Fit

Fit
The little plastic cylinders jut up from the Lego blocks splayed on the green foam mat in all their primary- colored glory and my eyes begin to glaze over. It is fourth period, the final I have with the pre-pre K children, and I am grateful that Lego blocks and a Raffi CD are all it takes to incite them to a joy I can no longer understand. All their protests and tears over the two pages of phonics (letter N) they were required to do before lunch are vanquished from their thoughts as they splay their arms and twirl to an up-tempo “Down by the Bay.” By tomorrow, they’ll have forgotten how one boy kicked another for not sharing (thereby causing a torrent of tears severe enough for me, in my exhaustion, to amuse myself with thoughts of reciting something ‘dry,’ like a list of irregular past tense verbs. In the end, my rather amusing, if completely abstract technique of stunning 3-4 year olds into silence, were extinguished only by my sense of responsibility as I cradled the child until his wails died down to a tolerable pout).By tomorrow, after they’ve gone through the near ritualistic stuffing of their faces with the bread and milk offered up by Monica (the Korean teacher), yesterday will have never happened. It’s weird how before a certain point, we all can’t seem to remember anything about our lives. It's almost frustrating, like there's a marked division between learning things for the first time and remembering more esoteric things, like voices and the feel of a hand clutched thousands of times. It’s like information bounces off the insular tunnels of the mind, leaving indentations of awareness in our subconscious too imperceptible to fathom; fossils for psychoanalysts to uncover decades down the road. Later, the little we can recall comes in spurts, disjointed like dreams that heat up around the edges, blurring vision. Everything else we have comes from whatever we can piece together from photographs that convince and reassure us of our happy childhoods (Say Cheeeeese!). Perhaps I’m watching children live lives that they’ll have no memory of in 6 years, when days are replaced, Doppelganger-style with a frantic, empty routine. The arts and crafts we do in class, if saved by zealous parents, will serve as the relics of people who have essentially passed out of reach; their old clothing, chrysalises to be wondered at, but tossed aside for something better fitting, their skin notwithstanding.
Our hold on things can't last forever. One day, I'll look back at the person I am now and marvel at my youth and wish I had done certain things differently. One day, maybe I'll no longer care about the issues that upset me today, the memories that jolt me out of bed at night. It's the same for everyone, I think. And I imagine that somewhere, right now and always, elastics, stretched too tightly are snapping, resonating arrogantly as they fall to the ground.Still in my “four-hours-down-six-left-to-go” stupor, I watch a little girl struggle to fit the blocks together. She has built a room on a platform and is sealing it off like a box with a lid. I stare at her condensed little creation and wonder why she has chosen to hide the contents arranged carefully inside. We’re all little microcosms of something larger in the Metaphysical sense, I guess. Imagine some giant, cosmic Babushka doll whittled down (by its own mental volition--what else?) to a cellular level wherein the soul, or our ideas about it, may or may not flicker silently in the dark. In an effort not to overlap; to not spill over the edges, we begin to box ourselves into our identities pretty quickly I guess. She searches around for flat pieces in her attempt at symmetry; leveling the parts off evenly, capturing everything within. She asks me for help, and I crawl around the mat, searching for her. Though I rummage through the plastic bins and overturn their contents, we are one piece short and a square shaped hole remains, like a blemish. Her eyes fall to it, and she attempts to stick a non-Lego shaped flower there in its stead. It falls through into the box and I recognize her disappointment as though it were my own. I pick the cube up and hold it to my eye, hoping she'll catch on and do the same, peering inside her own creation, as self contained as she herself; little corralled mysteries both, fugacious as the current date and time.
