1
The alien in the illustration has chalk-white skin and pouty lips. The eyes seem glassy, unfocused. A gray helmet (or helmet-shaped turban) adorns the head; a wolf-like ear emerges from one side.
The alien wears a gray uniform with a question mark emblazoned on the chest. He’s embracing a chalk-white, fox-like creature that has a single horn emerging from its forehead.
Of course, this may not be an alien at all. It’s impossible to say exactly what the artist had in mind. She may have wanted to depict a demigod, or some demented superhero. For that matter, I’m not even certain about the identity of the artist. Pat Steir is credited with “cover design”. Does that mean she drew the image? Or does it only mean that she selected it, and the title font, and the byline font, and figured out the ideal spatial relations between the three?
What can I say, for certain, about this illustration? Only that the publishing firm of Harper & Row found it suitable for the cover of its 1968 paperback edition of Myth and Reality. The book’s genre? Scholarly nonfiction—an examination of mythological themes that have recurred throughout history. The author? A Romanian named Mircea Eliade.
I’m reading it now.
Well, I’m not reading it right now.
Right now, I’m taking a break from reading the book so I can admire that cover art. I have a hunch that if I keep staring at it I’ll discover some fascinating, previously unnoticed detail. Throughout my life, in many different contexts, I’ve found staring to be a useful tactic.
When I’m not staring at the cover I’m compulsively smelling the pages. They’re humid.
Well, that’s not quite accurate. If I tell you: “they’re humid”, you’ll assume they’re slightly damp to the touch. You may think they smell of mildew. That’s not what I mean. It’s more subtle than that. What I mean is, they may have been exposed to humidity sometime in the past. They’re half-humid. Haunted by the ghost of humidity.
I bought this edition of Myth and Reality from a used book store. That said, I’m not certain this book was ever really used. It looks like the kind of book someone bought for a college class, but never read.
Such a sad-looking book. I imagine that it languished for years on the bookshelf of the student who never read it. Long after she graduated, she kept it around as a trophy of her education. (She needed something “deep” on her shelves to counterbalance all the knick-knacks and stuffed animals.)
Maybe the plan worked, and visitors to the student’s apartment noticed her bookshelves. Maybe, after scanning a shelf and coming across the title Myth and Reality, the visitors decided she could be taken seriously (but, as the stuffed Snoopy doll right next to the book testified, not too seriously).
On the other hand, maybe the student never had any visitors to her apartment. Maybe she suffered from insomnia. Maybe she had no coping skills with which to navigate the post-college world. Everything had been so structured, in college. There were clubs and classes and parties. Even if you didn’t attract boys, you could pretend they noticed you. Even if you didn’t care about the classes, they gave you something to do. Even if you didn’t have friends, you could find drinking buddies. You could forge pseudo-friendships. You could become some more popular girl’s hanger on.
Okay, maybe you couldn’t be the most popular girl’s hanger on, but you could be a hanger on for a third-tier girl. Even if you weren’t the queen bee (or a lady-in-waiting for the queen bee) you could still feel the buzz of the hive.
But I digress. The important thing is that, at some point (years later), the student died. Granted, I don’t know if that’s true. Nonetheless, I’m including it because these daydreams of mine, these little stories I invent, benefit from a dollop of pathos.
And let’s say that after the student died, her aunt went through her apartment. And maybe that aunt held no real sentiment for the student. So, the aunt threw almost everything into the trash. In fact, only two objects survived the cull: the stuffed Snoopy and the unread 1968 edition of Myth and Reality.
The aunt imagined an Antiques Roadshow sort of moment. She’d take both objects to a secondhand store, where they’d be appraised and found to be Valuable Collector’s Items.
This did not happen. The dude behind the counter refused to take the Snoopy doll, as one of the seams on its right ear had torn open. He did give the aunt forty-nine cents for Myth and Reality. Of course, he later priced it at $4.99. He had to make his profit.
To be clear: that last part, in which I related the price of the book, is the only part of this little story that’s demonstrably true. I know that part because I bought the book from that exact dude, behind that exact counter, for that exact price, five years ago. Yes, I bought it five years ago. I’m only now getting around to reading it.
I probably shouldn’t invest so much time in making up little stories. But that’s the kind of person I am: I enjoy making up little stories about the previous owners of the books I find at secondhand shops.
