A Night in the Life
I didn't intend this evening to turn out the way it did. After about 2 pm, I felt my energy begin to deplete. I had only one thing on my mind: A reunion with Elizabeth who returned from her three-week vacation.
I also didn't intend on staying with her as long as I did. I ended up being in there with her for an hour and a half. What a treat. Two therapy sessions in one. It is interesting that, on this day, a day I realized that I've been gutted, I would get to tear into my hollow and fly around a bit with an attentive ear standing by to listen. She's great that therapist o' mine. Everything that I thought I knew when I woke up was immediately replaced by nothing. A strange sensation that is. The muscle, visceral organs, sinews, tendons, ligaments all keep the body inflated. They were all there, of course, so this wasn't a gutting a la Silence of the Lambs 2 (a terrible cinematic experience despite the beauty of Julianne Moore).
It was just there, this gutted matter, walking around again tonight, wandering. Because of the length of my session, I was running a tad late for Intimate Strangers, the movie I was planning on seeing. I stood on the corner of Mercer and Houston, wondering whether I should just disregard the first five minutes and go in anyway. But I would have had to have gotten cash, which would have put me in my seat much to late for my liking.
The evening's prospect was no longer appealing, so I grabbed a Village Voice and went in search of a bench. I headed up Mercer and spotted the Mercer St. Bookstore. I stared through the window as I walked by, wanting badly to go in. But all of a sudden, I remembered that I hadn't picked up a book since Tuesday. Nexus had been sitting quietly in my bag untouched for far too long. I felt badly about that. I had just discussed that with Elizabeth. I'm not writing. I'm not reading. So why would I go into a bookstore. It was as if I didn't deserve it.
The storefront was there like a mirror. An idea that I have been working with for a while now. A mirror.I know nothing about Jacques Lacan's mirror stage, but I recently began identifying it -- the "mirror" -- with a sense of being overwhelmed. You see something, and you translate its existence into something that works for you. But then, that existence starts working against you, or me, rather, and I (forgive me while I change person mid-sentence) become overwhelmed by the meaning I ascribed to it. An example that comes to mind is the following line from my "Race Trader" essay: "The more I clung to my blackness, though, the quicker it weakened in my grip." When I wrote that sentence, I knew somewhere in me I had feelings about it. But not at that moment. My recent race crisis brought that to my attention. I felt it then. More so than I wanted to. But we rarely have choices in such matters. The more I thought I had it, that sense of belonging, the more I soon realized I didn't. When I was able to look at it in the "mirror" and see what it was, I discovered I was more lost than ever. This is only an example to describe this mirror thing, something that I have noticed infiltrates much of my thought. As I walked by the bookstore, I saw the books. I saw the people milling about doing their browsing thing. And I translated those images into a reminder of what I am not doing, of what I have felt incapable of doing. This is a very small example, but it is nevertheless an example. And it kept me from crossing the street and trying my hand at a little browsing myself. I turned left on West 3rd St., because I knew exactly where I wanted to sit. Though Bobst Library gives me the chills, there are very appealing places to sit just to the side of it. When it's dark, they're even more appealing. So that's what I did. I sat. I smoked. I read through the Voice. And I thought. I went back to my hollow. It was strange as I pondered it, staring off into space, paying little to no attention to the laughter that came from the people walking by. I didn't care about it, but nor did I care about my presentation. I just sat in my thoughts. I finally got up and resumed my westward walk down 3rd. More books. Wonderful souls spend hours upon hours on a daily basis, weather permitting, to sell used books that sit on unstable tables. In my gutted state, I walked slowly by, never departing from my post-therapy gait. With that same feeling I had walking by the bookstore, I lacked the energy to stop. But I noticed this first table contained a particularly attractive collection. They were just sitting there, staring back at me. By the time I had decided to stop and peruse this first table, I had already walked by about 10 feet. They were calling to me, so I went back. Only to look. I checked every binding carefully (he had them displayed very nicely; I wondered how much thought, if any, he had put into displaying them so as to entice browsers to buy). After seeing them all, I left, almost apologetically. Right after passing in front of the library, I noticed another table just before the end of the block. It was too far away for me to see any of the book titles, but I planned on just walking by, anyway, so with my eyes on the cracks in the sidewalk, I kept walking. But something told me to look up. And I did. Just in time to see a hardcover copy of Henry Miller: A Life, a book that I would later discover is out of print. I stopped dead in my tracks and walked straight over to it without removing my eyes from its cover in the event someone would enter stage left and swoop it out from under my grasp. I picked it up as if it were the best present I had ever received. I think I stared at it longer than I did my diploma when it arrived a couple of weeks ago. I took my wallet out of my back pocket and found only $3, much less than what a hardcover, out of print Henry Miller biography would go for. Opening to the price page, I saw I was $7 short. So I took the book to the peddler and asked him to hold it while I got cash. When I came back, he was stuck in a conversation with someone about something. Books, perhaps. So I decided to browse a bit. It turns out that this particular collection was even more beautiful than the one before. Hardcovers of Shakespeare, Orwell, Proust. They weren't in alphabetical order, but that was all right. I hadn't planned on buying anything more. Until I saw another hardcover that stopped me in my tracks. Opus Pistorum by Henry Miller, another out-of-print book, was waiting to purchased. It was like Christmas. Or my birthday. Or maybe just a really great orgasm. I bought them both. For a moment, my hollow was filled. I felt I had found things that were my own. Yes, Henry Miller is driving me these days. He makes it ok to be gutted. I ended the evening at the Tea Lounge, again, lost in thought, staring at the constrast in color between my skin and the cup I was drinking from. I carried the slow motion of my feelings in with me and they stayed with me throughout the remainder of the evening. Accompanying me on my walk home with my Ben Harper soundtrack going through my ears. I wanted to wander still. Maybe I was looking for something. Or maybe I just didn't want to feel confined. I could have probably walked much farther. I hope when I wake up I have more than nothing inside. Today was not a good one for me. I was lost.
