White Light (reposted)

This post was originally published on October 31, 2012. I leave you with it, in anticipation to a post coming soon....

It was only after I saw my shrink, today, that I fully understood what I had done.

Resolved the defining challenge of my life.

Defining because, yes, it had ruled me since I can remember. I couldn’t get the sounds in my head out of the cello. I raged, I bit myself—never puncturing the skin, but leaving the indentations of teeth marks for hours. I once broke a bow, slamming it on the strings of the instrument.

I knew it was in there; I couldn’t get it out. And with the rage came the depression. Black days, awful days when the minutes dragged, when no amount of will could banish the demon that lurked in the corner, always crouched, always ready to pounce.

Things I didn’t care about I did well. Teaching, never a problem.

The cello?

An agony that I couldn’t do, and couldn’t not do. I couldn’t breath at the cello, I held my breath until I had to gasp. My shoulders cramped, so tight was I.

I was practicing for hours at a time. There were days it went well. I floated down the street, beaming at strangers.

Most days it didn’t.

Late at night, in Chicago. Raf asleep, Marc alone in an empty apartment. I would be meditating, and almost get through.

I called it the breakthrough. The music would get out, I would get out, the struggle would be over.

I’d win.

Or be free.

I’d masturbate, hoping to use the energy of orgasm to push me through that door. And use Rush, amyl nitrite. I’d see a white light, I’d move closer, the orgasm would stun me. But I never got through.

Last March, I relived the moment I lost my mind, back in December. Had two weeks of struggle, of fierce concentration and mindfulness. It took five minutes to save a document. I washed dishes as if the process were a koan. I retrained myself to do everything.

At the end of the day, I would be exhausted. I’d sit and read what someone else had written.

I’d laugh out loud.

“He’s so funny,” I’d say.

“He makes the most amazing leaps,” I’d say.

I was reading that day’s post in a blog called Life, Death and Iguanas.

“I’m taking the writer to get his teeth fixed,” I told Taí. She was in a storm of worry ten islands down the Caribbean. I made sure he ate. I obsessed about his having water at all times. I needed to take care of him, this gifted guy whom I have nothing to do with.

And everything….

“He didn’t go away, I could have lost him,” I’m telling the shrink. And then, “hey, aren’t you guys supposedly to have Kleenex?”

He gestured to the side table.

Well, they are our confessors, these shrinks. And at one moment, retelling the story, I jumped back, back to a dark apartment, back to a man in agony, back to a man with his brain flooded with chemicals, and a light, a light, a light I could not get to. A light that would recede and leave me so stabbed with alone.

I’m gasping, now, as I was gasping in that red velvet chair, as I was gasping at the cello.

I have just had an orgasm I have never had. Nothing physical, no hands to wash, or floor to wipe. And no, I saw no white light.

I see that white light when I sit in my chair, at five in the afternoon and read the absurd, the tortured, most—the gifted—words he’s written.

He’s filled with that light, and I tell him, “fuck, you’re amazing.”

Reflections of a reflection

It’s a curious thing about Facebook. People post stuff that drives me nuts. “Eating mofongo at La Fondita de Mofongo!!!!!!” Usually accompanied by a photo.

(Any of you up there who have never eaten mofongo should go immediately online to get your ticket to Puerto Rico. Mmmmmm….)

Which is to say that, no, the world doesn’t need to know that somebody you friended in a weak moment is eating mofongo.

It may be, of course, that food comments are like golf and psychotherapy. Interesting only to the players….

On the other hand, comments about what people are listening to are interesting—to me, at least. And Cousin Brian did pique my interest with his comment about Chopin’s Piano Concerto Number One. Well, although I have it on the iPod (made by Apple!), it’s something I never hear. But if Brian—no slouch whatsoever in the classical music world—likes it, it’s gotta be good. I decide to check it out.

Not before dealing with a very snarky Mr. Fernández, who is busy peering at the cutting board in the kitchen. He holds up a little white part of a hand mixer.

“There used to be a little plastic bag with tiny little screws around here, and I DON’T SEE IT NOW!”

“Good morning, dear,” I say. I’ve been told about emotional hijacking.

“WELL, WHERE IS IT!”

“Slept well, I trust?”

“Well, it better turn up,” he says, and stomps off to the bathroom.

And this is before coffee.

So the opening of the piano concerto pretty well matched my internal emotional landscape. Think New Jersey on Monday….

And Brian also had said that Chopin had written the concerto at age eighteen.

Well, there is some music that only the young can write, I thought today, on the trot. It’s sort of like love—you may experience it many times in your life, but not like the first time.

