'As though of hemlock I had drunk, or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk.'

I'm reading a book in which the main character sometimes faints. I had forgotten I used to faint; I had no blood pressure in the old days. That was before spending a few years in the company of Gauloises Bleues, which helped rectify the situation somewhat. Perhaps my taste for bacon and pancetta helped a bit, as well. At any rate, sometime within the last five years I triumphantly entered the 'normal' range, and it was a happy, happy day, whichever day it was.

I remember one egregious incident. I was at college, it was autumn and still terribly hot, and our library's air conditioning either didn't exist or didn't work on the higher floors. I was somewhere back in a stuffy corner in a stuffy carrel. Lack of air circulation seems always to have been the necessary-and-sufficient catalyst.

At any rate, I started to feel less than hardy, sussed the source of the problem, and headed downstairs to the main lobby which, while hot, had at least a high ceiling, an open floor plan, and doors to the outside opening every once in a while. I chose the cluster of armchairs in front of the circulation desk and opened a book. Things had apparently progressed during the descent down the stairs, and my eyes were as unable to focus as my spine was to maintain the weight of my torso in the traditional vertical attitude of chair-users worldwide. I felt more than capable of conquering my inclinations toward unconsciousness, however, and positioned myself sideways across the chair, with my legs bent over one arm and my back resting on the other arm much in the manner of a back-and-backrest situation. I congratulated myself on my forethought as regards energy conservation and smiled at the librarian in the sort of robust and healthy manner as would befit a person in no immediate danger of passing out, and I cracked the book.

With the pressure taken off physical exertion such as sitting upright, I felt certain I could rally my mind to come back into play, so I held the book in front of me and focused on focusing. When I couldn't focus my eyes I employed my customary routine of abandoning the senses and solely focusing my diminishing mental faculties, and I thus recited a couple familiar poems in my head, concentration of any sort being a good last-ditch bulwark against unconsciousness. When it quickly became clear that even that task was now beyond my capabilities, and that that meant the possibility of sudden unconsciousness was growing ever likelier, I laid the book across my chest, to suggest a deliberate and pleasant nap to anyone who might pass by, and organized my legs, shoes, and hair to confirm the diagnosis with the remaining bits of thought I could muster as the light around me constricted to a pinprick.

But fainting cannot be entirely controlled, it turned out then, before, and subsequently. Whenever that precise point at which I completely ceded control after so many deliberate countermeasures, it seems I did not pass imperceptibly into that gentle twilight, but rather fell out the entrance side of the armchair, with the book going with me for the ride. I awoke with a squadron of firemen and EMTs circled around me, and a hook-and-ladder, not to mention the Fire Chief's special fire-chief car, outside the library, despite the unfortunate landing having taken place on the first floor of the library, just up a few stairs from the parking lot, and a scant few paces' walk from the main door.

--And directly in front of the circulation desk and the student librarian who may well have been scarred forever.

I am very grateful for being as old as I am now for so many reasons. But one of the things I most look forward to with regard to being older still is having ailments that make sense, that are typical and mundane and entirely predictable. Me, I either have Victorian pseudoailments such as fainting and vertigo, or ridiculously grandiose trauma-type ones. I have a solid tolerance for the latter type, I think, but anyway they go away or they don't and you don't have to incorporate them into your life or explain them to curious bystanders unless you feel inclined to. Either you bear the obvious marks or you don't - and if you don't, revelation is based on intimacy. A bum knee, sciatica, dermatitis, bursitis, colitis, rhinitis, allergies, migraine, high blood pressure, diabetes, bad arches, a cumin intolerance: these make sense, and friends will always accept demurrals or explanations based on them. But anything along the lines of 'Don't mind me; I'm just going to recite a few disconnected stanzas of Yeats and the preamble to the Constitution and just one or two bars of the Gettysburg Address and if I can't think of that then Molly Bloom's soliloquy or disconnected fragments of advertising jingles I can't help but remember forever to stave off a fainting spell I don't particularly care to indulge' is likely to meet with tremendous disrespect in any quarter. And for good reason: it's stupid. And it's more irritating to me than it is to you!

