Other

I read Toni Morrison – her essays, her speeches, her meditations – and my mind roams over the people I have known who were Other to me. This Otherness as it's now classed is a relatively new language. I didn't see these neighbours, these friends, these colleagues as Other at the time I knew them; now I would, because this Otherness has permeated language. I cannot now not see it (or past it); I cannot now not censor myself in any exchanges there might be or reflect on my part in them afterwards. Our racial discourses have damaged my natural inclination to want to know and to befriend people, all different types of individuals. It has, within me, created barriers. I cannot now engage on any deep level because there is always a risk of being misunderstood; I cannot express myself as I would to someone who I know to be “safe”, that is, we are already known to each other, we have history. There is only the page, yet even here I do not say explicitly what I want to say, for the page is now Other too.

See Mouth Full of Blood by Toni Morrison. 

From journal, August 2022.

Picture credit: Other Voices, 1995, Jamie Wyeth (source: WikiArt).