All that she desires

polaroid by Patrick Romero via Amy Stein

I sat there bleeding on the airplane and watching the film about Jane Austen. I could not bring myself to get up and walk to the bathroom and the two, the blood and the film, seemed very much related. Do you know what it is like, to feel blood coming down and then dripping between your legs? I took pleasure in the feeling, in the knowing that without the other, each on its own would have been banal.

The flight had been delayed and I would be returning home late. I looked forward to the boyfriend and I hoped he would bring the dog when he came to pick me up. But, in some ways, I hoped more that the flight would continue to be delayed. I relished the idea of flying around the sky, never touching down, and retreating to some kind of limbo. Limbo was a luxury. A luxury I wanted to taste.

I saw the documentary about Cindy Sherman, an artist I have always admired. As a college student I had a box of postcards: pictures of her earliest photographs. I knew that she had taken the photos of herself, had become her own subject, but the photos didn’t reveal anything about her. Each of these photos told a story, melodramatic and familiar, and at the same time inconclusive. In the documentary, the filmmaker befriended the famous artist and, surprisingly, they end up together. But the shadow of her art and her success eclipse him completely.

On the plane, I closed my eyes and tried to imagine my future. This is what all the self-help books suggest. It is even what a few of my friends suggest. I couldn’t seem to get past what the next step on the ground might look like. Tomorrow? Next week? I felt like an alcoholic in rehabilitation: one day at a time. Even when I tried to envision the secret to my success, I couldn’t get beyond the next day.

There are so many things to explore in the universe and it makes me dizzy to think of it. Like trying to count all the stars in the sky. A Herculean task.

I would like to close my eyes and drift instead of counting. I would like to feel the brightness of the stars instead of seeing. And I would like to know the limitless of the universe instead of imagining.