"So I had to do a lot of thinking and reappraising of my definiton of black nationalism. Can we sum up the solution to the problems confronting our people as black nationalism? [...] I still would be hard pressed to give a specific definition of the overall philosophy which I think is necessary for the liberation of black people in this country."
- Malcolm X, "Young Socialist," 1965
"These remarks... indicate that even at a mature stage of the development of his philosophical position, Malcolm did not hesitate to re-examine his ideas and consider the possibility of radical shifts in that position."
- Angela Davis, "Meditations on the Legacy of Malcolm X," 1992
Reading Davis is always a treat. What I read in this, one aspect of Davis's point, is that Malcolm X had taken on a demanding self-critique of his own political philosophy. Though I am interested in reading more on both Davis and Malcolm X, what I see here is remarkable. A political posture amongst these radicals is both strong and reflective. These are not individuals who reached firm ground and stayed there; rather, they understood the usefulness of one position without allowing that to define them. What does this mean for me?
It is important to me take theory and develop opinions, take opinions to inspire feeling, to take feeling and move that to action. This itself is a reflective process that is augmented by self-contained questions: Do they opinions "fit" or do they require further restructuring of myself? Do those opinions or feelings suggest an incomplete or inadequate theory? Does the action make sense? Does action--behavior, activism, community development, occupation--manifest in meaningful ways? What new insights surface with action? These questions lead to a reassessment of theory that then recreates the process. It is reflective and hopefully generative series of questions and answers.
This reflexivity and world-action-self reciprocity is not a simple, everyday thing, either. It seems to be a process shared with Malcolm X and Angela Davis, at least based on these excerpts. The important thing is that this fluidity and potential change does not undermine one's ability to be active and engaged. Being in-process does not mean that action is inconsequential or incomplete. It may, and I think ought to, describe how activism is process-oriented; process-oriented in that what is being done now is part of the largest timeliness of involvement and change but also how the self is processed and reprocessed by a life of critical activism and theory. Strength in stance is not the same as an unmoving stance, fluidity does not undermine fortitude and action.
Should I be surprised? Not exactly. There are two archetypes of renowned philosophers that come to mind: One is the philosopher who develops a theory from bedrock to the heavens throughout his or her life, Kant and Spinoza are two examples; the other provides a landmark theory and later in life completely contradicts that theory, Wittgenstein and Descartes do this. Which, I wonder, best describes this type of critical self-reflection. Descartes's La Monde (unfinished) actually shares a few qualities with Spinoza's Ethica, so substantially one style does not exclude the outcomes of the other. Does the lifelong work require a constant self-criticality that prevents a finished piece? Does a finished work allow for a radical self-critique (what Malcolm X may have undergone in some speculative alternative history) that is prevented by regular revisions and reconsiderations?
I often write papers until I can't look at them anymore. I research, think, write, think, reread, research, rewrite, and so on until I can't think anymore on the subject. I end up with a piece that, with some time and distance, I can then divorce from myself adequately to say, "Yes, this is on the right track," or "No, I can't hold to this argument because..." It isn't until I can finish and establish distance that I can really disagree and self-critique. Of course, not everyone works and thinks like this. Perhaps the trick of the lifelong masterpiece is to be able to open oneself up to radical criticism without distance, to incorporate that into one's perspective. Oddly, I can identify how Spinoza--constantly toiling away at his Ethica, grinding lenses until the glass filled his lungs and killed him--and Wittgenstein--despite his radical self-critique embodied in Philosophical Investigations--both lived their philosophies. Kant never traveled more than twenty miles from his home; does this prevent a more divorced critique of his theory? Descartes traveled but created a philosophical mindset that allowed for gruesome vivisection (literally: "life-dividing") experiments for the next several hundred years.
Of course, I don't have a conclusion. (I haven't even finished Angela Davis's article.) This is more a reflection on how life and action interrelate and inform the world (in its fullness) of our selves (in our emptiness). I consider how Sartre's Being and Nothingness creates a self defined by no-thing as it makes contact with the world of being. It is divisive of the world in ways I cannot easily reconcile, but appreciate how this emptiness provides space for recreation and redefinition. Foucault and Gramsci describe the ways the what-who of a person are defined by hierarchies of power, but it does not mean that we are limited in any essential sense. Rather, we are part of fragile systems that we need, in terms of justice, to break and redefine as we live our lives. I do not want fullness--content, stagnant, static--I want wholeness--dynamic, ecological, rhythmic.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Meditation: Wheel & Texture
The wheel of the bike:
a useful emptiness of
traction and texture.
...
Thirty spokes
meet in the hub.
Where the wheel isn't
is where it's useful.
Hollowed out,
clay makes a pot.
Where the pot's not
is where it's useful.
Cut doors and windows
to make a room.
Where the room isn't,
there's room for you.
So the profit in what is
is in the use of what isn't.
- Tao Te Ching, "The uses of not," Lao Tzu (tr. Ursula Le Guin)
...
"Contact is beyond fullness or emptiness, beyond connection and disconnection.... This incommensurable, absolutely heterogeneous repetition opens up an irreducible strangeness of each one of these touches to the other."
- Jean-Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural
---
As a reprieve from William Coperthwaite's A Handmade Life, I sat about and gathered my thoughts. I realized I was sitting in domo-style and took the moment to reflect--at least until my ankles began to whine. My eyes fell on a bicycle wheel (my friend Cori's) and my mind also returned to the lessons of Tao mentioned above. "The uses of not" isn't exaclty accurate--though it is lyrically and intellectually pleasing--concerning the wheel, but what strikes me is its reflection on myself.
We are full of emptiness, not in a spiritual sense but in a mental sense; we have space for our minds to flutter and pray and stretch and turn in on themselves. We have within ourselves enough space to learn and adequate space to forget. We are wheels in that we touch the world and one another on only the periphery while some much more is able to pass through, dwell within, and move back into the larger world. I am glad for this flexibility, this internal openness.
Nancy has grabbed much of my attention and I bring him in now because of his comments on the strangeness of people. As a phenomenologist, he emphasizes the shared flesh or texture of the world--something I have written on before--but it is through the radical "strangeness" of others--people, objects, places, what-have-you--that we experience them. It is in the disuniform nature of that shared cloth that we are able to discern the world in rich, enticing, and beautiful ways.
The medley arises from how we are full of emptiness but able to c experience traction with the world. The wheel touches the earth and is able to push along and guide direction. If the pavement were like the tire, the nobby rubber forms would lock against one another; the two textures would become one. If we come into contact with those that are too similar (lovers lost in one another, interlocutors arguing endlessly, the lonely souls in a rehab facility), then we can lock into inconclusive patterns. To escape these behaviors, we require the empty space where we can reflect and be pushed and challenged, where the wheel itself can change. Nancy's strangeness is integral not just for our contact with the world, but how we interact and respond to the stimulus of those (human and more than human) around us. That strangeness alone speaks to how we can lock into one another but it takes our--incomplete--emptiness (the texture beneath the texture) to go beyond that immediate experience and break from the old crystallized patterns.
a useful emptiness of
traction and texture.
...
Thirty spokes
meet in the hub.
Where the wheel isn't
is where it's useful.
Hollowed out,
clay makes a pot.
Where the pot's not
is where it's useful.
Cut doors and windows
to make a room.
Where the room isn't,
there's room for you.
So the profit in what is
is in the use of what isn't.
- Tao Te Ching, "The uses of not," Lao Tzu (tr. Ursula Le Guin)
...
"Contact is beyond fullness or emptiness, beyond connection and disconnection.... This incommensurable, absolutely heterogeneous repetition opens up an irreducible strangeness of each one of these touches to the other."
- Jean-Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural
---
As a reprieve from William Coperthwaite's A Handmade Life, I sat about and gathered my thoughts. I realized I was sitting in domo-style and took the moment to reflect--at least until my ankles began to whine. My eyes fell on a bicycle wheel (my friend Cori's) and my mind also returned to the lessons of Tao mentioned above. "The uses of not" isn't exaclty accurate--though it is lyrically and intellectually pleasing--concerning the wheel, but what strikes me is its reflection on myself.
We are full of emptiness, not in a spiritual sense but in a mental sense; we have space for our minds to flutter and pray and stretch and turn in on themselves. We have within ourselves enough space to learn and adequate space to forget. We are wheels in that we touch the world and one another on only the periphery while some much more is able to pass through, dwell within, and move back into the larger world. I am glad for this flexibility, this internal openness.
Nancy has grabbed much of my attention and I bring him in now because of his comments on the strangeness of people. As a phenomenologist, he emphasizes the shared flesh or texture of the world--something I have written on before--but it is through the radical "strangeness" of others--people, objects, places, what-have-you--that we experience them. It is in the disuniform nature of that shared cloth that we are able to discern the world in rich, enticing, and beautiful ways.