'Or new love pine at them beyond tomorrow'

'A hard drinker, being at the table, was offered grapes for dessert. "Thank you," said he, pushing the dish away from him, "but I am not in the habit of taking my wine in pills.' -- Brillat-Savarin, who might well himself have pushed aside a few grapes now and then in favor of their liquid form.

Today was a slow day. I went to church, did some paperwork, contemplated doing tax paperwork, forgot to buy batteries at the store, made the mistake of trying an unknown Indian place, and actually drank white wine. What's more, I enjoyed it thoroughly. A 2005 Feudi Greco di Tufo, a famous variety in the first century, when a thwarted lover was moved to scrawl the following on a fresco in Pompeii:

'You are truly cold, Bytis, made of ice, if last night even Greco wine could not warm you up.'

In my case i am not sure if it was the Greco, or the space heater I keep tucked under my desk, or the excitement of learning more about, and doing more with, another volunteer position this week, but I'll agree with the lovelorn graffitist that it is a truly enjoyable wine. And it is good to get out of the confines of one's prejudices. Alright, I still haven't had the courage to tackle a thundering California cabernet, but I will; I will.

Note to self: Stop using 'thundering,' 'varlet,' 'gamboge,' and 'admittedly.' Broken heels also overdone as personal tragedy trope.

I also ordered a couple books from Amazon, but I really ordered the same book twice. The book I was least crazy to read, as it turns out. I thought I had just sent one of them to my 'cart.' Apparently - as is so often the case - I was mistaken. No names, though, no names; but if you are in need of a one-volume literary grab-bag, then by all means write. (It's not the Agamben or the Josipovici - or even the Nancy. It's something very much in the 'other' column. So be advised. But perhaps, only getting one of them, you'll be less disappointed than I will with two?)

Update 5/8: I figured out how to 'return' before it was sent one of the volumes of the volume I only wanted one of. You get to send a note, too, which helps my guilty conscience: Deepest apologies for all inconvenience; lamentable state of perpetual incompetence; certain it and all your wares of highest quality and greatest importance; just don't need two of any and Thanks.

Same update: the book is really good! If only I had a second copy I'd read it again, I'm sure!

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

It seems I had misremembered Christmas. It's not surprising, really. I did so well with my sombre Yom Kippur wishes for my more Hebraically-minded friends that I was bound to mess something up.

Anyway, Christmas is always a bit of a conundrum for me. There are so many options, and all are slightly discomfiting. When I had roommates, or lived at boarding school, Christmas was always a time to savor a brief bit of solitude and quiet. I remember at college in Southern California, KPFK would play a reading of The Alexandria Quartet all day and all night for days over Christmas. If I were staying in the dorm over vacation, I could sit alone in my dorm room for hours at a time and listen. I could stay up all night and listen -- and who cared? it was Christmas break!

Now, however, I usually fulfill my RDA of quiet, solitude, and contemplation without needing a state-imposed religious holiday to do so. This leaves me in a bit of a bind when I do find myself confronted with one. Most things are closed -- not just (all but eleven, according to Open Table) restaurants and supermarkets, but gas stations, convenience stores, tire stores, nurseries, book stores...almost everything. Probably even Wal-Mart, too. Well, maybe only in largely Christian markets.

Thus normally the activity choices outside of churchgoing are fairly circumscribed: some kind of Christmassy thing at someone's Christmassy house, or Chinese food and a foreign film with the Jewish population of whatever city I'm living in, since Larry Durrell can no longer be relied upon for succor. In the first case, not only is there no species of traditional North American or British holiday food that I enjoy (although I love getting the good charms in a pudding!), I also dislike feeling trapped in someone's house as people get drunker and stupider and the dread board games are resorted to one after the other in an attempt, presumably, to stave off the Holiday Melancholia from which the revelers would otherwise be suffering. If I should find myself overtaken with suicidal impulses and existential angst, God help me if I for one second believe Boggle to be the cure.

