Fool. Absurd. Impatience. Red. Walls. Cracks. Skulls. Numb. Fear. Foetus. Naïve. Brown. Eyes. Smile. Lips. Kiss. Warm. Wet. Rain. Naked. Night. Horror. Mirror. Glass. Sharp. Blade. Wrist. Blood. Sticky. White. Sunlight. Hot. Burn. Matchstick. Forearm. Welt. Black. Soldiers. War. Anger. Purple. Ink. Stain. Pain. Cell. Tumor. Cut. Scar. Tissue. Paper. Book. Shakespeare. Tragedy. Comedy. Joker. Hat. Dunce. Cap. Fool….
They singe their way through a numbing conscious. Meaningful. Meaningless. Swirling around like a mass of subatomic mist, tantalizing, teasing, barely out of reach and yet never close enough. They move out of the masses of books that I surround myself with – a paper fortress, its black-and-white opacity shielding the world’s vision –enveloping like a protective lover. “You are a rock, you are an island.” I remember the laughter still. Gentle. Mocking. And I wonder. Why do I and so many I know seek refuge in these seven-odd-inch-long bound sheets of paper, holding it to my face like a mask, clinging with a desperation turning knuckles white? What is my relationship with these books? Why do I need them?
I don’t know.
But I’m now trying to understand.
So, here I sit, in the waiting room of my oncologist’s office with my tools of flight. Scribbling words into my notepad that accompanies me like a faithful Jeeves. Lying next to me is a book containing the poems of Emily Dickinson and in my oversized bag – another faithful that’s more likely than not to aggravate my spondolysis – is Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. The good-looking gaunt old man sitting across me, waiting for his own appointment with hell, looks at me as if intending to strike a conversation. But as I hurriedly pick up Dickinson, he leans back in his chair, deciding to leave me alone. Need I say more?
Lying down on the rubbery seat in the sterile room, my fingers curling around the cold metal sides, looking up into the blinding light of a medical apparatus I’ve never bothered to get formally introduced to, I feel primed up for slaughter. And I urge myself to go to my happy place. My living room. And the beautiful volumes of books that adorn it like the Kohinoor once adorned the crown. “I am a Rock”.. At that moment with tubes, liquids and light passing in and out of me with familiarity and ownership, I feel more jelly, but I hum on. And turn a page. And wonder again. Why do I need this refuge…?
I think I have an answer.
Inaccessibility to experience.
Home is Versova. A place so devoid of beauty, a garbage-dump seashore is a relief. ‘Sea-facing apartment’ is hyperbole for a view of couples making out amid plastic bottles and waste in front of the tired Arabian Sea. Where Barista is the Taj Mahal and Infiniti Mall – stylishly miss-spelt –the Eiffel of escape. The city doesn’t have quaint little cafes, beautiful winding pathways, sprawling fields of wheat, or even old abandoned mines or furyless volcanoes, no pine trees, no Pietas, no canals or windmills… And yet, people who live in places that have the Eiffel, abandoned mines, volcanoes or pine trees also read, don’t they?
Another conjecture.
Multiple personalities. Living several lives.
There are the characters. Living through the intense desire that Maurice Bendrix feels when he looks at Sara, knowing she’ll never be his… Digging fingernails into palms at Anna Karenina’s desperate longing and hungry passion for Vronsky, breathing the doom of its hopelessness. Feverishly suffering like Raskolnikov and raging in his guilt… Brings a drama into my world that I’d never know otherwise.. Allows me to place myself into Gaugin’s Paris and walk down snaking streets with an artist’s eye and equipment… escape into a world where no one knows my name… A closet schizophrenic.
The Nurse bustles in. Unravels me neatly. I feel bereft. But only for a moment. I cling to Woolf. And walk down the steps of the hospital – momentarily imagining stones in my pocket and water all around me, the road a river-bed. And suddenly, I’m angry. People in the real world never seem to behave with the romance and passion and intensity and volatility of their counterparts in books. They’re always drab. Always cold. Always rational. Or are they?
Not true.
Sometimes they do.
However when one acts like the characters in the books one reads, when one performs and speaks and behaves with the passion and intensity and volatility, one just looks ridiculous, idiotic. How many times have I gagged at the sight of two lovers necking and cooing and billing into each others’ ears… Never have I smiled and harked back at Romeo and Juliet. How often have we -- my wicked best friend and I -- spewed beautiful bitter bile at some silly declarations of undying love that someone has made to someone else. How corny have words of idealism -- spouted by knowing, meaning pretenders who want to live the lives of books – sounded, almost compelling me to break into a laugh.
Cynical. Sarcastic.
Poor people.
Damned if they do, damned if they don’t.
Why do I do that? When I seek this beauty, this romance, this fable – why do I reject it so disdainfully, so contemptuously when I face it? Is it because I know that the passion is presumed, the intensity is faked and the volatility is carefully engineered? The lover’s words are never real. The affection is for public display. The idealism is a sham. Isn’t all of this obvious? Am I the only one who sees it? Or am I seeing too much? Is there anything that’s true? Honest? Instinctive? Or are we constantly looking over our shoulders to see who’s watching? Constantly acting a part? Playing a role? And seeking applause….
Why do I write my words and send them to my friends and wait for their reactions? Why are the reactions important? The book I’ve written – yearning, longing, waiting to be published – how would it give me any more pleasure whether twenty million people read it or two? And if I write, knowing that twenty million people are going to read, aren’t my words and emotions and writings automatically, instinctively, subconsciously geared and censored and playing to a gallery that I know someday will watch. So the pain of my writing is magnified, unreal. The truth of a thought is embellished, rendering it plastic. The beauty of an emotion is consciously sketched out, turning it into a parody, a bad actor hamming on stage. And if one writer is conscious of this, aren’t they all? Woolf and Dickinson and Maugham and Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky – haven’t they all done what I do? Read the first instinctive words they’ve written, and then rewrite them – because it reveals too much, or too little. So why do I read these books?
Anger of a woman conned.
I’m still angry. But the rage is directed at the books. I decide I won’t read. Period. I step out. Go to a mall. To watch a movie. And meet an old friend now turning famous who speaks to me, but is looking over my shoulder at the people beyond wondering if they’ve seen him, recognized him. Measuring the amount of time he must speak to me. Too much would mean his eminence fades – after all I’m not famous. Too little and he would fall short in his own eyes because he hasn’t played his part well enough. It’s a performance. Not his best. But he’s getting there. All of this – in someone who isn’t even an actor. And I suddenly feel a slap on my face. A glass of ice cold water splashed on my face. A lightning piercing through my center tearing me into two. This is the reality of my world, everyone’s world. Too many masks. Too little honesty. All for effect. Nothing felt. Nothing touched.
Lying on my couch, hugging a book close. Begging for forgiveness. Going back to an old lover. Whom you know. Whose scent is familiar, moods known, failings recognizable. Maybe books are better than people. Maybe they aren’t. But they never disillusion you. So I’m back in my fortress.
A rock feels no pain.
And an island never cries.
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