The medley arises from how we are full of emptiness but able to c experience traction with the world. The wheel touches the earth and is able to push along and guide direction. If the pavement were like the tire, the nobby rubber forms would lock against one another; the two textures would become one. If we come into contact with those that are too similar (lovers lost in one another, interlocutors arguing endlessly, the lonely souls in a rehab facility), then we can lock into inconclusive patterns. To escape these behaviors, we require the empty space where we can reflect and be pushed and challenged, where the wheel itself can change. Nancy's strangeness is integral not just for our contact with the world, but how we interact and respond to the stimulus of those (human and more than human) around us. That strangeness alone speaks to how we can lock into one another but it takes our--incomplete--emptiness (the texture beneath the texture) to go beyond that immediate experience and break from the old crystallized patterns.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Paper Thin Walls, Whole Story
I noticed a few errors which I hope I've addressed.
---
Personal Essay II
Anton Carew
English 305, Professor Sewell
Miskatonic University
The walls of the study carrel were paper thin. Not that it mattered much. It was in the library with the others, providing an alcove for study and, to a smaller extent, escape. I spent five, ten, then fifteen hours a day in there as the semester wound on, the dissertation in my head gestating and appearing suddenly on bits of paper, on the computer screen, scribbled into the margins of the books I bought or borrowed. I could shut the door and close myself off from the world, only noticing the scrabble of a pen, the clatter of a forcefully used keyboard, the flipping of dry leaves of paper, the rumble of someone on the floor blowing his or her nose. I came prepared with a thermos of green tea and several sandwiches, though I'd often have more than crumbs leftover and my multiple visits to the café were for nothing more than hot water. The days I taught for my advisor would break the rhythm, but I began to arrive to class later, to emphasize the final paper they were all supposed to be working on, and throw my lecture notes willynilly into my messenger bag and shuffle off. I could feel the weight of their apprehension, their hundreds of pages waiting for me at the end of the semester, and the innumerable hours spent assessing them. Funny how now my writing seems so insubstantial and unimportant, how I would barter to regain those quotidian rhythms with everything but my soul. A soul: something I once set aside as a romantic daydream now feels so central, if utterly deflated.
I'd spent the Saturday in the carrel, noticing more than usual the thinness of the walls and how the neighbor to my left--present, it seemed, as often as I was despite the numerous underused alternatives--seemed to read his research material aloud. Becoming distracted, I realized he must be a student of language, either ancient or exotic if not both, because I could discern nothing familiar in the muffled intonations. Despite the ambiguity, he spoke with a rhythmic, even musical manner that even after I returned to my work I sensed not just through the wall, but behind me as if someone were peering through the small inset window on the door. More than once I glanced behind me expecting a student of mine or some neglected friend furtively standing there, fingers poised claw-like behind the glass. After several such inconclusive distractions, I made an excursion to the restroom; the opportunity allowed me an investigatory glance at the various students--few on a Saturday, but all embedded in their work--and some deliberate spying on my neighbor.
His head bobbed up and down as if in mosque-style prayer as he studied. It gave reason to his rhythmic chanting and I wondered if he were Muslim or had assumed the habit as a neurosis. His unkempt hair was flecked with shimmers of grey and I could see his olive complexion by his widely protruding ears. The small desk was littered deeply with open books: old heavy tomes, many with broken spines and ruddy old covers. One corner of the desk was cleared for a spiral bound notebook, its revealed page thick with a tight, incomprehensible chicken scratch. Something in his motions, his queer dedication, or the admirable mess he labored in captivated me and I stared for longer than intended. I began to discern not just his scribbling, but clearly described diagrams or hieroglyphs of esoteric meaning. In one of the opened books an expansive two page illustration detailed a circle of people in an ancient stone room where braziers' listing fire cast unnatural shadows on the walls and floor. The image assumed some early cubist style, apparently depicting more walls than a traditional vantage would allow, suggesting fleshy and angular bodies that inspired complaints in my empty stomach.
His head jerked up, dragging me from my focus and without thinking I twisted myself away from the window, jabbed my key into my carrel's lock, and slipped in. He was silent for a long time as I calmed my breathing and absently flipped pages. I brushed off the anxiety as the result of overeager snooping, an unusual voyeurism on a fellow student and researcher. He must be analyzing fiction of a bygone era or the language was only an addendum to some sort of religious study, an examination of medieval mysticism or something like that. I had jumped to conclusions and then been surprised when his research was not as expected. Being sly did not come naturally to me and it left me titillated in a surprising and captivated way. The unwholesome thrill unnerved me and I tried to placed it behind me, but no amount of tea seemed to bring me back to my studies. I folded up my papers, slid them into their awaiting folders in the cabinet, replaced my books on the shelf, and locked away my little monastic cell. My neighbor's door had been left just slightly open and against my better judgement I slipped in for uncertain mischief. My heart leapt again to my throat, but the illustration was hidden again between covers. The books were in various languages--one distinctly German, another two or three in Italian or Latin, but most entirely unknown to me. I noticed a small unmarked vial tucked in the bookshelf, containing several orange capsules. The absence of labeling set me off, though I am familiar enough with the contents. His bobbing head made that much more sense.
Considering my predicament in a briefly cleared mind, I left the carrel and made my way to the stairs. I caught the small man at the corner of my eye, but prevented myself from any egregiously suspicious observation. He was Middle Eastern, maybe Indian, or perhaps Egyptian, and seemed overly small, as if trying to avoid attention by curling up into himself. He was a snail of a man--I decided--carrying his literary hoard, his rightful shelter being the pages of ancient books, of times that he managed to understand better than the present. The University was large enough that we may never have crossed paths until that night and if it hadn't been for those paper thin walls I might have gone on blissfully ignorant of this man and his esoteric studies. But I doubt it.
The way home was haunted by suspicions of other presences that refused to dissipate and, upon reflection, became ever more intense. The nights bore that wintry dark which gobbles up the light in its amorphous starless skies. Somewhere above, the moon danced, though its only sign was the infusion of sickly radiance in an ever-shifting formation of clouds while earthbound lanterns flickered sodium yellow. The campus was suspended between the early tittering of youths and the boisterous return of those celebrants; they were somewhere, I told myself, enjoying the night far away from this particular route. Shadows seemed to race on all sides, encircling me and cutting off my escape and as I turned to face them, a street lamp would flicker its unwholesome glow and nothing unusual would be there; a flash of darkness and then the expected outlines of denuded trees and shrubs, walkways and banisters, ivy-covered buildings with shriveled leaves rattling in the night. I wanted to run, to lock the door behind me and turn on all the lights until this malignant mood passed, but I refused the fancy with all the determination I could muster, wishing it away with clenched, pocketed fists.
I was out of breath when I locked and bolted the door behind me. The entry light hummed it's fluorescence warmly and I stood, rubbing my shoulders with my hands, trying to shake off more than the cold. A deep-rooted scientism jostled and jarred with my sentiments, shriveling slightly at this undeniable confoundment. I put water on for tea, but only after letting the lights flutter gradually into life, banishing the shadows only too slowly. The entry light remained on, breaking my childhood habit of turning every light out as I passed; a habit that frustrated my quiet, sensitive mother to no end, though she always affirmed the habit with a wavering smile. I placed a spoon slathered with honey into the tea pot, the water in the kettle stirring to life, and sprinkled loose petals and leaves of jasmine into their silver chassis. Trying to reconnect with my usual absentmindedness, I opened the fridge--an old, polished Frigidaire I rescued from my grandparents' before my sister had the chance to give it to Goodwill--only to blanche at the notion of eating anything. My stomach churned restlessly, though the promise of tea and sleep calmed it once the door to the fridge closed. I flipped on the main room light--a living room and bedroom--and nibbled on dry, salty crackers from the pantry until the water boiled, all the while watching the slow retreat of the dark.
The arm chair wrapped itself around me as I set myself into it, an immense relief sloughing off as I sipped the still too hot tea, relishing the scalding floral sweetness on its end. The days in the library, of endless reading and writing and solitude had gotten to me; that was all. My fellow scholar was probably in the same boat, though our brief encounter suggested a strong, perhaps proud foreignness. My progress on my own work had been substantial and I may benefit from a holiday, rejuvenating myself on more than stale or soggy sandwiches. I had lost weight--a common trend of mine during periods of academic intensity--and allowed friends' calls to go unanswered. Tomorrow, yes tomorrow I would catch up, get a drink or just enjoy some sunshine--if that skulking sun ever showed its face again--and conversation over tea and coffee. I felt my appetite return, but let it grumble as a sort of vengeance on its earlier hesitancy. I thought of rich, swirling cream; a chai latté with a shake of nutmeg, cinnamon, and brown sugar; of the forgiving flesh of the baguettes served at that particular coffee shop, the buttery crumble of a scone at the other. I'll give myself a holiday and allow this little episode to fade.
Logic seemed to surface again as I considered the whole event with greater removal and objectivity. It all could have been a panic attack, the result of those upcoming papers and my poor preparation for handling them, or just some fear of actually finishing the dissertation... When was the last time I met with my advisor? He was out of the country until Wednesday, but we ought to discuss my progress shortly thereafter. It was all a conflation of forces, of the slow tides that I had refused to acknowledge. I had been taken up by a riptide, but was returning to a more comfortable ebb and flow. The waves lapped beneath me as I pulled the comforter over my shoulders, up to my chin, and dozed off.
