I find myself wanting to write something here, only I'm not quite sure what to write. I miss it here. But at the same time, I feel foolish having nostalgia for a mere "address." This place doesn't exist, and yet it has been my home for the better part of a year. For me, it was an uncommon luxury, as I rarely let myself feel "at home" anywhere.
On Tuesday night in Argentina, NDN and I quarreled. I got very drunk and lost my head. I had count to twenty as slowly as possible. It's funny what the brain will drag up to save itself. (This, reminiscent of the years in which I had panic attacks). NDN tells me that I kept saying I "wanted to call home."
"I don't think you wanted to call your mom," he laughed the next day.
No. I didn't want to call my mother. I wanted to call "home," although I've never quite had a firm sense of where that is.
When I was a little girl and I would cry, I would often cry that I wanted to "go home." I know that it always disturbed my mother.
"But you are home," she would say.
Somehow, I always felt a nostalgia for something never experienced. Something past-- much more in the past than any part of me. I've always had a very ancient memory. It's why I like to laugh that I've been a mermaid. It's the only image with which I can tap into that. A sign signifying the part of me that craves creative sublimation.
Creative sublimation? Just the idea of it tears at my brain. I'm not cut out for it! I don't have the stamina. Creativity is too lonely a prospect for me, and so I prefer love.
That's just it, isn't it? A sickness... It's a weak answer that I've come up with-- especially for a girl with infinite strength (as I believe I do have). What is this love? This generosity? This pity, sympathy, worship, craving in my heart? It's a religious impulse. A creative longing for annihilation in an other.
I feel so adolescent sometimes that I am embarrassed even of myself. But there it is-- I am fixed on the crucial conjunction of love and death in the most sophomoric way-- I am gloomy Schopenhauer, plagiarizing from the Buddhists so that I can savor the gothic and the sensual, making myself over into a melancholy German.
And what is it that I want out of life? The disintegration of the "phenomenal" into the "noumenal."
Even if it's a lie, Hyde?
Yes, I tell myself. Even if it's all in my head.
B and I used to joke all the time about wanting a Liebestod. Only I wasn't joking, and I think he knew it. Sometimes he laughs uncomfortably and says we are "too close."
"Don't you think it's bad if we're dependent on each other?" he asked me this afternoon.
"I'm not dependent on you," I said. "I love you. There's a big difference. And that's the least of my problems."
"Are you sure about that? Are you sure it's not at the root of your problems?"
"Yes, I'm sure." I replied. "I don't tell you the worst of what's in my heart anymore. We're not as close as you think."
(I closed my eyes. I'm not that close to anyone anymore.)
"Well, then... What is in your heart?" he asked.
"I've started to see the world through eyes not my own," I said. "Self-hatred."
"And?"
"And... Most of the time I agree with it all. I hate myself and I want to punish myself. And I do, don't I? With much success. But then, sometimes it clears. Sometimes I see. Only rarely do I remember myself--my true self and get angry at things for what they are."
(I know I sound cryptic here, but I can't bear to share with you any more of this strain of thought than just that.)
We didn't finish the conversation. It turned to some tears on my part and he wanted to change the subject. We stiffly discussed the souvenir I brought him from Argentina before making plans to meet at 4:00 tomorrow. We've got a date to go see Wozzeck at the Met, and I couldn't be more thrilled.
But I meant what I said to B. And I had such a moment of clarity this week. It was a true revelation. I sat on a balcony, my eyes fixed on the sea, the bitter taste of red wine in my throat and tears hot on my cheeks. It was then that I realized something very basic...something I had been complicating... romanticizing ad infinitum. And yet, there it went. Right before my mind, it crumbled into the mundane--into the repulsive... Somehow, my great project became something much more shallow and pitiless. And right then and there, a piece of me fell out of love. I've waited several days now for the change to reverse, but it has not.
I have amazing skill when it comes to not wanting to accept what is before me. For some reason, I keep thinking of that tattoo on my arm: "the signifier is the signified." Yes. That's what I've always believed. Similarly, didn't Foucault say somewhere that "the symptom is the disease"? (signs of sickness are signs of truth?)
But in this New Year, I'm beginning to doubt the infallibility of my readings. Signs are shadows and not light. (Thank you, Plato.) Signs can be misread if one is as romantically inclined as I. For after all, signs are just that--signs. They are, by definition, one step removed. They can not ever be enough to lead one to an annihilatory liebestod (however foolish a dream that might be).
And so, I stare the New Year in the eye, and long to cast off these veils, but I am terrified. Should I let go of my spirit, let go of my orientation and my vision, let go of my illusions, I will be unrecognizable even to myself. How can I live without my own mythology?
I force myself to pause. I must stop myself and ask, "What are you afraid of?"
In consolation, I remind myself of Tennyson's In Memoriam:
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, "A thousand types are gone;
I care for nothing, all shall go."
-h-
PS: Sorry if this post took on sort of a strange tone. The old Hyde is still here. Just a little pensive these days... Perhaps a visit to Cheers tonight will remedy all that is off kilter.
