Hanging between: the restaurant banquet table, and the bathroom door. Or at the table, D– on one side, B– on the other. Between the conversation and the piano: and the imagination of doing something with the piano. Standing among D–'s explications and my doubts. The walk home – between these green summer trees and blue sky, always between heaven and earth. Among all the things I imagine, but hesitate before or during, or within, the doing of them.
If the reasons for my regrets are all the things that have gone wrong, the context behind those reasons is the constant sense of the many other ways things could go, could have gone. Suspended: why can't I play a dazzling, charming Schubert impromptu on this restaurant piano? What if I were to be as sure as D– is of the validity of writing, of ideas? What if I were firmly present here in this pleasant group of colleagues and friends, or alternately at home alone, but not always hanging in between?
I know of course that no one is totally here, or there (with very few and special exceptions): that doubts, hesitations, unclarities, nauseas, inner disruptions are everywhere, for practically anyone. I certainly don't think I'm unique in any of this.
But there is an endless wistfulness in this for me, as though I've got my nose pressed to the glass of other people's lives: it must be so real to be like that one, it must be so fun to be like another, it must be so... they must be so certain of themselves... aren't they?
And of course the interesting question, amidst all my usual regrets and false turns, is not only how would I have lived my life differently – had all those contingent accidents gone in other ways – but, in the context of vaguely believing (but not quite believe, more perhaps hoping) in reincarnation, how will I handle it better next (life)time? Or a thousand times hence.... Am I moving forward, is the hesitation proof of development or backsliding, am I anything but waiting for the universe to tell me what I'm supposed to be? Which is, self-evidently, a fairly poor place to be.
Pendu, suspendu, sous-pendu. Le pendu.
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