---
It was nearly a week before I made it back to the carrel. Everything took on a peculiar, distracting keenness. For once I wasn't disheveled as I taught my classes, I stayed after chatting with students, encouraging them on their various projects and passions. I noticed a young woman in the class had taken a liking to me: a short curly-haired brunette who wore an obvious spunk and witty style. Upon reflection, I could recall how she was often eager to participate in class, to stir me from my lecture and develop a conversational, seminar vibe. The second class of the week I let the classroom shift: students spoke up from different corners, popcorn popping in a delightful, chaotic medley of experiences, interpretations, and insights. Students provided novel, perspicacious observations on the readings, on subjects and ideas I had learned four, five, six years before. It was new to them, often radically new, and seemed to stir me from my slumber even more.
After the second class a handful of students gathered at a coffeeshop near campus. It became clear that in my absence they had built up a support web for one another, a study group that gave them the environment they wanted in the classroom; I watched as they bounced around in open criticism and playful condenscencion of one another. At first, I was eager to join in, to offer my own ideas and wizened critique and understanding. In no great length of time, though, I sat back and sipped my coffee--heavy with cream--soaking in their vigor and camaraderie. I inserted small comments, used one of their computers to dig up articles they might find interesting. The brunette--her name I recalled was Jezebel but all her colleagues refered to her as Bel--schemed her way into leading class discussion the next week, staring at me with uncanny confidence. Her fellow students liked the idea and they, with syllabus in hand, began revamping the next month of classes, setting up their own alternative.
Spring had begun eeking its way forward, drawing out the days with pleasant, sunny intensity; but night had set before I left, carrying with it the last breaths of a hesitant winter. I had only my jacket and scarf which I tightened around me. My stomach quaked with sloshing coffee, my fingers jittery with caffeine. Jezebel--I refused to take the more familiar appellation which seemed, somehow, unchaste--caught up to me and offered me a ride. She pointed to a second- or third-hand sedan, the chassis rusted around the wheels and a stubborn passenger window that I assumed refused to wind entirely. I said no, that I was going to work at the library--a short stroll--and put the caffeine to good use. I rarely drank coffee, but something about the evening had suspended that abstinence. She smiled and I responded in kind, perhaps too much so, and walked away with her warm brown eyes on me--I imagined, at least--until I reached the corner.
I quickly regretted the decision. The cold snapped at my ears, at my ankles along my too-short thrift store trousers, and crawled into my jacket sleeves insidiously. I quickened my clip toward the library, feeling a brazen, even malicious intent in the night. Shadows danced as cars passed, taking on brief, perturbing forms just before fading. They took on an unwelcome sharpness, just as everything had since my last late night in the library, and I felt the urge to break into a run. The steady incandescence of the library façade--a brick firmament testifying to the heavenly status of education--apparently banished the phantoms. I tugged at the door with undue force and let the suction drag me in. It was quiet, the public terminals near the lobby almost empty, and one lonely student at the front desk read a half-hidden notebook. It was the Friday just after midterms--from which I excused my students--and the only sound was the faint fluttering of pages and the hushed high whine of the archaic ventilation system. The student at the front desk noticed me and shoved his notebook under the desk in a feeble attempt to conceal this small breach in regulation.
I avoided the wide main staircase for an access stairwell, brilliantly lit by humming fluorescent lights. My quick steps and hard shoes echoed in a mumbling chorus on the linoleum and unforgiving walls. Upstairs, I stepped into the bathroom, the same soft humming of the lights sang as I washed my face and forced my breath to slow. I felt feverish, my forehead washed of its beads of sweat, and my eyes widely staring back at me through the silvered pane. My hands roughed dry on crinkly towels and then tugged at my shirt and jacket--damp creeped along its cuffs--hoping to feign some composure. Laughter lay somewhere inside me, bottled up with anxiety and a strained, unnatural tension. I chuckled with numb ambiguity, unnable to make light of myself. Several deep breaths later I stepped out into the hallways toward my carrel.
I expected his light on but only a series of blackened windows met me. I forced my hand steady as I inserted the key and turned the handle. Everything was as I left it, all in its rightful place, and I breathed deeply again. I pulled out a frayed spiralbound notebook, a stack of books from the shelves, and one of my awaiting black pens. Cracking the topmost book--some critical reading of Tocqueville--and let the words rise up to meet me. They were dense and warm and provided a hard, certain texture to the unnerving ethereal quality that had chased me thence. After the first several pages the words took on a peculiar foreign attitude, somehow modulating on the page the way the ocean floor shifts underneath a passing wave. I could see the words, but as they sang in my mind they took on unnatural yellow tonalities; they became slippery and lolled around with oceanic weight.
I closed the book and opened another, not glancing at the title. The words roiled on the page, intoning themselves in my mind in unimaginable ways. They were the words of dreams, juxtaposed with alien meanings the way one knows Arabic or German in a dream, speaking and understanding in perfect fluent clarity only to wake and feel that knowledge evaporating away. I tried to focus, to read each word with its own anglophone certainty, its Saxon or French root; but letters and syllables built, each on the next, in precipitous architectures of sound. Again and again, even flipping through my spiral notebook with growing anxiety and inescapable surreal fear, the words became a heady, abyssal sound. Alien phonemes of geologic age meant nothing to me but each iteration brought on new vertiginous depths, each haunting me with ineffable meaning.
The door slammed behind me, sealing my keys, coat, and scarf within while the reverberation echoed through the floor. I ran, holding onto banisters and tracing my finger along walls on my way to the exit. Bulbs flickered, revealing the shadows beneath the light, hidden between pages, tucked like bookmarks between the covers in every cranny of the library. My feet tripped themselves in my haste, fearing that I might step on some tangible specter waiting to grab hold. The student looked up, shouted something at me, as I broke into the sharp, cold night--his words chased after me, carrying that otherworldly annunciation--and I felt liberated despite the dark. Icy air stabbed at my unaccustomed lungs as I raced through campus, heading into town, following the trail of street lamps and the raucous vigor of youth.
I stumbled past my apartment entrance, wheezing and frustrated. I checked my pocket for my wallet and strolled, bent half-over, into town. In a dimly lit bar, the dance floor rustling to life at the other end, I downed a double whiskey and grabbed my beer. Someone nearby whooted in my honor, oblivious to my frantic state and confusing it with something celebratory. I grabbed a pen from my pocket and a stack of napkins, thinking I might record the events. My hand seized in stark fear above the napkin, fearful of what letters or strange glyphs I might inscribe. As the whiskey gripped my stomach, I was able to attend to the surrounding sounds, the rumble of words redefined by software and the conversations hollered between friends and strangers. They were clear and comprehensible. Words loaded with their own textired meanings but ultimately a human meaning, something my mind could grasp and comprehend. I sat alone for several minutes, ordering another beer and whiskey that I sipped with gradually steadying hands.
---
I met Elwynn Caldwell in this state. He finished with his second whiskey before he spoke to me. It was clear he needed either clarity or confusion in great quantity. More than I could providem, anyway. I did what I could: I bought him another drink and listened to his story. I have recalled it here to the best of my ability, using his same sobering words where I could. When I sat with him, I had just been turned down by a classmate and made a fool, in a small way but a fool all the same. A night next to this half-familiar fellow seemed better than moping around the bar or chasing after friends out in the chill night.
I met Caldwell at the coffeeshop with his students. Bel and Jacob were in his class and when I saw them bantering loudly in their small crowd, I decided to sit with them. The lanky man that had listened and joked drily with us then was an entirely different creature than this half-frozen, increasingly drunk heap of poorly fitting clothes. He had been mostly quiet, prefering to have others hush when he spoke than to raise his voice. At the coffeehouse he had a monkish austerity and humor to him. He did not cause many laughs, but smiles rippled around the table as he made allusions to theorists he enjoyed and the faculty of the University. Caldwell made no effort to conceal his distaste for some among of the instructors in the humanities; he even chuckled mischieviously as he recounted how he and the younger Professor McEwan had openly condescended against one another the previous year.
If it weren't for his unshakable anxiety in Kiely's Pub, I would have expected a joke of it, that he had simply left his jacket in the restroom or on another chair and was using me for some private laugh. But as his tale closed, I was certain that he was in earnest. The details took on ever increasing clarity and I doubted--though I wanted to believe--he had spent too many quiet hours in the library and was suffering from nervous exhaustion. That sounds like a page out of time: nervous exhaustion. Would I next diagnose an energetic and unpredictable woman with "uterus fever." All the same, I could do little besides take in his story and believe, despite myself, in its verisimilitude.
The library had closed before he finished the narrative, otherwise I would have gone to recover his keys and coat in his stead. His apartment, I learned as he stumbled on my arm, was one of those second floor spaces above a shop. With no clear landlord or neighbor in sight, I sobered up and dragged him to the apartment I share with two others, Jesse and Upton. Caldwell had long since fallen into a stuporous sleep, dragging his feet as much as walking. I plopped him onto the couch, set out a glass of water, and strolled down the hall. I saw the flickering of a computer screen creep under Jesse's door and heard the subdued grunts as he played one of his games. I thought of how Caldwell had said, "the shadows beneath the light," and could not make out his meaning. I decided it was either my fatigue or his. I heard him grumble as I prepared for bed. Something rustled and splattered to the floor.
