Once upon a time, Norman called me at my apartment a couple of blocks away, and frantically insisted I come over.
Norman was very good at sounding frantic. There was never really anything to panic over; it usually just meant he was excited. And that wasn't exactly unusual. I got used to the frantic thing. At the time, we hadn't been dating long, and his tone of voice suggested, to me, that he probably needed a kidney. Like, ASAP.
So I dashed over to Norman's apartment. Maybe I stopped for cigarettes and orange juice at the gas station on the way; I don't remember that part.
He met me at the door with a cigarette and a book. He put the cigarette in an ashtray, threw his arms around me, and pressed the book into my hands. It wasn't a nice, delicate presentation; he actually forced my hands around this book.
"You need to read this," he said. Not, "hi," not, "hey baby, how was your day..." Ah, Norman! Such a strange and baffling and wonderful creature. Norman always seemed to have too many thoughts in his head, too many things to say and do -- there was precious little time to waste on conventionalities.
The book was The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. Norman said he liked to read it whenever he was feeling "ungrounded." He said I would love it. And that I needed to read it. As in, NOW.
Well, fine. Norman played his guitar all night, and I read all night. There wasn't any getting out of THAT, whether or not I wanted to. I think it took me two or three days to read the whole thing. It's not a difficult book at all. I carried it with me until I finished it. I took it down to the Chenango, and read it at Grass on the Roof. It was October then, and all the leaves had changed. Whenever I read parts of that book now, I can smell Indian summer leaves, and I can hear Norman's guitar.
I too, like to read it when I'm feeling ungrounded.
I have my own copy now. I read it when I feel ungrounded. Unsettled.
Everything exerts gravitational force on everything else, at least according to 12th grade physics. This is why people stick to the planet, even if they're in, like, South Africa or someplace and it looks like they ought to fall off. They don't fall off because the mass of the earth is great enough so that they stick. People also exert gravitational forces, although we're a good deal smaller than planets, and therefore our gravitational forces are weaker.
This isn't rocket science, but I'm amazed at how many people don't know why, or can't explain why, we stick to the ground, and why, for instance, dust motes float toward people.
I feel like the gravitational forces have changed.
Actually, I've often felt that way. But not in a long, long time.
Seems now like the world is smaller, like it's lessened its grip on me, like I could step outside and drift away somewhere like a dandelion seed or something. It's not a pleasant feeling; I sort of rely on SOME representations of stability to remain stable. I feel like the earth has let me go. I feel like many things have let me go. Like, perhaps, at any moment, everything might let me go. That is not a pleasant feeling either, but it's one that I've occasionally enjoyed. It's nearly identical to the sensation of being on a very long Greyhound bus trip: the feeling that one is nowhere, that one is in a kind of motion that isn't found in 12th grade physics texts, that one is entirely insubstantial as far as the world is concerned -- and so the world doesn't bother forming any ties to one.
This is how I feel.
Simultaneously, I feel heavier. Bigger. Slower and clumsier and more awkward. I trudge instead of walking. I feel like a boxcar. In truth, I am a lot heavier and a lot bigger. Of course, I have this remarkable ability to look scrawny regardless of how much weight I gain, so nobody but me is really aware of how much my body has actually changed. Of course, gaining ten pounds, to most people, is almost unmentionably commonplace. For me, it's an act of fucking Congress to gain or lose a pound, so ten pounds -- probably more at this point -- feels like an added ton of bricks on my body. And, naturally, it's all in one place. Well, mostly one place. I've been getting frequent backaches because I don't know how to carry myself anymore. And because it's hard as hell to slouch with nearly six months' worth of kid inside me.
I'm big now. I'm heavy. I should sink into my surroundings. I should form these deep gravity-like bonds with my little world. Gahd knows I feel like I'm going to sink through the sidewalk when I walk to the store. But in some way I can't really understand, I'm too light for things of any mass to bother with. Or so it seems. I suppose this is my definition of "ungrounded."
So, I'm reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being again. I like Sabina best: the epitome of non-attachment. But I know that I'm really nothing like her. I like the idea of lightness. I like it when I'm on a Greyhound and I know I'll reach my destination within a countable number of hours. But I can't live it. In reality, I hate feeling like this.
Spent a couple of hours last night alone in the woods. I think I was in the woods. It was pretty dark, and I'd never been there before. I am sure about the lake though -- there was definitely a very, very small body of water where I was. I watched the mist rising off it, and tried to count stars in the reflection. I tried to psychically commune with a faraway friend of mine, but I don't think it worked. My psychic communication is limited to a very select few.
What would you do if you were me? I psychically asked my friend. Where would you go? When everything's moving and nothing feels safe, to what would you allow yourself to be attached?
As I said, my psychic communication sucks. So, I just tried to imagine my friend's replies.
In my imagination, she took me to the Red Oak and we had coffee and strawberry shortcake, and smoked cigarettes all night. But she didn't say anything. So, I just sat and watched the stars for a long, long while.
They didn't say anything either.
~H.T.*