Coolit / Silvie Schlein

Coolit

Silvie Schlein

This one is going to be about how things move from very fast to very still. This one is going to be about how surprising that realization is, and how Coolit wanted all of her thoughts to be beautiful.

Coolit was big but she seemed small. She knew that she was big, and she wished that she seemed big. She wanted to be seen so bad it hurt, but even when people saw her it wasn’t enough. She saw an old man (old because that’s how he seemed to her) eating a bagel in a pink hat one day. This was a big moment for Coolit because, in that moment, that man was very beautiful and big to her. She wasn’t sure if he felt big or beautiful, but she could see that he was. After that, Coolit would walk around and stare at things very closely and make them big.

If Coolit walks by you, this is what it feels like: it feels like that shrinking is gone. It feels like that wall you were just staring at is full of soft speckles and shadows. It feels like “holy shit, did you see that? That makes me think about how I felt when I jumped into cold water last summer, that makes me think about how I felt when I realized that I was making things all the time.” But also it feels like “I am doing so much while I do nothing, if I stand really still can I watch things change?” and “I saw a shooting star and you missed it, I wish you had seen, I wish I could share that with you.”

Coolit is wonderful at telling stories. She tells stories about now (here) and about sometime soon. Sometime soon! Those are Coolit’s best stories. When she tells these stories, Coolit gets bright and confusing. Her eyes meander and close and sometimes she looks at you so hard that you grow. And when you grow then you say “Coolit, I think I know what happens next!” and you tell the story with her and it’s a together moment where anything is possible.

And sometimes Coolit is absolutely too much and it is horribly distressing. Very freezing then and confused and lost and wondering and falling. These times are hard, and she knows it. However, Coolit has decided that these moments are also necessary. This is when things are simply out of control. It’s honestly pretty fucked, and not everyone will understand her which makes it harder. Sometimes this makes you feel like you’d rather not even think at all, even about how big things are because you see things are shrinking all around. That’s when you could lose what you have so you’d rather not have it now so you don’t get upset later when it is taken away/goes away of its own accord.

Coolit says this: “better to have things to lose.”

I want to lie down and watch a bird fly so that when my eyes suddenly see the tree the bird is flying to, I am confused that the tree does not move as well and suddenly I am aware that I am still and I can feel the grass against my back and realize that I had been flying too just then.