The Beginners (32 page)
Authors: Rebecca Wolff
SUPERNATURAL
is when you wake up in the middle of the night, as I occasionally do, and did just last night, with your hands crossed peacefully at the wrist over your chest, like a corpse lying in a coffin in a grave. Unconsciously prefiguring. You have to put these things right out of your mind in order to go back to sleep. Or what would you do, for that matter, if you finally really saw something in the dark at the back of your closet, when you opened the door quickly, as if to surprise it out of being there? I don’t know how many times a day I’ve taken a moment to predict what profane materialization might await me around that corner, or in my room when I get home. It’s this old trick of outwitting one’s own creation: if I imagine it fully first, then it can’t be so.
I’ll take the life right out of it.
Every night, in my childhood, before I went to sleep, I’d gaze at the shadow on the wall next to my bed and turn it into the silhouette of a witch, a crone on a broomstick, warts and all. That accomplished, I could rest assured that the shadow would not do anything like this of its own accord, while I slept on in the dark.
is when you wake up in the middle of the night, as I occasionally do, and did just last night, with your hands crossed peacefully at the wrist over your chest, like a corpse lying in a coffin in a grave. Unconsciously prefiguring. You have to put these things right out of your mind in order to go back to sleep. Or what would you do, for that matter, if you finally really saw something in the dark at the back of your closet, when you opened the door quickly, as if to surprise it out of being there? I don’t know how many times a day I’ve taken a moment to predict what profane materialization might await me around that corner, or in my room when I get home. It’s this old trick of outwitting one’s own creation: if I imagine it fully first, then it can’t be so.
I’ll take the life right out of it.
Every night, in my childhood, before I went to sleep, I’d gaze at the shadow on the wall next to my bed and turn it into the silhouette of a witch, a crone on a broomstick, warts and all. That accomplished, I could rest assured that the shadow would not do anything like this of its own accord, while I slept on in the dark.
But
here,
in Wick, is the future, in which I am not to be left alone—I am to be accompanied, and supported, even cradled by my friends and my relations.
Now,
and
now,
and now again. There is no end to this story, in my version or any other. An X marks the spot where I rest, remain, and you can’t tell from where you sit, or stand, if I am an X on a diagram—a place, a situation, a process—or a timeline. If this is a map, or a history, or a beginning.
here,
in Wick, is the future, in which I am not to be left alone—I am to be accompanied, and supported, even cradled by my friends and my relations.
Now,
and
now,
and now again. There is no end to this story, in my version or any other. An X marks the spot where I rest, remain, and you can’t tell from where you sit, or stand, if I am an X on a diagram—a place, a situation, a process—or a timeline. If this is a map, or a history, or a beginning.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Excerpts from
The Beginners
appeared in
Open City
and
trnsfr
; many thanks to Joanna Yas, Tom Beller, and Alban Fischer. And thanks to Joydeep Roy-Battacharya, Janet Steen, and most of all Ira Sher, for astute readings and friendship and love. And a million thanks to Bill Clegg for years and years.
The Beginners
appeared in
Open City
and
trnsfr
; many thanks to Joanna Yas, Tom Beller, and Alban Fischer. And thanks to Joydeep Roy-Battacharya, Janet Steen, and most of all Ira Sher, for astute readings and friendship and love. And a million thanks to Bill Clegg for years and years.
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