Someone Else

Patient: “I’d like to be someone else, really, anyone else. I’d like to slip out of my skin and be free to become something I can’t even imagine. As it is, this skin has a stranglehold on me. I’ll die in it like a prisoner in his cell. It’s really quite simple: I want to be free and I want my freedom to have genuine meaning. I want to go somewhere that is not on my map.” Doctor: “Isn’t this why people take up acting, or become writers, or playwrights or even painters or sculptors or musicians? But perhaps actors go at it most directly?” Patient: “But actors bend the knee to reality. What they do is pretend and often wildly off the mark. When you think about it, acting is pretty shabby, quite without real convictions or daring. Seeming to take risks while not really risking anything is like eating your cake and having it, too. I acted in high school and in college and was told I was quite good at it, good enough even to warrant trying to make a career out of it. But as an actor I disgusted myself.” Doctor: “Why was that?” Patient: “I was a confidence man trying to play a trick that had little if any meaning. I suppose that now I act some in everyday life and certainly when I’m trying a case.I don’t know how I ended up going to law school. It was a whim, that was then unbelievably boring and then turned into a test of how much unpleasantness I could tolerate, an ordeal that challenged me,...

“I’d Kill Myself If…”

“I’d kill myself if I could attend my own funeral.” The speaker is a seventy-five year old man, a lawyer who specializes in wills and estates, always peculiar, now semi-retired with a sterling professional reputation as someone who can craft a complex trust so that it can not be broken. He is from an old family, himself the beneficiary of rich trusts, but has made a fair amount of money by his own labors in the arcane province of wills and estates. “The reason that I would like to attend my own funeral is that I would be the center of attention while yet remaining exempt from the obligation to exert any effort. I would be glad even to pretend that I wasn’t there. In life, if you want to be the center of attention it requires such a lot of work. It saps your energy to arrange your self-presentation just so after having compiled extensive intelligence concerning the tastes and distastes of those you wish to arrange in circles around you. It has always been beyond me. I have tried but I never lasted more than a few weeks. I can’t imagine running for office. I’m simply not robust. I’m not even sure I could serve as a hereditary monarch unless I were permitted to remain out of sight for decades at a time.” He has shown me pictures of himself from decades gone by. Tall and thin with an air of elegance, he is a handsome man in these photographs, perhaps with just a hint of fragility. Long nose, long thin fingers, pale blue eyes – in...

Plaisir d’Amour

The eighteenth century French poet Jean Pierre Claris de Florian wrote, “Plaisir d’amour ne dure qu’un moment/ Chagrin d’amour dure toute la vie.” (Pleasure of love lasts only a moment; the sorrow of love lasts all of life) “ The twentieth century duo of bossa nova composer Tom Jobim and lyricist Vicinius de Moraes produced the lovely and haunting “Felicidade,” which begins, “Tristeza nao tem fin; felicidade, sim” (Sadness has no end; happiness, yes) How these two sets of lines, written centuries apart at a great geographical remove from each other resonate not so much in our minds alone but also profoundly in our hearts. Brazilian audiences often applaud with great fervor when Felicidade is being performed.There is no way to put into words how Tom Jobim’s music works, with its limber rhythms and understated fluency. But the music has a flavor that might almost be called a happy melancholy, a wise appreciation of what life is and of our situation in this life which is so rich and yet also limited. The pleasure of love and happiness are always limited in their tenure. We know this before, during and after. It is a knowledge against which we struggle, even one against which we revolt. Yet the struggle and the revolt are to no avail. We can no more give them up than we can prevail in them. We are well and truly caught. It is a part of our nature that we struggle and that we revolt against the fleeting nature of the pleasure of love, of our happiness. After the pleasure of love, after the intimate glory...

