ONE PERSON BOOK CLUB

Book: Six Memos for the New Millenium (Italio Cavlino)

Chapter 1: Lightness

I’m compelled by his decision to start with this one, perhaps the most ephemeral of any of the topics listed. The thoughts were rambling, stacked upon each other haphazardly but concurrently united by a theme of lift and—of course—lightness. I found the words almost impossible to move past, the concept resonating so concretely in my chest; yet at other points, I drifted away from the page, finding lightness in my own mind, laughing at the connections drawn to Ovid and leaping over tombstones. I don’t know what to make of this essay. The first ten pages have been pursued many times, never finished until today, and now with the concept of lightness in my mind… I still don’t know if I agree.
The concept of lightness, in my experience, is often used as a way to leap over problems instead of tackle them. Of course, heaviness can pin us to the ground, suffocate us with horror and responsibility, but lightness can distract. Lightness can let us lift ourselves over tombstones, rejecting the structure of poetry itself, or it can let us keep death and decay far away, never growing to face it, letting it scare us later on.
As I was reading this essay today, sitting on the bank of the Mississippi river, there was a man, about fifty feet away from me smoking a cigarette. I wanted to go and ask him for one desperately. It would have quenched my desire instantaneously. A birthday gift to myself—prove that I’m an addict and get a treat out of it too. But I did not. Instead of lifting my feet off the ground, following the intoxicating smell infusing itself into the air from tens of feet away, I kept myself heavy and reminded myself of lows that I did not want to recreate. If I had followed lightness in that moment I would have sunk. Instead I rose above the light.