I enjoy making up little stories about lots of things. It kills time.
I used to think time was too precious to kill. Now that I’m unemployed, I know better. Work is toil, yes. I hate work. But the only thing I hate more than work is the absence of work. Work means money. Even more importantly, work is Something to Do.
Without work, I find myself staying in bed for too long, inhaling the sour odor of unwashed socks and gazing up at the mountain range of dust growing atop the ceiling fan. Sometimes I get tired of the view. Women aren’t supposed to live in such conditions. Not even single, middle-aged women. We can be hoarders, I suppose. Crazy cat ladies. We’re given that freedom. But we’re not supposed to have mountains of dust on our ceiling fans. Nor are we supposed to have disgusting bathrooms.
I have both, and live completely alone. I have no man to blame. Nor am I a cat owner. I am the sole architect of my squalor.
Sometimes, I have to stop looking at the mess. So, I turn the fan on. When the blades whirl around, the motion makes them blurry. That way, I don’t have to look at the dust. I can lie in bed, stare at the ceiling, and pretend everything’s normal.
I know I should clean the ceiling fan. It would not only improve my view, it would provide a sense of accomplishment. For that matter, why stop at the ceiling fan? I could make a list of five things to clean every day, make checkmarks next to the tasks as I complete them, and feel an even greater sense of accomplishment.
That would be a reasonable approach. It would make sense. I’d feel so much lighter, so much freer as a result.
But I can’t be reasonable. Something irrational, heavy, and intrusive has taken over my brain. It weighs my head down. Yes, my skull is every bit as heavy as a cinderblock. My neck would break if it had to support such a burden on its own! So, I must always lie down.
No, that’s not the case. I exaggerate.
I can get up to turn the ceiling fan on. I can get up to piss and shit and check the mail and go to the grocery store.
The truth: I can move, but have decided the rewards of cleanliness aren’t worth the effort required to obtain them. My mother would say I’m lazy. If I were to confide in her about the irrational, heavy, intrusion she would say I was being gratuitously weird. Only, she wouldn’t use the word “gratuitously”. Such words are beyond her. She would simply scowl and say “You’re weird!” My weirdness has always exasperated and disgusted her. Her ignorance has always exasperated and disappointed me. She and I do not think alike. Not even remotely alike. My thinking is a foreign language to her, and vice-versa. We look exactly alike, facially. We have the same dishwater blond hair too. It’s even styled the same. But we’re nothing alike, in our souls.
Bottom line: I know I’m not lazy. I know the irrational, heavy intrusion is real. I can’t see it, but it’s there.
I know it has a name. I know that name rhymes with “recession”. I know our society has said it’s a disease. I know there are doctors who could, for a price, provide a cure. A pill, a potion, an incantation, a validation. Pharmaceutical corporations make a fortune off such magic. They’re always advertising on TV.
I don’t trust anything advertised on TV.
I fear I’m coming across as cynical (or even paranoid). I don’t want to come across as cynical (let alone paranoid). I’d love for this irrational, heavy intrusion to be lifted from me. I’m just not convinced the helpers offer anything better.
I have an earnest heart. I would like, more than anything, to believe in the goodness of doctors. However, I can’t trust them. I’ve crossed paths with a few of them. They never seem like real people.
2
So, I stay in bed. I read. Or, at least, I admire the cover of the book I’m reading. I think about its previous owner(s). I get up to turn the ceiling fan on. I perform the various and sundry movements necessary to piss and shit. I check the mail. Go to the grocery store.
That’s how I spend my days.
But what about my nights?
Well, it’s the funniest thing. The irrational, heavy, intrusion lifts after dark. What I mean is, it doesn’t lift completely. Darkness isn’t a cure. It is, however, a treatment. It gives me enough energy to walk (or at least shamble) through my neighborhood.
It’s puzzling. Why should depression lift, just a little, at nightfall? I can think of no physiological reason for this to be the case. So, to find the answer, we have to look beyond mere physiology. We must look to axiology (the study of value), perhaps even to ontology (the study of being). At least, I believe it’s in these realms that I discovered a possible answer; that is, a theory that might explain this strange alleviation of my suffering.
I call it The Theory of Nocturnal Purgation. In plain English, I believe my depression lifts after dark because daytime is cluttered and nighttime is clean.
