Hello, nice to meet you.
Since I came back from Europe I have felt as if I wasn’t traveling any more. I buckled down to school, the move, my mother’s death, and so on. I recovered Xerxes. I took tests. I put my hand to the plough and did not look back. And in all that I lost the here and now.
Hic et nunc, all there is. ’Round the corner from my apartment there is a branch of the anthroposophical society: they occupy a storefront. The floors are rough wood and the walls unfinished brick; steel beams are exposed overhead. I went there tonight for the first time, since they had an art event. Several young painters — maybe a dozen or so — set up their easels and samples of their work, and painted together. There was a band and dancing.
How general. How generic. When I was there I thought “I should write down everything I see and hear around me,” and then I thought, “I can’t capture the precise experience of my being here: I don’t even experience my own being here except mediately through my internal monologue, written retrospectively.” There were four others with my hair style, glasses, coloration, and gender presentation there, and dozens less similar but style of the same type. Everyone was in costume, and I came in a costume that other people came in, too.
I was terribly frightened when I walked past and saw the event, since I was surprised and curious but loath to appear as if I was investigating or skeptical; I walked past and went down the street, then came back and, in the brewery next door, had a tiny beer and tried to read. But they were even more dismal could-have-been-anywhere folks, so I went back to the anthroposophical society art night.
They charged admission, which was a relief. I didn’t feel as if I was intruding: they wanted people to come in. It was a very cool crowd, and besides the boy selling tickets I didn’t talk to anyone. He was nice, though. His sister hosted the event, and he encouraged me to go speak to her and say he sent me; but I wasn’t sure which of the people she was, and anyhow I didn’t want to be that fool going around introducing themselves. Though the people who seemed to be running the show — or at least, refilling the snack table — had an affable and welcome air: I think people who host parties do it just so they can go to a party that’s up to their standards.
The difference between the US and Europe is that we are much more shy here. Abroad, the perception of the US is as boisterous, loud, and arrogant; this is true, but it misses that the US is also deeply puritanical: like the English, we are most forward, most theatrical, and most reserved, most withdrawn. The US will smile with its mouth but its eyes are dead and glazed-over. And it will conceal the dagger in its hand to rob your purse when you turn your head and laugh. So we’ve learned to be cagey, uncertain, and shallow. Reading books is considered a mark of the leisure class, a luxury; speaking about them is considered tedious and pretentious. It’s not that the truth is in books. But speaking in conversation isn’t about truth: it’s about words. And words live in books.
Words also live in my head, where they spin ’round and confuse me. I’m in my thinking hat and so can’t hear you. That’s how I felt at the party; but also I think everyone felt a little that way, as if they were just the “normie” in a crowd of artist types: the dandy among amateurs, the flâneur among travelers. In Europe I might have been spoken to, or maybe spoken to someone. Here, I didn’t want to — didn’t want to seem pretentious or overbearing or too-smart or too-at-ease. Even though there were artists with their books of poetry some of which really wasn’t bad at all. And I’m the one not at my ease.