And this is definitely a young man’s work. And—trademark Chopin—it has a theme that just squeezes your heart.

I was listening to it today since I had decided that the piece was sort of like all of people you really like, whom you kiss (when appropriate / possible), and say “hey, we really gotta get together” and then never do.

Until the next time.

There’s music like that, too. You hear a piece, think ‘wow, that’s great’ and make a promise to yourself. You’re gonna listen to it often.

The next time being when NPR decides to play it.

All right, so what’s the story of the piece? Well, Chopin wrote it in 1830, and performed it in one of his “farewell” concerts.

Where was he going?

Off to Paris. In fact, he never returned to Poland, but became part of the “Great Emigration.”

Hunh?

Ah, the joys of the hyperlink! One click and I know, or rather remember. Poland got sliced up between Austria, Russia and Prussia in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Most of the elite packed up and left, so that Polish political and intellectual activity was really mostly French.

Well, something to know! Now then, what’s the skinny on Chopin?

Well, here I commend you to Wikipedia, which has an excellent article on him. But to make it short, it doesn’t seem to have been a very happy life. And it’s definitely not a healthful (in the sense of full of health) life. Sickful, in fact.

His death certificate says tuberculosis, though I prefer the term “consumption” of the 19^th century.

And what of his love life? Also not much fun. Yeah, the affair with George Sand that we all know about, but she became more of a nurse than lover, at the end. And they quarreled and separated at the end—she didn’t even attend his funeral.

Any money? Well, he dies poor, though at least not alone.

And there must have been some comforts. A raging intellect, for example, and good friends. One of them the painter Eugène Delacroix, who plays in this little episode, sent by Sand through Wikipedia:

Chopin is at the piano, quite oblivious of the fact that anyone is listening. He embarks on a sort of casual improvisation, then stops. 'Go on, go on,' exclaims Delacroix, 'That's not the end!' 'It's not even a beginning. Nothing will come ... nothing but reflections, shadows, shapes that won't stay fixed. I'm trying to find the right colour, but I can't even get the form ...' 'You won't find the one without the other,' says Delacroix, 'and both will come together.' 'What if I find nothing but moonlight?' 'Then you will have found the reflection of a reflection.' The idea seems to please the divine artist. He begins again, without seeming to, so uncertain is the shape. Gradually quiet colours begin to show, corresponding to the suave modulations sounding in our ears. Suddenly the note of blue sings out, and the night is all around us, azure and transparent. Light clouds take on fantastic shapes and fill the sky. They gather about the moon which casts upon them great opalescent discs, and wakes the sleeping colours. We dream of a summer night, and sit there waiting for the song of the nightingale ..

Hey, that girl can write!

OK—that’s a consolation, having company like that, and an interesting woman, as Sand certainly was. But was it enough?

Here’s a photo of him in the year of his death:

I'm voting no.

White light

It was only after I saw my shrink, today, that I fully understood what I had done.

Resolved the defining challenge of my life.

Defining because, yes, it had ruled me since I can remember. I couldn’t get the sounds in my head out of the cello. I raged, I bit myself—never puncturing the skin, but leaving the indentations of teeth marks for hours. I once broke a bow, slamming it on the strings of the instrument.

I knew it was in there; I couldn’t get it out. And with the rage came the depression. Black days, awful days when the minutes dragged, when no amount of will could banish the demon that lurked in the corner, always crouched, always ready to pounce.

Things I didn’t care about I did well. Teaching, never a problem.

The cello?

An agony that I couldn’t do, and couldn’t not do. I couldn’t breath at the cello, I held my breath until I had to gasp. My shoulders cramped, so tight was I.

I was practicing for hours at a time. There were days it went well. I floated down the street, beaming at strangers.

Most days it didn’t.

Late at night, in Chicago. Raf asleep, Marc alone in an empty apartment. I would be meditating, and almost get through.

I called it the breakthrough. The music would get out, I would get out, the struggle would be over.

I’d win.

Or be free.

I’d masturbate, hoping to use the energy of orgasm to push me through that door. And use Rush, amyl nitrite. I’d see a white light, I’d move closer, the orgasm would stun me. But I never got through.

Last March, I relived the moment I lost my mind, back in December. Had two weeks of struggle, of fierce concentration and mindfulness. It took five minutes to save a document. I washed dishes as if the process were a koan. I retrained myself to do everything.

At the end of the day, I would be exhausted. I’d sit and read what someone else had written.

I’d laugh out loud.

“He’s so funny,” I’d say.

“He makes the most amazing leaps,” I’d say.

I was reading that day’s post in a blog called Life, Death and Iguanas.

