On Extinction- IN/visible OUT/line
Sima Rabinowitz
<exstinctus frm. extinguere> - to extinguish, become inactive; gone out of use
Burn/OUT
IN/flame
Are we IN (cool, hip, visible) or OUT (out of fashion, outmoded, out of date)?
Are we a dictionary of anachronisms (far out, out there, out of sight),
a set of tired gestures that have OUT-lived us, worn OUT
their usefulness,
appear-ing to have dis-appeared (even when they haven't)?
Or, are we meant, over time,
to IN-habit a new vocabulary, a new wor(l)d:
99.9% of all species that have existed on earth are now extinct.
I miss the reckless, radical stance
of an earlier truth.
What is the radical (root) of this longing?
Do I simply miss my youth?
Have we OUT-grown
the fossil version/vision (visible) of ourselves?
[1] Extinction–having no living members of the species or family
16 months. 500 days. 2.5% of my lifetime. 100% of my family…vanished. I have been banished. Rendered invisible. When my mother tells me about the reunion—mother, father, siblings, niece—to which my partner I were not invited, I am outraged. My fingertips burn and blaze across the keyboard and cyber-page as I send my siblings message after message—ignored, as if invisible—hot little bursts of prose, inflamed with anger quickly turned to anguish. Why did you leave us out? But I know why. And then I weep. And weep. And weep. After 17.5 years. 210 months. 6,500 days. More than 1/3 of my lifetime, my partner knows what to say when something I desire does not work out: they don't deserve you. I decide to wait it out. Nothing. Five decades extinguished. Don't contact me again, I tell them in my final message. But I am talking to myself really. Nobody has called or written. Then or since. We're officially on the outs. 16 months. 500 days. 2.5% of my lifetime. I outlast the shock of being outcast. My partner points out that I seem less fearful, more certain of myself, than she has ever seen me. She is not the only witness to my orphan days and nights, but what has perished is imperceptible to everyone around me.
IN/print
Print/OUT
Are we obsolete (imaginary, a myth, fictitious)?
Was coming OUT the IN-vention of another era
like a stylus on papyrus or the letterpress?
The alphabet remains, but now we trace
its shapes as pixels.
IN/put, OUT/put.
The Cost Benefit Approach to biodiversity maintains:
full valuation is the value of products obtained from each species.
I have forgotten what's OUT there.
Do I perceive these remnants (of my life)
as withOUT worth (amiss, abnormal, perverse)
or OUT-of-character (that I could have done
these things ((OUT-done)) myself?
Are they IN-significant or IN-distinct?
They seem, IN fact, merely remote (invisible)
IN-discernible, concealed (from public knowledge).
<exstinctus frm. extinguere> - to extinguish, become inactive; gone out of use
Burn/OUT
IN/flame
Are we IN (cool, hip, visible) or OUT (out of fashion, outmoded, out of date)?
Are we a dictionary of anachronisms (far out, out there, out of sight),
a set of tired gestures that have OUT-lived us, worn OUT
their usefulness,
appear-ing to have dis-appeared (even when they haven't)?
Or, are we meant, over time,
to IN-habit a new vocabulary, a new wor(l)d:
99.9% of all species that have existed on earth are now extinct.
I miss the reckless, radical stance
of an earlier truth.
What is the radical (root) of this longing?
Do I simply miss my youth?
Have we OUT-grown
the fossil version/vision (visible) of ourselves?
[1] Extinction–having no living members of the species or family
16 months. 500 days. 2.5% of my lifetime. 100% of my family…vanished. I have been banished. Rendered invisible. When my mother tells me about the reunion—mother, father, siblings, niece—to which my partner I were not invited, I am outraged. My fingertips burn and blaze across the keyboard and cyber-page as I send my siblings message after message—ignored, as if invisible—hot little bursts of prose, inflamed with anger quickly turned to anguish. Why did you leave us out? But I know why. And then I weep. And weep. And weep. After 17.5 years. 210 months. 6,500 days. More than 1/3 of my lifetime, my partner knows what to say when something I desire does not work out: they don't deserve you. I decide to wait it out. Nothing. Five decades extinguished. Don't contact me again, I tell them in my final message. But I am talking to myself really. Nobody has called or written. Then or since. We're officially on the outs. 16 months. 500 days. 2.5% of my lifetime. I outlast the shock of being outcast. My partner points out that I seem less fearful, more certain of myself, than she has ever seen me. She is not the only witness to my orphan days and nights, but what has perished is imperceptible to everyone around me.
IN/print
Print/OUT
Are we obsolete (imaginary, a myth, fictitious)?
Was coming OUT the IN-vention of another era
like a stylus on papyrus or the letterpress?
The alphabet remains, but now we trace
its shapes as pixels.
