Torpid Trifling: The Name

My sister called me, upset. This was years ago; the particulars escape me. But she picked me up, I know that, she drove a Geo Storm. Teeny, tiny little thing. The car, not my sister, although I guess it could be said of both.

So she's crying and she's saying she's fucked up her life, like I said, the particulars escape me. There are many ways she could have been appearing to fuck up her life to an outside observer, or occasionally even to an insider.

In my memory of the event it's as if I had a buzz. The way the words expanded into the inside of the front seat of the cramped car and then shimmered in the air as I said them; the sense that simply speaking called the concept into being and made it true. Like as the idea was said aloud it looked down upon itself and thought: I might just be crazy enough to be true. It's also possible that I did, in fact, have a buzz.

So what I said was something like: The things that are the very worst about you, the qualities that drive you to the brink, that will not be tamed, changed or subdued, that take you to the ugliest places you can go: These Things: are the things that will save you.

Another time, another sister, I said: Sometimes I think you have to look at whatever it is that scares you the most. Then walk directly into it.

Torpid Trifling means, in essence, Lazy Lazy. It is in my ability to lie down, stretch the line of my spine long against the earth, inhale, exhale, remain: that I will be saved.

We lead with the negative/follow with the positive here at Torpid Trifling because what we see as negative deserves a second glance sometimes. The very things we fear ought to be allowed up front occasionally, to lead the way once in a while. See where they take us. This might just be what saves us, in the end.