Research: Journals
The Journal
Past Issues
28.2
M.V. Clayton
Notebook10199 October again already
and this year what a change, what a mess
[ At this point, after I wrote "mess," about an hour ago, I felt the urge for a cigarette, felt the agitation starting, knew I was not going to be able to write/think without agony; so I rose quickly and went to get some pretzels or something to eat, thinking maybe I could bring food back to the desk, stuff my mouth while writing--anything/everything to break old habits but appease the oral urges, keep me busy in nonsmoking actions even as I write--so I went to the kitchen and ended up making a sandwich and toast and eating there; and came back to this. That urge that sent me away has been the problem: after a tremendous battle to stop thinking about smoking or not smoking in relation to sitting down to read or write, I had no sooner begun to write than the urge came. I am now back at the desk, chewing gum and a plastic straw (as I've been doing all day every day to the point of a raw mouth), but I am writing, making me wonder if this is may be possible after all.]
My intention in sitting down tonight (early morning: after 2 a.m.) was to try--after many days of not even thinking of trying to try to write anything other than quick scribbled crazy notes in my notebook--to try finally to record some of the ideas about "Miles, Alone" that I've had since I haven't been smoking but have been unable to write because of the agitation even the thought of writing without smoking caused...
I've had at least three, maybe four, cogent ideas concerning Miles' revelations growing out of his desperate sorting of his journals: (1) one to do with discerning types of women he has been attracted to (eccentric, oval faces, small, wanton, etc.) (arguing the nature vs. nurture idea of attraction); and (2) another to do with Miles' agony concerning a double-bind inability to explain his despair over existential questions (especially and mainly to his mother)--if he is honest to those whom he loves and who love him, then he would have to tell of his despair over "meaninglessness," and this would cause them serious concern/worry, and he would not be able to explain to them, because after all, didn't it seem silly? Given the grave concerns everyone has about health and the stresses of modern life (this from thinking of my inability to explain to my mother why the writing was so important to me and why the not-smoking-and-not-writing agony caused me such depression; her reaction to my agony over not being able to write without smoking and my resultant depression was, understandably, 'just don't write then'); (3) another idea--vague, vague now--I think had to do with the libido, the need to make clear, perhaps in the notebooks, that Miles' desires are common to the male (need for different women, seductions?, always the desire to have sex with attractive women, of which each day he sees a surfeit, each day for all his life, a great and unending desire--see notecards: David Buss's The Evolution of Desire, strategies of mating, about men's promiscuity and lust) [this from, I think, X's comment about whether I found women in the Victoria's Secret catalog attractive and how I thus must find her not very attractive, and an earlier similar question, the week before, from her about two young women in short skirts in the cafe (did I find them sexy), and I said, Yes, and she said something like, Thanks a lot but I guess at least you're honest; and she acted hurt, and I thought that she really didn't understand my desire; she said, How do you think that makes me feel? And I couldn't explain to her sufficiently that it wasn't about comparison, it was about lust; and of course this is an age-old argument and misunderstanding; women always (?) seem to think that if you love them, then you should not have any desire for any other woman (do they not have any desire for another man? Well, probably some fantasies, but not like the men, I'm sure, because men are always, constantly thinking about sex, I am convinced) (Broad Generalizations Department); but the man's dilemma is to love one woman deeply and to still have a roaming raging desire for every other sexually attractive woman that crosses his path--need to make clear in his notebooks or perhaps from the philanderer?--it's the My Life as a Man theme, which runs throughout]; and... (4) what was the other idea? I'm not even sure if there was one, or two, other ideas, but I can't grasp them out of the fog...yet...if ever...
In the two weeks since I stopped smoking, this is the most I've written without being crazy with desire to smoke and the agony over not smoking and the struggle, anger, tears, despair, weariness. After all these years of keeping notebooks, it seems maddeningly ironic that I have been unable to record such a profoundly affecting time. All I've written in the notebook in the past two weeks has been about how I can't write without smoking.
Almost two weeks of pure misery and torture and self-pity and struggling and madness and unable to even sit to write because of the terrible urge to smoke and the tremendous conflicting desire to not smoke.
Oh, of all that I haven't written: like now, the smell of cigarette smoke that has, just these past two weeks, come into my window each night, when I've sat here--either to try to draw and make birthday cards, or try to research on the Internet--
Solipsism: that this smoke should drift in my window now and continue even very late into the early morning, just because I am trying not to smoke--as if there is a conspiracy to torture me (conjecture: I've smelled this smoke before occasionally, and I think it has often been there but only drifts in on cool nights when I have my fan on in other window, which has been the past three weeks); also I have rented videos to occupy myself and maybe stimulate [hey, I think one of the other ideas I had for "Miles, Alone" came from one of the movies--which one? what? about a dark and dangerous woman? Clara Bow? Louise Brooks? Two or Three Things I Know A bout Her? Charles: Dead or Alive? My Life to Live (Vivres a Vie), Anna Karina?--some ideas, and most of them have been French and in all of them EVERYONE smokes and smokes a lot, even in the recent comedy Celebrity and as unlikely as it was even in the futuristic sci-fi "adventure" The Matrix]; every movie I'd picked had smoking smoking smoking and people seeming to enjoy smoking, and smoking with young women and smoking with romance and smoking with style, and it was unbelievable: there I was desperately seeking respite from my agonizing preoccupation with not smoking and here on the screen were smokers galore! Irony? Torture!
