If Sappho says, “Desire melts the limbs,” then is it the very desire of my characters that distorts their faces, disturbs the symmetry of their bodies? It is fairly obvious that mobility can be a conduit of desire, that moving in and out of places, crossing borders, is in part a grasping for that which these characters themselves don’t have. But what exactly do the characters want? In Eros the Bittersweet Anne Carson asks, “Whoever desires what is not gone? No one...[for] to be running breathlessly, but not yet arrived is itself delightful, a suspended moment of living hope”. Is it those spaces in between, the gaps and ruptures between origin and destination in which my characters wish to remain? Or are they grasping and leaning towards something else?
As I saw my characters moving back and forth not only between geographical borders but psychological borders and boundaries as well, changing their minds on a whim simply because they could, going in and out of relationships, friendships, kinship, I began to see them disappear, render themselves invisible, and it was a self inflicted kind of disappearing act. I saw them start to erase themselves unconsciously. They not only begin to fragment, morph, and distort, but they ultimately disappear. They come to not exist even though of course they still exist. What they gain in one sweep or pass of movement, they lose in another and so forth. They erase themselves metaphysically.
In the story “Zelig ca. 2008,” a struggling filmmaker can't decide what girl he wants. As soon as he professes his love to a screenwriter, he leaves her for a starlet, but then keeps seeing the screenwriter, who accuses him of living in his own fantasy world, of erasing himself in his own dissatisfaction, his own indecision. The story begins:
This is a story about O, a man who was disappearing into the plots of his films, but going about his everyday life anyway. Lately it was love letters, for the first time in his life:
You're perfect for me.
We'll build a cocoon and love in it forever.
Screenwriter X had dumped Director O two months earlier because she claimed he had no beginning and no end. Because he was a mystery that no one could solve.
Later in the story O says:
Zelig was a guy who could jump into anyone's skin and just become that person. He was such a natural.
Zelig was such a chameleon that he didn't exist, X said. He existed as so many different people that he cancelled himself out.
That makes him even more real to me.
Because you're living your life in a film, X continued. A film that doesn't
exist. Chasing after starlets that don't exist. It's your own movie playing inside your head. You're disappearing into the scrim of your own script.
I began to attribute the erasure in part to choice. Desire is heightened in our culture, a commodity to cultivate and then exploit, something to prey upon. Everywhere around us, desire is created, nurtured where it didn’t exist before. This kind of planted desire results in a grasping, a restlessness for the astounding array of options available to those with access. Where to live? What country? City? Apartment? House? Where to work? What kind of work? Who to date? Marry? Break up with? Friends? What to eat? Books? Music? Internet? Bars? Restaurants? Trips? And once we get what we desire, once we achieve those desires? How long can these results last? Since we can’t desire that which we have, how long before we are on to the next thing? Desiring, longing, grasping, wanting, needing something else we do not have.
Too many options can manifest in a certain kind of paralysis, leading to a groundless kind of wandering. No decisions can be made. One wanders from one thing to the other, lost, unable to make important decisions that could ground, unable to stick with something for long enough to connect. In the “Zelig,” after making love to X, O wavers about his new starlet:
I’ve run out of things to talk about with her, O said. I don’t know what I’m doing.
You’re being fictional, X said.
O laughed. And do fictional characters exist? Can I exist if I'm fictional? If I'm fictional, I can always exist, he continued and smiled. I can always be 26 years old. Like I promised myself.
The more you talk the less real you become, X said. You’re canceling yourself out!
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