Feeble streetlights slipped through the threadbare curtains on the window, dancing with the dark of the room. Caldwell seemed to be sitting up: a black silhouette on black. As I focused, I wondered tiredly what might have happened. Other forms congealed out of the darkness. Caldwell was sitting perfectly straight and impassive on the sofa, as I'd left him except for his posture. The plastic cup rolled from side to side in its plashed water as it whispered rhythmically. The water glimmered with a confused, refracted indigo; I could not discern the light's source. A frame of yellow light surrounded the door from the hall, but, I realized, it was not a perfect frame. My eyes struggled between the mundane light and the smudge of unmoving but rippling darkness between the door and myself.
The air was still and I realized Caldwell wasn't breathing. I wasn't breathing. Whatever it was between the door and myself wasn't breathing. Somehow, over an infinite distance I could make out the clatter of keys and remote, monosyllabic mutters. Blood pumped through my neck, pounded in my ears, and the room seemed to flush--sanguine red on inky black--as my pulse throbbed. With infinite care I raised my foot, toe still touching the floor, and stepped back. I repeated the step with the opposite.
It all happened at once after that. The floorboard creaked and a sofa spring sang its queer dirge. Darkness like heavy, stagnant air moved in a tidal rush toward me, split or confused by the two simultaneous sounds. The door opened, its hinge howling against the other sounds. Light flooded in and blinded my dark-accustomed eyes. Upton and the woman with him were caught mid-laugh only to choke on it. My vision blurred, accompanied by a dull thrum behind my eyes as too much light came at me too quickly. Still I could not dismiss the slithering, ichorous darkness as it crawled with wicked speed out the door. Upton's company tripped and fell to the ground suddenly unbalanced and unable to breathe. Caldwell was bathed in the light of the hallwaye. He was bone white, and frozen stockstill.
I remained planted in place. The stark fear of that thing bearing down on me, the creak in the floor, the way it moved without moving, without any clear concept of momentum. I was certain it might return and the only thing I could do was stay still. Then the hollowness in my chest rattled and I struggled to breathe as if the air had been knocked out of me. I saw that Upton was trying to help the woman struggling to breathe in the hallway and went to Caldwell. His his eyes were wide, the whites pierced by pupils dialated grotesquely. His forehead was damp with cold sweat. I feared him dead, or near enough to it, but I felt the thin rasp of breath on my cheek and eventually--though not nearly as soon as I would have liked--he blinked. He was entirely unresponsive to my comments and I went out to check on Upton and the girl.
Upton had been calling to me to get some wet rags or bandages as he held her. When I brought them out I saw why: He'd rolled up her shirt and along her midsection and right side were striated burns--or what I thought could be burns--where small rivulets of blood dripped. She breathing, but with difficulty. Her hands quaked in shock. I grabbed the phone and dialed, babbled something about a burn, an accident, I don't know what. Something prevented me from calling them friends; they were just "people" in my place, hurt and confused and scared. They kept me on the line, though I couldn't think of any way to describe what had happened or how. I tried to run through the scenario but it was only later, only when I tried to write this that it came back to me. A smell had been left in its wake, the smell of scarred flesh and the fear and something like an absence, the way rubbing alcohol smells when it evaporates. I opened the door and tried to coax the air out. The cold hit me like a brick, the sweat all over me suddenly becoming frigid. I shivered fiercely and I wasn't sure if it was the cold or the fear.
The fire truck mutely flashed its lights outside, piercing the night like so many spears, and I led the men in. They whiffed the air and muttered to one another as they knelt to help Libby--Upton was calling her that as he tried to nurse her wounds. The pair of firefighters spoke in unwavering voices. It wasn't until the ambulance came that anyone noticed Caldwell, inanimate on the couch. Libby had calmed somewhat, though I think it was the shock setting in, as they set her on a gurney. Caldwell allowed himself to be half carried by the firemen and set in a tight corner of the ambulance where they secured him in with a seatbelt like a baby's carseat. They gave the straps a hard tug and passed a thumbs up to the driver. Libby was sleeping or sedated serenely on the gurney, looked over by an EMT. They had given Upton and me a look over, saying nothing in the process. The police had arrived by then and the two of us were taken to the station, each in his own cruiser, for a statement.
The officers handled us softly, all things considered. We had two people in our apartment requiring urgent care while we were shaken but physically fine. The deputy said something about a burglar--which I wanted to deny but failed to--that was scribbled into the report. A couple of younger officers tried to argue with the deputy that we ought to stay over night, and I was clearheaded enough to see they thought we were, in some manner, quilty. The deputy presented a stoic face, took the two aside and spoke plainly to them out of earshot. They grabbed their coats and scurried out. Upton and I didn't speak about what happened when we were driven home, nor the next day.
On the second day, Upton went to the hospital to see Libby. I stood in the hallway and listened as he tried to get her to talk to him. Walking past the door to the bathroom I glanced back and saw the bandages running all along her side. The crisp linen folded neatly under her arms. She stared at him, anger red on her face. Beneath the anger--something about the fatigue of her eyes and the circles beneath them--I could see that the anger was a veneer; it covered the fear that kept her up except for the painkillers running in through her IV.
Upton stormed out, pushing me against the wall in the process. I let him get ahead of me and then followed him to the main door. I stopped at the front desk and asked to see Caldwell. The rosey cheeked, rotund nurse explained that I couldn't. When prodded, she said plainly, "Mr. Caldwell is in psychiatric care. No visitors. Doctor's orders," a line she didn't mind handing to me. I asked for his doctor, that I was the last one to seem him before he was admitted, that I was a friend. After prodding her, she eyed a doctor as he passed in a hurry with a clipboard in hand. I took the cue--intentional or otherwise--and chased after him. It was Caldwell's doctor, from whom all I got was, "He's nonresponsive since they brought him in."
I walked with him, prying with any question I could muster. I tried to explain what had happened, the memory still jumbled madly. He stoppped at a counter, spoke in an aggravated tone to a nurse, jotted down a note on a pad, but then left it there. I watched him walk away as a wave of med students with an instructor cut off my route. The nurse at the counter watched me, glanced down at the pad, and resumed her work on the day's crossword puzzle. I lifted the pad; in tight medical scrawl read, "Breakdown institutionalized prognosis inconclusive." I tore at the pad, but the nurse grabbed my wrist and neatly extricated the sheet. Her eyes on me, she spat a wad of gum into the paper, crumpled up the paper, and threw it in the trash.
I told Bel about the visit. She tried to get in to see him, trying to explain--first--that he was her instructor and--after that--that he was her boyfriend. She got a skeptical look, but they let her peer through window, the kind crisscrossed with reinforcing wire. She said she had expected a padded room, but it wasn't. He sat at the edge of a white iron bed, a lumpy mattress and single cover over top, a pillow neatly set at the head. Blue and white tiles lined the floor. And there was Caldwell: sitting at the edge of the bed, hands gripping his knees, pale and stockstill.
---
Mister Carew,
Though you have here a fine display of your flamboyant style and diction, the language comes off as trite and assumed. Your twist does not make up for an inconsistent voice. This shows some improvement over, at least in potential, from your first paper. I will remind you that this is a nonfiction course and, for your sake, I hope you realize THAT for the final paper. I will not pass you if you try to hand in another piece of fantasy like this.
C+
---
Personal Essay II
Anton Carew
English 305, Professor Sewell
Miskatonic University
The walls of the study carrel were paper thin. Not that it mattered much. It was in the library with the others, providing an alcove for study and, to a smaller extent, escape. I spent five, ten, then fifteen hours a day in there as the semester wound on, the dissertation in my head gestating and appearing suddenly on bits of paper, on the computer screen, scribbled into the margins of the books I bought or borrowed. I could shut the door and close myself off from the world, only noticing the scrabble of a pen, the clatter of a forcefully used keyboard, the flipping of dry leaves of paper, the rumble of someone on the floor blowing his or her nose. I came prepared with a thermos of green tea and several sandwiches, though I'd often have more than crumbs leftover and my multiple visits to the café were for nothing more than hot water. The days I taught for my advisor would break the rhythm, but I began to arrive to class later, to emphasize the final paper they were all supposed to be working on, and throw my lecture notes willynilly into my messenger bag and shuffle off. I could feel the weight of their apprehension, their hundreds of pages waiting for me at the end of the semester, and the innumerable hours spent assessing them. Funny how now my writing seems so insubstantial and unimportant, how I would barter to regain those quotidian rhythms with everything but my soul. A soul: something I once set aside as a romantic daydream now feels so central, if utterly deflated.
I'd spent the Saturday in the carrel, noticing more than usual the thinness of the walls and how the neighbor to my left--present, it seemed, as often as I was despite the numerous underused alternatives--seemed to read his research material aloud. Becoming distracted, I realized he must be a student of language, either ancient or exotic if not both, because I could discern nothing familiar in the muffled intonations. Despite the ambiguity, he spoke with a rhythmic, even musical manner that even after I returned to my work I sensed not just through the wall, but behind me as if someone were peering through the small inset window on the door. More than once I glanced behind me expecting a student of mine or some neglected friend furtively standing there, fingers poised claw-like behind the glass. After several such inconclusive distractions, I made an excursion to the restroom; the opportunity allowed me an investigatory glance at the various students--few on a Saturday, but all embedded in their work--and some deliberate spying on my neighbor.
