Warm thanks to David and Stacey for
inviting me to BLOG this week! I plan to write about a variety of issues, magazines, people, poems, musicians…but I thought to start on a personal note
I didn’t want to finish my degree
at Oxford. It was nearly halfway through the year, and my mother and uncle
travelled to Berlin for the Berlinale. I
met them there.
Sitting in a dim restaurant in
Mitte, I didn’t touch my sauerkraut until I finished explaining exactly how
impossible it would be for me to finish my studies at Oxford. Consumed by rehearsals, I was spending all my
time in the theater, writing, acting, and
producing. I wanted to raise money to go to the Edinburgh Fringe that summer. As if that weren’t enough, I had developed a
physical allergy to academic writing.
Each time I mounted the stairs to the Rad Cam, I turned around again
like someone performing a ritual dance.
I just couldn’t do it anymore. I
felt like a puppet hanging on divine strings; even if I wanted to finish my
studies, I was being guided in another direction. The only valuable part of my
engagement with the institution was my long talks, walks, lunches on Fridays
with poet and professor Jon Stallworthy.
This was the kind of thing I could learn from. Reading poems with Jon. The rest was dross. I knew I sounded ungrateful. I knew I sounded childish and stupid. But I also knew that we only get one chance
at living, and that this year would make or break me. An indestructible fire was burning behind my
eyes. I couldn’t let it be put out. Not now.
“Pass
the class,” my uncle hissed, coldly, like a clerk.
Maybe they
hadn’t been able to concentrate on what I was saying. Maybe the food was too good. I turned to my mother, she surely understood
me.
“Pass the class!” She smiled that
omnipotent smile that makes her my mother.
That smile that means: I’m paying,
you’re obeying.
I felt as though I’d been taken
into a small detention room at an airport; no one spoke my language, no one
cared about what happened to me.
“Eat your kraut,” my uncle suggested,
kindly, moving onto desert.
I couldn’t eat. Going back to Oxford to continue enrolled as
a masters student would be like- like having many abortions at once! All my
plays would die inside me! I-
“Pass
the class!” They said in unison. I must have given a little shout. People
turned from other tables. “Just pass the
class. Then you can do whatever you
want.”
That weekend, stressed and
depressed, I decided to go to London and try to relax at a tango festival. I
had a paper to finish, and a new script to complete for a play we had already
started rehearsing. I planned to spend all day writing and all night dancing. Forget all my troubles. I had a suitcase with me, packed with
pajamas, tango shoes, and my computer.
At nightfall, I made my escape: from the café to the tango hall.
I was meeting a friend at Finchley
before heading over to the dancing. As
soon as I got off the Tube it was obvious I was in the wrong place. I stood near a large bus station; it was very
ill illumined, few people walked the streets. I called my friend and learned I
was at the wrong Finchley. I walked,
looking for someone to ask the best way to get to the other Finchley. Standing on one of those traffic islands
where cars circle around in almost four directions, I looked in front of me and
saw the blinding pink lights of a strip club. A voice growled in my ear:
“Hey
baby, where are you trying to go?”
I’m taking a taxi, I told myself,
stepping quickly away from the man and off of the island.
Glass broke at once, shattering
loud and cold against my whole body. I
turned my head, saw the shattered front of a red double decker bus, and realized
I was still flying through the air. Move with it, I told myself. Yes, I had time to tell myself that. Yes, it was slow motion. When I landed, I didn’t move. I was squatting somehow, oddly balled up on
the cement. I could see my suitcase
swallowed under the front of the bus. My computer! I thought, as the bus
driver ran to embrace me, crying.
“It’s not your fault,” I told him.
“It’s not your fault, just please
don’t touch me.”
I was afraid if I moved the wrong
way I would dislocate something. Or
break it, if it wasn’t already broken. Maybe it didn’t matter, maybe I was
paralyzed anyway. He couldn’t control
his impulse to hug me, he kept reaching out and grabbing me.
“Please, don’t cry, it’s not your
fault! Just please don’t touch me. And can you please help me to get my
bag! My bag is under your bus- please
help me get my bag!”
The ambulance came fast. Someone called and said a fifteen year old girl
had been hit by a bus. The paramedics
told me not to move, lay me down, fastened a kind of brace that kept me from
moving my neck and jaw. My suitcase was with me in the ambulance. I asked them to call my boyfriend and tell
him where they were taking me. The
paramedic wanted to know where I was a student, what I studied…she wanted to
know all about me. I told her I was
sorry but I didn’t want to talk. She
kept asking questions. I told her I wanted to cry. I thought about dancing, I thought about
being on stage- I wondered if I would be paralyzed, brain damaged, or
what. I pictured my computer in many
pieces. I saw dark lights on an empty stage.
When she realized
I wasn’t interested in talking about my university or academic interests or
boyfriend or anything else really, the paramedic started talking to me about
herself. She was from Ireland, had just
gotten married, loved her husband dearly, and thought she had a great job. Things couldn’t be better for her
really. When we got to the hospital, she
met a friend of hers that she hadn’t seen in a long time. He had also just gotten married. His
wife was pregnant, he had a vacation coming up soon. So did she. We were queing to enter the ER, and the que wasn’t
moving an inch.
“You guys are really enjoying your lives,”
I observed, perking my lips and speaking in a strange accent inspired by the
jaw brace.
They looked down at me and smiled.
Inside the ER, I was stationed a
curtain away from someone who really sounded like they were about to die. The
cries were so guttural, I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. I got scared.
Maybe they had placed me in the dying ward. I started screaming with her (or him),
loud. Together we managed to attract one
Brazilian nurse who petted our hands, first his (or hers,) then mine, and assured
us that soon someone would come help us.
“Alexandra?!”
“Ress!”
(Yes, pronounced with a jaw brace.)
It was my boyfriend. He stood over me, and started to cry.
“Please!
Get my computer! I need to see my computer!”
He tried to hold my hand.
“Please! Can you let go of my hand
and open the suitcase and get my computer?”
“You’re crazy,” I heard him
say. “You just got hit by a bus, who
cares about your computer?!”
“I want to see it. It’s probably
destroyed,” I said, tears oozing out. “Everything is on there. My whole life. Please can you just take it out of the
suitcase?”
Trembling, he went for the bag. I strained my eyes all the way to the right
to be able to behold the computer as soon as it came out. It had been deep under the bus, I reminded
myself. It must be shattered.
When I saw it lifted out intact, I
couldn’t believe it. I smiled
inside.
“Open it!” I begged. “Turn it on!”
He looked at me in disbelief. I threatened him with my squint. He gave up and opened the computer; I held my
breath as he pressed the button. Then, like
angels singing, I heard the “daaaAAAA”
of the Apple coming to life. I closed my eyes and rested.