Disembody

I made a recording of myself, left it, forgot about it, and then listened to it today, when I thought enough time had passed that I wouldn’t be able to remember what I had said.

It was very strange.

I’ve written before about feeling displaced from my own body when I watched my family’s home videos for the first time; when I saw myself moving and breathing and alive before a video camera, when I was too young to harbor any memory of where I was or what I was doing.

It felt like seeing a ghost, like something that was no longer alive was now living. Except the ghost was myself, and last I checked, I’m still breathing.

My experiment today was much the same.

Maybe the strangeness was mostly for the fact that I’m not accustomed to hearing myself speak in a recording. I cringe whenever I listen to the last voiceover I made, so I’ve kept a point of not trying to hear myself speak.

But after this, I might try again.

It’s no less strange hearing myself talk, but it does give me the kind of distance that I sometimes need, whenever I feel like I’m bogging myself down or whenever I start to feel out of touch with my own skin.

It’s worth doing again.

Fool synesthete

When I was younger, I’d do an experiment. If I was around people I knew closely and spied on them long enough, sometimes I could sense something colorful.

I wasn’t exactly looking for an aura, but if I kept watching, I’d start to associate someone so strongly with a color that I’d start to feel it. And most of the time, my dad felt green.

I’d think of green especially when I’d see him in the kitchen, stirring fava beans into his ful.

Ful (pronounced “fool”) is a comfort dish, and even if you have no idea what it is, you can find out everything there is to know about ful from its scent.

You don’t need this picture. You don’t need to know ingredients. When you get the chance, you’re going to sit down and devour every bit of this–one whiff will confirm it.

The fact of ful’s deliciousness is so simple, and whenever Dad cooked it, “simple” is exactly how he’d appear to me:

When the ful was done, he’d switch off the stove, grab the newspaper, and drop the pot off at the table. He never bothered with bowls when he didn’t need them.

He didn’t even need spoons. He’d pull his pita from the toaster and toss it palm to palm the way he used to dribble a soccer ball, negotiating the heat. Back at the table he’d rip off a chunk, scoop up some beans, chew, and swallow–Mediterranean style. That was the only way to eat.

When the bread was gone and the last fava bean shoveled, he’d down the rest of the broth and lean back, the oil still shiny on his lips.

And for a little while longer he’d sit and read his paper, the smell of the ful would linger, and everything would be green.

The right words

It was not a natural death.

That was the phrase she kept using, how she chose to index it in her memory. And how could I blame her?

Mom didn’t speak again for a long time, and not once did she look at me. Her thoughts were outside the passenger window, where she could watch them from a distance.

I’d never known anything to upset my mom to the point that she met it with silence. But still, I pressed.

“Can you tell me what happened?”

Soft, almost animalistic, came a little noise of apprehension.

I was relentless. “Please?”

What I was today

isn’t what I will be yesterday.

Can you? Will you? Why didn’t you?

I called myself a determinist

I learned a new word today (I say ‘new,’ but I’ve probably come across it in school, and failed to remember). The word is hamartia.

Dictionary.com defines it as a tragic flaw, but from other sources I’ve read, it’s more layered than that.

Even though you can’t see me, I’m looking at you, Oedipus

Hamartia is the moment – as with Oedipus and other tragic heroes – when one must make a decision that, ultimately, will determine one’s fate–the choice that will result in either a Happily Ever After or an eye-gouging, gruesome tragedy that highschoolers will forever remember.

I doubt I’ve faced a decision so fraught with risk as poor Oedipus. At least, I’m still around to say that I haven’t.

But how can I know for sure?

What stresses me out sometimes (probably more than it should) is that, no matter how clear-headed I feel at a particular moment, when I must make a choice that carries any bit of weight, I can never feel certain in it. No matter how rational I believe I am in making a decision, no matter how long I take or how many outside opinions I measure before that final leap, I still worry – in the moment when I make that choice – that in the end I’m just jumping towards concrete.

It’s happened before. What I felt was a sound decision based on reason, not emotion, made after much introspection, not impulse, turned out to be the opposite.

I messed up.

Granted, I was not so reckless that I had to blind myself for what I’d done. But still.

I called myself a Determinist, and all I got was this lousy anxiousness.