I Did It
I didn’t want to. I didn’t
want to do it. I didn’t think,
even once, before it happened,
of wanting to do it, of wanting
anyone to do it, let alone me.
I was free from want. I was
oblivious, entirely occupied
with other things –
the rocks, the leaves, the
pursuances. I had no
attention left. It hadn’t even
crossed my peripheries.
Truth be told, I hadn’t even
heard of it – I had not the slightest
inkling that such a thing were possible,
let alone so popular. When I realized,
for the first time, that I had done it,
it had to be explained to me. I was
that out of it. I really didn’t even
understand what was happening.
I just kept on in my normal fashion,
maybe somewhat slightly aware
of the gawks and agape mouths
that surrounded me. But they didn’t
register – not really. I only
somewhat fantasized about them,
and only for a split second. In that
split second I simply thought
that some outrageous
stunt had occurred behind me.
I thought maybe some acrobat had
face-planted into the brick wall behind
me. Maybe a big old truck was on
fire. Maybe a swirl of green had left
the sky and come crashing down to
earth, plastic and oozing. But
I looked back and saw nothing,
of course. There was nothing
behind me. Only a wisp of
breeze and some billowing
strips of trash. So I kept walking.
Faster now, head down. Unnerved,
I guess, aware somewhat of the
consortium of gazes but incapable
of reconciling them to the anonymity
I had up until then assumed for myself.
My pace again quickened, and
I brought my head lower towards
my chest. It was almost as if a great
pressure were pushing down upon it,
my forehead, forcing it down – a pressure
gathered from all directions, coalesced
into an invisible corkscrew driving itself
at me. In retrospect, it made perfect
sense. What other way was there
to feel? How else was I to react?
How else was anyone to react?
Everything that was happening
in that moment was entirely logical
and understandable – I know that now.
But at the time it was inconceivable.
It’s so funny, how far from ourselves
we can be. I imagine, in that moment,
there were two,
parallel versions of myself,
held within the same outline, their
appearance and movements exactly
the same, doubled so precisely that
any deviance from an absolute
sameness of appearance was
imperceptible to the naked human eye.
And yet, I also imagine that those
two versions of myself existed,
simultaneously, at the furthest
reaches of metaphysical coherence
from one another. They were two
beings sharing an identical
physical reality, and yet
existing in two realities of intention
so dissimilar that it’s maybe impossible
to refer to both as something even
akin to a reality, as if they each
represented a matrix
of discernible, graspable
indicators, some aligned some not.
Instead, they’d probably be
more like polarities, or tunings –
aspects of relation. They’d exist only
in a vibrational ether refracting
the clean and complete oppositeness
of one another: one that knows, one
that knows not. One that does,
one that does not. I might
hazard to declare that the tone
produced in the disjunction
between those two becomings was me.
It sounds a bit obtuse,
but that’s simply how I felt,
in as precise a language as I
can muster. It was me. And
what was I doing? People will
say otherwise, but in my mind,
I was simply strolling. That’s all
it was. My only wish for that afternoon
was to amble lightheartedly
down the sidewalk, in search
of a nice treat. All my energies
angled me towards that outcome.
I’ll admit it: I love a treat. I love a
delectable little morsel to whet
my palate and send me off
on a happy quest. Most mornings
it’s all I can think of – very rare is the
day that gets started outside
this ritual of indulgence. On this
day in particular, I remember my
treat of choice being a pour
of tonic water in a glass tumbler,
with two ice cubes, a slice of lemon
on the side, a ritz cracker on the side,
the intent to eat half a bag of M&M’s
later on, and a nice long inhale of climate
controlled air in the pharmacy
on the corner, one block down
from the café I frequent.
Now, I’ve been told before that,
individually, these kinds of choices
might not add up to what most
people understand to be a treat.
