Morning Whirl

[So...what the hell? I have no patience. Therefore, I will publish this thing I was a little nervous about, and I will provide the background later.]

[Written last Thursday or Friday or something, in my nice new owl notebook from Rar Rar, that I bought at the craft fair w/ Alison]

So, this morning...I've been reading the Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, which seduced me with its very well-designed cover. Verdict: the first two stories were mind-blowing, and after that, it's gone down markedly. I don't so much like stories about people in extremis, or something. I perfer really well-done excavations of common feelings.

Anyway, "Sea Oak" by George Saunders is a masterpiece, and "Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned" by Wells Tower had me from the first line and wouldn't let go. (Update: Stepen Dixon has a pretty great one in there, too.) So from there on out it's been kind of blah, though not un-fun, till this morning on the train when I was reading the second half of "When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine," by Jhumpa Lahiri. I tried to dislike it, because the beginning had this strained note of Salman Rushdie-ness, and also out of a churlish desire to dislike Jhumpa Lahiri herself for being born very rich and very beautiful. But I couldn't keep it up. She's good.

One line, especially, almost kind of made me cry. This is partly Jhumpa Lahiri and partly me. I've been feeling pretty emotional these past few days, both happy and sad, or rather neither one, but just intense somehow. I know why, too, or at least part of the reason. Right, so I've been taking Zoloft since January or thereabouts. And this week I've missed about three doses in a row by accident. I forgot on Monday, and again on Tuesday, then yesterday I only took like half of one so as not to shock the ol' system, and then this morning (I realized on the train), I forgot again.

So, right, I wanted to say something about Jhumpa Lahiri, but I also want to say something about how the world is when I abruptly miss a few days of pills -- which I don't pretend is the same thing as 'the world when I'm just not taking anything at all'; I think that what I'm trying to describe is definitely a comedown effect, a weird brain surprise. It's one's neurons saying "whoa!" Anyway. I wouldn't necessarily say that "colors are deeper and food tastes better" which is how a friend described it to me recently, but that's not too far off the mark. Everything feels more portentous. The skyscrapers are taller, the quality of the light is more vivid, and my reactions to the people on the station stairs of the train and as I emerge onto street level are more immediate and engrossing. I respond to things more. I feel as though I am in it. Overall, it is a likeable state to be in. Exciting. Only later in the afternoon do I notice that I also feel kind of woozy.

But back to the story. So I'm sitting on the train, reading Jhumpa Lahiri's story. It's about the tentative, affectionate relationship between a little girl and a Pakistani refugee who must be reminded by her of his own daughters, whom he can't get back to, because he's stuck in America during the war that resulted in the creation of Bangladesh. Anyway, stories about nice dad-figures always get me, in books, and there was this line:

In the glare of her headlights I saw that our pumpkin had been shattered, its thick shell strewn in chunks across the grass. I felt the sting of tears in my eyes, and a sudden pain in my throat, as if it had been stuffed with the sharp tiny pebbles that crunched with each step under my aching feet.

And that almost made me a little teary, there on the subway. The description of that feeling like gravel in the throat is just such a perfect evocation. It slingshotted me back to childhood; I was remembering things, and the feels of things, that I hadn't thought about in quite some time. The description caused the feeling that it was describing. The swelling up of the throat and a feeling of muchness, and then the exquisite sensation of all this muchness about to break over one's head like a wave.

So then I finished the story, blinked by eyes, got off the train and pushed through the turnstile, past the woman with dark brown skin and heavy red lips and tired blue eyeshadow who holds out copies of A.M. New York most mornings and says "Start your day with A.M.! Start your day with A.M.!" I always wonder about her life; I always feel lucky, and guilty, and crass for thinking about it at all, and then we break up onto the surface, and what's the weather like?, oh good it's sunshine, more people selling more papers, the coffee cart, the fruit stand where I got the good cherries, are they still three dollars a pound, the fruit stands of New York are so lush at this season, I love the fruit stands, I love New York, I look at the one crenellated rooftop across the street, the blue sky, walk past the McDonald's and the place that sells used office furnitire, I should write about the fruit stands, I think, and then, wait, I know her, the girl coming out of the burger place, it's B's friend, I feel so good to have remembered, I think her name's Katy.

Some mornings, things are vivid like that. Every little moment feels ineffably worthy of description, and every description could be drawn out to fill pages, books, years. There's this sense of tiny details spinning off into infinity. It feels great, and also a little unsustainable. Sometimes I feel this way in the normal course of things. Other times, I can trace it to something as prosaic (but also incredibly complicated, obv.) as missing a few doses of something my body's gotten used to. And as much as I enjoy the state I'm describing, it can be unsettling, too, to sense how easily affected by material things one's emotions really are, and how, much like the line between 'thoughts' and 'feelings,' the line between 'the physical' and 'the emotional' becomes purely invisible when you look at it from certain angles. Like this one.