When I was a child, I loved Legos, though I found it maddening that there never seemed to be an end in sight. As much as I strove for completion, little plastic connectors always remained reaching upward, tauntingly reminding me that there was room for more, eternally. A perfectionist by nature, I would continue to build the walls of my fortresses and add to the steps of my imaginary cities until, my resources spent, I would stare in disgust at the holes that would inevitably remain, at the un-eveness of that final wall, dilapidated from my own lack of planning. Hours of effort and pride would somehow morph into a cumbrous sort of lassitude as I'd cede to the threat of 'bedtime' and let fall, plastic clacking onto plastic, that which had once been my endless construction.As we put our shoes on and leave to go, in the best English she can manage, the girl asks if she can put her building on the table instead of tearing it apart in typical Lego block fashion. I know it won't be there tomorrow and will no doubt have become raw material—resplendent in flat pieces and intrigue as it is--for some other child, but placing it carefully on the corner of the table, I gladly oblige. I close the door behind us and when the metal meets metal, the click attests to our relevance.
My pertinence in the world has been a long-standing issue, though in recent months, prior to returning to Korea, I’d come to question my significance. Trapped in a state of personal remiss and identifying myself through past accomplishments, I imagined myself like a piece of writing (ironic, as nothing of worth flowed from my pen), slowly losing credibility. Attacked by criticism and censure, I am rendered prone as the words drip slowly from my pages, collecting themselves by my splintered spine in puddles of melted alphabet by-products. Dialogue shrieks its last coherent oath and collapses in raw contempt at the image before it: the destruction of its requisite verbal substratum. I sit and stare quietly at other words, not my own, bound strongly within covers made shiny in the lamplight. I try to make the connection between them and me. I blink and my edges begin to crumble delicately and stick in the carpet, like ash from a bonfire.
About a month ago, I began to have dreams again. The first one disconcerted me and I am surprised that, despite having not written it down, it remains in my head, unable to escape secretly into those memory-hoarding side pockets of the mind. Since then, I’ve been deconstructing it; sequencing events as though my sleeping brain may have left something out. Rearranging my nightmares and dreams like puzzles; cramming them into frames to make them fit better; to see the whole picture in the right order, has become my new past-time in the moments between my insomniac’s struggle to sleep, and finally drifting off to further maelstroms of the mind. The dream took place in what I can only imagine is an airplane hangar.
I step into a very large, somewhat cold, sterile looking room. Everything is clean and appears bathed in white light. The first thing I notice is a wheel with numbers—the sort you might see at a bank or a deli, or anywhere you might have to wait your turn. Without considering where I may be, I take my number. 6. Okay. I look around and realize that I appear to be in the waiting area of an airport. There are many seats and a large window looking out onto grey pavement. I am a little alarmed that the airport seems empty and I wonder whether I am too late, though I don’t know where I am going.
I walk over to a counter; stainless steel, and of the sort you might see people packing their boxes at in large Korean grocery stores. Suddenly, obscure people; friends I never see; are handing me presents that have absolutely no use to me--like candles and piñatas with colorful streamers, heavy and unwieldy. I think of how my bags probably already weigh too much. I wonder where I am going. Are they going too? I accept their gifts with turbid smiles, thick with confusion, though I am struck with the utter uselessness of the offerings. There is nothing I want and essentially, I am accepting paperweights (or blunt objects that will eventually be used for this purpose). Number 4 is called out in a tinny voice over a loud speaker and someone gets up excitedly. I can’t see who it is or where she came from. I hadn’t seen anyone else earlier and at this point, the gift givers are gone too and I am left with awkward trash bags that I cannot lift. I leave them under the counter and find a seat.
I wait and wonder what is happening. I look at my number and remember that four had already been called. I assume I am going somewhere, like everyone else clutching paper numbers, but if it’s on a plane, why am I going alone? And why is it taking so long for my turn to come up? There are several other faceless people around the room at this point, all looking very bored and tired of waiting. Some are reading magazines. I stare at the wall and my eyes catch a crack snaking its way up the wall. The longer I stare at it, the larger it becomes. Suddenly, to my alarm, thousands of ants stream out of it. The surface of the floor is instantly enveloped in shiny black moving bodies and I pull my legs up in disgust. To my relief, they are heading toward the automatic doors which I had not noticed before, having thought they were windows. The ants assume an orderly line and when the glass parts, they gain their freedom and file out of it in one swift motion, like a waving flag rippling through the wind. I approach the door myself and it appears locked. I am unable to leave. I stare out of it and I see that we are high off the ground and the ants have vanished. I return to my chair and wait.