The problem with Christmas dinner for the single person who is not overwhelmingly inclined to celebrate Jesus' birth with drunkenness or ironic renderings of 80s metal ballads is that Jews and Chinese seem to be the only religious or ethnic minorities who want things to proceed with as much semblance of normalcy as possible amidst all the gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And since, outside of Florida and big Eastern cities, the Jewish community in North America tend to leave the restauranteuring to other groups, while non-Chinese non-Christians in the business gladly leap upon their one opportunity a year to take a day off, that leaves the Christmas trinity of Hunan, Mandarin, and Szechuan, with the odd offering of late-night dim sum (not available in all areas). There are also, of course, 24-hour/365-days places and nicer hotel restaurants open on Christmas, if your Yuletide tastes run toward chicken-fried steak with eggs or eating amidst lonely, stranded business travelers and recent divorcés who haven't yet found the courage to cook for just one.

I hadn't misremembered that. It is hard to forget the limited culinary offerings when the same thing happens every year and I get sufficiently frustrated, once more, around 8PM so as to relent and find myself again numbly picking at a plank of ghastly tinned ham over a Monopoly board, with people potty on boozy curdled cream with nutmeg scum to the accompaniment of a whiskey-fueled rendition of My Way streaming from the den-turned-karaoke-studio.

This year, however, I had an alternative. My Australian friend was going to be in Denver on Christmas Eve prior to flying out for skiing on Christmas Day. The snow would lend a festive yet nonsectarian air, and the crack addicts outside the window would serve as handy stand-ins for more traditional holiday revelers. And since I'd already be in a hotel, it would make sense to eat in it. Or I could just have some nuts and Toblerone from the minibar. In either case, not a single incongruous eggroll would need pass my lips.

That is the part I misremembered. I had about 80 to 1 on it being Christmas Eve/Christmas with a hedge of 2 to 1 on New Year's Eve/New Year's. I lost out on both, because it was squarely in the middle, the 27th, which doesn't help me at all, since by then I could be eating Hakka or Lebanese again if I wanted to. My only wish is that, whatever transpires, however many rounds of cribbage or Pictionary and however many murdered Rat Pack songs and show tunes I have to sit through, however many people cry, or break up, or end up in the ER, and no matter how many bowls of punch are gone through, there be no Tofurkey at any time, anywhere. That would kill my Christmas cheer completely, and quite possibly permanently.

Shakespeare and His Cats

And with regard to that neighbor's cat, I am at a loss. We are having a bit of very heavy rain here, which makes me less than favorably disposed to going out (and although I do have a raincoat, I have no idea what a person is supposed to do with her hair, or her shoes), and as it is Sunday (now Sunday night), any work I had is work to do at home. So I mostly, with a couple exceptions, stayed in. Which is where this cat comes in.

Cats have some crazy hold on the psyches of certain people. There is a whole Cat subculture about which I neither know nor wish to know anything. These people buy cat napkin holders, cat toothbrush holders, cat blankets, cat lamps, cat mousepads, and cat 'art', and some, I can only imagine, have probably even seen Cats, not to mention purchased and no doubt enjoyed copies of the too-ghastly-to-contemplate picture-book Shakespeare Cats, in which memorable scenes or characters are needlessly rendered as though being played by - obviously, at this point, I suppose - cats... it's far too painful to elaborate further...

-- Never mind; I can't help myself: they buy up cups with cats on them, cats to pour cream from, cat-embellished shirts, and cat-embellished tea towels. They have Whimsical Cats, and Naughty Cats, and Sensual Cats (usually, of course, panthers, and generally meant to symbolize alongside this austere and capricious sensuality the nexus of feminine-feline and the Sphinx-like opacity [don't pretend you didn't know it was coming; of course it was; it always does] of both), and cats to burn incense in and cats to hold your toilet roll while you sit and stare in amazement and transfixed disgust at the cat holding your toothbrushes...

