Recollections

Recollections

 

A sequence of events has brought Laura to where she is now. Events of an unnoticed, unseen, unspoken nature, yet more powerful than anything else. After all, aren’t these the only that truly matter? At the end of one more workday Laura felt tired. She could feel the dark circles around her eyes, and it would be at least one more hour to get home. She got on the subway, dropped her purse on the floor, and let her body slide into the rough seat. She was probably halfway home when she looked up and in the window across from her seat, she saw her image, distorted but still clear enough to hit her. She started down on her feet and went up: the legs slightly open, the stomach sticking out, the curved shoulders, the drooping corners of her mouth, creating a bitter, pitiful expression. And the eyes, the eyes were what struck her the most: they showed a painful, undeniable absence of life. She stared at herself, looked right into her dead eyes, and that’s when it all started.

 

That evening at home, Laura felt restless: she moved from one couch to the other, but no place seemed comfortable; she tried watching TV, reading magazines, but couldn’t concentrate. At the second sentence she was not able to remember what she had heard in the minute before. There was always this vague, undefined apprehension. She meant to talk about it to her husband, but she didn’t know how to express it in words. Mainly to him, such a practical, analytical person, always rationalizing problems and making lists of possible solutions… how could she ask his help, if she was not even sure what the problem was? She was afraid she would end up just looking silly and a bit neurotic. For a minute Laura thought of her old notebooks... She, who always loved writing, and how long since she had last written in them? Laura couldn’t even remember. “This is definitely not the kind of thought that is going to calm me down!” Laura thought, while getting up, finally resigned to occupy, and silence, her mind with her loud vacuum cleaner.

 

From that evening on, all her days were filled with that pervasive apprehension. Simply knowing that at the end of every day she would have to go back to the subway, and although she tried to keep her best posture, her most presentable image, when she looked back at the window, all she could see was that first vision was enough to make her uneasy. At those moments, she didn’t have any tasks, or places to go, or people to talk to. Every morning since that first day, Laura had to get up knowing that by the end of the day she would have to go back to the subway seat, see how far she was from everything that she always desired for herself, and for one hour she wouldn’t have anything else to do but think.

 

She used every possible argument to convince herself that what she saw was ok: that she was tired; that it was just the subway; that she caught herself in a bad moment, but nothing could erase from her mind the stark truth of what she saw. Months passed by, and that image, along with all the questions it raised, was still there. She couldn’t understand how she got to that point. What she saw was far away from everything she had always imagined for herself, and of herself. That miserable image: the curved, humiliated shoulders; the entire mediocrity of the face; the defeated eyes. Those were features that Laura had always despised in other people and dreaded for herself. In her mind those traits were always accompanied by a feeling of pity, and sometimes even disdain.

 

In the next months, while her body was inert in the subway, the monotonous sounds of the engine and the mix of people’s voices seemed to blend, becoming a blurred, distant noise, and Laura’s mind just zoned out, trying to redo the steps that brought her to where she was… For several weeks, she was back in Paris. She relived her first trip by herself, to France, and the feelings she had on those days. There she experienced the feeling of being exactly in the right place for the first time in her life. Walking through the city’s backstreets, it was like she was as much part of that environment as the old buildings, the cafes, or the French ladies and their scarves. Laura always had a romantic, idealized view of Europe, and that trip was a confirmation of everything that unconsciously she already knew. It was for her more than just visiting a different place: she could sense the history and the vibration of Paris. The bond she felt and that conviction of finally belonging somewhere filled her with confidence, and then she felt like she was able to do anything. The entire time, Laura knew that she should stay and prolong that moment as long as possible; she knew that she should drop all her other plans, because as rational as they seemed, they couldn’t be right, once they didn’t include this new consciousness, this unique experience she was just having. But Laura didn’t do that: she came back home, to her college, and to her life, and buried that experience and those feelings in some well hidden place. Back then she thought she returned because she was cautious, prudent, responsible. Today she thinks she acted as a sheep. A very white one.

 

It was with bitterness that everyday she woke up form her recollections and got back to her real life and to the subway, its noises and mediocrity. And France was just the first of the so many cadavers that today weighted her down. Laura’s little dream house, on the third floor of an historic building, with red stairs giving access to the terrace, from where she would listen to Nina Simone and watch people walking by, grocery shopping, coffee sipping, while she was taking care of her daisies. It seemed such a simple, modest, easy to accomplish wish, but it also ended up replaced for a more realistic idea: a comfortably large condo, in a coveted middle class complex, with a garage and enough space, so she and her husband wouldn’t have to worry about moving when the time to have kids would come. On a Tuesday, three stops before her final point, Laura realized that as large as her house was, she never found room in it for daisies.

 

It was in one of these days, while Laura’s mind walked up the red stairs, to take care of imaginary flowers that the matter of her marriage first crossed her mind. Her husband was never present in her dreams; he didn’t even know that she ever had such unusual thoughts. Old building? Red stairs? In this moment she questioned if her marriage could also be result of one of those safer, practical decisions. Surely there was respect, loyalty, admiration. But was there love? Passionate love? This question stood above her head for days, and she could never get to a positive answer. Sometimes even doubting seemed indecorous and paradoxical: it was a stable, solid marriage, and wherever they went, people were always impressed and even jealous of their relationship. But truth is: Laura didn’t, at any moment doubted the sincerity of their feelings, but rather their nature and intensity. She, who always expected love to be irresistible, indescribable, yet self-evident, or at least to be palpable enough to not leave any interrogation mark hanging over her head, started wondering how much of that concept she had to trim down, so her marriage would be as lasting, and “successful” as it was. In that first day, more than an image, Laura saw her life story represented in each trait of her body. Although she tried to confine all her frustrations in some corner of her mind, they escaped and were clear as daylight, drew on her face.

 

It was when she got on the plane back home that her shoulders first got an arched feature; and it was every time she walked by old villages and saw her perfect house, that she never got to live in, that the bitterness in her expression became more evident; and it is every time Sinatra declares his love and “smiles with his heart, to looks that are laughable, unphotographable”, that Laura’s appearance becomes more crushed and defeated. Of all the deceptions, and all the plans reasonably narrowed to fit in everyday reality, there was one, one special, tender dream; a desire that was particularly close to her heart, and it was so much part of who she was, that losing it was like losing an arm, a leg, or her nose. Since she can remember, Laura wanted to write. She didn’t care for the recognition, respect or admiration. She wanted to be able to express all the convictions and contradictions that were always in her head. In fact, it was on paper, rather than anywhere else, that her life had ever made sense. But she didn’t think she could make a living of it, or at least not the safe, stable living that her hesitant personality required, so she didn’t dare, didn’t stand for it. As time went by, because her practical plans started consuming all her time, and she got accommodated; and because her life itself had lost most of its poetry, she let that dream slowly, lingeringly fade away. Although all the other failures weighted her down, and determined the humiliated expression on her face, the vanishing of this most cherished desire was what marked her the most.

 

The awareness that she let it go without even trying was a shadow following her everywhere she went to. More than arching her shoulders, this was what took the color, and the life of her eyes. When she was caught by her image on that window, the divergence existent between her body and her soul became clear to her; she couldn’t anymore ignore the gap between what she could’ve been and what she had become. And there was nobody to blame but herself. Was there a way to walk through that abyss?

 

Jan 30th, 2007.

 

This morning I woke up earlier than usual, grabbed a notebook, and right now I am sitting at the outside area of Starbucks. (wow… I’m scared…) Mmmm, … I might not be able to go to work today, because I have long, lovely stories to tell.

 

I’ll start in Paris.