His head bobbed up and down as if in mosque-style prayer as he studied. It gave reason to his rhythmic chanting and I wondered if he were Muslim or had assumed the habit as a neurosis. His unkempt hair was flecked with shimmers of grey and I could see his olive complexion by his widely protruding ears. The small desk was littered deeply with open books: old heavy tomes, many with broken spines and ruddy old covers. One corner of the desk was cleared for a spiral bound notebook, its revealed page thick with a tight, incomprehensible chicken scratch. Something in his motions, his queer dedication, or the admirable mess he labored in captivated me and I stared for longer than intended. I began to discern not just his scribbling, but clearly described diagrams or hieroglyphs of esoteric meaning. In one of the opened books an expansive two page illustration detailed a circle of people in an ancient stone room where braziers' listing fire cast unnatural shadows on the walls and floor. The image assumed some early cubist style, apparently depicting more walls than a traditional vantage would allow, suggesting fleshy and angular bodies that inspired complaints in my empty stomach.
His head jerked up, dragging me from my focus and without thinking I twisted myself away from the window, jabbed my key into my carrel's lock, and slipped in. He was silent for a long time as I calmed my breathing and absently flipped pages. I brushed off the anxiety as the result of overeager snooping, an unusual voyeurism on a fellow student and researcher. He must be analyzing fiction of a bygone era or the language was only an addendum to some sort of religious study, an examination of medieval mysticism or something like that. I had jumped to conclusions and then been surprised when his research was not as expected. Being sly did not come naturally to me and it left me titillated in a surprising and captivated way. The unwholesome thrill unnerved me and I tried to placed it behind me, but no amount of tea seemed to bring me back to my studies. I folded up my papers, slid them into their awaiting folders in the cabinet, replaced my books on the shelf, and locked away my little monastic cell. My neighbor's door had been left just slightly open and against my better judgement I slipped in for uncertain mischief. My heart leapt again to my throat, but the illustration was hidden again between covers. The books were in various languages--one distinctly German, another two or three in Italian or Latin, but most entirely unknown to me. I noticed a small unmarked vial tucked in the bookshelf, containing several orange capsules. The absence of labeling set me off, though I am familiar enough with the contents. His bobbing head made that much more sense.
Considering my predicament in a briefly cleared mind, I left the carrel and made my way to the stairs. I caught the small man at the corner of my eye, but prevented myself from any egregiously suspicious observation. He was Middle Eastern, maybe Indian, or perhaps Egyptian, and seemed overly small, as if trying to avoid attention by curling up into himself. He was a snail of a man--I decided--carrying his literary hoard, his rightful shelter being the pages of ancient books, of times that he managed to understand better than the present. The University was large enough that we may never have crossed paths until that night and if it hadn't been for those paper thin walls I might have gone on blissfully ignorant of this man and his esoteric studies. But I doubt it.
The way home was haunted by suspicions of other presences that refused to dissipate and, upon reflection, became ever more intense. The nights bore that wintry dark which gobbles up the light in its amorphous starless skies. Somewhere above, the moon danced, though its only sign was the infusion of sickly radiance in an ever-shifting formation of clouds while earthbound lanterns flickered sodium yellow. The campus was suspended between the early tittering of youths and the boisterous return of those celebrants; they were somewhere, I told myself, enjoying the night far away from this particular route. Shadows seemed to race on all sides, encircling me and cutting off my escape and as I turned to face them, a street lamp would flicker its unwholesome glow and nothing unusual would be there; a flash of darkness and then the expected outlines of denuded trees and shrubs, walkways and banisters, ivy-covered buildings with shriveled leaves rattling in the night. I wanted to run, to lock the door behind me and turn on all the lights until this malignant mood passed, but I refused the fancy with all the determination I could muster, wishing it away with clenched, pocketed fists.
I was out of breath when I locked and bolted the door behind me. The entry light hummed it's fluorescence warmly and I stood, rubbing my shoulders with my hands, trying to shake off more than the cold. A deep-rooted scientism jostled and jarred with my sentiments, shriveling slightly at this undeniable confoundment. I put water on for tea, but only after letting the lights flutter gradually into life, banishing the shadows only too slowly. The entry light remained on, breaking my childhood habit of turning every light out as I passed; a habit that frustrated my quiet, sensitive mother to no end, though she always affirmed the habit with a wavering smile. I placed a spoon slathered with honey into the tea pot, the water in the kettle stirring to life, and sprinkled loose petals and leaves of jasmine into their silver chassis. Trying to reconnect with my usual absentmindedness, I opened the fridge--an old, polished Frigidaire I rescued from my grandparents' before my sister had the chance to give it to Goodwill--only to blanche at the notion of eating anything. My stomach churned restlessly, though the promise of tea and sleep calmed it once the door to the fridge closed. I flipped on the main room light--a living room and bedroom--and nibbled on dry, salty crackers from the pantry until the water boiled, all the while watching the slow retreat of the dark.
The arm chair wrapped itself around me as I set myself into it, an immense relief sloughing off as I sipped the still too hot tea, relishing the scalding floral sweetness on its end. The days in the library, of endless reading and writing and solitude had gotten to me; that was all. My fellow scholar was probably in the same boat, though our brief encounter suggested a strong, perhaps proud foreignness. My progress on my own work had been substantial and I may benefit from a holiday, rejuvenating myself on more than stale or soggy sandwiches. I had lost weight--a common trend of mine during periods of academic intensity--and allowed friends' calls to go unanswered. Tomorrow, yes tomorrow I would catch up, get a drink or just enjoy some sunshine--if that skulking sun ever showed its face again--and conversation over tea and coffee. I felt my appetite return, but let it grumble as a sort of vengeance on its earlier hesitancy. I thought of rich, swirling cream; a chai latté with a shake of nutmeg, cinnamon, and brown sugar; of the forgiving flesh of the baguettes served at that particular coffee shop, the buttery crumble of a scone at the other. I'll give myself a holiday and allow this little episode to fade.
Logic seemed to surface again as I considered the whole event with greater removal and objectivity. It all could have been a panic attack, the result of those upcoming papers and my poor preparation for handling them, or just some fear of actually finishing the dissertation... When was the last time I met with my advisor? He was out of the country until Wednesday, but we ought to discuss my progress shortly thereafter. It was all a conflation of forces, of the slow tides that I had refused to acknowledge. I had been taken up by a riptide, but was returning to a more comfortable ebb and flow. The waves lapped beneath me as I pulled the comforter over my shoulders, up to my chin, and dozed off.
---
It was nearly a week before I made it back to the carrel. Everything took on a peculiar, distracting keenness. For once I wasn't disheveled as I taught my classes, I stayed after chatting with students, encouraging them on their various projects and passions. I noticed a young woman in the class had taken a liking to me: a short curly-haired brunette who wore an obvious spunk and witty style. Upon reflection, I could recall how she was often eager to participate in class, to stir me from my lecture and develop a conversational, seminar vibe. The second class of the week I let the classroom shift: students spoke up from different corners, popcorn popping in a delightful, chaotic medley of experiences, interpretations, and insights. Students provided novel, perspicacious observations on the readings, on subjects and ideas I had learned four, five, six years before. It was new to them, often radically new, and seemed to stir me from my slumber even more.
After the second class a handful of students gathered at a coffeeshop near campus. It became clear that in my absence they had built up a support web for one another, a study group that gave them the environment they wanted in the classroom; I watched as they bounced around in open criticism and playful condenscencion of one another. At first, I was eager to join in, to offer my own ideas and wizened critique and understanding. In no great length of time, though, I sat back and sipped my coffee--heavy with cream--soaking in their vigor and camaraderie. I inserted small comments, used one of their computers to dig up articles they might find interesting. The brunette--her name I recalled was Jezebel but all her colleagues refered to her as Bel--schemed her way into leading class discussion the next week, staring at me with uncanny confidence. Her fellow students liked the idea and they, with syllabus in hand, began revamping the next month of classes, setting up their own alternative.
Spring had begun eeking its way forward, drawing out the days with pleasant, sunny intensity; but night had set before I left, carrying with it the last breaths of a hesitant winter. I had only my jacket and scarf which I tightened around me. My stomach quaked with sloshing coffee, my fingers jittery with caffeine. Jezebel--I refused to take the more familiar appellation which seemed, somehow, unchaste--caught up to me and offered me a ride. She pointed to a second- or third-hand sedan, the chassis rusted around the wheels and a stubborn passenger window that I assumed refused to wind entirely. I said no, that I was going to work at the library--a short stroll--and put the caffeine to good use. I rarely drank coffee, but something about the evening had suspended that abstinence. She smiled and I responded in kind, perhaps too much so, and walked away with her warm brown eyes on me--I imagined, at least--until I reached the corner.
