Loring, a Writing Life

9: My Shadow Self

“The life so short, the craft so long to learn.” Chaucer

I’ve never been a quick study. Not about life anyway.

If you have been following along with this week after week, you may be thinking otherwise.

Indeed, it may seem that I had it figured out, had created a cute bohemian life. Making a living without a job. Taking a long daily walk. Dressing as I liked most days. Being a man-about-town, a friend to the baristas, on a first-name basis with the grocery store cashier. The teacher meeting students at the neighborhood coffee house, driving here and there to help my Tibetan friends. Doing presentations on teaching writing to groups of teachers. Most days, I could honestly say I was my own best friend. I enjoyed my own company and felt proud of the extra help I gave the people who needed it.

But everybody has a shadow. About once a week I bought a bottle of wine, shut the door, and turned off my phone.

I paced the floor reading aloud the Dead White Males—and some of the soon-to-be-dead, too—Ginsberg, for one. I’ve always loved his “Sunflower Sutra” and relished walking back and forth, tipsy, in my living room, hearing the words come off the page in my voice. Eliot’s Prufrock was in those days a favorite that I tried to memorize until the third glass of wine told me to forget it. And I had already memorized John Crowe Ransom’s “Blue Girls,” which I enjoyed reciting for high school students, emphasizing the last lines: “For I could tell you a story, which is true…” I paced the floor reading or reciting, imagining myself performing for an audience or class, larger in the world than I had the courage to be. The wine freed me into a confidence I couldn’t otherwise feel.

I paced telling stories or explaining myself to the empty room. As I drank more, I enjoyed telling off some target of my resentments, someone I felt slighted by, some superior snob who had made me feel my insignificance. In my own apartment, high on those first glasses, I swelled with pride for important insights that I forgot in minutes. But reasons and justifications flowed. Sometimes these speeches were completely imagined out of my deep social anxiety, which fed my rage, which fed my fear that my unchained rage would ruin me in the crash. In actual, sober situations I mostly kept my mouth shut, fearing that I would explode. When I did open my mouth, it was to make a wise crack, but often these were poorly aimed and veered off course. Cause and effect. I seemed always to be cleaning up a social mess. Alone in my apartment, alone with my cheap bottle of wine, I felt safe from myself.

Those nights alone in my apartment seem now like nothing else than rehearsals for being the me I didn’t believe in but longed for.

I often ended those evenings on the couch listening to NPR. Not that the bed was in some distant room. No, it was four or five steps away. But the room might be swimming if I stood up. The slamming of car doors and the starting of engines, the birds and the sunlight through the blinds woke me as the rest of the world went off to school or a job. My empty wine bottle waved a wry good morning as I rolled to the carpet on my knees. Disheveled but already dressed, I found my shoes and turned off the radio, then made for the coffee house down the street. The cool air and the caffeine set me off in the right direction. More or less.

If I had thought much about it, my big, important insight would have been that those nights were an attempt to fend off the constant, hazy specter of my demons. Resentment. Fear. Worry. Loneliness. Yada yada yada. Drinking alone seemed somehow healthier than sitting at a bar gabbing with drunks. At home, I had the pleasure of my own company and my own important insights. Such very important insights. What I was doing, I told myself, made perfect sense. Everything was under control.

It wasn’t of course.  

Underneath these breaks was a deep emptiness that I had always felt, no matter my circumstances. I felt it going home to my apartment and shutting the door. I felt it gathering together my papers and books after teaching a class at Metro State and then walking down the hall and out to the parking lot to get into my car. Some nights I made a detour and, without knowing why, drove past the little house my ex-wife and I had owned. And I felt it staying in motels on out-of-town residencies. I even felt it some nights leaving my Tibetan meditation group. Gen-la would see me off with one of his subtle almost-smiles, but as soon as I climbed into the car I felt alone and lost.

Well, loneliness attracts loneliness. The acting out attract the acting out. That’s where I’ll go with my next post.

Like I said, I’ve never been a fast learner. Not about life anyway.