Superbowl. There, I said it.
And now, on to other things.
I feel a little dislodged in time right now -- can't seem to get a grasp on which day of the week it truly is. I don't even care that this seems to be one of the things psychiatrists check, with patient who may need to be hospitalized -- 'Do you know what day of the week it is?'
I'm not even sure what day I think it is. It's as if I've entered a place of day-less-ness, living perhaps as animals do -- one period of existence being pretty much interchangeable with any other. If I didn't have actual appointments to do actual things involving other actual people, I have a suspicion that I wouldn't really care.
But because today is/was Sunday, and I kind of knew that, because John left the house earlier than usual, I went out to Branchburg for a few hours of Combat Paper work. I helped dismantle a pair of fatigues from the 1950's. I helped make about ten sheets of new Combat Paper. I chatted with my fellow vets. I got a look at the first sheets of pink paper I made last week, and will be using to test how the book should actually be printed. I had a large cup of coffee and a slice of pizza.
Then, because it's the first Sunday of the month, there was a concert at Christ Church, so I left Branchburg a bit earlier than usual, to get to New Brunswick in time to park and find a seat. Marvin Mills was accompanying Marlissa Hudson on a concert tribute to Marian Anderson. It was a splendid event -- Marvin's playing was perfect, and Marlissa used the space and her voice to make incredible music. I think they both got three standing ovations -- including one for a song in the middle of the second section of the program -- people leapt to their feet. I felt like I was in Paris in the 1800's, and the latest etoile was making her debut at the Opera. And best of all, John and I got to have dinner with Marvin and Marlissa, before they started their trek back to DC. We laugh all the time, except when we're being serious, until we start laughing again. I felt a bit star-struck, I'm afraid. But we laughed anyway.
And now, here we are, at home. The cats have been fed, John has set up the coffee for tomorrow morning, and I've got my new pink paper beside me, so I can pick it up and look at it every once in a while. Hold it up to the light, to see how consistent the thickness is, across the whole piece. Look at the differences in texture between one sheet and another. I've begun wondering if I might want to use some ink other than black, for printing the illustrations. A really dark browny-maroon might be nice.
Still, for all of this activity, this driving from one place to another, to have wholly different kinds of conversations with a widely diverse set of friends and acquaintances, I feel, in my life, a kind of dislocation similar to the day confusion I've already mentioned. I feel, it's odd to say, more like a tadpole than like a 66 year old human man -- I feel as though I'm slick and covered with an invisible ooze, that will, at any moment, allow me to be expelled from what I take to be real life, and deposited somewhere else. Someplace unexpected, where I'll be required instantly to fit in, to mix nicely, to seem to be acceptable and of some value.
There is, beneath the surface tranquility and a kind of enviable ideality of my day-to-day existence, a sense of fraudulence that's become more and more pronounced over the past few weeks. I seem to be noticing the things that are wrong -- the continued mess in the driveway; the collapsing garage door; the innumerable tiny repairs that need to be done to the house; the continued mess in the guest room, the attic, the back porch and the basement -- oh, and the garage; the just barely less than disreputable state of the front and back yards, and the untrimmed shrubs threatening to swallow the front porch... The list is, I think, endless. And for some reason, I seem to believe that, like Jacob Marley, I ought by rights to be dragging tangible, ponderous evidence of these shortcomings around with me -- but in my case, it wouldn't only be my old business partner who would see me. No, I'd be required to expose these lapses and sins, of possibly both omission and commission, to any living soul withing hailing distance.
I feel, to use a possibly explosive term, as though I'm 'passing' -- as though I'm being taken for someone other than who I actually am. And because of this sense of inauthenticity, I find difficult, as I've said before, to embrace and admit whatever complimentary remarks may come my way. I feel as though I must, as quickly as possible, diminish anything positive, and dilute it with all the faults and failings for which I'm ultimately responsible.
And so, I wander from day to day, whatever day it is, and either keep to myself, or mingle with others with varying degrees of comfort -- and I don't think even I would question the apparent authenticity of my behavior. But not very far beneath the surface, pretty much round the clock, in mostly every situation, I'm poised to be disqualified, exposed, dismissed, denounced, evicted. The membrane separating my apparent self from what I experience as my real and true and usually slightly repugnant self, is so thin as to be invisible. I marvel at its apparently inexhaustible elasticity, but I don't trust that it will continue, for much longer, to keep my dark, twisted, inward shortcomings from public scrutiny.
Which makes knowing what day it is rather academic and unimportant, really. Even if, as today, the Superbowl is being played. Somewhere. Does that mean it's Thursday? I forget...
© 2013 Walter Zimmerman
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