Reckoning
"Just because you’ve written a book about something doesn’t mean you’re done thinking about it."
I’ve been reckoning for several weeks now.
Reckoning is not the normal kind of thinking, the everyday thinking. Not that kind, no. That everyday kind is the pleasant kind, the kind where thoughts settle well back into the body.
No. Reckoning is the figuring kind of thinking. The sizing up, the taking stock, and it’s much more exhausting.
It’s been many months since I’ve written anything regarding current politics. I’m quite sure I’ve needed this break, having directed a rather exhausting amount of reckoning on my soon-to-be released book, Here Be Monsters. And, really, I’d much rather only write about gods, and the medieval demonology which led to our current political theology, rather than also anything currently shaping political discourse.
I reckon that’s not how it will be, though.
I got my first copy of my book several weeks ago, and immediately started reading it. I finished it in one sitting, and the next morning felt a kind of elation and release that I soon realized was quite misplaced.
“I’m done with all that,” I said to my husband, noticing immediately the error in my words as they left my lips.
What I’d meant by “done” was that I somehow imagined I no longer needed to reckon with those matters, no longer needed to think about them.
I’d written a book about it, and that was the end of it.
As I said it, shook my head, sadly, remembering a quote from Ursula K. Le Guin:
Just because you’ve written a book about something
doesn’t mean you’re done thinking about it.
In fact, writing that book means I’ll need to be thinking much more about it, and talking much more about it, which means also writing much more about it.
But part of me really still doesn’t want to, at all.