Christina Olson's "The Thing You Fear Is Not the Thing That Kills You"

Thoughts on the paradox of it all.

The Thing You Fear Is Not the Thing That Kills You

oh but you knew that already. The spider
in the garage is not the secret cigarette

in the garage, the beast in the dark ocean
is not the blood clot darkening a path

to your brain. Seventy-five percent of accidents
occur in the home—invisible puddle

outside the bath, loose handrail to the basement
that you always meant to tighten.

If we acknowledged these dangers every day,
we’d never leave our beds, except to avoid the clot.

But oh how we need to leave the bed,
except when we don’t. Oh how we need Saturdays,

the early autumn sunset on the drive home,
the clerk who beckons us to their line,

a necklace of green lights, the smiling doggo,
even the stupid word doggo. These are the things

that kill us, disasters that break us open.
The birds screech and screech and finally we understand

that they too are merely startled by beauty.
Tiny dinosaur alarms, right outside your window.

All you had to do was pay attention.


from The Anxiety Workbook (Pitt Poetry Series, 2023)

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I first read this poem in The Nation not long ago, and saved it almost-immediately to my running list of poems I’ve mentioned before, a list of poems I maintain on my notes app of my computer, a list of poems I return to and keep open in tabs and return to again if I ever close those tabs. And so I found myself reading this poem again this week, and then reading more of Olson’s work.

For example, I read this poem of Olson’s, “Catalogue of Damages,” with its humble admittance — just another / human so proud in her indifference — that is followed later by these lines:

All morning I've tried to reconcile
our ambition with the misery it brings:

what we set out to do & what disaster ensues.

And I read this one, “Neither Time Nor Grief Is a Flat Circle,” where Olson illustrates the pervasive, all-consuming, hard-to-bear aspect of grief:

My grief is a sharp, hot thing that pokes me
in the spine whenever I am crabbily
unloading our dishwasher or I spend
another Saturday sleepwalking the internet.
Your one precious life, says my grief. Huh.

And yet, not long after this description, Olson offers us the paradox of it all, the way grief — awful as it is — can still become a softened thing, a companion for the journey:

It’s oppressive, this grief, yet
without it I feel terribly alone,
wandering through the pandemic.

In both of these poems, as well as today’s, I notice Olson situated so compassionately and humbly and even humorously in that place where paradox lives, that place where life doesn’t quite make sense, that place of bafflement and unease and hope and longing.

Yes, so much of Olson’s work seems placed right here, in these lines from today’s poem:

But oh how we need to leave the bed,
except when we don’t.

Today’s poem — as well as the poems I quoted from above — feels so much like the phrase and yet, a phrase that can be at once an enactment of encouragement and reluctance. It is a phrase that can turn towards hope just as quickly as it can turn towards loss. Life — in many ways, not just one — can turn just as quickly in either direction, too. Yes, each moment of life on this endlessly turning sphere in the middle of seemingly endless space, feels so much like the words and yet. Reach out, such words say, but also look back. Hold on, such words say, but also let go.

Yes, and yet is a phrase that lives in words like still and except and oh, but and what if and have you ever and turn and keep turning and would you look at that and I wish and I hope and even though and I still love — as in, even though they hurt me, I still love them, and the words and yet live in the response to such things, and in the response to all things, the response that goes what do you do with that or I just wanted to or if only or I’m still here or I’ll still love or I’ll still live, as in yes, even though that happened, I’ll still love, and I’ll still live.

Powerful phrase, and yet. It carries on and doubles-back. It holds us together as we come apart. It is hope and memory all at once. It is what weighs on the mind at the same time as each future-thinking heartbeat signals our presence here, right now, the part of us that says and, and, and — the part of us that lives.

Today’s poem begins simply enough — with a declaration of negation. It begins by saying that we, all of us, know that we are worried, often, about the wrong things:

The spider
in the garage is not the secret cigarette

in the garage, the beast in the dark ocean
is not the blood clot darkening a path

to your brain. Seventy-five percent of accidents
occur in the home—invisible puddle

outside the bath, loose handrail to the basement
that you always meant to tighten.

It is only after this litany of truths — of facts, we might say — that Olson then turns us toward the poem’s and yet — the complication and paradox of it all, the thing we hold while still living:

But oh how we need to leave the bed,
except when we don’t. Oh how we need Saturdays,

the early autumn sunset on the drive home,
the clerk who beckons us to their line,

a necklace of green lights, the smiling doggo,
even the stupid word doggo. These are the things

that kill us, disasters that break us open.

I’m struck by the final lines here: These are the things // that kill us. I’m struck by that word kill — how it reminds me of a quote that I mentioned last week, from Michael Clune’s White Out:

the scale of the human problem was breathtaking. It took my breath away, standing in front of those colossal sunsets. Red and purple.

Even the smile of the adorable dog is part of this “human problem,” is one of the “things // that kill us.” It breaks us open. It is incomprehensible, in part, perhaps, because of its beauty, because we know, too, that we will lose it eventually, that it will become, in our minds, a kind of grief. A loss we hold as we live. And yet, and yet, and yet. We still live, right? And yet, and yet, and yet.

