Marginalia

When I see a word for the very first time and read it in my mind, I'm not seeing the individual letters, nor am I recalling what they sound like. When I see the word "marginalia" I spew forth it's assumed syllabry in the void of my mind, having never heard a human utter this word, nor seen its sequence of letters before, I project an echo of its meaning inside my skull.

 I make an inference that it is associated with margins and perhaps paraphanalia or paper ephemera as if something written on the edges of paper pages harbors secrets.

I don't sound it out, but rather the shape and vision of the word is what I remember. As if the very space dictated where I am not meant to write, is the very place I now must. The word becomes the DMZ of the space beyond the red line on my college ruled paper. Don't write here you heathens, for this space is left blank on purpose because civilized society requires rule of order, and only the bold will question the authority of that intentional blankness.

But now those forbidden zones become the only place I want to go. Once I was told me that if I drove too far down a certain road on the military base I was visiting I'd stumble upon the NSA. He said they would probably detain me for it.

For days, that was the only thing I wanted to do. I wanted to drive into that secret oblivion, cross over into the Margin and leave my footnotes in the illegal white space where the government said I should dare not tread.

Marginalia, also reminds me of magnolia, mostly because they share many similar letters, but also because they both can burst apart in unexpected spectacle. In college I commited marginalia regularly before I knew a word existed to describe such treason. Just as a magnolia seems to be a tree known for its big green shiny leaves, with a blast of pixie pink, much like my esoteric smiley face symbols drawn in a rainbow of gels pens evolved on the edges of my college notes. A bit of eccentric swirl and deep mind madness to remind myself that learning about the Holocaust in junior year History requires a depthless sense of humor and a willingness to puruse depravity. My notes in the forbidden zone a series of symbolic scribbles as I learned about state sponsored torture and genocide.

 We don't learn about the intimate doings of Nazis because we never want to forget, we do it because it's in our human blood to explore vivid terrors in the barrens and plant beauty in its turbid soils. We delight in those hideous and lessor explored spaces.

We live in magnoliaed margins, we dream of stepping over dark thresholds, to peak behind blood stained curtains, that after a few washes, remind us of our favorite pink flowers bedsheets at Grandma's house. 

We dread the thought of living only within the lines that have been drawn for us. Yet, we rarely admit outloud that our minds have wandered into such forbidden places. We let artists and spies and journalists do that for us, so the rest of us can be outwardly lukewarm while we internally crave the obscure.

We seek art on the fringe, perception beyond deflection. Have you seen a Jew skin lamp in the flesh?  Do you want to know suffering beyond the comforts of your American Lazy-Boy, YouTube binge? 

What redline will you cross to feel alive? What vicarious shapes of words will you sink into? Can you appreciate a magnolia growing atop a mass grave? Can you find solace in the fact that you are alive because someone down your line took a life? It's in your DNA to be prone to violence, right? Or have we evolved beyond this primal drive?

Marginalia is not just the notes beyond the edges of the allowed, it is the shape of dissent, the color of roguness, the smell of a dairy farm that rotates dead cows in a compost pile so you can have a gallon of industrialized milk for less than $4. Will you tell your friend visiting from out of state that they are whiffing dead dairy cows up their nostrils for the sake of "affordable" milk? Or will you leave that comment in the margins, and let them live in a blissful ignorance?

What edge will you dare to tread? What atrocity are you willing to witness and leave notes for the next curious soul? Do we share our adventures into the disallowed? Or will we live within our comfortable confines?

Some of us are meant to go beyond the red line and into the marginal oblivion. We come back from it, not better or more educated, but with higher capacity hearts, crystalized souls, and an insatiable desire to make the world beyond the margins less ferocious.  We must explore depravity, and shine our light into its darkness, for how else can you begin to heal a festering wound, unless you are willing to look at it without fear.