“Art doesn’t have to solve problems; it only has to formulate them correctly.”
(~ After Anton Chekhov, 1987. There are several translations.)
One Glance
Sadness presses on my body like bad weather. Not enough to smother me but enough to exhaust me. The sun lamp of positive thoughts is an exertion wasted. Transcend it. Solve the problem. Such injunctions are wasted on me. Literature offers me a way out. Inhabit the sadness. Learn its grammar. Meaninglessness is still living.
Another Glance
A couple emerges from a sandwich store. The woman takes a wrapped bun from the brown-paper bag and offers it to the man. She looks. They look. In that moment there are chapters of caring. Of a shared humanity that doesn’t know that love’s throat can be slit easily and by the one you loved. I want to remember. The caring for me alone. I want to retain that —the best of humankind. Even though it hurts.
In my youth, I saw sadness as a brute thug bearing down to disembowel me. I ran away. I did that often. There is no escape from sadness. Emotional sobriety is the acceptance and governance of both the bad and the good; about reacting responsibly and not impulsively.
It’s showering couplehood stories.
Science articles on the necessity of holding hands for mental and physical well-being; how to be in a successful marriage; gender transitioning at age sixty. The inevitability and the joy of taking the hard road, the steepest climb, the gasping ascent—all to find fulfillment and joy. I’m having none of it. I clench my jaw. Gnash my teeth.
I reset the thermostat in the apartment by looking at YouTube videos. I almost called my former partner. Almost. Didn’t. Checked off the mental box marked “Progress.”
The Unconscious Glance
I am looking at the contoured Austin Princess. A magnificent metal chariot in our driveway. My mother, sister and I are admiring this metal beast while my father surveys us all. He decided to get a new car; traded in his old one and drove the new one home just as we awoke on a Saturday morning.
The air is a bit chilly, clear though, long before the polluted air of Calcutta. My sister seems sleepy but looks intently at the polished leather seats and the dashboard that is made of gleaming artificial wood and with more instruments, it seems, than an airplane. I’d glimpsed a cockpit as I ducked into a two-engine propeller plane cabin on our trip north the summer before.
What was I doing here? Admiring, silently. Obediently. Respectfully. As always, the model little boy. Did I think, hell, do this for another few minutes and then dart back into the house, dive under the cement and brick stairwell with my book and lands far away.
(Photographs courtesy of author. All Rights Reserved.Reproductions prohibited without written permission.)