I quickly regretted the decision. The cold snapped at my ears, at my ankles along my too-short thrift store trousers, and crawled into my jacket sleeves insidiously. I quickened my clip toward the library, feeling a brazen, even malicious intent in the night. Shadows danced as cars passed, taking on brief, perturbing forms just before fading. They took on an unwelcome sharpness, just as everything had since my last late night in the library, and I felt the urge to break into a run. The steady incandescence of the library façade--a brick firmament testifying to the heavenly status of education--apparently banished the phantoms. I tugged at the door with undue force and let the suction drag me in. It was quiet, the public terminals near the lobby almost empty, and one lonely student at the front desk read a half-hidden notebook. It was the Friday just after midterms--from which I excused my students--and the only sound was the faint fluttering of pages and the hushed high whine of the archaic ventilation system. The student at the front desk noticed me and shoved his notebook under the desk in a feeble attempt to conceal this small breach in regulation.
I avoided the wide main staircase for an access stairwell, brilliantly lit by humming fluorescent lights. My quick steps and hard shoes echoed in a mumbling chorus on the linoleum and unforgiving walls. Upstairs, I stepped into the bathroom, the same soft humming of the lights sang as I washed my face and forced my breath to slow. I felt feverish, my forehead washed of its beads of sweat, and my eyes widely staring back at me through the silvered pane. My hands roughed dry on crinkly towels and then tugged at my shirt and jacket--damp creeped along its cuffs--hoping to feign some composure. Laughter lay somewhere inside me, bottled up with anxiety and a strained, unnatural tension. I chuckled with numb ambiguity, unnable to make light of myself. Several deep breaths later I stepped out into the hallways toward my carrel.
I expected his light on but only a series of blackened windows met me. I forced my hand steady as I inserted the key and turned the handle. Everything was as I left it, all in its rightful place, and I breathed deeply again. I pulled out a frayed spiralbound notebook, a stack of books from the shelves, and one of my awaiting black pens. Cracking the topmost book--some critical reading of Tocqueville--and let the words rise up to meet me. They were dense and warm and provided a hard, certain texture to the unnerving ethereal quality that had chased me thence. After the first several pages the words took on a peculiar foreign attitude, somehow modulating on the page the way the ocean floor shifts underneath a passing wave. I could see the words, but as they sang in my mind they took on unnatural yellow tonalities; they became slippery and lolled around with oceanic weight.
I closed the book and opened another, not glancing at the title. The words roiled on the page, intoning themselves in my mind in unimaginable ways. They were the words of dreams, juxtaposed with alien meanings the way one knows Arabic or German in a dream, speaking and understanding in perfect fluent clarity only to wake and feel that knowledge evaporating away. I tried to focus, to read each word with its own anglophone certainty, its Saxon or French root; but letters and syllables built, each on the next, in precipitous architectures of sound. Again and again, even flipping through my spiral notebook with growing anxiety and inescapable surreal fear, the words became a heady, abyssal sound. Alien phonemes of geologic age meant nothing to me but each iteration brought on new vertiginous depths, each haunting me with ineffable meaning.
The door slammed behind me, sealing my keys, coat, and scarf within while the reverberation echoed through the floor. I ran, holding onto banisters and tracing my finger along walls on my way to the exit. Bulbs flickered, revealing the shadows beneath the light, hidden between pages, tucked like bookmarks between the covers in every cranny of the library. My feet tripped themselves in my haste, fearing that I might step on some tangible specter waiting to grab hold. The student looked up, shouted something at me, as I broke into the sharp, cold night--his words chased after me, carrying that otherworldly annunciation--and I felt liberated despite the dark. Icy air stabbed at my unaccustomed lungs as I raced through campus, heading into town, following the trail of street lamps and the raucous vigor of youth.
I stumbled past my apartment entrance, wheezing and frustrated. I checked my pocket for my wallet and strolled, bent half-over, into town. In a dimly lit bar, the dance floor rustling to life at the other end, I downed a double whiskey and grabbed my beer. Someone nearby whooted in my honor, oblivious to my frantic state and confusing it with something celebratory. I grabbed a pen from my pocket and a stack of napkins, thinking I might record the events. My hand seized in stark fear above the napkin, fearful of what letters or strange glyphs I might inscribe. As the whiskey gripped my stomach, I was able to attend to the surrounding sounds, the rumble of words redefined by software and the conversations hollered between friends and strangers. They were clear and comprehensible. Words loaded with their own textired meanings but ultimately a human meaning, something my mind could grasp and comprehend. I sat alone for several minutes, ordering another beer and whiskey that I sipped with gradually steadying hands.
---
I met Elwynn Caldwell in this state. He finished with his second whiskey before he spoke to me. It was clear he needed either clarity or confusion in great quantity. More than I could providem, anyway. I did what I could: I bought him another drink and listened to his story. I have recalled it here to the best of my ability, using his same sobering words where I could. When I sat with him, I had just been turned down by a classmate and made a fool, in a small way but a fool all the same. A night next to this half-familiar fellow seemed better than moping around the bar or chasing after friends out in the chill night.
I met Caldwell at the coffeeshop with his students. Bel and Jacob were in his class and when I saw them bantering loudly in their small crowd, I decided to sit with them. The lanky man that had listened and joked drily with us then was an entirely different creature than this half-frozen, increasingly drunk heap of poorly fitting clothes. He had been mostly quiet, prefering to have others hush when he spoke than to raise his voice. At the coffeehouse he had a monkish austerity and humor to him. He did not cause many laughs, but smiles rippled around the table as he made allusions to theorists he enjoyed and the faculty of the University. Caldwell made no effort to conceal his distaste for some among of the instructors in the humanities; he even chuckled mischieviously as he recounted how he and the younger Professor McEwan had openly condescended against one another the previous year.
If it weren't for his unshakable anxiety in Kiely's Pub, I would have expected a joke of it, that he had simply left his jacket in the restroom or on another chair and was using me for some private laugh. But as his tale closed, I was certain that he was in earnest. The details took on ever increasing clarity and I doubted--though I wanted to believe--he had spent too many quiet hours in the library and was suffering from nervous exhaustion. That sounds like a page out of time: nervous exhaustion. Would I next diagnose an energetic and unpredictable woman with "uterus fever." All the same, I could do little besides take in his story and believe, despite myself, in its verisimilitude.
The library had closed before he finished the narrative, otherwise I would have gone to recover his keys and coat in his stead. His apartment, I learned as he stumbled on my arm, was one of those second floor spaces above a shop. With no clear landlord or neighbor in sight, I sobered up and dragged him to the apartment I share with two others, Jesse and Upton. Caldwell had long since fallen into a stuporous sleep, dragging his feet as much as walking. I plopped him onto the couch, set out a glass of water, and strolled down the hall. I saw the flickering of a computer screen creep under Jesse's door and heard the subdued grunts as he played one of his games. I thought of how Caldwell had said, "the shadows beneath the light," and could not make out his meaning. I decided it was either my fatigue or his. I heard him grumble as I prepared for bed. Something rustled and splattered to the floor.
Feeble streetlights slipped through the threadbare curtains on the window, dancing with the dark of the room. Caldwell seemed to be sitting up: a black silhouette on black. As I focused, I wondered tiredly what might have happened. Other forms congealed out of the darkness. Caldwell was sitting perfectly straight and impassive on the sofa, as I'd left him except for his posture. The plastic cup rolled from side to side in its plashed water as it whispered rhythmically. The water glimmered with a confused, refracted indigo; I could not discern the light's source. A frame of yellow light surrounded the door from the hall, but, I realized, it was not a perfect frame. My eyes struggled between the mundane light and the smudge of unmoving but rippling darkness between the door and myself.
The air was still and I realized Caldwell wasn't breathing. I wasn't breathing. Whatever it was between the door and myself wasn't breathing. Somehow, over an infinite distance I could make out the clatter of keys and remote, monosyllabic mutters. Blood pumped through my neck, pounded in my ears, and the room seemed to flush--sanguine red on inky black--as my pulse throbbed. With infinite care I raised my foot, toe still touching the floor, and stepped back. I repeated the step with the opposite.
It all happened at once after that. The floorboard creaked and a sofa spring sang its queer dirge. Darkness like heavy, stagnant air moved in a tidal rush toward me, split or confused by the two simultaneous sounds. The door opened, its hinge howling against the other sounds. Light flooded in and blinded my dark-accustomed eyes. Upton and the woman with him were caught mid-laugh only to choke on it. My vision blurred, accompanied by a dull thrum behind my eyes as too much light came at me too quickly. Still I could not dismiss the slithering, ichorous darkness as it crawled with wicked speed out the door. Upton's company tripped and fell to the ground suddenly unbalanced and unable to breathe. Caldwell was bathed in the light of the hallwaye. He was bone white, and frozen stockstill.