Number 5 is called and someone heaves an irritated groan. I turn to see a familiar face: sitting beside me is a girl I went to high school with. During school, I found her popularity intimidating and her constant bursts of emotionality to be too much to handle. This was the sort of girl who would tell me all her problems, but have an excuse to leave before I could ever open my mouth and engage in my own cathartic outpourings. If this girl got a bad mark, the sight of her crying would be enough for a teacher to reconsider. I hated her. I am, then, a little surprised to see her now, in what I would assume is my dream-adult life.
She shows me her number. 7. I show her mine. She insists that she has to be somewhere; that we have to trade; that her appointment is much more important than mine could ever be. I refuse. I am impatient and wish to leave myself. My destination is still unknown. She begins to get frantic, and starts to raise her voice. I am tired and just shake my head. No. Sorry. She begins screaming that if I don’t trade with her, she’ll stick her head in the oven which has suddenly appeared in the kitchen-like environment we are now in. I tell her I don’t care; that if I am not the next person to leave, I’ll lose my mind; that I need to be on the next flight. I no longer see my luggage.
Like someone gone completely mad, my ex-classmate hurls herself towards the stove. There’s a drawer beneath it and she pulls it out violently. Upon laying down on it, her body flattens, dough-like and melted, and the door slams, initiating an explosion that I assume kills us all and prevents my flight. Then, for an instant, everything is blackness.
I wake up exactly 3 minutes before my alarm clock to the sound of my mirror falling off the wall. It’s been so humid here that hooks tend to be sweated off, yellow glue dripping down the wall. I prop it carefully against the side of the cupboard now. I’m surprised it didn’t smash, actually. Little shards of glass on my floor and the potential of seven unlucky years does note strike me as appealing.
Some people find the heat oppressive. I have only turned my air conditioning on several times, though it’s occurred to me that using it would probably keep things hanging on the walls; intact. I’ve bought several different brands of hooks, but they’ve all popped off randomly: the warm air makes the glue expand; the corners of square-shaped adhesive melt tragic-like as they weep pus-like down the wallpaper voicing their inability to stay put, like obstinate children, or escape artists like me.
I smoke a cigarette in bed and watch the smoke churn upwards, like a swing untangling in a park, slow then gradually quicker until it twists back on itself, fusing into its respective terrain; the smoke becomes a part of the air I breathe, nicotine-vitiated or otherwise; the twisting swing slows down, its chains no longer clinking together, until it’s easy sway patterns that of the breeze through the grass, palliative and without impetus. Everything seems to cohere and merge, I think, as my eyelids couple in exhaustion with their baser counterparts.
I breathe in deeply and I let the air fill my stomach, hesitating before release. Though it is necessary for life, I begin to think of it in abstract terms, because despite the fact that it fits inside my body; my lungs, this is a sustenance I cannot distinguish from contagion. I let it have its freedom in a thin stream pointed towards the ceiling and I pull my stomach, airless, in, like it was vacuum-packed, its sides pressed up against my ribs. We are all receptacles of a sort, I guess. I, at least, would like for things to fit, but everything that does seems so transient. Air, the elan vital itself escapes eventually, in death and in life, unable to connect in permanence; fearing the concept of forever, like some uncertain lover.
A friend of mine told me once that she was in love and that she thought she had, at 21, found her soul mate, so fused together were all aspects of she and her partner's personalities. He completed her, she (the otherwise defective, fragmentary being) said. This same friend's boyfriend told me, though, that the reason he'd stayed with her for as long as he had (possibly over six months!), was because he enjoyed/needed the sex. Both remarks, heard at different times, of course, made me think that people are constantly attempting some form of cohesiveness, though the human condition to me, has always been a very solitary one.
