self-portrait 22 – Alison Lanza

January 9, 2026

While I was on Earth, I felt sorry for myself. I was twenty or so. I was philosophically-minded, but a little stupid. I did have a good autobiographical memory. I was capable of feeling extreme depths of sadness and hopelessness. I found these words embarrassing and omitted them from my writing. I regularly surpassed the former limits of my sadness and hopelessness so that the world when I saw it seemed to me to break its own terms—sun beneath clouds too bright, etc. I could draw on that feeling in any place I went, like someone skilled at finding the right vein. That was usually thanks to my good memory. I could weep at the smell of frost and voices of pigeons that reminded me of similar qualities hidden in other things. There was a haze of memory all over the world, the haze of my eyesight, and things glinting out of it, illogical brightnesses calling attention to themselves. Everything looked something alike. I was able to see this.

I had the idea that I had something to say. I thought I was good-hearted. I thought of myself as being something like a pilgrim. And I was trying to find a good place to rest—a farmhouse just past the horizon. I thought that it was there. That it had been built for me. Nice ideas kept me walking forward in the snow, toward the invisible place of rest, in spite of my suspicions, the threatening silence.