I find myself wondering, too, about the final lines of today’s poem:

The birds screech and screech and finally we understand

that they too are merely startled by beauty.
Tiny dinosaur alarms, right outside your window.

All you had to do was pay attention.

When I first read this poem, I was struck by the choice of words here. Screech, startled, beauty, alarms. I found it all so jarring — a word like screech associated with beauty. And then I thought about the paradox of it all. I thought about how, yes, birds are dinosaurs — theropods, sharing similar qualities to terrifying, bi-pedaled creatures like velociraptors. And then I thought about them — birds, I mean — perched one day wherever they were perched, and then seeing whatever they must have seen — tell me, what did it look like? A star tumbling down to earth? A sunset in the morning? A horizon soaked with fire? I don’t doubt that it — whatever signaled the end of the world — must have been as beautiful as it was terrifying. I don’t doubt that at all. Now, how do you hold that paradox? That paradox that only arrives in your mind if and when you pay attention?

Yes, today’s poem reminds me of that sudden strangeness of life, how, somewhere deep in the recesses of their minds, birds hold the historic memory of the end of the world. How what is beautiful can also be terrifying. How what feels so ordinary can sometimes be so dangerous. Tell me now — have you ever, at least once in your life, been afraid of something as seeming-safe as love?

One side effect of this age of late capitalism is that we have bundled up the deep and rich complexity of this life into something simple and achievable. We have fitness metrics and data trackers. We have meditation apps and we certainly have goals. We have the now-trite mantras we say to ourselves each day on our individual journeys to rid ourselves of whatever it is we don’t want about ourselves. We, to borrow a phrase from Ari Brostoff’s Missing Time, “manufacture consensus,” so that even collective efforts are made through a kind of simplified consumption. And sometimes, even something like acceptance has become a word so shallow that it, too — a daily process of trying to comprehend the depth of what it is you are trying to accept — has become separated from its complexity.

When this happens, when we try to consume and achieve our way out of paradox, we are left — if we are still trying to think deeply about this world — with even more paradox, the paradox of our lives out of step with the paradox of the world. And, if we are not thinking deeply (and, too, even if we are), we are left with worry. A worry that leaves us trying to protect the small, accumulated things we have gained in this life, these things that protect us from thinking, that protect us from paradox. Accumulation necessitates, sometimes, a need to protect what has been accumulated. We fear, as today’s poem suggests, the wrong things. We exist out of solidarity, on some strange islands — to each our own. Lonely, I think, if we’d admit it.

Yeah. It’s a weird world.

Remember what Christina Olson wrote, in one of her poems mentioned above? Here:

All morning I've tried to reconcile
our ambition with the misery it brings

That misery, I think, begets more misery. It’s a misery that grows exponentially, I think, if we don’t recognize our impermanence, our complexity, and the very paradoxes that exist at the heart of our existence here — small and yet still impactful thing it is. Yes, we fear so many of the things that won’t kill us, and yet that fear is real. That worry, too. And the love we cultivate amidst it all — that, too. And so, I’m left thinking about the final lines in that aforementioned book by Brostoff:

I don’t feel lonely anymore, but it isn’t nearly enough. An infinite amount of care seems necessary. While we gather our strength, the lucky ones among us will grow old.

When you think about how much of our world seems consumed with worry, an infinite amount of care does seem necessary. Worry is an awful feeling, even if it is based in what might not kill us. And yet, some people worry each second about what might actually kill them. What might appear as if out of the sky. Loss, for some, is a dailiness. To build solidarity in this world of such strangeness and of such cruelty and of such paradox requires a real care, a care based in the kind of attention that sees the world for what it is, which is so much at once, even when it doesn’t make sense.

I think that sometimes, maybe every day, you have to make an effort — determined thing it is — to break out of the confines of the simple and the achievable, out of the triteness that capital has made out of the mind. And then you have to imagine — which is a kind of remembering — that everyone is capable of being shattered, shattered by loss, by beauty. Shattered by the surprise of this world, uncertain thing it is. And, holding that imagined thing, you have to see us all, walking in pieces, trying to be whole. There it is again. That paradox again. In pieces, trying to be whole. And yet, and yet, and yet. In all that trying, even as you try to piece yourself together, you have to care.

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Some notes:

1. I had an essay published in Longreads earlier this week. You can read it here. Thank you for reading it, if you have the time. It is about a year of learning (when I sent in the essay, it was just titled “Learning”) and what such learning has taught me — which is to say, more about about how to cope with the uncertainty of life than anything else. What is the word for that, I write in this essay (and still wonder), for the wild surprise of life we make possible by learning, each day, how to live?

2. Here is a list of urgent fundraisers for Gaza, if you have the means.

3. As I will continue to mention, Writers Against the War on Gaza has been a powerful resource that has, in these days, reminded me of all the various potentials for solidarity in this moment. You can follow them on Instagram here.

4. If you’ve read any of the recent newsletters, you’ve perhaps noticed that I am offering a subscription option. This is functioning as a kind of “tip jar.” If you would like to offer your monetary support as a form of generosity, please consider becoming a paid subscriber below. There is no difference in what you receive as a free or paid subscriber; to choose the latter is simply an option to exercise your generosity if you feel willing. I am grateful for you either way. Thanks for your readership.