On Fixing A Mess
♠
The weekend had been a blur, obscuring a mess that was distorting a muddle. I had spent my time off alternating between waking dreams of thorough drunkenness, and blank slumbers. My actions at work on Monday consisted solely of drinking coffee and picking my teeth. But all was not lost: that night, I was to retreat to my room, my little corner of the world, and redeem myself through the restorative activity of writing. It was a night to pursue my interests with a gusto that would dwarf any reputed proclivity I had for tomfoolery.
When I got home Monday evening, the first step was to engage in a virtuous but not entirely taxing activity. This was meant to coax my conscience to set down the whip of self-flagellation, and take up the bull-horn of aspiration. I would clean my room. As I entered my apartment, I was confronted by the spectacle of the living room. A metropolis of cans and bottles spread out uninterrupted upon the table, floor, blaring television, and finally, in the crevices of the couch around my napping roommate. The remote hanging in his hand, his mouth agape, he was the essence of ambition. I tiptoed around him, turned off the TV, and entered my room. Closing the door, I released my breath, a faint tremor playing on it as I recovered from the assault on my spirits. So there would be no cutting of the slack. Fine, I could handle it.
Half an hour later, my heaping laundry was thoroughly hidden from view in the closet, ashtrays were emptied, and miscellaneous flatware and utensils had been removed to the kitchen counter. I felt the measure of my distress lessen from the vicinity of panic to a mere churning turmoil. It was time to get down to business. Good old business, roll up the sleeves and have at it! For a moment I stood stupidly, then I sat. Maybe not just yet. Email, yes, it was important to check it now. After all, a lot could have happened since I stared at it at work, picking my teeth… As it turned out nothing had happened, but I did realize that I’d neglected to respond for days to a kindly woman who used to employ me, and from whom I was seeking a reference. “Reference” had been her word, actually, in the last dispatch she sent. I reread her email, in which she had gently corrected my own word choice: I don't believe I've ever been asked for documentation rather than a reference. Is this for a job application? As fitful cringing wracked my chest, I remembered why I hadn’t written back. I tried to respond right there, but ran out of synonyms for “misunderstanding” before I could fully explain myself. Enough with email, and with fancy-pants terminology!
Not just email but any kind of writing seemed impossible lately. I had a now looming deadline for an assignment that I’d half-composed a dozen times in recent days, each of my efforts merely an extended clearing of the throat. They were essentially just strings of connected platitudes, “there comes a time” bleeding into “one is apt to notice” lamely coming to rest at “as is the case most, but not all, of the time…” It just didn’t seem like I had much to say lately. My powers of observation felt like the sideview mirrors of a car, bent to reflect only a warped view of myself and a sliver of my surroundings. Sure, the weekend had been a doozy, but the problem seemed deeper than that. Staring at the wall, I interrogated myself as to possible causes for the writing problem. Perchance I had been reading too many great books of late, with scant exposure to mediocrity. I speculated half-heartedly that to read nothing but top-rate stuff was a recipe for binding the tongue and losing one’s own way. I then tripped onto a recurrent theme in my recent thinking, that of disdaining the inclusion of myself in my work. A former philosophy major, I suppose I was growing anxious that perhaps I could no longer abstract ideas to make my points. What I didn’t realize at the time was that I had developed a foolish, almost moral attitude about the whole endeavor—“my next piece must be such-and-such a way”—so naturally my writing was going kaput. But it was clear enough then that something was stifling me, I was cramped, crabbed, confined! Beads of sweat began to form on my brow. I noticed my room was rather hot… maybe it was time for a little “break.”
I also needed to move my car. They cleaned the streets on Tuesday and I couldn’t afford a ticket, given that my current collection nearly merited a binder. I left off the computer, took up my keys, and stepped out. It was a warm evening, but a sharp wind would now and then cut deviously down the sidewalks, the effect being that neither a t-shirt nor a long sleeve was wholly comfortable. Slivers of pink peaked through a flat, gray cloud cover. Rounding the corner of my building, I pocketed my hands and began heading for… where? It occurred to me that I had no idea where I’d parked. I stopped and placed my hands on my hips, involuntarily shaking my head in shamed disbelief. The evidence of my irresponsibility and general brainscatter was mounting. Confront too many fuck-ups at once and you start thinking your critics, inner and outer, were right all along. No, I had to find my car, and it had to be nearby, and I had to start the search. Systematically, mind you. There would be nothing disorganized about this little undertaking upon which my self-esteem now largely rested.
