Have you ever fallen down a hole? Not literally, but mentally.
I have—and unlike falling down a literal hole—there is no narrative to attach to it. There isn’t a series of events that led to the fall, or a way to accurately describe the fall itself. It’s not as if one moment you are standing on the top of the cliff and the next you’re free falling to an uncertain fate. At least for me it wasn’t.
It happened much slower. So slow that I didn’t realize I had fallen until I woke up at the bottom with a rare moment of clarity about where I was. At the time I was laying on a tatami mat in a small apartment on the outskirts of Tokyo, Japan; literally waking up and looking back at feelings of self-harm with an alarmed sense of reality. I had fallen and hadn’t even realized it.
In retrospect, the fall is obvious. It’s looking back and seeing a million little falls. It’s the sensation that everything in your life is hurtling towards a singular point while life flails about in every direction around you. It’s the feeling of lying awake at night because your thoughts are spiralling and descending further into the abyss with every rotation.
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous isn’t so much a narrative as it is a downward spiral of thoughts with no control to do otherwise.
In Ocean Vuong’s debut novel the main character, affectionately known as Little Dog, grapples with his difficult relationship with his illiterate mother by writing her a series of letters. Having immigrated to the United States from Vietnam as a child, he talks through the effects growing up amongst war had on his mother and how those translated to his first relationship with a boy.
It’s a spiral of negative, hurtful thoughts and memories twisted into something ugly and then un-wrung before us to display the beauty. It’s line after line of blurred pain with joltingly clear moments of revelation.
Sometimes it’s not the content of a book that relates to you. Healing doesn’t always come through seeing a character experience your experience. But feelings are universal. Sensations can induce healing as quickly as they do nostalgia. Books and stories can be a place to feel your feelings in the safe context of another being’s thoughts.
The first time I read this novel I experienced the falling. Flying through it with a whirling sensation and uncertain feeling of oncoming panic, but I think it deserves something more. I think it deserves pouring oneself over each line. Taking a slow and methodical approach to dig into every emotion in every line.
And I think I’ll start with this one:
“I want to insist that our being alive is beautiful enough to be worthy of replication.” –Ocean Vuong