The Other Side (28 page)

The opposite of
aporos
—or a puzzle, a perplexity, a paradox—is
poros
, meaning “passageway” or “opening,” from which come words like the Latin
porta
, meaning “door” or “entrance” or “exit” or “escape.” From
poros
come words like
port, passage, opportunity
.

These two terms,
poros
and
aporos
, the opening and the impasse, are mutually dependent: each one creates the
other. An escape without a trap leads away from nowhere forever; the closure without an opening merely suspends. The
aporos
requires the
poros
. For every impasse, there must be an opening.

from
thirteen

Page 191:
White of forgetfulness. White of safety
.
Louise Glück, “Persephone the Wanderer.”

You drift between earth and death

which seem, finally,

strangely alike. Scholars tell us

that there is no point in knowing what you want

when the forces contending over you

could kill you.

White of forgetfulness,

White of safety—

thank you

I am grateful to the editors of
Pebble Lake Review, TriQuarterly Online
, and
Creative Nonfiction
, where portions of this manuscript appeared over the span of many years, and in very altered form.

I am deeply grateful to my agent, Ethan Bassoff, whom I cannot thank enough for his time, energy, and tireless advocacy of this work; and to Masie Cochran, my editor at Tin House Books, whose insight and energetic vision are forces to be reckoned with. I am indebted to you both.

Thank you also to Jakob, Diane, Nanci, and the whole Tin House crew.

Thanks to the generous readers of early incarnations of this manuscript: Nick Flynn, Joshua Rivkin, Casey Fleming; and to the teachers who clarified my thinking about this book before it became one: Rubén Martínez, John Weir, Mark Doty, Claudia Rankine, Ann Christensen, J. Kastely, and W. Lawrence Hogue. Thanks also to the dedicated writers I worked alongside during this book's infancy: Elizabeth Chapman, Annie Newton, Lucy Seward, Brian Wolf, Fariha Tayaab, and Allison LiVecchi. I love you with my whole, second beating heart.

I am grateful for the generous support of the Sustainable Arts Foundation; the Millay Colony for the Arts, where a portion of this manuscript was written; and the Inprint Brown Foundation.

And finally, thank you to my husband and partner in life, whom I'll not name here, and to our children, whose love is so fierce and complete that it pulls me out of bed at night. More than anything else, I am grateful for that love.