With all plots moving in one direction, it’s time to launch our Collective into Week 5. There are only two more weeks to go, ye mighty Meanderers, and it continues to be a great treat to read your comments as I trot along the trail.
Last week I went back in time to my first job. It was the end of the day and dark already, so it must have been winter. I shut down my machine, meandered over to my car, and ended up chatting with the head of our editorial department in the parking lot.
After a minute or two the conversation took a turn to real life. One of us shared a hard thing that we were dealing with, I can’t remember whether that was her or me. We talked about the likelihood that most people had something hard they were dealing with, much of the time, and never talked about it.
I remember us nodding out there in the parking lot, in no rush, saying it was super interesting that we all know death is a real thing, a thing we’re going to get around to one of these days. But we put that aside and find a way to focus on fixing the typos on page 57 of a computer book, which back then was almost the definition of an ephemeral object, born to be put out of print.
The tone wasn’t grim. It was “isn’t that something?”
I was barely out of college, and she wasn’t just a grown up, she was the personification of leadership and focus, of hitting dates and doing quality work. But she knew that we lived in two worlds at the same time. It’s stayed with me all these years that we paused there, and we took a moment before driving home, to acknowledge a big truth.
In this little ditty, about Jack and Babette, our protagonists have lost their ability to put this big truth aside. To forget their fear so they can take a step. Take a breath.
They compete to see who’s more terrified.
Him: “I wake up sweating. I break out in killer sweats.”
Her: “I chew gum because my throat constricts.”
Him: “I have no body, I’m only a mind or a self, alone in a vast space.”
Her: “I seize up…”
Jack, Babette, DeLillo, all of us — interesting animals for sure, smart enough to know we’re really truly, no joke, going to die, but not quite smart enough to know what to do about it. Or even how to think about it.
I’m loving this book, Jack’s jackassery and all, for making me think about it, for sending me back to that conversation in the parking lot. And especially, in this moment of fairly high anxiety, for surfacing all the throat constricting moments around us and the many ways we wave our hands at those moments, like flies we’re trying to push up, down, over, away.
This week: Let’s meet up at the end of page 268 aka the end of Chapter 36, where it turns out “Your doctor knows the symbols.”
And then, one week later, magnets await at the finish line!
Say pally, how’s this work again? Finish on time, comment each week, and stay in the hunt for a free “I Survived the White Noise Meander” magnet. Oh, and in case you were wondering: This is the post for comments on Chapters 31-36.
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