IN/put, OUT/put.
The Cost Benefit Approach to biodiversity maintains:
full valuation is the value of products obtained from each species.
I have forgotten what's OUT there.
Do I perceive these remnants (of my life)
as withOUT worth (amiss, abnormal, perverse)
or OUT-of-character (that I could have done
these things ((OUT-done)) myself?
Are they IN-significant or IN-distinct?
They seem, IN fact, merely remote (invisible)
IN-discernible, concealed (from public knowledge).
[2] Extinct- no longer in existence; archaic; out of print
Out of sight not out of mind. I troll the Internet searching for signs of my family afraid of what I'll find (…she is survived by two daughters and a son.) "Two daughters?" My twin sister (not-identical, not double) chatters on professional blogs with colleagues about work and encounters with students; the other sister posts photos of her pre-teen daughter sitting high on a handsome horse; preening on the prow of a boat. As if to prove that I am extant, then I search for myself. Out in America. A Cities Network. Feature product: Something to Declare. Good Lesbian Travel Writing: "Buy lesbian products at discount prices from the United States' leading online store. We have a range of the latest lesbian DVDs, books, calendars, and more!" And an anthology in which an essay of mine appears, I learn that I am not, as I had imagined, out of it, but instead in among the trendiest of lesbian goods. At www.thefreelibrary.com "Pain and the Lesbian Body"– an abstract from The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide co-written years ago with a literary colleague who has been out of touch. The Walker Art Center. Dyke Night! (The name alone so radical, it's taken years for the local press to even print it in its calendar.) In celebration of the program's 15th and final year, the museum publishes a complete roster of every artist who participated in the show. I am listed as the very first performer. Exhausted by the thought of 90,700 hits associated with my name, I decide to log out after a few dozen pages but then another unexpected reference catches my eye. Qmunity. BC's Queer Resource Center. My partner and I were planning, along with another couple, to marry in Vancouver, and we hoped to get a recommendation for a marriage commissioner. On the "Kudos from Our Donors" screen there's a quote extracted from my enthusiastic "thank you" for assistance in figuring out how to manage the logistics of British Columbia's requirements for matrimony. After so many artifacts of my experience that I created and have half-forgotten, I am more startled to see my address (Bronx, New York, a place I never expected to live). OUT on the Internet—I will exist forever (or for as long as the digital documents persist) identified prominently as a producer of lesbian culture.
[3] Extinct- no longer valid or practiced; ended; diet out
Because our families are either out of their right minds (dementia and Alzheimer's) or estranged, we worry about who will inherit our modest possessions should something happen to one of us. There's just the apartment in the Bronx, a small savings account, and several dozen boxes of books, and it's unlikely anyone would challenge our will, but it's not out of the question. It's outrageous to think one of us could be tossed out of our home, but it would be in keeping with events of the past year and half. We're told by friends with legal expertise we would be wise to marry, to show that we intend to avail ourselves of every legal protection. I make the arrangements for the four of us to go to Vancouver. The betrothed need two witnesses and the whole endeavor seems less secretive if we do it in a group. We are surprised by our friends' sudden outpouring of emotion and the traditions they buy into: they purchase elegant gold rings set with expensive, outsized gemstones and fussy dresses with lace and flounces, search with a seriousness that seems out of proportion for the task for something borrowed, something blue; and write long, rambling vows with the requisite "I do's" (though the law in British Columbia does not require these exact words and we do not say them). Their preparations grow more elaborate by the day. Meanwhile, I am investigating hotels that meet our many varied needs and criteria, among them a room with two beds, which our traveling companions insist on. Since they sleep in a narrow double bed at home, we are perplexed about this requirement, until we realize our friends want to appear not to be sharing a bed. They do not want to reveal their relationship to the desk clerk or housekeeping staff, despite the pseudo wedding, the gold bands, the gaudy gowns. They do not want anyone who comes into their room to come out with the impression that its inhabitants are lesbians. The morning after the short ceremony, the too-long vows, half a glass of sparkling wine, a quick just-sign-on-the-dotted line, we head to the anthropology museum, a gallery of beautiful rooms at the university, where we view, among more hopeful exhibitions, the ruins and remains of cultures lost or languishing. Some have been vanquished, subsumed, inculcated. Others refuse to die out.
Working Notes
IN-somnia: I don't sleep most nights more than three or four hours. I've had debilitating insomnia (the next day I am a wreck—five of every seven days most weeks) for the past two years. Is it the awake-at-two-in-the-morning-menopausal sleep-less-ness that so many women complain about? Isn't it ironic? Lying awake with hormones ceasing to make reproduction possible, thinking about extinction? I will write something for Trivia, if something occurs to me to write.
