will(fully) in the world

i know there are some of you out there that are thinking that my infatuation with stephen greenblatt is getting to be just this side of ridiculous ... perhaps even just the other side of scary. it seems trite and even cliché to wail once more about just how transformative that "resonance and wonder" moment was the afternoon i heard him speak -- but it was and i just can't get away from that.

it seems, however, that i've done a right good job lately of getting away from myself. tonight, i had a solid heart to heart with confessing mermaid about an overwhelming situation i'm dealing with and for the first time since this situation bubbled to the surface, i was able to articulate exactly how it makes me feel.

i'm going to be frank, and perhaps this may get me in some trouble, but i honestly don't care. there is a person who was at one time in my life, and who remains on the periphery, who has made me feel as though i have somehow lost (dropped? misplaced? discarded?) that kernel of me-ness that i trick myself into believing defines who i am. the good little post-structuralist in me is having a difficult time with this whole kernel idea, but i'm telling her to be quiet, because it works.

sara hall, in her rowing memoir drawn to the rhythm, discusses how she faced a similar circumstance and was able to locate in the sport i love a way out of a situation where a person left her "hurt and confused". Her description of that situation, prior to her entry into the rowing world, has a resonance and wonder all its own: "It was as if my own experience of [any] situation, my reality, was suddenly slippery and elusive [. . . .] With each little remark I felt smaller and less solid, and [the other person] seemed to get bigger -- somehow harder and immovable [. . . .] I learned to walk on eggs, to phrase and time my comments and requests to avoid the accusations, the little stabbing blade of sarcasm; learned to avoid the requests I knew were hopeless anyway" (174-75). i remember the first time i read that passage -- i was sitting all solitary in the campus library, working on an article (for which i was reading hall's memoir) and i had to put the book down and walk away for awhile. what i had just read hit too close to home.

the past couple of weeks, in dealing with this situation, i've allowed the memories and the ripples of this person's existence on the periphery of my life to absorb the energy and passion i normally devote to other things: my writing, my reading, my friendships/relationships, my sport, my music -- all of the things that nurture me as an individual and give me a sense of self that i believe is worth protecting and standing up for in the face of challenges such as those this person brings into my life. as i said to confessing mermaid tonight, i know that the best way for me to deal right now is to take the energy i've been devoting to nurturing this problem and invest it in those things that give me a sense of self. what i realized tonight, however, as i finally articulated that thought, was that i was feeling emotionally bankrupt. to put it in the language of rowing (because really, when is the jargon of that crazy subculture more appropriate than in moments such as this!) i'd completely drained the tank. in the last 250 m of this race, i had pulled two 7-ups and i had nothing left to give.

okay, i know you're wondering when i'm going to break out the g-man. here it comes.

kismet has a strange way of delivering what i need when i most need it. today, as i was making my way from the coffee bar in the bookstore i frequent to the exit, i passed table of biographies that some sales clerk had selected that represented folks most prominent in our cultural imagination at this moment. sitting on the corner of the table, as though it had been set down by an indecisive shopper, was the store's only copy of the g-man's will in the world. since i'm currently waiting impatiently for my recall of the g-man's practicing new historicism to come in at stauffer, i saw this book as something to tide me over. i snatched it up, along with julia cameron's the right to write, and dashed for the register.

pop culture critic james twitchell is probably the only person alive that would joyously and un-judgmentally celebrate the way in which i deploy practices of consumerism to construct my identity (okay, jimmy t and cm!). to all those who might not at this very moment agree with jim and me (and cm): fuck off. in the thick of my conversation with cm, i glanced down at my desktop and saw the two covers starring back at me, as if to say "duh, you know what you need to do!" i need to reach somewhere inside of me, down into that place where i store that nameless thing i pull out in moments of great difficulty both in rowing and in life, and begin to go about being, pardon the horrible pun, "will(fully) in the world". the one way i know how to do that is through writing, both about literature and my life. i consider this post my first step away from this troubling situation and toward that sense of self that, for the past few weeks, i was so afraid might be lost for good.