Yesterday, my chest heavy and my head dull from the beer the night before, I moved slowly through the morning. My voice was scratchy and deep from loud-talking over the music. I met two strangers, TJ and Rachel, who are both regulars at the bar. We talked about things… the local music scene, the cops that sit on 45, the state of the world. We guessed each other’s ages – I was the old man of the group by at least ten years. We talked about what we do – nonprofit, grad student in engineering, beautician. At times, I could only catch every third or fourth word but nodded along anyway. We left, one by one. First TJ, then Rachel, then me.
In the morning (yesterday), it was damp and gray… again. I frittered my time away. I was planning on going to a book a reading in the afternoon – the drive was about 45 minutes. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to go early and have lunch at a café and check out a used bookstore, or just eat at the house and limit my adventure to the drive and the reading. My sluggishness made the decision for me.
I took a long, hot shower. I’m taking longer showers these days – every few minutes inching the water hotter. It feels good on my head and neck and shoulders – like sinking back in the pillow warmth before sleep. This is when I think a lot, and if I’m paying close enough attention, I start to hear my little narrator describing my thoughts. Short declarative statements in which the world becomes a slightly fictionalized version of my life. This is when I need to let him out, roam around the house or city or go for a long drive on Autumn roads.
The narration stopped when I began thinking about two friends (well… Facebook friends) who lost their fathers this week. Going through his stuff, the one friend found a picture of her father that she had never seen before. In the picture, he was smiling and laughing with her mother. This was before they had kids and before the rest of the world squeezed in and sat squarely on his shoulders. She said it’s the happiest she’s ever seen him. I began thinking about what I’ll leave behind and how there are always sides of people we never see. Who has witnessed my happiest days? What artifacts tucked in some shoe box in a closet will my daughter uncover from me – what assumptions will she make about the type of man I was, the life I’ve lived?
On the drive to the reading I vacillated between two trains of thoughts. One: why are these roads so narrow, hilly, and twisty and why is there always someone riding my ass? This made me feel old – as though I can’t trust my reflexes enough to take the turns more quickly… a nervousness that didn’t exist when I was younger. Two: what a strange thing a book reading is (especially if it’s not poetry). I’m going to go and listen to someone read to me. Should I bring my copy of the book and read along? And what if he reads from a story that I don’t like? Do I ask the author to sign it, even though I’ve known him since college? Is this going to be awkward? Pretentious? Disappointing? Because it feels like it could be.
Today, it’s gray again. After breakfast and the dog walk I settled in on the sofa and read the story that my friend read from yesterday. He left some parts out and stopped short as a cliffhanger. There were a few sections where the insights resonated with me. This is, in some part, why I read. To see, written elsewhere, those familiar truths of my own mind and experiences – to chip away at self-doubt and isolation.
In writing about the worst thing one person can do to another my friend writes: “Disregard is the worst thing you can do. To utterly ignore someone, render them insignificant, not worth any extremity of response, any response at all. To make someone worthless.” I’ve tried to grapple with this notion of disregard a few different times on this blog. I’ve written about feeling as though my voice had, at times, been stripped away… about the desire (somewhat universal) to be seen and heard. I have experienced disregard and perpetrated it – sinner and saint. If we’re to be graceful about such things, it seems like we might find it in challenging our assumptions of malicious intent from “the other.” I suspect people practice disregard out of self-preservation, thoughtlessness, or some combination of fear, hurt, and spite. In our worst moments, feeling no other recourse, we say to others, “you’re dead to me” – which I suspect is a type of self-delusion, an overcompensation for our inability to show compassion to those who hurt us – killing off what we can no longer bear.
Later in the story my friend writes about the over-dramatization we make of our own lives. “People experience moments when they feel nothing could get worse. You alienate a woman, fail at a job, are alone, are afraid of how small your place in the world has become. Most people recognize such assumptions later as maudlin and overwrought, usually after things have become worse. A select few recognize their own dramatics. Jocelyn criticized me, accurately, as too precious with myself, too wrapped up in constant acts of self-interpretation.” Usually, within hours of writing these blog posts, I feel that I have been mired in acts of self-interpretation and want to take it all back – that I have been overly dramatic or precious with my own thoughts and feelings. This is a strange type of guilt that I feel about writing and sharing. It, the guilt, becomes more acute when I’m out of practice. Nothing I write is unique to me. My experiences, of loss or triumph, feel so much less when compared to the arc of human history and experience. My story is utterly plain. Yet this is what I know, this is the only story I have.
This has been a long post… a bit disjointed – held together only by the thread of time (mundane occurrences and thoughts over two days). Several of the paragraphs could probably be their own explorations: why do I equivocate over terms like friends and need to clarify with “Facebook friends”?; what are our physical and emotional legacies and is the emotional diminished without the physical reminders?; Is feeling guilty or exposed through my writing just some strange manifestation of imposter syndrome – a cheap attempt to cover up the fear that I have nothing of value to contribute? The morning is getting long. I need to get groceries and I’d like to revisit a story I had started a year ago. I should probably exercise… but maybe I’ll start with a long, hot shower followed by some short, declarative statements.