IN and OUT of consciousness: "IN/visible OUT/line" occurs to me on the very first night I begin to think, in my wakeful state, about the Trivia-extinction theme. I think I know what I want to write. I am wrong. As always, when I am right about what I want to/should do. That is how I know I am right. I am wrong at first.
INto it: I am obsessed, spending every non-working minute (at my many jobs) compiling notes, cross referencing ins and outs and outs and ins and visible and invisible and the verbal implications of extinction. I have filled an entire notebook with definitions and idioms. The pages fall out of their binding. I shuffle and reshuffle these meanings. I can't think about anything else. I worry that if I fall asleep I will forget something I want to INclude in the OUTline. This is how I know I am right about what I want to/should do. I am IN control of the idea; but I feel OUT of control of the content.
OUT of sorts: I am vaguely, but perceptibly aware of being distressed, but I am not sure about what. Then, I remember the OUTline. My family. The rejection. The disappointment. Other losses I refer to in the piece. Writing the OUTline makes me happier and sadder than anything I have composed in a long time. This is how I know I am doing what I want to/should do.
OUT on a limb: I am writing about people I know, real places, actual relationships. I worry about angering the people I'm writing about, even though I know it is unlikely they will even find OUT I have written this piece, or published it, if Trivia, in fact, decides to take it. They are people from whom I find myself estranged in many senses of the word. But, estranged does not mean entirely OUT of the loop. Who knows what other people see? I fret, but decide to go ahead. This is how I know I am doing what I want to/should do.
OUT of the blue: While I am working on the piece, a friend I haven't spoken with in at least a year calls unexpectedly. She's a former student, ten years my junior. We met twenty-five years ago when I was one of only two OUT lesbians on the small college campus where I was teaching and she was majoring in psychology and minoring in Spanish (the subject I taught). She worked at the school's radio station, and together we produced and hosted a weekly women's music broadcast. These days, she's still involved in dyke culture, heading up the local lesbian social-cultural council in the Florida town where she lives and programming concerts, and movies, and other events. "It's because of you," she tells me. "I would never have even known about women's music or lesbian performers," she tells me. This is how I know I am doing what I want to/should do.
IN and OUT of consciousness: "IN/visible OUT/line" occurs to me on the very first night I begin to think, in my wakeful state, about the Trivia-extinction theme. I think I know what I want to write. I am wrong. As always, when I am right about what I want to/should do. That is how I know I am right. I am wrong at first.
INto it: I am obsessed, spending every non-working minute (at my many jobs) compiling notes, cross referencing ins and outs and outs and ins and visible and invisible and the verbal implications of extinction. I have filled an entire notebook with definitions and idioms. The pages fall out of their binding. I shuffle and reshuffle these meanings. I can't think about anything else. I worry that if I fall asleep I will forget something I want to INclude in the OUTline. This is how I know I am right about what I want to/should do. I am IN control of the idea; but I feel OUT of control of the content.
OUT of sorts: I am vaguely, but perceptibly aware of being distressed, but I am not sure about what. Then, I remember the OUTline. My family. The rejection. The disappointment. Other losses I refer to in the piece. Writing the OUTline makes me happier and sadder than anything I have composed in a long time. This is how I know I am doing what I want to/should do.
OUT on a limb: I am writing about people I know, real places, actual relationships. I worry about angering the people I'm writing about, even though I know it is unlikely they will even find OUT I have written this piece, or published it, if Trivia, in fact, decides to take it. They are people from whom I find myself estranged in many senses of the word. But, estranged does not mean entirely OUT of the loop. Who knows what other people see? I fret, but decide to go ahead. This is how I know I am doing what I want to/should do.
OUT of the blue: While I am working on the piece, a friend I haven't spoken with in at least a year calls unexpectedly. She's a former student, ten years my junior. We met twenty-five years ago when I was one of only two OUT lesbians on the small college campus where I was teaching and she was majoring in psychology and minoring in Spanish (the subject I taught). She worked at the school's radio station, and together we produced and hosted a weekly women's music broadcast. These days, she's still involved in dyke culture, heading up the local lesbian social-cultural council in the Florida town where she lives and programming concerts, and movies, and other events. "It's because of you," she tells me. "I would never have even known about women's music or lesbian performers," she tells me. This is how I know I am doing what I want to/should do.
About the author
Sima Rabinowitz is the author of The Jewish Fake Book (2004) and Murmuration (2006). Recent work appears or is forthcoming in Water-Stone Review, Hamilton Arts & Letters, and Sentence. She received a 2009 BRIO Award from the Bronx Council on the Arts and served as the first Writer-in-Residence for Yeshiva University Museum. She lives in the Bronx, New York.
For an updated list of works published in TRIVIA, please see this author's contributor page.
For an updated list of works published in TRIVIA, please see this author's contributor page.