I have no better explanation for this than you do, and it appears also to be confined largely to one sex. If you start to say, Yes, but women have always been compared to cats, or even, Yes, but women are so, well, feline, so Sphinx-like, aren't they, in either case, I'm not going to punch you or even wish to, but neither of those excuses such appallingly bad taste. Thou canst compare me to a summer's day, if you feel the need (and I sorely doubt that you do, even though I am more lovely and yes more temperate, too, but never mind), and I will be in no greater danger than before of going out and buying cheap prints of Van Gogh's Sunflowers or decorating in chintz. Maybe I am sunny as the smile of the blue firmament, but that doesn't make me incline toward hanging hummingbird feeders in the latrine!

So for me, the Inscrutable Mysteries of the Inscrutable Cat hold no appeal. I am not curious in the slightest why someone should wish to be so mercurial, so self-centred, so obstinate, and so awake at exactly the wrong times. I don't care. Dogs don't do it. Plants don't do it. Even educated clams don't do it.

Today was an endless loop replayed with, for my part, ever-diminishing enthusiasm. The not wanting to sit on his 'special place' followed by savagely attacking the Jetsons chair followed by whines for eating again followed by whines to go out immediately upon which came the sulking outside the door subsequent to which was the biting of the hand that retrieved him (from the rain outside the door, I might add) short upon the heels of which was ignoring the Things to Scratch I'd bought for him in preference to something I had bought for vastly divergent purposes after which came the return of randomly attacking things and knocking perfume bottles off things not designed to be leapt onto...

I freely admit I know nothing about cats. That is one of the reasons I don't have one. Another one is a preference for species that 'make sense' at some level inside my hominid brain. When a dog, for example, stares at his food bowl, or pushes it toward you, you are right in assuming it means, You are fifteen minutes late on the grub, chump, and I'd say I'm never going to forget it but I'm a dog and this will all be irrelevant and, just between us, irretrievable, in about twenty seconds. It never means, Go to the refrigerator and grab something for me and then walk over here because I really want to leap up and bite you in the face.

Clearly, however, there is Not Having One and 'not having one,' the latter of which I fall into now. His real parents leave him outside, whether it is 85 degrees, or snowing, or hailing, or pouring rain. He hides under cars from the sun, or lies on top trying to get some heat: it's not as though I have a choice in this, wrecked weird chair or no. I made him a bed inside the Chinese wedding cabinet, on the lower tier so it was safer, even though it meant I couldn't use it for what I had intended to, or close it. I put a box in there that I painted that said 'Baby' so he would know where to go. I bought him his own hamper to attack once he made it clear he wanted to kill my cute matching set of two, which matched everything in the house, and then relented and gave him one of those when he didn't want the nearly identical one I'd got for him. And then I bought a wrought-iron one for me, so there would be no question...

Still, though -- and this doesn't mean I want anything, ever, in the shape of him -- he is, when he is not trying to rip open my jugular, or nap on my keyboard while I'm typing, or tip over my wine cabinet, or ruin my stockings when I'm trying to put them on, he is, actually, recklessly, unashamedly, murderously cute...

This is the only happiness; and is a rare instance of advantage in the body overpowering the Mind.

Said Keats regarding indolence, and while I to this day hate that Ode, I still love Keats and admire as always his respect for indolence. We devalue it tremendously, of course, the sitting, being, the taking in, and allowing...

We are no doubt fearful that passivity or unalloyed receptivity in one area will leech out and become some overarching guiding principle in our psyche, or life. That we'll wake up one day and find we've unwittingly morphed into swarthy, layabout Mediterraneans who say 'five' when they mean 'six-thirty' or worse. This is one reason, amidst poor taste, uninventiveness, ignorance, xenophobia, and fear of solitude, that we spend our vacations righteously doing things, ticking off Chartres and Epidavros on our lists, snapping the requisite few hurried shots of St. Basil's and St. Peter's before making our way to consuming the Great Wall and Kyoto's daibutsu.

I have no such fears, myself, but certainly if you are the sort of person who needs to, you can check my resume and see that I have worked hard enough, and worked long enough, to have 'earned' the right to spend the day doing nothing but making melon balls I never intend to eat or sitting around Montmartre doing nothing other than doing nothing and calling it a holiday all the same. And that's what I did. That was my vacation. I ate quite a bit of pastry, drank a lot of both coffee and wine, talked to my friend and my friend's friends, and bought a book hoping it would help me reproach one of them in German. It didn't, and anyway I expect his French and English were better than mine, so I stuck with those and reproached away and got a foot massage out of it so all was fine.

