Starlight, 1962 by Victoria Chang

Starlight, 1962
Victoria Chang

Suppose the stars are just our grief reflected back to us, proof that grief sometimes forgets its source, that it can find dead things no matter how distant. Everyone arrives one day and asks, is this it? And the stars answer back with more stars. I wonder if Agnes started at the bottom or at the top, if she went left to right or right to left. There’s no use in wondering if the canvas was on the floor or on a table. To ask questions is to be distracted by point of view. Point of view has a terrible memory. I’ve looked at photos scrolling up and over, zooming in and out, and realize it is not love I want, just the ability to zoom back out. A woman loses herself when she can no longer zoom out. Agnes knew that love exists because of the distance of starlight. That desire is the only thing with nerve endings. That it drips. That it dries faster in the desert. She knew to paint it vertically but to hang it horizontally.

MARGINALIA

1.
Isn’t grief an echo of love. It doesn’t matter how far we go or how much we heal. There are certain distances the heart still insists on measuring.

2.
I’ve spent years asking why and how and when, as if knowing the shape of the pain could ever soften its edge.

3.
I don’t know if I’m devastated or comforted by the fact that light can still reach us after everything has already ended. Maybe both.

4.
How can I orient my pain? And to which direction?

5.
I think of what it means to reach and never quite arrive. I suppose longing is not a flaw, but the form love takes when it’s not afraid to be unfinished.

6.
I want to protect the part of me that still feels awe. I want to look at the stars and not demand an answer.

7.
Grief is slippery. It forgets its source because it is faithful, because it follows whatever reminds it of the original wound. Here is an unfinished painting. Here is a slant of light.

8.
We think grief is linear, but it loops and loops and loops and loops and loops.