In life, we are expected to be individuals, able to do more and more for ourselves as we age. It has always struck me as very unsettling, almost, that so many people go through their lives obsessed with the idea that not only must they couple, but that they must find one solitary human being in whom to synchronize their lives completely. It's like how electronics won't work unless they're plugged into the wall and how outlets are only there, useless until penetrated. The idea that we are inherently incomplete; rent up the middle; makes me a little bit sad. However, I don't think that joining forces with another incomplete searcher will ever make anything whole, but rather, produce just two tentative bodies acting as temporary stuffing for one another
A long time ago, I read about how female sexuality was perceived in the middle ages and the figurative language with which it was referred in literature. In one play I read during my study, the author, in speaking of a rather unfaithful married woman often alluded to the cracked vase in the corner of her kitchen. This was meant to suggest that women are like vessels needing to be filled. The cracks, obviously were meant to suggest the imperfectness of her character. However, they also seem to me to suggest that, try as she might to retain what she holds, in the end, everything escapes eventually; she ends up as empty as she started; insatiable.
Another medieval writer, in comparing men and woman's internal organs, decided that the only true difference between men and women was that women had a womb, a great big empty space inside them, whereas men did not. The only way for women to be truly healthy, happy and complete was by being pregnant, thereby completing themselves and filling their bodies. Later, Freud, in diagnosing nervous disorders in women, had a somewhat similar approach. Many of his patients were older women past childbearing age and suffering from bouts of apparent hysteria. He believed that removing the uterus by way of hysterectomy, would be the cure for the irrational behavior of his patients; fear and panic over being no longer able to be properly filled, I suppose. It's a bit ironic, I think, that anyone could think that getting rid of the womb could help solve a person's feelings of being incomplete--it a removal of a major organ, after all. Some people clearly don't understand that being empty is such an abstract thing that to go pinpointing it physically is foolishness. And, all that's left at the end is hollowness and a queer feeling in the pit of one's stomach; a low grumble, like the desire to be full again.
The stomach is a muscle that can stretch over time to suit one’s habits of consumption. Supple and extensile, it can expand to degrees far beyond that of the average—a human fist. I imagine a sort of mad rush to squeeze everything in, like it was a matter of necessity; suitcases that need to be shut, stomped on, zipped closed after a struggle. I saw a man on television once, whose girth was incredible. Like many people who overeat to excess, there was the suggestion that something was lacking in his life; some switch not turned on; some failed connection. I watched him speak on television and thought about how some people say food is comfort, like the introduction of food into one’s body has a steadying effect that keeps one’s feet rooted firmly to the ground, dome-shaped, like the earth. But, in our rather gratuitous culture, it seems that there is the constant desire to be filled. Nothing is ever enough.
The act of over-consumption itself; the input of food into one's body when it is unneeded, fascinates me. If overeating is meant to be percieved as a replacement for something that is lacking, one has to wonder at those who purposely choose to deny themselves essential nourishment at all, thereby allowing themselves to sicken; to become weak. It calls to question wherein the human difference lies between those who try to fill the space that cries out so plaintively for tenancy, and those who actively seek it, void themselves of everything. Perhaps the pain and the echoing rumble is a reminder that they are indeed human and alive; they aren't empty after all. Pain is some sort of palpable monster after all.
Somewhere, the figurative rubber band strains under the tension of keeping it all together.
The rubber band stretches taught to the point where the brownish beige begings to whiten, scar-like along the edges. Like a pregnant woman's stomach, or a watermelon, the lines slither upwards, their hisses gradually fading into a nothingness whose starkness against stretched skin is very palapable. The fingers looped around the edges doubt their ability to match its elastic resistance. They quiver and shake as the rubber is adjusted around its charge, snapping tightly into place like an uncomfortable second skin, crawling gradually upwards until...unable to contain its object any longer; unable to fit, the rubber breaks and drops limply to the ground, And the fingers, taking a brief moment to recover from the shock of separation, drum listlessly for a moment before grasping myopically for something