But my feeling is that
the consistency of a treat
lies not in the actual consumed
“treats” themselves, but in the
degree of specificity with which
they are chosen. The more specific,
the more precise to a moment,
is the desired object, the greater
its status as a treat. For me, that
day, the most precise thing I could
determine was a pour
of tonic water in a glass tumbler,
with two ice cubes, a slice of lemon
on the side, a ritz cracker on the side,
the intent to eat half a bag of M&M’s
later on, and a nice long inhale of climate
controlled air in the pharmacy
on the corner, one block down
from the café. The act of manifesting
such an explicit arrangement, cementing
its appearance within that episode
of the day – fusing it to the day –
that was the treat. That was the
extravagance: the making real of
an absolute set of conditions whose
meaningfulness lay exclusively
within their mystical adherence
to an inherent but elusive
personal compulsion. Of course,
I understand that within this formulation,
there’s the risk that such precision might
result in something ridiculous – some
self-consciously wacky or absurd
designation, like a game of scopa
played atop an elaborately woven
tray made from the fine shed nosehairs
of pekingese showdogs. But I’d never
do that. Such a scene could not denote
my desire, nor anyone else’s really.
Nobody could honestly demand
such a thing. There’s no truth to it – it’s too
dependent on the abstruse distances
between its component parts.
The magic is lost. It’s no longer
a treat – it is instead more like a whim.
But most people don’t understand
the difference. Most people
probably couldn’t even tell you
why they would want a treat
in the first place – they spend
their whole lives ignoring what
they want. Worse, they spend
their whole lives imagining that
the wants they experience satisfy
an essential, fundamental aspect
of themselves, when in fact
what’s happening is exactly
the opposite: some essential
aspect of themselves is
being satisfied by contriving as
a treat one of these patent absurdities.
Because the essential character
of most people is an incomprehensible
morass of infinitely differentiated
impulses. A true want – a true treat –
cuts through all that. It’s a column
of gravity that pulls you together
and nails you to the present.
To merely reflect the discord
of the soul is to unhook oneself
from life and float, directionless,
unconscious, disintegrating.
Take, for example, this thing I did.
I don’t even know what to call it.
In many ways, I don’t even know
how to describe it, because I can’t
visualize it occurring in any way
other than how it occurred when
I, myself, did it. It is inseparable
from the fact of having done it
myself. And I don’t think I’m alone
in having borne this relationship to it,
because, in its immediate aftermath,
after the dust had settled and the
passersby had uncovered themselves,
and the fog had lifted and the
shaking stopped, and the uncountable
blades of grass had stopped waving,
and the moisture in the air had stopped
flickering, and the clouds had burst
into light, and the light had begun
pouring out from within the heat
of the sun, which had stopped rounding
in the exuberant depths of space,
and the shadows hiding behind the
houses and the cars revealed their lengths
and let into themselves the voices
of the animals that had
all gathered in a broad circle around us,
and upon their hind legs stood and
bellowed and bowed and stomped,
and danced and gleaned and pulled
from the weight of the stuff of the day
the shapes mounted upon my lips,
the words: no, please, you,
have to believe me,
I didn’t want to, I didn’t, I swear,
I swear, I didn’t. They then threw themselves
upon the ground, and wracked and bent
their bodies, and flipped and
torqued and withheld, and
having wound themselves
into such pressure,
pitched forwards without stopping,
like round shot
from a cannon’s barrel,
their little furry bodies flung inwards,
towards us, at a terrible velocity,
at a speed interminably mounting,
brutally stretched to the ends of vision,
and the sound and taste of the atmosphere,
shredding, all of them,
in the mounting friction
of their great pursuit,
the ends of their fur igniting
and turned to whistling
mounds of eager flame twisting
in the day’s breath.
**
JOSEF KAPLAN is the author of Loser, recently out from Make Now Books. His other books include Poem Without Suffering; All Nightmare: Introductions, 2011-2012; Kill List; and Democracy Is Not for the People. He lives in Philadelphia.