I remained planted in place. The stark fear of that thing bearing down on me, the creak in the floor, the way it moved without moving, without any clear concept of momentum. I was certain it might return and the only thing I could do was stay still. Then the hollowness in my chest rattled and I struggled to breathe as if the air had been knocked out of me. I saw that Upton was trying to help the woman struggling to breathe in the hallway and went to Caldwell. His his eyes were wide, the whites pierced by pupils dialated grotesquely. His forehead was damp with cold sweat. I feared him dead, or near enough to it, but I felt the thin rasp of breath on my cheek and eventually--though not nearly as soon as I would have liked--he blinked. He was entirely unresponsive to my comments and I went out to check on Upton and the girl.
Upton had been calling to me to get some wet rags or bandages as he held her. When I brought them out I saw why: He'd rolled up her shirt and along her midsection and right side were striated burns--or what I thought could be burns--where small rivulets of blood dripped. She breathing, but with difficulty. Her hands quaked in shock. I grabbed the phone and dialed, babbled something about a burn, an accident, I don't know what. Something prevented me from calling them friends; they were just "people" in my place, hurt and confused and scared. They kept me on the line, though I couldn't think of any way to describe what had happened or how. I tried to run through the scenario but it was only later, only when I tried to write this that it came back to me. A smell had been left in its wake, the smell of scarred flesh and the fear and something like an absence, the way rubbing alcohol smells when it evaporates. I opened the door and tried to coax the air out. The cold hit me like a brick, the sweat all over me suddenly becoming frigid. I shivered fiercely and I wasn't sure if it was the cold or the fear.
The fire truck mutely flashed its lights outside, piercing the night like so many spears, and I led the men in. They whiffed the air and muttered to one another as they knelt to help Libby--Upton was calling her that as he tried to nurse her wounds. The pair of firefighters spoke in unwavering voices. It wasn't until the ambulance came that anyone noticed Caldwell, inanimate on the couch. Libby had calmed somewhat, though I think it was the shock setting in, as they set her on a gurney. Caldwell allowed himself to be half carried by the firemen and set in a tight corner of the ambulance where they secured him in with a seatbelt like a baby's carseat. They gave the straps a hard tug and passed a thumbs up to the driver. Libby was sleeping or sedated serenely on the gurney, looked over by an EMT. They had given Upton and me a look over, saying nothing in the process. The police had arrived by then and the two of us were taken to the station, each in his own cruiser, for a statement.
The officers handled us softly, all things considered. We had two people in our apartment requiring urgent care while we were shaken but physically fine. The deputy said something about a burglar--which I wanted to deny but failed to--that was scribbled into the report. A couple of younger officers tried to argue with the deputy that we ought to stay over night, and I was clearheaded enough to see they thought we were, in some manner, quilty. The deputy presented a stoic face, took the two aside and spoke plainly to them out of earshot. They grabbed their coats and scurried out. Upton and I didn't speak about what happened when we were driven home, nor the next day.
On the second day, Upton went to the hospital to see Libby. I stood in the hallway and listened as he tried to get her to talk to him. Walking past the door to the bathroom I glanced back and saw the bandages running all along her side. The crisp linen folded neatly under her arms. She stared at him, anger red on her face. Beneath the anger--something about the fatigue of her eyes and the circles beneath them--I could see that the anger was a veneer; it covered the fear that kept her up except for the painkillers running in through her IV.
Upton stormed out, pushing me against the wall in the process. I let him get ahead of me and then followed him to the main door. I stopped at the front desk and asked to see Caldwell. The rosey cheeked, rotund nurse explained that I couldn't. When prodded, she said plainly, "Mr. Caldwell is in psychiatric care. No visitors. Doctor's orders," a line she didn't mind handing to me. I asked for his doctor, that I was the last one to seem him before he was admitted, that I was a friend. After prodding her, she eyed a doctor as he passed in a hurry with a clipboard in hand. I took the cue--intentional or otherwise--and chased after him. It was Caldwell's doctor, from whom all I got was, "He's nonresponsive since they brought him in."
I walked with him, prying with any question I could muster. I tried to explain what had happened, the memory still jumbled madly. He stoppped at a counter, spoke in an aggravated tone to a nurse, jotted down a note on a pad, but then left it there. I watched him walk away as a wave of med students with an instructor cut off my route. The nurse at the counter watched me, glanced down at the pad, and resumed her work on the day's crossword puzzle. I lifted the pad; in tight medical scrawl read, "Breakdown institutionalized prognosis inconclusive." I tore at the pad, but the nurse grabbed my wrist and neatly extricated the sheet. Her eyes on me, she spat a wad of gum into the paper, crumpled up the paper, and threw it in the trash.
I told Bel about the visit. She tried to get in to see him, trying to explain--first--that he was her instructor and--after that--that he was her boyfriend. She got a skeptical look, but they let her peer through window, the kind crisscrossed with reinforcing wire. She said she had expected a padded room, but it wasn't. He sat at the edge of a white iron bed, a lumpy mattress and single cover over top, a pillow neatly set at the head. Blue and white tiles lined the floor. And there was Caldwell: sitting at the edge of the bed, hands gripping his knees, pale and stockstill.
---
Mister Carew,
Though you have here a fine display of your flamboyant style and diction, the language comes off as trite and assumed. Your twist does not make up for an inconsistent voice. This shows some improvement over, at least in potential, from your first paper. I will remind you that this is a nonfiction course and, for your sake, I hope you realize THAT for the final paper. I will not pass you if you try to hand in another piece of fantasy like this.
C+
Monday, February 6, 2012
Paper Thin Walls Pt 2
It was a week before I made it back to the carrel. Everything that week had a peculiar keenness. For once I wasn't disheveled as I taught my classes, I stayed after chatting with students, encouraging them on their various projects and passions. I noticed a young woman in the class had taking a liking to me, a short curly-headed brunette who wore her hair short with obvious spunk. Upon reflection, I could recall how she was often eager to participate in class, to stir me from my lecture and develop a conversational, seminar vibe. The second class of the week I let the classroom shift: students spoke up from different corners, popcorn popping in a delightful, chaotic medley of experiences, interpretations, and insights. Students provided novel, perspicacious observations on the readings, on subjects and ideas I had learned four, five, six years before. It was new to them, often radically new, and seemed to stir me from my slumber even more.
After the second class a handful of students gathered at a coffeeshop near campus. It became clear that in my absence, they had built up a support web for one another, a study group that gave them the environment they wanted in the classroom in which they bounced around in open criticism and playful condenscencion of one another. At first, I was eager to join in, to offer my own ideas and wizened critique and udnerstanding; but in no great length of time I sat back and sipped my coffee, heavy with cream, soaking in their vigor and camaraderie. I inserted small comments, used one of their computers to dig up articles they might find interesting. The brunette--her name I recalled was Jezebel but all her colleagues refered to her as Bel--schemed her way into leading class discussion the next week, staring at me with uncanny confidence. Her fellow students liked the idea and they, with syllabus in hand, began revamping the next month of classes, setting up their own alternative.
Spring had begun eeking its way forward, drawing out the days with pleasant, sunny intensity. Night had set before I left, carrying with it the last breaths of a hesitant winter. I had only my jacket and scarf which I tightened around me. My stomach quaked with sloshing coffee, my fingers jittery with caffeine. Jezebel--I refused to take the more familiar appellation which seemed, somehow, unchaste--caught up to me and offered me a ride. She pointed to a second- or third-hand sedan, the chassis rusted around the wheels and a stubborn passenger window that I assumed refused to wind entirely. I said no, that I was going to work at the library--a short stroll--and put the caffeine to good use. I rarely drank coffee, but something about the evening had suspended that abstainence and suggested its import. She smiled and I responded in kind, perhaps too much so, and walked away, her warm brown eyes on me--I imagined, at least--until I reached the corner.
I quickly regretted the decision. The cold snapped at my ears, at my ankles along my too-short thrift store trousers, and crawled under into my jacket sleeves insidiously. I quickened my clip toward the library, feeling a brazen malignity in the night. Shadows danced as cars passed, taking on brief, perturbing forms just before fading. They took on an unwelcome sharpness, just as everything had since my last late night in the library, and I felt the urge to break into a run. The steady lights of the library façade--a brick firmament testifying to the heavenly status of education--apparently banishing the phantoms. I tugged at the door with undue force and let the suction drag me in. It was quiet, the public terminals near the lobby almost empty, and one lonely student at the front desk with a notebook half-hidden behind the desk. It was Friday just after midterms and the only sound was the faint fluttering of pages and the hushed high whine of the archaic ventilation system. The student at the front desk noticed me and shoved his notebook entirely under the desk in a feeble attempt to conceal this small breach in regulation.
I avoided the wide main staircase for an access stairwell, brilliantly lit by humming fluorescent lights. My quick steps and hard shoes echoed in a mumbling chorus on the linoleum and unforgiving walls. Upstairs, I stepped into the bathroom, the same soft humming my company as I washed my face and forced my breath to slow. I felt feverish, my forehead washed of its beads of sweat, and my eyes widely staring back at me through the silvered pane. Straightening, my hands roughed dry on crinkly towels and tugged at my shirt and jacket--damp creeped along the cuffs of my jacket--hoping to feign some composure to myself. Laughter lay somewhere inside me, bottled up with anxiety and a strained, unnatural tension. I chuckled with numb ambiguity, unnable to make light of myself. Several deep breaths later I stepped out into the hallways toward my carrel.