“I’m taking the writer to get his teeth fixed,” I told Taí. She was in a storm of worry ten islands down the Caribbean. I made sure he ate. I obsessed about his having water at all times. I needed to take care of him, this gifted guy whom I have nothing to do with.

And everything….

“He didn’t go away, I could have lost him,” I’m telling the shrink. And then, “hey, aren’t you guys supposedly to have Kleenex?”

He gestured to the side table.

Well, they are our confessors, these shrinks. And at one moment, retelling the story, I jumped back, back to a dark apartment, back to a man in agony, back to a man with his brain flooded with chemicals, and a light, a light, a light I could not get to. A light that would recede and leave me so stabbed with alone.

I’m gasping, now, as I was gasping in that red velvet chair, as I was gasping at the cello.

I have just had an orgasm I have never had. Nothing physical, no hands to wash, or floor to wipe. And no, I saw no white light.

I see that white light when I sit in my chair, at five in the afternoon and read the absurd, the tortured, most—the gifted—words he’s written.

He’s filled with that light, and I tell him, “fuck, you’re amazing.”

Little Deaths

It seems disrespectful, diminishing to call it this way, but that’s how it occurred to me, this morning.

It’s a little death.

I am thinking of Taí, my sister, who wrote to tell us that she had put her treasured cat—Sajo—to sleep. We scrambled to find her number, Raf called Charisse, then Taí called.

Suffering, of course. She’s a woman who loves animals, and is very, very good with them. When she is here, the food bowls get put in various places, and Taí assumes the role of lunchroom monitor—Loquito has to eat out of everyone’s dish. And he will attack Herrick—not seriously, but certainly not amiably.

Herrick, of course, weighs twice as much as Loquito. He could easily send Loquito flying—and in fact has. I’ve seen it, and cheered Herrick on. Doña Taí, however, puts up with no nonsense from the cat world. “Oh, gosh,” she will say, and fly out of her chair in the dining room to investigate suspicious feline sounds. 

And she is of the belief that yes, cats can be trained. 

My take?

Errr…no.

But who knows? What I do know is that there is something peculiarly bad about a little death. The big deaths—a parent, a spouse, a child—those are agonizing. The death of a pet?

Also agonizing.

As I write this, Loquito is ten feet away. I am writing, he is snoozing—very much what cats do. And the moment I get up?

He’ll fly into action. He’ll follow me wherever I go. I, of course, will be scolding him.

“Don’t wag your tail! Wagging your tail is prohibited! Strictly prohibited! Ridiculous!”

Why do I tell him this?

Because he pays absolutely no attention. In fact, his whole body language is screaming…

…fuck you!

Which amuses me. I was a nervous, inward child—the nerd who never misbehaved, never even whispered, when the teacher left the room. Loquito? The kid who jumped up and started writing obscenities on the blackboard.

Loquito is also my creator spirit. The person who writes, who plays the cello?

Loquito.

Irrepressible, intractable, fearless, silly—whatever I do creatively is felinized (can’t be personified, can it?) by Loquito. And so in those months when I was struggling, it was Loquito who got me through, showed me the way.

Taí—of course, was worrying in Tobago. I felt her love coming through. Raf was frantic but working in Hato Rey.  He was, and is, the constant in my life. But Loquito?

He was making me laugh. I’d watch him under Raf’s computer table, playing with cables. He’d be knocking the clumps of kitty litter out of the scooper as I cleaned the pans. He’d be crouching behind a picture resting against the wall—waiting for something, anything, to pounce on.

And he would ALWAYS be there. 

That, I think, is what makes the little deaths so hard. Yes, I loved my mother. It was definitely a big death. But she lived and died three thousand miles away. I called her every morning and most afternoons, those last years. The moment a vexing grammatical point presented itself, I thought to ask her, and could not.

But she wasn’t woven into the warp and weft of my life—as Loquito is.

As animals are.

“Cloudy!” called John once, when I visited him in New York. He was calling my mother’s cat, now a New Yorker. “Mr. New is going to work, honey! He’ll be back! Mr. New will be back at seven, honey!”

Mr. New?

“He does this every morning,” reported Jeanne.

John shot me a nervous look as he walked out the door. Mr. New was wearing a three-piece suit and carrying an elegant leather briefcase. He’ll make his calls and write his emails and scream at other people’s attorneys—if he has to—and then come home. 

Home to a cat who—trust me—has not missed him. The work clothes will be shed, dinner started, the TV turned on. Cloudy will jump into his lap, be stroked, patted, caressed, addressed. She will be a cat.

Why do I think it’s our animals that make us human?