A grid of streets and three parallel avenues ran directly behind my apartment, with the avenues extending straight off into the distance. In all probability the car wasn’t more than seven or eight cross streets away. So I began heading down the nearest street, from the top of the first avenue down to the third, where I intended to make a left and then commence up the second street. I maintained a severe focus. Looking squarely at each car, I assessed its model and color like a salesman on the lot, and said to myself “No, that is not my car.” I kept this up for a block, nearly goose-stepping in my rigid adherence to the plan, the saving-grace plan of systematic and accountable action. Accountable action, yes, more of that was needed. The recent record showed a clear dearth of accountability, a surfeit of recklessness. How could I have gone and drunk the weekend away, shoving my inner agitations aside yet again? Now here I was left to traipse through the streets, unable to marshal my thoughts, berating myself. One can usually distinguish between drinking for fun and the self-destructive kind. I knew it had been the latter that weekend. There could be no doubt that I was up to some self-blotting. And I knew there had to be some cause waiting to be unearthed…
…And then suddenly I knew that I had walked two blocks and not paid attention to a single parked automobile. I laughed reflexively and then felt grotesque, and weary. I turned to walk back up the same street. Not my car, not my car, not my car. I hopped out to the middle of the road and peered through the settling darkness. It didn’t seem like it was there. Good enough for now—I could always return. I went back to the avenue, walked to the second street, and began heading up. The search began to assume metaphoric dimensions in my mind. Here I was, going through life, always performing a menial task on account of forgetting some insignificant detail, all the while unable to focus on the important things. This reflection put me in a bit of a churlish snit, so I stopped after a time to take in the delicate turn to night that was playing itself out about me. Streetlight, soft in the dusk, filtered through the canopy of the trees and faintly touched the brownstones. The scene nearly resembled a quiet set, just moments before an actress would fling open a shutter and divulge her aching love as the day faded. Instead, a deep voice somewhere down the block bellowed out a string of expletives. I walked on.
I passed another fifteen minutes of fruitless searching by stewing in memory. In particular, I was dwelling on conversations I’d had recently with a friend about adjusting our respective lifestyles. They were embarrassing to contemplate in the same way that rereading diary entries often is, brimming with naďve exuberance and declared intentions now mostly left unfulfilled. But, as with diaries, by talking about dissatisfaction we force the issue out—and it’s important to raise the stakes now and then by putting oneself on the record. Yes, I thought, I may have lost my car and a good many brain cells and possibly some pride this weekend, and I may not have written a single word tonight, but at least I’m not wallowing! Immediately upon creation of this rousing little cheer it occurred to me that I was in fact engaged in a quite thorough wallow, with few modes of remorse left unsampled. A wallow decorated with rosy intentions was still a wallow. I felt my mouth tighten into a rather unattractive grimace.
Eventually I happened upon the car, which was parked on one of the avenues rather than a street, a potentiality that had strangely eluded me. “Thank God!” I shouted, by now wholly comfortable with talking to myself. I half-ran up to the door, unlocked it and swung it open passionately, then plunked myself down on the ripped leather seat. I slammed it shut and listened to the silence, taking in the familiar and homey old smell. It was like unalloyed joy pervading my nostrils, and I purred while sinking deeper into the chair. I coaxed every bit of mental and physical relief out of that situation that I could, like a cat stretching on a couch. For a few seconds all feeling was suspended. Then my magnificent gloom began inching in again, and I opened my eyes and started up the car.
I never did manage to write that night. After parking the car I went home and lay down in bed. My thoughts slowly grew incoherent—not exactly a far departure—and I drifted off at about ten o’clock. That the evening was an absolute failure as far my ambitions were concerned is not in question. But I do ask myself whether things could have gone otherwise, and I conclude probably not. I was trying to pave my path to redemption with guilt, a patently unhealthy endeavor. Sometimes one just has to bear regret out for a spell, and accept that no other course has any dignity to it. Just bear it out, holding your head high as you nurse your two-day hangover and search for your lost automobile. Yes, reject delusions of band-aid rectification! Well, except for cleaning your room—I’ve found that never hurts.
—JSL