In my life. . .
there are so many things and not one of them is there for any reason but by my own choice. So terrifying to be trapped in a hell of your own making that resembles so much at first glance your idea of heaven. So terrifying to look around and see nothing that causes displeasure, to enjoy even the mild disarray and vague settling of dust, yet feel utterly trapped and nauseated by the whole affair of living. To look in the mirror and know that without time seeming to pass at all, I will slip into a long and hazy life throughout which I will decay and curl and crumble into something dry and broken in some probable future.
I have my health, to spite everything, I think. My round belly is so comfortingly solid under my hands.
Bad things simply don't happen to me.
But there's something wrong when I seem to always see walls before walls, something before the something that is there, a sort of idle claustrophobia that is absurd in this huge room, but no less real. Beneath the ceiling there hangs a ceiling and before the wall there stands a wall. To pass through one door, I first have to pass through an imaginary door, a door that I have to pry open in my own mind before I can even begin to go through the real one. Always some impediment.
To sound, too. I find myself squinting at people when they talk to me, wondering what they're saying without listening to them and wondering when it will become evident that I cannot hear them. Probably never. Most people are less interested in the responses to their problems than in voicing their. . .their concern? their. . .their upset? annoyance? awareness? I don't know. I'm not that interested in their problems either, but sometimes I think it would be nice to know what was going on, to know how people are doing, well, with whatever. I'd like to help.
I like to help, but not when I can't believe in what's being done. Is it admirable to believe in something? Anything? Is it just to do something? Anything? Is is admirable or desirable to try to be just? Should we ask more of ourselves than honesty? Should we ask courtesy? Either? Both? Should we act in our own interest or in the general interest? Should we act without thinking? What's a person supposed to be like? I'd like to be a person, to do things properly, but I've never been quite sure what that means. Some days I try to say only what I mean and other days I try not to say anything I mean. It doesn't seem to matter and people never seem to mind too much what I say. I'm not trying to hurt anyone.
Usually, when I say what I think, people laugh so I think I must have a pretty good sense of humor. When I make jokes, people laugh, too, but they also say things like, "I shouldn't be laughing" or "That's bad" or "Ohhhhhhhhhh. . .I never want to hear that again." What's a person to do except disregard it all and go on. Because without answers we'll go on and even if we never find any we'll go on.
Because we have to.
I have my health, to spite everything, I think. My round belly is so comfortingly solid under my hands.
Bad things simply don't happen to me.
But there's something wrong when I seem to always see walls before walls, something before the something that is there, a sort of idle claustrophobia that is absurd in this huge room, but no less real. Beneath the ceiling there hangs a ceiling and before the wall there stands a wall. To pass through one door, I first have to pass through an imaginary door, a door that I have to pry open in my own mind before I can even begin to go through the real one. Always some impediment.
To sound, too. I find myself squinting at people when they talk to me, wondering what they're saying without listening to them and wondering when it will become evident that I cannot hear them. Probably never. Most people are less interested in the responses to their problems than in voicing their. . .their concern? their. . .their upset? annoyance? awareness? I don't know. I'm not that interested in their problems either, but sometimes I think it would be nice to know what was going on, to know how people are doing, well, with whatever. I'd like to help.
I like to help, but not when I can't believe in what's being done. Is it admirable to believe in something? Anything? Is it just to do something? Anything? Is is admirable or desirable to try to be just? Should we ask more of ourselves than honesty? Should we ask courtesy? Either? Both? Should we act in our own interest or in the general interest? Should we act without thinking? What's a person supposed to be like? I'd like to be a person, to do things properly, but I've never been quite sure what that means. Some days I try to say only what I mean and other days I try not to say anything I mean. It doesn't seem to matter and people never seem to mind too much what I say. I'm not trying to hurt anyone.
Usually, when I say what I think, people laugh so I think I must have a pretty good sense of humor. When I make jokes, people laugh, too, but they also say things like, "I shouldn't be laughing" or "That's bad" or "Ohhhhhhhhhh. . .I never want to hear that again." What's a person to do except disregard it all and go on. Because without answers we'll go on and even if we never find any we'll go on.
Because we have to.
posted by jw at
5:24 PM
1 Comments:
In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror I spent seventeen months waiting in line outside the prison in Leningrad. One day somebody in the crowd identified me. Standing behind me was a woman, with lips blue from the cold, who had, of course, never heard me called by name before. Now she started out of the torpor common to us all and asked me in a whisper (everyone whispered there):
"Can you describe this?"
And I said: "I can."
Then something like a smile passed fleetingly over what had once been her face.
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