til we embrace the 
discomfort derived from relinquish-
ing our power to divinity that we feel 
most able to act. When we forgo our 
desire to control and trust that all 
things are working for our good, that 
this eternal moment is sacred and 
full of meaning, we find ourselves 
enriched by all the possibilities our 
Creator has in store for us. As English 
philosopher John Ellis McTaggart 
states, “A state of absolute perfection 
would render further death improb-
able.” In other words, without con-
flict we would lead a monotonous 
existence devoid of meaning. Once 
we acknowledge we are always 
arriving in the moment, conflict 

becomes an opportunity for growth.
In our pre-existent state — wheth-
er we believe that to be constituted 
by past lives or some form of previ-
ous consciousness — we undoubt-
edly acquired the qualities and skills 
inherent to us in this life which ini-
tially seem innate.
Much like how our previous 
experiences in high school, middle 
and elementary carry themselves 
over into college, much like how 
the residue of our long-gone sum-
mer dwells with us, now, well into 
the school year, the lessons learned 
in our previous existence (whatever 
that may be) certainly re-mains part 
of our self. As McTaggart claims, “If 
the same self passes through various 
lives, any change which happens to it 
at any time must affect its state in the 
time immediately subsequent, and, 
through this, in all future.” 
This is not to say we are fully 
determined by what’s come before, as 
we know with our bodily experience 
that this is not the truth. McTaggart 
draws on the notion of forgetfulness 
in order to elucidate his point about 
us losing memories of important 
events that nonetheless have dutiful-
ly shaped our self, provided signifi-
cant value and affected our essence. 
He maintains that memory makes us 
wiser, more virtuous and indicates 
to us that those we relate with have 
loved us and have been loved by us 
in the past. Yet while we do forget 
astounding instances, we do not 
necessarily regress. Their relevance 
endures on an energetic level. 
It’s the feelings of déjà vu or 
delight that we get when we experi-
ence a moment that feels timeless 
or transcendent. When the music 
at home, in the car or at the club 
blesses with unremitting beloved 
bliss. When we hear a word, phrase 
or even a single syllable that sits with 
us, lingering long after being uttered. 
When seeing someone for the first 
time feels like a re-union at last. At 
the very least, we can re-cognize, 
fully re-Sourced, how subtly we’ve 
been informed by forces originating 
from lifetimes ago … and with this 
knowledge, know that our everyday 
decisions in the moment will in part 
determine our ultimate destiny, stay-
ing with us as we enter dimensions 
beyond in death. 
I think about this now, as I am, like 
I said, stuck in the moment. I think 
about how little so much of what I do 
now will matter upon the academic 
death that is graduation. Moving on 
from Ann Arbor next year, I wonder 
how many relationships will fade, 
devotions disappear, fires inevitably 
extinguish, alliances and associa-
tions wither away. And while I know 
many of the ties I’m maintaining 
at the moment may not necessarily 
“matter” in nine months, when I’ve 
moved on, what will prolong, what 
will matter and what I will re-mem-
ber is the supreme impression it all 
has had on my soul. 

