Art of Perspective

It all started with a party. Two people celebrating two books and two lives that shot them towards this very moment.

Linda Gregerson’s voice melted my soul. Her consonants were held to a length unmatched as her vowels seemed to punctuate every word. Her rhythm was English but accent was American, her sound had no home but I felt as if I was there while in this space.

I sat, in the front of the Kelsey Museum, literally surrounded by ancient artifacts and stories that needed a home inside my mind. But I was also surrounded by life. Lives that kept living to share all that this world had to offer.

Today it offered me head congestion and foggy, red eyes. My throat felt like the dirt that found its way into my foot’s blister. My head seemed to spin with every pause she made, trying to find something to grasp on to but only finding more air, more space. My hands shakily grasped my jasmine green tea. My crossed legs seem to beckon my torso to fall towards them; before long I had turned into something more severely collapsed than the Thinker’s and I think Rodin would only scoff at my body’s positioning.

Before I could pour another sip David Halperin took the podium. His book defined my second week of August while it helped define his last ten years. I found myself in two main locations while he found himself in one, and I thought how interesting it would be to have a thought turn to book all while inhabiting only one place. Where must one’s mind go to in order to have such thoughts? Surely one would have to free their mind because I find mine to be trapped all too often by walls and colors and block m’s here.

He read. His presentation was less precise, he is not a poet, but his content was much more present and it seemed to ground the whole experience.  He talked about faucets and boyfriends and subjectivity—all which regularly don’t bring me to tears. But at this moment, the perfect draft from the window hit my weakened eyes, and a façade of emotion fell from my ducts where it was really the sickness springing forth. Others were laughing at the prose and I sat wiping my fake tears as they splashed onto the scarf I had just placed on my lap.

After the applause had ended we were herded into an adjacent room where friends told me their new definitions of poetry and of the mad and all I could do was stare at the food. The appetizers sat in the most perfect arrangement only ruined by myself. Unknowing if they were vegetarian or not, I shoved them into my mouth, grabbed at the vegetables, and started my decent into what would become a quarantined apartment.

I found myself holding myself as my feet quickened their pace and as the birds flew chaotically overhead. Aren’t they supposed to always assume a formation? Or fly to Florida or Mexico? Aren’t they like butterflies? I didn’t know and I didn’t care but the streetlights flickered into different colors. Having no headphones only exacerbated the atmosphere and I just assumed this was going to mark my downfall.

These omens are never right but they were not proven wrong that day.

I must have been infected by art, I tell myself, because no virus has touched me like this. It can’t be “treated” and only a poem would necessitate chewing on garlic. Only passages on Queer Theory would demand hours gargling with salt water and baking soda. Only academics and their speech would require my body to writhe in pain at four in the morning. The human body cannot ingest art. From my perspective, if it attempts to, one has to spend days purging art from their system.

I’ll stick to listening, watching, and touching; leave feeling for those whose immunity has been built up for longer than mine.