I expected his light on but only a series of blackened windows met me. I forced my hand steady as I inserted the key and turned the handle. Everything was as I left it, all in its rightful place, and I breathed deeply again. I pulled out a frayed spiralbound notebook, a stack of books from the shelves, and one of my awaiting black pens. Cracking the topmost book--some critical reading of Tocqueville, if I recall correctly--and let the words rise up to meet me. They were dense and warm and provided a hard, certain texture to the unnerving ethereal quality that had chased me thence. After the first several pages, the words took on a peculiar foreign attitude, as if somehow infected or modulated the way the ocean floor shifts underneath a passing wave. I could see the words, but as they sang in my mind they took on unnatural yellow tonalities; they became slippery and lolled around with sickly, oceanic weight.
I closed the book and opened another, not even glancing at the title. The words roiled as if boiling, intoning themselves in unimaginable ways. They were the words of dreams, juxtaposed with alien meanings the way one knows Arabic or German in a dream, speaking and understanding in perfect fluent clarity only to wake and feel that knowledge evaporating away. I tried to focus, to ead each word with its own anglophone certainty, its Saxon or French root. The letters and syllables each a constituitive building block on the next. Again and again, even flipping through my spiral notebook with growing anxiety and inescapable surreal fear, the words became a heady, abyssal sound. Alien phonemes of geologic age meant nothing to me but each iteration brought on new vertiginous depths, each haunting me with ineffable meaning.
The door slammed behind me, sealing my keys, coat, and scarf within while the reverberation echoed through the floor. I ran, holding onto banisters and tracing my finger along walls on my way to the exit. Incandescent bulbs flickered, revealing the shadows beneath the light, hidden between pages, tucked like bookmarks between the covers in every cranny of the library. My feet tripped themselves in my haste, fearing that I might step on some tangible specter waiting to grab hold. The student looked up, shouted something at me, as I broke into the sharp, cold night--his words chased after me, carrying that otherworldly annunciation--and I felt liberated despite the dark. Icy air stabbed at my unaccustomed lungs as I raced through campus, heading into town, following the trail of street lamps and the raucous vigor of youth.
I stumbled past my apartment entrance, wheezing and frustrated. I checked my pocket for my wallet and strolled, bent half-over, into town. In a dimly lit bar, the dance floor rustling to life at the other end, I downed a double whiskey and grabbed my beer. Someone nearby whooted in my honor, either oblivious to my frantic state or confusing it with something celebratory. I grabbed a pen from my pocket and a stack of napkins, thinking I might record the events. My hand seized in stark fear above the napkin, fearful of what letters or strange glyphs I might inscribe. As the whiskey gripped my stomach, I was able to attend to the surrounding sounds, the rumble of words redefined by software and the conversations hollered between friends and strangers. They were clear and comprehensible. Words loaded with their own meaning but ultimately a human meaning, something my mind could grasp and comprehend. I sat alone for several minutes, ordering another beer and whiskey on the rocks that I sipped with gradually steadying hands.
After the second class a handful of students gathered at a coffeeshop near campus. It became clear that in my absence, they had built up a support web for one another, a study group that gave them the environment they wanted in the classroom in which they bounced around in open criticism and playful condenscencion of one another. At first, I was eager to join in, to offer my own ideas and wizened critique and udnerstanding; but in no great length of time I sat back and sipped my coffee, heavy with cream, soaking in their vigor and camaraderie. I inserted small comments, used one of their computers to dig up articles they might find interesting. The brunette--her name I recalled was Jezebel but all her colleagues refered to her as Bel--schemed her way into leading class discussion the next week, staring at me with uncanny confidence. Her fellow students liked the idea and they, with syllabus in hand, began revamping the next month of classes, setting up their own alternative.
Spring had begun eeking its way forward, drawing out the days with pleasant, sunny intensity. Night had set before I left, carrying with it the last breaths of a hesitant winter. I had only my jacket and scarf which I tightened around me. My stomach quaked with sloshing coffee, my fingers jittery with caffeine. Jezebel--I refused to take the more familiar appellation which seemed, somehow, unchaste--caught up to me and offered me a ride. She pointed to a second- or third-hand sedan, the chassis rusted around the wheels and a stubborn passenger window that I assumed refused to wind entirely. I said no, that I was going to work at the library--a short stroll--and put the caffeine to good use. I rarely drank coffee, but something about the evening had suspended that abstainence and suggested its import. She smiled and I responded in kind, perhaps too much so, and walked away, her warm brown eyes on me--I imagined, at least--until I reached the corner.
I quickly regretted the decision. The cold snapped at my ears, at my ankles along my too-short thrift store trousers, and crawled under into my jacket sleeves insidiously. I quickened my clip toward the library, feeling a brazen malignity in the night. Shadows danced as cars passed, taking on brief, perturbing forms just before fading. They took on an unwelcome sharpness, just as everything had since my last late night in the library, and I felt the urge to break into a run. The steady lights of the library façade--a brick firmament testifying to the heavenly status of education--apparently banishing the phantoms. I tugged at the door with undue force and let the suction drag me in. It was quiet, the public terminals near the lobby almost empty, and one lonely student at the front desk with a notebook half-hidden behind the desk. It was Friday just after midterms and the only sound was the faint fluttering of pages and the hushed high whine of the archaic ventilation system. The student at the front desk noticed me and shoved his notebook entirely under the desk in a feeble attempt to conceal this small breach in regulation.
I avoided the wide main staircase for an access stairwell, brilliantly lit by humming fluorescent lights. My quick steps and hard shoes echoed in a mumbling chorus on the linoleum and unforgiving walls. Upstairs, I stepped into the bathroom, the same soft humming my company as I washed my face and forced my breath to slow. I felt feverish, my forehead washed of its beads of sweat, and my eyes widely staring back at me through the silvered pane. Straightening, my hands roughed dry on crinkly towels and tugged at my shirt and jacket--damp creeped along the cuffs of my jacket--hoping to feign some composure to myself. Laughter lay somewhere inside me, bottled up with anxiety and a strained, unnatural tension. I chuckled with numb ambiguity, unnable to make light of myself. Several deep breaths later I stepped out into the hallways toward my carrel.
I expected his light on but only a series of blackened windows met me. I forced my hand steady as I inserted the key and turned the handle. Everything was as I left it, all in its rightful place, and I breathed deeply again. I pulled out a frayed spiralbound notebook, a stack of books from the shelves, and one of my awaiting black pens. Cracking the topmost book--some critical reading of Tocqueville, if I recall correctly--and let the words rise up to meet me. They were dense and warm and provided a hard, certain texture to the unnerving ethereal quality that had chased me thence. After the first several pages, the words took on a peculiar foreign attitude, as if somehow infected or modulated the way the ocean floor shifts underneath a passing wave. I could see the words, but as they sang in my mind they took on unnatural yellow tonalities; they became slippery and lolled around with sickly, oceanic weight.
I closed the book and opened another, not even glancing at the title. The words roiled as if boiling, intoning themselves in unimaginable ways. They were the words of dreams, juxtaposed with alien meanings the way one knows Arabic or German in a dream, speaking and understanding in perfect fluent clarity only to wake and feel that knowledge evaporating away. I tried to focus, to ead each word with its own anglophone certainty, its Saxon or French root. The letters and syllables each a constituitive building block on the next. Again and again, even flipping through my spiral notebook with growing anxiety and inescapable surreal fear, the words became a heady, abyssal sound. Alien phonemes of geologic age meant nothing to me but each iteration brought on new vertiginous depths, each haunting me with ineffable meaning.
The door slammed behind me, sealing my keys, coat, and scarf within while the reverberation echoed through the floor. I ran, holding onto banisters and tracing my finger along walls on my way to the exit. Incandescent bulbs flickered, revealing the shadows beneath the light, hidden between pages, tucked like bookmarks between the covers in every cranny of the library. My feet tripped themselves in my haste, fearing that I might step on some tangible specter waiting to grab hold. The student looked up, shouted something at me, as I broke into the sharp, cold night--his words chased after me, carrying that otherworldly annunciation--and I felt liberated despite the dark. Icy air stabbed at my unaccustomed lungs as I raced through campus, heading into town, following the trail of street lamps and the raucous vigor of youth.
I stumbled past my apartment entrance, wheezing and frustrated. I checked my pocket for my wallet and strolled, bent half-over, into town. In a dimly lit bar, the dance floor rustling to life at the other end, I downed a double whiskey and grabbed my beer. Someone nearby whooted in my honor, either oblivious to my frantic state or confusing it with something celebratory. I grabbed a pen from my pocket and a stack of napkins, thinking I might record the events. My hand seized in stark fear above the napkin, fearful of what letters or strange glyphs I might inscribe. As the whiskey gripped my stomach, I was able to attend to the surrounding sounds, the rumble of words redefined by software and the conversations hollered between friends and strangers. They were clear and comprehensible. Words loaded with their own meaning but ultimately a human meaning, something my mind could grasp and comprehend. I sat alone for several minutes, ordering another beer and whiskey on the rocks that I sipped with gradually steadying hands.
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