In the heat malaise, summer days, I’m thinking about severing.
*unfortunately, yes there will be spoilers for Severance the book by Ling Ma here*
So, I read Ling Ma’s debut novel Severance for an Asian book group I’m a part of (ABG™). Initial thoughts: holy fuck I wish I wrote this book. After thoughts: I still wish I wrote this book, and also, wow what a masterpiece, so rich and particular while also articulating so well the generalized experience of the monotony of violence and decay in late capitalism and the impossible severance of all other possibilities of living and dying in this World.
SEVERANCE and RUPTURE is something I meet time and time again no matter what pathway I take…
In diaspora communities, home has almost a mythical status in the collective imagination. It represents this ultimate possibility of a unified wholeness, and, at least for me, held a hope of return. That in return I could be connected not only to an ancestral past, but also feel at home in this world. I yearned, yearned, for a way back. Now, I’m not so sure.
Severance is and isn’t about diaspora. I think that’s what I loved about it. Lately I’ve been really sick of talking about how I’m ~Asian~ even though I probably will continue to do so. I’m sick of thinking about myself as an ~Asian writer~ or ~Asian artist~ even though the restrictions that those categories hold are often self-imposed.
In Severance, the main character Candace Chen immigrated to Salt-Lake City from Fuzhou when she was young, now residing in New York. The novel circles back and forth as she pieces together the present moment [an apocalyptic world in which an infection called the Shen fever has spread globally and in which the people that contract it are basically zombies, but instead of being murderous they stay in loops of their daily routines—watching TV, sending emails, folding clothes, setting the table for dinner] and retraces different points in the past [the loss of her parents, her childhood, the time right before the end]. ~non-linear storytelling~ ever heard of it???
Severance refuses a clean return. Before the apocalypse, Candace worked as a Bible product coordinator finding herself “just doing her job” as she is further webbed into the global market of offshore factories, time zone delays, workers lawsuits and, of course, the shape shifting face of Imperialism that leaves casualties across a protracted aftermath in its wake. She returns back to China to visit factories and finds that her Mandarin is frozen in time at the point in which she left—her vocabulary simplistic and crude, even child-like. It holds all warm possibilities of reunification at a distance, not because it intends to be cruel, but simply because it is the truth. For Candace, there is no way back, no home in China anymore. Instead she anchors herself to her work, refusing to leave the office even as New York City collapses around her in hopes of receiving her severance pay that she was promised [now in a world where money means nothing].
Severances layer on top of each other…
Severance
Severance
Severance
Living through severance means being haunted by absence of what was severed, a phantom limb that’s ghostly presence presses up against her present reality. Not only the childhood past that did happen (her severing from China and eventually her parents), but also what might and could have been. Candace reminisces about her past in Fuzhou, and “Fuzhou nighttime feeling” a feeling of night markets, an erotic sort of excitement, a primal festering in which in discussing it in the book group we found that we all could sub in our own childhood nighttime feelings in Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Philippines and on and on and on. A memory understood through feeling if nothing else, lodged in time. Severance, in the book, not only refers to diaspora and the severance of home but as well the deep impossible severing of the World making capacities of Slavery, Capitalism and Colonization that Worlded the World and the messy mess-making that places each of us at this point (here and now). [capital S and capital C because things are complicated, as I am always reminded of, and more complicated than those words can account for]. From this point (here and now) it would be a disservice to say that there is a way we could return to how it was, that the diaspora could be reunited to home, that the great and ongoing species loss could be undone, that the unmourned dead could be avenged, that languages ripped out from people’s tongues could be restored and on and on…
Deep, impenetrable and impossible loss has happened and continues to happen, something has been severed, and it’s from here, from the point of rupture where I find myself, that I can say this is the end…but like all ends, there is still the (…)
—
(Interlude: Journal Entries) On creating lighter stories (6.29.22)
I HAVE BEEN ON ONE LATELY. A part of me, at first, was like wait am I being manic right now?? One evening, I spent hours awake, unable to fall asleep, just thinking about how excited I feel for life, how invigorated I am to be having this human experience here on earth. Every day it feels like new ideas and projects are slowly (or actually very quickly) taking shape.
~
Internal narrative:
Doubtful, but cute nervous self: wait you’re moving way too fast, are you sure about this?? I’m nervous…
Bold, unwavering self: Literally can’t hear you too busy living my best life, sorry xoxo
~
The thing is, I feel so happy right now, so happy it scares me. So happy, that there is that part of me that is waiting for heaviness to weigh itself back on to me. A part of me that is waiting for myself to suddenly realize that it all is a mistake, and all that shines isn’t really gold, that life is actually not this easy, that I don’t know what I’m doing, that I’ll lose the momentum and I was actually just manic this entire time.
Maybe, but also maybe not. [wow…the number of times “but, also maybe not” has become a cheat code for creating lighter stories].
