Offering

316 years ago, a ship sailed off into the night. Not just a ship. A galleon, to be precise. Where it departed from: Potosí, Bolivia. What it was carrying: tons of silver, fresh from the bolivian mines. Where it was headed: Sevilla, Spain. It never got to its destination. Halfway though the Caribbean sea, the galleon was attacked by pirates. They took most of the silver, killed most of the crew. The ship sank into the ocean, and it’s there still, rotting away in the depths of the world, along with what silver the english pirates could not carry in their hands. The silver that did get to Europe, was sold and melted and turned into jewels, or coins, or weapons. But a small part ended up in the hands of scientists and artists. And around the time, a handful of scientists and artists were beginning to play wonder about- more precisely, about how to capture them. Camera obscuras were already around: those dark rooms or boxes with tiny holes that projected an upside-down image of the outside world onto a surface inside. For centuries, painters had been using it as a drawing aid, yet the image vanished the moment the light disappeared. The dream was to make that fleeting projection stay. Some chemical experiments revealed that certain salts- especially silver salts- would become darker when exposed to light. It took many years and many lunatics, playing with mercury and iodine and light until photography came to be, through combination of chemestry and the mechanics of the camera obscura. And it took a couple more years until someone realized that if you put one photograph after another after another (preferably at the speed of 24 photographs per second) you could create something very similar to a moving picture. In the end, it all comes down to silver and light.

So, if you think about it, cinema as we know it wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for that single mineral the Europeans took from Potosí. Cinema, in a way, is forever stained by colonialism and exploitation. Of what was stolen again and again. Cinema bears the mark of what was taken and never retributed, of what can never be repaired, of the fundamental injustice our world is built on. It carries the weight of a sunken ship, of all that silver could have been, if it hadn’t left South America in galleon after galleon- of all the nitrates that never turned into celluloid, of what was taken from here and used to make movies out there. In a way, taking the material essence of cinema from a whole continent is not that different from taking its voice.

I opened my mouth and let my jaw drop. I stopped in my tracks, grabbed your arm, made you stop, and gasped. It was bit a of an exaggerated reaction, but only a bit. I really did mean it when I said: “That’s beautiful. What a beautiful way to think about it.”

You dropped onto your knee right there, in the middle of the street, in the middle of the night, and brought your fist to your face. When you looked up, you were smiling- what a beautiful, sweet smile you have. “Yes”, you said. “I did it. I told it the right way”, and that was a very stupid thing for you to say, or rather for you to expect- for me, to be a good and impartial judge of your narration skills. I could never help but loving (and believing) everything you told me.

That’s the last story I remember you telling me- the one about the galleon, and the silver, and the celluloid, and the movies, and the mark of colonialism. What a beautiful story that was. Anyways, that’s not really what I wanted to tell you. I know it is weird. We haven’t told each other anything in months.

But I wanted to tell you I’m going off the sleeping pills. I’m planning to go off the sleeping pills. You know about the sleeping pills- the beginning of them, at least. You know about the sleepless night, that turned into two, that then turned into three, and then turned into a full week of what, at the time, I considered to be the very verge of madness. You know. You know you were the first person I talked to about them. Not because I was embarrassed or anything, I’ve learned from a very young age that being embarrassed about medication, and especially psychiatric medication, is a very stupid thing. I wasn’t talking about them because I was scared. Scared that they wouldn’t work, scared that they would make me crazier, scared that nothing would be able to help me. You know, it wasn’t the drugs I was scared of- it was me.

I think I’ve been somehow terrified of myself my whole life.

Terrified of the dark corners of my mind, terrified of finding out just how dark they can get.

I don’t know if you know that.

But what you probably don’t know is that sleeping pills were invented around the same time as cinema. Early 20th century, in Europe (is that really were all inventions come from?). I guess a bunch of scientists, and probably many artists, too, were wondering about insomnia- more specifically, the question of how to makeitstop. What they wanted: to sleep. What they needed: something to make them sleep. Opium and alcohol mixtures and herbs had been around for centuries, but as any insomniac worth her salt knows, they don’t really do shit. Then along came barbituries- straight out of a German mad scientist’s lab, they were fast-acting, effective, and could be easily mass produced. They had only one catch: the difference between a therapeutic dose and a lethal dose was very, very small. They needed a bunch of insomniacs to experiment with. So, you do the math: we’re talking Germany, 1904, maybe ‘05. One Sigmund Freud was known for having a bunch of hysteric female patients with all sorts of troubled minds and sleep problems. A first batch of barbitals went to them, and then a second one, and then a third, a God knows how many overdoses (accidental or intentional) came with each of them. 50 years later, the actual major component that is now used in sleeping pills was discovered by accident, in a French lab. So I can’t even tell you the experiment was meaningful, that they got it right in the end, that the women locked up in the darkest corners of their minds got their ride’s worth for the medication that they hoped would help them.

So if you think about it, sleeping pills, as we know them, carry the mark of the patriarchy. Of all the women who have spent their life scared of themselves, because in a sense that’s all they ever teach you to be. Of all the women who died trapped in their dark corners- trapped with all that was stolen and never retributed, all that was taken and never given back, all that can never be repaired, the fundamental injustice our world is built on. Etc.

How’s that for a thought-provoking story?

So much of the way we loved each other was about telling stories. We took turns to tell them, we held them up to each other like offerings. Here’s this thing I’ve noticed about John Ford’s sunsets. Here’s this thing a witch told me about the way the planets were standing the moment I was born. Here’s a thought I had about the desert. Here’s my favourite Mary Oliver poem. Here’s what I’ve figured out, recently, about death. Here’s why I’m so afraid to finish college. Here’s what’s been happening in my dreams.

It felt like we were offering each other life itself.

And then we offered our skins and our bodies and when I saw the hippopotamus tattooed across your chest for the first time it felt like such a privilege- but no bigger a privilege, I think, than it had felt to hear you telling me the story about Pablo Escobar’s zoo, and the animal’s escape after his death, and their roaming around the outsides of Bogota to this very day, and your childhood spent searching for hippos in the field outside your town. It would be a lie to say that this would hurt less, if I had never seen the hippo tattoed in your skin up close. I hold the story within me, and I can forget about person’s touch eventually, but I don’t think I can ever forget their words.

I know so many stories, so many things because of you, and just as I say this it has just occurred to me that maybe I loved you so much because you did the same thing the first people who ever loved did. You told me stories, when it was dark, and it was time to go to bed.

What a lame excuse for a last offering: a sad, made up story about women and Freud and medication. But it totally sounds like something that could have happened, right? The thing and my thoughts about it- it totally sounds like I would’ve given you.

You know, I started taking the sleeping pills around the time I fell in love with you. They helped, they really did. For a while I wondered if it would ever be possible to sleep without them again. To live without them. I wondered if I would feel like this (on the verge of madness) for the rest of my life, and they would be the only thing able to keep that terror away. And the answer is yes- I will probably will feel like this for the rest of my life. And the answer is no- they can’t be the only thing. So I’m going off them. Soon.

I guess when it’s dark, and it’s time to go to bed, I’ll tell myself a story.

So, goodbye.

The ship sails off into the night.