Also: I had come to think that you rarely saw people smoking on the street anymore, or that there were fewer and fewer people smoking on the streets, and though I don't usually smoke on the streets (except with X after dinner, while we walk about, because I know I am not going to smoke once I get inside apartment and won't smoke again until morning) because I even as a smoker am aware that the smoke drifts and can accost unsuspecting strangers with allergies and/or disdain for cigarette smoke--but this past two weeks, of course, it's like all the street smokers in the world have conspired to be out on the sidewalks where I am. It is incredible, unbelievable, not possible—I must be dreaming ; it's a bad nightmare—because everywhere people are smoking, lighting up as I pass, blowing smoke across my path, and beautiful young women especially, flashing their long fingers from lips to flowing waves . O h, the agony . I cannot escape...
Also : the irony, oh, the raging smoking ironies of these past two weeks: Sunday I was sitting on one of the periphery benches in the macadam Abingdon Sq uare Park in the sun away from others, staying out of my apartment, trying to break habits, trying to read the Sunday Times in peace and not think about smoking or writing, and so reading and doing so fairly well (that is, going for long minutes, maybe an entire article without thinking about the fact that I wasn't smoking), and I was chewing gum and had a clear plastic straw in my mouth, and I noticed out of the corner of my eye a woman pushing another woman in a wheelchair (I usually don't look up while I'm in this park because this is where a lot of the residents and patients from the nursing home across the street come in the afternoon and, though I want to be supportive and friendly, I am afraid to see some of them, they break my heart), and they seemed to be doggedly coming toward me rather than past me, and I didn't want to look even as I suspect ed they must be intentionally approaching me, I didn't want to look because the last time I had, that day , I 'd seen an intravenous bottle fall off the rod above a wheelchair and then two men struggling to keep the plastic IV in place in the man in the chair; so I kept trying to concentrate on my news paper, but they came so close I finally look ed up and the woman in the chair, either weak or struggling with her arms, looking very ashen, had a cigarette in her fingers and she said , Do you have a light? And I smile d and said , No, I'm sorry, I don't; and the woman (nurse) pushing the chair away, said , I told you it wasn't, Margie, it just looks like it...and the woman said , weakly, It does look like...and I couldn't hear the rest, and about two benches below me, a man snorted a laugh and said , She doesn't need to smoke anyway, look at her . This is the man sitting closest to me . I had noticed him because the park was filling up and these less desirable benches were beginning to gain attention , I had noticed him because he was the closet person to pass by me, obviously headed to a bench near me, and he had come in very slowly , I hadn't look ed up but I was able to see him progress across in front of me, a slight skip - hitch of one leg and a drag of the other . H e was alone, dressed in tweeds, a hat, trying to maintain dignity, to lift his foot enough so it wouldn't scrap e as he went by . I didn't look up; I hadn't looked up except out of the corners of my eyes so that I had registered a vague impression of him; but when he said this from the bench below me, I was surprised, because I had forgotten anyone was there, and I looked over at him and would have never thought he was the same man who had struggled so to walk to that bench . H e seemed a bright and friendly man, a bit like a shriveled wizened Saul Bellow, and I nodded to him and smiled and went back to the paper.
Not long after, this man walked by in front of me again . I might not have noticed him except for the slow hitch and scrap e of his legs as he went by . I cried, very softly and discreetly . I could have been friendly, I thought . H e might have wanted to talk, but didn't want to disturb . H e had come out alone to the park on this fine warm sunny autumn day, come out from the nursing home where he lived alone, and no one had come to visit today, a Sunday, and all his friends from the home were out, so he had dressed in his finest tweeds and come for a stroll, and though walking was laborious and slow, he had come down the stairs and walked ten yards to the corner and then across the street and patiently up the sidewalk to the nearest gate and then into the park , and he had probably headed for the nearest bench (and since I was sitting on the end bench of the row nearest that gate entrance, he had to pass me and perhaps exerted himself to considerately pass the adjoining bench to not sit unseemly close to the only other person on that long strand of benches ). He had come to sit on one of the rotting benches in the paved park where pigeons endlessly strut and coo and amass in the sycamore branches . He had come for fresh air perhaps, for the sun, for people gathered, young and old, talking and reading and passing a fine fall day...
I don't know anything about him, except that he walks slowly with a hitch, that he dresses in tweeds, is elderly and has a glint in his eye, and that he has a clear strong voice, enunciates distinctly, and was amused, if not appalled—as I noted in his remark, which was either out loud to no one, or to me in the spirit of sharing—by the strange behavior of humans. I didn't know him, but when he passed and then when he was gone, I felt ashamed for my suffering. I had been there a couple of hours at least, through the shifting shadows, through the coming and going of a guided tour that stopped below the heroic WWI soldier statue, through the coming and going of the streetpeople's carts, through the forming and dispersing of pigeon crowds, through the coming and going of the elderly and their guiding accompanying visitor or visitors, presumably relatives; through the wafting and waning of horns around all sides; through seeing nothing and hearing nothing and knowing nothing while reading about events or ideas; to seeing everything and hearing everything and knowing that I am not alone and haven't been alone all this time, and yet knowing I was alone then and am now, as I leave, as I walk away, out of the park, thinking, I should be thankful, even in this pitiful paved park, even in this mockery of an oasis. I walk with my thick folded piles of the news and views of the world, along the sidewalk, having caught up with what is offered as the highlights of the week. All around, there is the constant stream of people, mostly in twos, but sometimes threes and fours. Dogs strain against their leashes, and children scream in glee at private fantasies, and the yellow sharklike taxis weave blaring in the stream. Above a high blue sky, some cirrus clouds, a jet floating north toward the airport. People coming and going. A light wind and a breeze of thoughts.