On a much more miniscule level, 
there’s always the day-to-day begin-
nings as endings that entreat us to 
treat our daily endeavors with an 
underlying 
episodic 
awareness. 
“The day is an epitome of the year,” 
as Transcendentalist Henry David 
Thoreau remarked, and with that 
in mind, it becomes clear that each 
morning is a master class in spring-
ing back to life as is the month of 
March. When asleep we lose touch 
with our conscious self. Thus, our 
dreams do resemble a death of some 
sort. 
As analytical psychologist James 
Hillman describes, dreams are chil-
dren of the Night linked closely to 
Sleep and Death. He posits that, “We 
may believe we are living life only on 
the level of life, but we cannot escape 
the psychic significance of what we 
are doing.” 
In between the start of a new day 
and the end of an old one, our dreams 
scaffold us into the dregs of the 
underworld. As Hillman postulates, 
dreams plainly put, ask us, “Where 
is my fate or individuation process 
going? … We know (exactly) where 
our individuation process is going — 
to death.” Yet upon waking, we are 
given life, yes? It makes sense then, 
why we often wake — if allowed 
proper rest unfettered from the reins 
of capital — regenerated, renewed, 
reborn. If our waking up is rehears-
al for a future resurrection, then it 
would do us well to ensure that our 
mornings are filled with the most 
fine-tuned spiritual practice. 
Needless to say, this is rarely the 
case. How frequently do we awake 
and find ourselves fixated on the first 
worldly pleasure we can find? Nowa-
days, our phone alarm so effortlessly 
facilitates us into the fold before 
we are even completely conscious. 
Every morning is now an immedi-
ate marination in the matrix of mass 
programming and corporate control. 
And if we’re not apprehended by the 
allure of our phone, then we’re likely 
caught in the clutches of caffeine, 
nicotine, marijuana, white sugar or 
sexual gratification. Wrapped in a 
wounding world of vice, we greet 
mornings with such wretchedness, 
leading me to wonder if we fear our 
most natural state. 
Are we afraid to be alone with 
our thoughts? Alone in our body? 
Alone as our Self? It seems the social 
stratification of clock-time has con-
stricted our ability to truly be on our 
own when white supremacy and 
late-stage capitalism prey on every 
minute of our day from the moment 
we wake up. Mandated early meet-
ings, classes and work shifts are all 
imposed as absolutely important, 
subjecting us to punishment when 
we fail to meet societal standards 
which we did not agree upon. Even in 
isolation or supposed solitude, we are 
only one email, one phone call, one 
text message and countless social 
media applications away from con-

necting. Always allowing everybody 
to access us, even in digital space, at 
all times, has scathing implications 
on a somatic and energetic level. No 
wonder we’re so quick to quell our 
everlasting discomfort with deathly 
material delights. 
Under our current cultural socio-
economic 
system’s 
hierarchical 
structuring of social time, every 
awakening is a rude awakening. We 
are always tired. Our nervous sys-
tems are always dysregulated. We 
are always experiencing some form 
of physical, emotional and spiritual 
depletion. Collectively, we’ve been 
robbed of the relaxing joy of an early 
rise. No longer do we view our morn-
ings as a revival in which we are to 
actualize our abundance upon open-
ing eyes. 
With that said, we might consider 
resolving to start our mornings with 
reflective, soul-enriching activities. 
Journaling, meditation, music, exer-
cise and simply existing in the quaint 
glory of a quiet sunrise can allow us 
to clearly see, feel and witness the 
all-encompassing beauty of morning. 
Mornings build momentum! If we 
are to see the day, the planetary hour 
as our life and death cycle on display, 
then we can simply say that in the 
morning we are a mere child. But as 
the day goes on, and we drastically 
develop, have formative experiences, 
learn, love and lose til finally, we’ve 
aged, acquainting ourselves with the 
wisdom of the night. 
It would do us good to embrace 
this wisdom, these nights which 
as we know, exist as beginnings in 
themselves. The day is on its death-
bed but the night is still young. Espe-
cially on the weekend, our nights 
are rife with potential. Bountiful 
new beginnings open up at the end 
of the day when we roam and play 
in the darkness, in deep space, in 
divinity, in non-duality, in between 
in-betweens. 
Of course, in between the begin-
ning, the end, the morning and the 
night, there is the middle. Too often 
do we overlook the middle in which 
we are not straddling two extremes 
but meandering in the mundane. 
Just as summer situates itself as the 
high noon of our Earthly seasonal 
cycles, there’s something about the 
sustainment, the warm, endearing 
sensation of a mellow after-noon 
that invites us to be idle. To rest. To 
re-connect with others. To take life 
a little slower. To bask in mediocrity. 
In the middle. And at the moment. 
And in the after-noon when sum-
mer is over, evening arrives, as does 
Fall. We fall back into place, once 
again arriving in autumn, not yet 
deterred by the dead of winter, of 
night, of self in slumber. Instead, we 
arrive — sensibly so in September — 
in autumn, in evening’s middle-aged 
maturity, reveling in the knowledge 
of setting sun. By then it seems we’re 
nearly back to where we began. At 
the end. 

KARIS CLARK
MiC Columnist

KATHERINA ANDRADE 
OZAETTA
MiC Senior Editor

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