Thu, 19 May 2005

Plasmate
In 1992 I was in the snacketeria of Quadrangle dorm in Iowa City, where I was talking to this girl I knew from my Intro to Philosophy class, and she had seen me do this improv thing (I did a lot of that sort of thing, for a while), and we were walking over to one of the study rooms, where rows of wooden desks from the teaching college that burned down in ‘38 soak up florescent light, which were strangely off, and I felt weird, that this girl I only kinda knew and I were walking into this dark room, and the pressure of the pneumatic door-hinge was set really low, and so this big heavy door fell shut behind me, and somehow her hand was caught in the door. At the time, I was working on a kind of strategy where every day I was convinced there was a “critical moment”, in which my actions would become an integral part of my life, would set forth a path, and I had to be prepared all the time for that day’s moment. This idea, pretty obviously, completely ruined me for any “real” writing and played into my technical apathy and my laziness into making me the little three-paragraph writer I am today. So instantly I knew that this girl’s hand getting caught in the door was that day’s critical moment (which I knew was coming, as getting my desk drawer stuck wasn’t much of a critical moment though I tried to come to it with complete mindfulness and not getting frustrated and made sure to completely fix the drawer so it wouldn’t happen again. Here, however, I didn’t have the time to think through what needed to be done. If you assembled a panel of women who have played an ongoing role in my life (which would be hilarious, and would probably end in drunken prank phone calls) hands-down there would be agreement that I’m notoriously bad in the clutch, generally out of touch with what’s actually going on, and while I think my spaceboy days are over (thank god), I’m still a bit thick, and generally have to explain and apologize for things half an hour after the fact, when I finally realize that, yes, I fucked up. That said, I do think there’s an out to any circumstance, at least one thing one can do which would be perfect, would completely counterbalance and capture everyone involved. I used to call this “narrative disease”, this notion that things should work in the world the way they do in a story, and if I make fun of that in some things I’m mostly laughing at myself. So she’s on the other side of the door, and I can hear her yell “Fuck!” really loudly, but it sounded a bit muddied through the door. I reached for the doorhandle, and I also tried to reach for the light switch, because for some reason it seemed important now for the lights to be on, I’m not sure why. So I pull the door open, and was trying not to physically look for the switch, but just grope for it with my right hand, and she was standing there, holding her left hand with her right hand, and she laughed a little, but she was definitely pissed off, and I was convinced that if I was just present, and didn’t overthink it, I would just naturally do the right thing.

My natural unthought Zen response was “You wanna go to my room and get some ice?”

The lesson, for that day, was my inner voice is retarded, which is just as true today as it was nine years ago.
(12:10.05.19.2005) [/alpha] #