The Idea of Permanence
A few weeks ago and with absolutely no context, Beatrice (who goes by Apollo now) ran up to me and said, “I can’t believe you threw me into the pool!”
“What are you talking about?”
“I read it in your essay!”
And so it begins. The children have discovered my writing.
She then proceeded to quote back to me several lines from an essay I wrote about enrolling her in swimming lessons ten years ago.
“You know, people have used that essay in classes to teach writing,” I said neither subtly nor humbly, but she graciously ignored me. Instead she proceeded to ask many very specific questions about many other essays I had written five, ten, or even twenty years ago. “Did I like the stick?” “Whatever happened to Marguerite?”
“What stick?” “Who is Marguerite?”
I had been expecting this day. Everything I ever wrote about the kids, I wrote knowing they would someday read it, and I feel okay about what I said and what I didn’t. Nonetheless, I felt obscurely annoyed, and it wasn’t just because Apollo and Arthur were not sufficiently impressed by my illustrious career (Apollo did later say her friend Mia is a fan of mine, so that’s something).
Instead, I felt suddenly and painfully reminded of all the other lives I had lived, lives as remote now as if they had belonged to someone else. I wanted the kids to already know, somehow, all these things I had never told them, or maybe I wanted those things never to be brought to mind again. I was mad at myself for forgetting so much, and felt in the instant Apollo asked me about her swimming class or my Paris apartment every loss again.
Ever since I was a child myself, I have been in love with the idea of permanence. I romanticize the family that has lived in one house for four generations, the craftsman who has practiced his art for forty years. I love listening to anyone who has lived in one city for a long time talk about the gas station that used to be a pet store, the new condos on the site of the old elementary school. I want that sort of long history with something or somewhere.
In fact, I am completely unsuited to permanence, by habit, circumstance, or temperament. The problem is that I don’t want to be permanent at any one thing, I want to be permanent at everything, I want to live the life where I never leave Chicago, the life where I never leave Shanghai. I want to spend every day working only on baking, also only on taxidermy, and witchcraft and watercolor. I want a life where I immerse myself solely in Latin but also solely botany but solely poetry. The other day I went to my first magic lantern show and I thought, yes, this is it, I will devote my life to magic lanterns now! I won’t, but the man who presented the show certainly has, and more than his lantern, I am in love with his devotion.
What I felt, when Apollo unearthed my old essays, was that I had failed to find my permanence in any of those other lives. Still, I like to think those lives are out there somewhere, I like to think they stayed. One Summer who still works in tech, one still a nanny, one still a food critic at the magazine. One who knows every face at Jimmy’s Woodlawn Tap, one who knows every dancer in Fuxing.
As the clock strikes midnight tonight, I’ll imagine them, still living their long, same lives, as though I can glimpse my other selves through the little crack the new year makes, crossing the Jardin des plantes holding a small boy’s hand or rocking on her heels on the BART platform, and know that all of us are somewhere living in our own forever.
What I Should Be Doing
Studying for my field exam, studying for my German exam, writing a talk on Milton I’m supposed to be giving at the end of this month
What I’m Actually Doing
Sweeping up pine needles, packing up ornaments, making a lot of fevered trips to The Container Store.
Also this week I’ve been kicking a little money to all my favorite arts organizations in LA, particularly the small/independent/weird ones. It’s very important to me that I always have a place to see a silent aerial puppet show on a Tuesday night so I need to make sure that keeps happening.
What I’m Reading
The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood, Youth, Dependency, Tove Ditlevsen. Ditlevsen, I recently learned, was very influential and important in Danish literature but completely new to me; I discovered these three slim volumes with their arresting covers on the discount table at Vroman’s, but I liked the first so much I went back and bought the next two.
Back to Nature: The Green and the Real in the Late Renaissance, Robert Watson. This book is all I want to talk about now. Audacious and a little off-the-wall but I am absolutely loving it, I love an academic book that isn’t afraid to take big swings.
Dostoyevsky Reads Hegel in Siberia and Bursts Into Tears, László F. Földényi. There is literally no way I could pass up a book with this title. A little rushed, shallow, and simplistic, this felt like the first draft of a much better book, but it’s fun, too, often clever, and it was a good companion on our recent trip to Virginia.
Greenery: Ecocritical Readings of Late Medieval Literature, Gillian Rudd. This one just arrived while I was out of town but I am very excited to start it once the preschool reopens after the holidays (please god reopen the preschool).
Also I'm Very Excited About
New Year’s Resolutions! Like all Geminis I am all about BIG PLANS, BIG CHANGES, LOOK OUT WORLD THIS IS MY YEAR MANIC NEW YEAR ENERGY
The Fine Print
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