In the Shadow of a Doubt

2006 -

In the shadow of a doubt there lies inquiry — festering inquiry and brooding skepticism. To condemn another one must be without it, yet its existence does not alter truth. Its absence can of course render the opposite opinion still. We are all just standing in proximity to the sun, dials of our own measure to dictate the fabric which makes our reality, though of course we’ve little control of our own height. Any attempts to alter this fact of self are a deception. Whether or not deception is a betrayal is at one’s own discretion. It could be argued that it’s impossible to deceive if we are all dials of our own measure as it has been asserted here. That doesn’t seem right, though. The only thing to circumvent deceit is genuine belief in one’s own measure. Our observed reality can exist in opposition to another’s without deception only if both parties truly believe their view of it. So if we’re ever at odds with someone about something one of us is lying unless we both believe we’re right.

I encountered this at a very young age, six or seven, though maybe it began at five, in a superior courtroom in Manchester, New Hampshire. Something terrible had happened, I knew it had happened because it happened to me, but it was my responsibility to convince a room of adults that it had happened. Half the people I encountered said it didn’t happen. The first jury couldn’t decide if it had happened. The second jury couldn’t either. I chose to stop trying to convince people that my three and a half foot measure of reality was true. I carried it with me to four feet, to four and a half feet, to five feet and now to five foot three. My license says I’m five-four, though maybe I corrected that. I’ve always wanted to be taller than I am.

My experience of exposure in early childhood to sexual-political violence distilled and matured to become a broader observation of the world; my early childhood exposure to sexual-political violence culminated in an obsession with all violence and justice. Between violence and justice there is truth. Between then and now there are the lenses of identity I’ve discovered. The assigned destiny of womanhood often superseded my experiences of gender variance, of sexuality, and even of poverty. My treatment in girlhood as being woman minded created a person who, here, in every passing moment, is aware of their luck and awestruck by the terrors of America.

“In the Shadow of a Doubt” is my present day testimony not to defense lawyers who screamed objections at my recountments, but to America. It is my sermon to my countrymen. It is my deepest breath and a sip of water. It is made in the moments between moments of everyday life on a 35mm plot of emulsion. It is made beneath the unbearable weight of being in pursuit of that unbearable lightness, the burden of happiness, the birdsong of laughter. I only know the depths of my pain for I have felt joy that exceeds it. It is me and it is you and it is nothing at all if nobody looks at it. America is doing nothing at all if nobody looks at it. We are hurting nobody at all if we do not look for it. We are the best country in the world if we know nothing else. I hope, here, to show you something else.