We did make it to Champagne, which is where the reproaching, the Teuton, and the feet come in, but it wasn't a 'goal' of mine, or even my idea. And we almost didn't make it (European gas mileage is a thing of beauty, but only when there is gas in one's tank to get mileage from), but we did, and we sat around there, too. This litttle sojourn to France was very nearly the only short trip I've ever taken except for ones close to where I happen to live right then, and I was very tempted to stay there, too, except that that would mean the loss of both my bed and a truly fabulous coat.

Maybe I'll move there next year. It couldn't possibly cost more to ship my bed than what I paid in overweight charges for books and shoes when I left Greece. And by then I could have conceivably winnowed my current supply of both to a manageable level, so that it would only be the 100-piece Chinese bed and the 50-pound coat with which I'd need concern myself. And since it will no doubt remain true in a year that the only German I know consists in a few cabaret songs and the occasional singspiel stanza, I won't have worn out my welcome with anyone.

The Parkgarage at the End of the Universe

Which is not to say that last night was not deeply traumatic in its own right. I was done with work, it was early and, better yet, it was a Monday. Monday, the day when if we can predict nothing else, we can predict that the art world is closed and the bridge and tunnel set stay safely ensconced in suburbia, Tivoing and chamomile tea-ing away the weekend's Home Depot and white sale excesses.

The sun was still out, the water was lovely, the air was softly moist, and I was brave and strong and filled with desire for a Douro. A wine bar was the thing to slake my wine lust and validate my courageousness. And, I had a book with me, so there would be no need to run up against any predatory alcohol-sodden flirtatious nonsense. I would park, I would swap the Driving Shoes for one of the pairs of nice ones just waiting in the passenger seat for such an opportunity to fulfill their destiny, and I would walk up the hill and have a nice glass of wine.

I found a parking garage that abutted the street I like to use to go home from downtown, in order to avoid the freeway and all thoughts of fifth gear. I changed the shoes, grabbed the (oddly heavy, even when empty) leather bag with the book and a notebook, fixed the lipstick, took the tiny purse, and headed for the exit.

Then I headed for the exit that way. Then I walked around in several concentric circles for thirty or forty minutes, coming upon nothing but private elevators which would have taken
me to the street, but only under condition that I were possessed of the secret code. Which, despite my good looks, keen attitude, and zest for the true, the blushful Hippocrene, I was not.

My back hurt. My feet hurt. The nailbeds in my fingertips hurt, and the membrane that handily keeps the brain away from the skull hurt, and I felt sad that I should have to live out my remaining decades stuck in a poorly-lit parking garage with the scent of kelpy air taunting me at every breath. I failed even to spot my own car save for once in all my increasingly hopeless wandering.

Then, finally, a street exit. I crouched under the gate and I was free! Free for Douro, or Barolo, or anything else my flagging whimsy fancied. I confidently marched up the hill, enthusiasm and bravery returning with each step of my buckle-embellished mules. I had nearly caught a joie de vivre when I had a vague feeling about keys. It wasn't anything more than that. Just 'keys.' Once I thought to think of what such a vague thought might mean, it became far less vague. I didn't remember doing anything with my keys. I remembered getting out of the car, and I certainly remembered getting lost, but I always immediately put my keys into whatever tiny purse I have that day, and I didn't remember doing that. Or even having uncharacteristically put them into the big bag, which would be the sort of thing that would stick in the mind for all its uncharacteristicality.

