The Ids of March

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"I had a vision of myself right now, as a kind of wandering bachelor Mendican poet, wandering all the way down the beaches of Malaysia, eating magic mushrooms all the way as I went until I reached Bali and evaporated in a state of ecstasy in the sunset."

- from Spalding Gray, Swimming to Cambodia

* * *

I'm crazy. Or at least I was crazy. Or at least there are some pieces of paper somewhere in the world that would indicate that I'm crazy. Or was crazy. Sometimes it's hard to tell about these things.

I went to an eye doctor when I was in fourth grade; I had no idea I was near-sighted until he flipped some lenses in front of my eyes and the world suddenly snapped into focus. I never thought to ask why the world was fuzzy; that was just the way the world was. Crazy is like that, too: a doctor presents a theory, or a prescription, or a suggestion about how to look at the world, and, like the eye doctor, asks, "Better or worse?"

Better or worse.

Better or worse.

Fuck if I know. The thing is, whether the world is blurry or not, we keep stumbling through it. What choice is there?

What choice is there?

* * *

I'm home now. Except I don't mean the home where I live; I mean the home where I grew up, the home where I was a kid. My parents' home. Except I don't mean that home, either, because my parents moved a few years ago. They packed up all the furniture and books and trinkets and all the landmarks and icons of "home," and unpacked them in this other place, so that this new place seems familiar even though it's completely different. The house is full of memories that I never actually had.

They pulled off a funny trick when they moved, managing to fit a full house worth of stuff into a smaller house. I try to pull off a similar trick when I visit: I try to fit all the experience I've acquired since I moved out; I try to sneak those ten-plus years into this place; but it never fits, just like the high school letter jacket doesn't fit. So one sense I get, coming home, is that nothing fits.

* * *

I find a stash of old books and CDs in the basement. This was me, then. This is what my world sounded like. These are the words that went in and out of my head.

Better or worse?

I try to explain to the stylist why it's so hard for me to get my hair cut. I don't know what I want. I don't know what I'm supposed to be. She seems to understand: "The hair," she says, "is where the superego meets the id. And it's right there in the mirror, every single morning."

Sometimes it's hard to tell about these things.

Some days I want to evaporate.

"He is a dreamer; let us leave him. Pass."

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