Little soul, you came so far to be here, on the other side of your mother’s skin.
Today as I rounded the bend into the clearing I ran into J with his three little dogs. I hadn’t seen him in two years. As I raised my hand in greeting it became obvious he didn’t know who I was. At first I guessed two more years of drinking and medications might finally have finished off his memory, but now, thinking of his uncharacteristically clear eyes and almost sheepish demeanor, as if presenting himself too nakedly to the world, I think he was sober. He was sober, while I was still in the fog. When I asked how long they were staying, he was evasive. I don’t blame him. If I ran into me, I’d avoid myself, too.
Over the course of one sunny afternoon a stately ice shelf the size of Connecticut breaks loose and collapses into the ocean. You are dispersing. You have entered the floe.
Bad day.
Wait it out.
Stay within yourself.
It’s a long season.
How could something so wonderful even come to exist?
I’m the kind of person who, if you know me, you either pretend not to see, or cross the street to avoid. I didn’t arrive at this awareness through self-knowledge, but only recently, through observation. Inwardly I feel nothing like the ponderous bore I sense myself to be in your presence. Perhaps this perceptual gap accounts for the spirit of unspecified ridicule I’ve always felt hovering about our interactions. Now that I understand it, my memories finally begin to make sense.
Whenever he spoke you would inevitably hear a faint muttered “cunt” off in the distance.
My participation in events to which I’d thought myself central, I came to realize, went mostly unnoticed.
That couple holding court over there, accomplished, attractive, older (my age?), she a composer and head of a department (the Composition Department, I would guess, if there is such a thing) and he a well-known painter, portraits of John Coltrane on black velvet, in kingly dress—I’d assumed undertaken with some irony, but having once mentioned this in his presence and receiving an embarrassed smile, as if he was embarrassed for me, apparently some internalized form of post-ironic sincerity.
When I am forced upon their radar, they regard me with a vague distaste that doesn’t quite come up to the level of dislike. I’ll show you later on—if we walk in that direction, the flurry of minute physical adjustments as they calculate whether they can safely avoid us without personal discomfort. Since the accident I’ve been pleased to detect a new note of fear in their uneasiness, as if I now represent the additional possibility of freakish misfortune that might befall anyone, no matter how charmed or lucky.
I bring this up because I owe my newfound awareness to you, the last time we met, when you mentioned that for you it would be hell on earth to know what other people really think of you. The way you said it, though, I got the impression that you really meant it would be hell on earth for me, and I haven’t been able to shake it.
The few minutes each evening this time of year when the back windows flood with wild monkey light and birdcalls echo through the trees. Something in you lifts and you feel the heaviness of what you’ve become.