Just to confirm that, despite not recalling anything, I did indeed have them, I checked in both the tiny purse (hard to miss anything in there, most particularly a gigantic collection of largely orphan keys tied up together with a huge red carabiner) and in the mostly empty big bag. And they were in neither. Leaving all thoughts of dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth behind, I hurried back to the car. This in fact amounted to hurrying back to the parkgarage, which was easy enough to find, and then wandering for fifteen or so minutes in search of the car. When I found it, the keys weren't in it. They weren't on it, and they weren't under it. And while that would be more entertainingly put in Turkish, I wasn't thinking of that at the time, because I didn't have my keys, and I had no idea where they could possibly be. Certainly they were not at the counter in the wine bar next to the lecherous Rioja-swilling Hair-Club-for-Men member -- since I hadn't managed to get that far.

Now, clearly, the thing to do at such a point is to Retrace One's Steps. This becomes tricky, however, when the One whose Steps are to be Retraced has no idea either where she is now, how she got there, or where she was before. Which steps? I didn't know where I had gone or where I hadn't gone. But I did my best, and I left the heavy bag in the car that time, which was the smart thing I accomplished yesterday.

After giving up on the garage, I went upstairs to the concierge for the building. No one had turned in keys, but she assured me that hers was the desk where keys would be turned in, at least on those occasions in which such a turning-in took place. Now was not one of those occasions. Nor was it such at the parking office, either.

Now I was even sadder than before. Not only would I have to live in a parking garage because it was an unnavigable maze of a thing, but I would have to do so incommunicado, since my lack of keys would preclude charging my cell phone. I walked around a bit inside again and found the exit, and with no hope remaining in me but not wishing to dwell on the negative, I retraced my few outdoor steps again. At some point before the destroyed eye makeup obscured my vision entirely, I called The Boyfriend.

Not, I hasten to aver, to ask for help, nor even with the intention of admitting that anything of any sort other than the most dulcet of Douros had befallen me. I was already on the right street for a taxi, the appointment for the locksmith was set for 9 AM the next day, and I was going to go home and bang on a neighbor's door and beg for a bed. But, perceptive and not-hard-of-hearing as he is, he heard the cracks and chinks and quavers in what was left of the audible range of my voice. And, weak as I am when confronted with a direct question (and sometimes the hint of a question when I am completely at wits' end), I spilled it. He said he would come over and help me find them. I knew it was futile to look further, and he lives so horribly far away that it seemed inhumane because it was now not so early as it had been two hours previous or even forty-five minutes, and also I already had the appointment with the long-winded locksmith to get a key made.

I needed Closure, not solutions.

But he came, and we reexamined my car with the assistance of a flashlight. The keys remained obstinately unthere. After the search of car and environs and a feebly-uttered and marginally coherent brief recapitulation of my barely-remembered 'timeline,' we retraced my steps outside, which were easy as they were few. No keys. We went back to the garage and retraced any and all steps by any person capable of making steps on my level of the garage, since I was of no assistance in suggesting what steps I might or might not have made. I was unapologetically and tiresomely apologetic and made repeated vows to repay him in whatever way most pleasing to him, so long as it didn't involve money, because that was all going to the locksmith and the wine cellar I was going to start building next week so as to prevent this sort of thing happening in future. And my feet hurt. My feet, my shoulders, my back, and it was starting to become that horrible sort of tired where you walk like you've still got training wheels on your legs and they are likely at any moment to come out from under you and wouldn't it just be better anyway if I lay down right here and no it won't take but a couple hours they can drive around me no I'm sure the concrete will be more than comfortable.

And then, in a weird little alcove that only housed a few cars and in which I had been when I was on foot or at least one very similar to it in near uselessness and seeming unusually after-thoughtish for a parking garage, there they were right by a post and a little ugly wall. All ninety-seven of them and the red carabiner, as well. I would have been overjoyed, but that would have required being conscious or sensate, neither of which I have any reason to believe I was at that point. I did, however, manage many more profuse apologies and gratitudes, but the lack of muscle control precluded smiling.

I made it home. I drank a beer. I apologized and thanked in email and on phone forty-three more times and vowed to myself to have copies made of house and car keys, and stick them on the car and in the planters of dying flowers outside my door. And passed out and slept the sort of sleep you can only sleep when you imagined the end of the world but it was really only the end of the two-for-one sale on vegetarian items down at the Indian place.