I mean, just think about it. Daylight allows us to see all sorts of objects. Too many objects. The world is now surfeit with objects. Little plastic things. Big plastic things. Ironic things. Action figures. Cute little collectible Funko Pops! Candy. Pills. Rusted-out sheet metal. Plastic grocery bags. Squirrels. Broken glass. Dogs with only three legs. Dogs cross-bred with coyotes. Ridiculous small dogs. Cats with debilitating mutations. Televisions infected with talking heads. Screaming heads. Doll heads. Shrunken heads. Secondhand books with strange cover art. Store brand soda cans. Store brand cereal boxes. Obsolete electronics. Phones and stop lights and microwaves and refrigerators.
Homo sapiens was never meant to look at so many objects. They rush, en masse, at our eyeballs. They clog up our pupils the way leaves clog up gutters.
Oh, and speaking of eyes, they’re objects too—just like tongues, breasts, and armpit hairs. Objects are all over the place. We’re enclosed within certain objects (e.g., houses) and we enclose other objects within us (apples, hot dogs, Twinkies). We are like those nested Russian matryoshka dolls, simultaneously surrounded by objects and surrounding objects.
No doubt, the number of objects has proliferated exponentially since the dawn of mass production and the invention of molded plastic. Surely, more objects exist on Earth than have ever existed here before. (Cavemen knew nothing of venetian blinds and phone chargers, step ladders and stuffed animals. Theirs was a simpler, purer world. Earth, wind, fire, watering holes, animals—that was all they had to worry about. Sturdy objects, all of them.)
Our modern objects are anything but sturdy. The increase in the quantity has necessitated a decrease in quality. Objects are flimsier than they used to be. Uglier than they used to be. Mutable, meltable, disposable.
During the daylight hours I’m forced to look at all the crap in my house. I become aware that I’m surrounded by layers of junk. I ruminate on how everyone is surrounded by layers of junk. (Even people with uncluttered houses. Their junk might be better organized, but it’s still junk.)
We are all shrouded and suffocated under junk.
We, ourselves, are junk. (No exceptions.)
We shroud and suffocate other bits of junk within us.
Nighttime purges this Hell from my sight. I’m still shrouded and suffocated by junk, but I’m less aware of it.
I sense an objection. (Ha! “Objection”.) Is “junk” the right word? Isn’t that too dismissive? Are newborn babies and mighty sequoias merely “objects”? How can I possibly dismiss them as such? If we consider each of them one at a time, as abstract mental images, taken alone, they seem to transcend such classification. They seem magnificent.
But that takes us to the crux of the issue: in real life, they’re never isolated. Never alone. Thus, never untainted. When it emerges from the womb, the newborn is slathered in all sorts of unpleasant gunk (a casserole of blood, amniotic fluid, waxy vernix, etc.). Yes, of course, the casserole is soon washed off. But other objects soon take its place.
When gunk disappears, junk fills the void. For example, the mewing goblin finds itself wrapped in a plastic diaper, under a Walmart onesie. It finds itself placed within the confines of a hand-me-down crib, forced to stare up at a cracked ceiling. To be born is to be smothered in junk.
I’ve discussed the objects surrounding the baby. But what objects does the baby surround? Urine in the bladder. Feces in the intestines. Tears holed up in ducts, waiting for an excuse to escape.
As for the sequoias, they’re also better considered in a vacuum. Taken alone, out of context, they ooze grandeur. But Nature abhors a vacuum. It sadistically insists on prohibiting solitude. Thus, the sequoias suffer under the footfalls of squirrels. Birdshit stains their leaves. Even worse, some have been partially hollowed out to allow cars to pass through them. Behold the obscenity: turds tucked inside humans, humans tucked inside cars, cars tucked inside sequoias, sequoias covered in birdshit. Junk nested within junk, shit nested within shit, ad infinitum.
Thus, darkness is a blessing. Night hides things. When one takes a walk down a suburban street at midnight, one is troubled by relatively few objects.
Now you may be thinking to yourself: But what about the stars?The existence of stars complicates matters. There are hundreds of them visible in the night sky, right? And therefore, nighttime is even more glutted with objects than day!
Perhaps.
But when was the last time you saw hundreds of stars in the night sky? I live in a little working class subdivision. Lights from a nearby city shine brightly enough to keep most stars at bay. Besides, there’s an easy way to protect oneself from the nuisance of stars: never look up.
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