Improving Aristotle’s Flavor

“I got into philosophy through cooking,” said Sharon Fitzwater. “Iknow it’s not the ordinary path, but then I’m not sure any twopaths have much in common. Resemblance may be fundamentallysuperficial. I certainly never expected I’d have so much to dowith Aristotle. It’s as much talking with him as about him. Or isit that I’m trying to talk with myself through Aristotle? It’salways been something of a mystery to me how I might go aboutgetting my own attention.” She pushed her long blonde hair away from her face. “Cookingalways fascinated me because I was so hungry. My father was amachinist in Akron, Ohio. He was very good at what he did, so he’dget called out of town often on quite short notice, sometimes foras long as a month. I’d come home from school to discover that he was gone. My mother was a different person when he was away. Even before Andy Warhol, she had a love affair withthe Campbell Soup can. She’d take a can of tuna fish, add a can ofpeas, pour a can of Campbell’s Tomato Soup on it, heat it a littlebit and then serve it to us.” “I just couldn’t get it down. My brother seemed to manage, but Icouldn’t do it. So I got interested in cooking and cooking led meto a wider world. I discovered French cooking and I discoveredChinese cooking. I’d get cookbooks out of the library and try toimagine what the recipes would taste like. I’d filch things fromthe supermarket so that I could try a recipe. The first bottle ofred wine I ever had anything to do with I stole...

Ludmilla Gribovaya

Ludmilla Gribovaya We managed to get ourselves invited to have tea with the legendaryballet teacher Ludmilla Gribovaya at her Upper East Side apartmentthe other afternoon. It was a cold dark Manhattan mid-winter day. A desultory snow was falling, the flakes melting and immediatelyturning to gray slush when they hit the pavement. It was about asfar from the enchantment of the ballet as we could imagine getting. Yet, we found ourselves so excited during the elevator ride up toLudmilla Grobovaya’s fourteenth floor apartment that we literallycould not stand still. We got off the elevator, made an effort tostill our feet, sighed and found her door. We rang, then listenedto the chime echo on the other side of the door. Ludmilla Gribovaya answered the door herself. She wore a plaingray smock. She had her hair pulled back away from her face intoa bun. Without any further ado, she invited us in, settled us ina comfortable armchair by the fireplace and got us tea. Although we had trouble catching our breath, we plunged in andasked her a series of questions that seemed foolish to us. Aftera while, we found ourselves relaxing. We were able to diagnose,then, that we had been in terror of her and that the depth of ourrelaxation response was proportionate to the terror we had broughtalong with us “People talk about muscles. Yes, that is right. Muscles, yes,”said Ludmilla Gribovaya. “But that is not enough. Only a part. People talk about music. Yes, that is right. But that is notenough. Only a part. Music makes a space for dancing. Musicmakes a place for dancing. But dancing must find its...

Cecil Wheatin

“The amoeba’s a blob. Man’s a blob with something missing. It’sthis something missing running all the way through that makes allthe difference. The hole makes the doughnut. It’s a topologicalstep up in complexity to go from being a spherical blob to being atorus. Once the hole is there, there’s orientation. “Orientation gives a point to perception, to motion and tomotivation. Then you have emotion growing out of all that. Thenyou have the tremendous problem of sorting and refining perceptionin the service of purpose, that is, turning perception back uponitself. “I think there’s a whole topological theory of biological development that remains to be explored. I sometimes ask myself what liesbeyond the torus. Each new inclusion produces a more complicatedexploration of space and a more complicated space for exploration.” Cecil G. Wheatin grimaced. “The point is so simple and runs so deep. We’ve got a piece of theoutside inside us. The digestive tract is organized around theemptiness that fills us up. It’s the emptiness we strive so hardto fill because it fills us up. Mental function was born out ofthe need for coordination in eating. That’s where the appetite came from. I’m not meaning to debunk thinking and feeling, buttheir complexities were elaborated on a base.” Now Cecil G. Wheatin smiled, a huge ravishing smile that made himlook, even at 6’6″ and 286 lbs., like an oversized infant. “They’ve found most of the neurotransmitters in the gut. When theydid, it shocked them. The neuroscientists like to think ofthemselves as high and mighty, somehow up above it all. They’vegot it all backwards. What happened was that they found the guttransmitters way...