The thing is, if sadness comes on, heartbreak, loneliness, disillusionment, chaos, despair I’m okay with that too. There is something about the fear of suffering that balls up these emotions into tight compact energies we can fit deep inside ourselves <too dense to touch, much less look at> and and the other things is, it’s not that I don’t fear suffering. It’s just that I don’t find density in it. I love letting these emotions be as expansive as they desire to be [without getting lost in the sauce of it all—more on sauce later…] When I am in despair I languish in the sorrow in the narrative folds (everything sucks, I am cursed, why? Why? WHY?????), when I feel lonely, I commune with that deep loneliness inside me. The feeling that I could quite possibly be the only person alive right now. And on and on and on…We’ve all heard it from your therapist or mental health gurus online ~nothing you feel is wrong~ BUT for real, from the depths of my soul I understand that nothing I feel can be wrong.
Now, let’s circle back to the sauce in question. For me, not getting lost in the sauce of a feeling or an emotion is really just allowing reality to be lighter. I.e., this can be FOREVER!!! Or…this can be just for now. There are moments when I feel myself sinking so acutely into an emotion that it feels like I could swim in it forever, or I suppose, I fear that I could drown in it forever. “I give it a few days” I say to myself. I buy in to the transience, and transient it becomes.
—
Bound to Other Promises: Through the Portal
There is a quote by Saidiya Hartman from her book Lose Your Mother: A journey along the Atlantic slave route that I return to again and again.
“The hope is that return could resolve the old dilemmas, make a victory out of defeat, and engender a new order. And the disappointment is that there is no going back to a former condition. Loss remakes you.”
A single thought from that quote keeps ringing again and again in my head…
LOSS REMAKES YOU
LOSS REMAKES YOU
LOSS REMAKES YOU
An undeniable truth, at least for me, in reading that one line everything rose to the surface, I couldn’t contain the flood. Something that I knew so deeply to be true. Everything in me understood.
Claiming that there is an ultimate severance is not denying or even abandoning the past before this world was worlded, but, in fact, it deeply honors it. Honoring the loss that frames your existence, that puts you here in space and time. Honoring the phantom pains that remind you that yes, yes, the absence is there, and, perhaps, perhaps, I can never return to it.
Yet the quote from Hartman doesn’t end there, she continues:
“I shall return to my native land. Those disbelieving in the promise and refusing to make the pledge have no choice, but to avow the loss that inaugurates one’s existence. It is to be bound to other promises. It is to lose your mother, always.”
Bound to other promises.
During the book club meeting, someone brought up a specific passage towards the end, where Candace who is very pregnant now speaks on her soon to be daughter who she has named Luna:
“I have been an orphan for so long I am tired of it, walking and driving and searching for something that will never settle me. I want something different for Luna, the child of two rootless people. She will be born untethered from all family except me, without a hometown or a place of origin.”
Luna is the diaspora’s hereafters born from a motherless, originless woman. Neither Hartman nor Ma give us an answer to how loss transforms, or how possibility can emerge out of deeply impossible circumstances [how other worlds can be worlded or are being worlded now, or the what else that follows after the end]. But, to avow the loss is to be bound to other promises, other possibilities, and portals to elsewhere. After all, the only way out is through.
—
This…or that (If you did it before what do you choose now?)
meta clue reveal in substack post in question…
—
Podcast Plug: The Pandemic is a Portal
~if you enjoyed this article and want to engage more~ In this episode of the podcast, we talk about Severance, and Arunduhti Roy’s 2020 article “The Pandemic is a Portal.” Have we entered the portal?
—
& A Poem…and this one even got ~published~ in @yiaramagazine
Hey, Don’t You Know?
Hey, don’t you know? It’s already the end of the world. I’ll meet you right here, In the future, and we can talk about, What our parents’, parents did wrong And how we will do better. For a moment we can untangle ourselves into thin silver lines, And make sense of this point, (that is different from other points) And find safety in that knowing, Or perhaps we can just feel held by all the sticky webs, And sink ourselves under the thin covers of time, Wondering if we tug just so That some[where] our parents’, parents’, parents might feel it. Here, at the end of the world, We can imagine history happened differently, Or that umber possibilities that have long since been discarded, Or dumped in riverways that lead to the ocean, Can be discovered, Hanging on a fin of a fish, Or around the neck of a turtle, Or tangled up in seaweed. We can imagine that this was where our soul last left off, And pick it back up again. Here, at the end of the world, We can finally mourn and wail deep indigo, And allow the ghosts crowding our houses to be put to rest, Or, if they wish, to roam freely, Between ether and orange sky. Where clouds that look like willow trees Chatter on different time—lines, And remember different memories. We can hold their phantom pain, And cry about what-could-have-been-but-never-was. Here, at the end of the world, We can dip our fingers in to honey And gasp in between this realm of pleasure and pain, That helps us feel the future. We can dream about freedom, wake up again, And remember that we are alive. That some[where] between here and [elsewhere], Exists eternity and it is ours if we want it. Hey, don’t you know? It’s already the end of the world.
—
Affirmations:
Me: *getting stressed*
My friend (very calmly): this is fine.
Me: omg you’re so right…this is fine.
-
My dreams are normal and inevitable.
—
that is all for now as always, much love xoxo
-Thai
love it💜🛐