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PORCH PRESENTS | page 2
we returned five minutes later with mochas, and found the door
open. We peered in. The well-dressed people inside appeared to be in a
state of stupefaction. They had been listening to other speakers all day,
and there was a stale feeling in the air. Everyone looked tired
and uncomfortable, gazing at me with looks on their faces that said, "Oh, great,
now what?"
I gamely started talking about writing, began to sing all my
tired old songs -- "short assignments, shitty first drafts, there's ecstasy
in paying attention" -- and I was dancing as fast as I could. I felt like
the court jester, in my floppy old clothes, there to amuse the weary
royalty.
After a while I looked at my watch. Only 10 minutes had passed. It
was a nightmare. My mind began to wander, even though I was the one talking.
Then I noticed that there were heavy drapes over the windows to keep the
room dark for some reason. But one was not drawn all the way shut, and you
could see one tiny strip of green -- a vibrant stripe of the world outside,
of leaves, that was so beautiful, like seeing a patch of sky in prison,
that says, This -- Oh this -- is what you're missing.
I closed my eyes. An old quote of someone's floated into my head: that
what was missing from a situation was only what you couldn't or wouldn't
provide. So I decided I needed to give these people a porch present. I
tried to wake up, to spritz myself with some psychic plant mister. All at
once, I abandoned my notes, and began to tell them instead how sick I
was of the sound of my own voice, how nuts and other I felt. It was
definitely a little improvement, and I felt a kind of settling in on the
audience's part, a little relief, like I had started out by lecturing them
on the Dewey Decimal System, but had decided instead to tell them all a
nice bedtime story.
I started talking to their crazy-inside-person. I
just assumed, you see, that like the rest of the professional world, they
spent most of their time trying to cover up that person, to cover up the
cracks, the goofiness. Then I made the mistake of mentioning my mother, who
is English. "There ought to be a 12-step group for the children of the
English," I said, "because of how frantically they always need to spackle
everything," and right that second there was a loud crackling sound, a
whiny creak, like that first tiny hint of a problem on the Titanic. And
then, a fire alarm that was hanging from the ceiling like a uvula lit up,
began to spin, and then to wail.
"I'm sorry, mom," I cried. "I really didn't mean it."
Everyone laughed then, and looked around. No one knew what the alarm
meant or what to do, and it was like we were on hold, waiting to see if we
should go ahead and panic. But Neshama, who was sitting in the back of the
room mending a blue sweater, was smiling. So I smiled too. It was either
the caffeine in the mocha or the surprise, but I almost immediately understood how great this
interruption was. Neshama said later that the whole conference was a kind
of machine, and when any social or conventional machine breaks, you get
to see who these people really are inside it all. That it throws us
all into the same boat, a boat we didn't even notice we were in before.
The siren kept going, the light kept flashing, Neshama kept smiling
and mending her sweater. We didn't smell smoke and so stood in suspended
animation; smiling shyly with some embarrassment at each other.
Then a grave -- dast I say it, self-important -- male voice came over the
loudspeaker and told us the building was being evacuated. We picked up
our things and trooped on out, as if it were a fire drill in third
grade. We filed down the stairs alongside people who had
been down the hall at the wedding reception. We, the writerly types, in our
preppier clothes, smiled at them. Most of them were pale and doughy in a
way that I found sort of touching: like they were made of general, sweet
people-dough.
Despite the alarms, the evacuation was very discreet. Two
women in wheelchairs were carried regally to the elevators, as if on
litters. One was old and crabby, one young and full of joy. The rest of us
marched
along, our two groups merged, all of us finally in the same absurd soup.
We went outside together. We got some fresh air. And we got to see
the outside world that we'd glimpsed through the parting in the curtains:
the stripe of green trees. And it was so beautiful. People from the two
groups started mingling, happy to be outside, happy to see a wonderful
little sight gag across the street, where the hotel's 15 cooks stood
in a cluster,
smoking, their white coats and hats absurdly bright in the early afternoon
sun. It was very Fellini: They looked Amish, in their tall hats, or like
sufi dancers, or penguins, on their little island of fresh air and smoke.
After a while word spread that there was no fire, and we could
go inside. Everyone trooped back in: You go out, you come back, you do
what you are told. But here was the difference: The barriers had broken
down between us and them, where the us is good and fine and whole, and the
them are broken and less-than.
It was as if a film had stopped and then started up again 10 minutes
later. But back at the podium, I felt less like a lounge lizard, less like
Bobbie Vinton or Eartha Kitt. I felt like me but tired. I started
singing my little songs again and the writers and editors nodded. It was
like the start-over had reframed everything. Maybe they were rested,
revived by the air and all that green outside, all those leaves. Maybe
they were people who were always working, had other people working for
them, all of them into production; and here I was, speaking of soul stuff
instead, but now really feeling it -- writing, softening, the scouring off of
dross. Maybe they were used to seeing their work and co-workers as product
and
means to a product, as human packages that either read and buy their
product or help them produce it; so maybe it was good for them to see a
human who instead just feels and yearns and is sad and tired but trying to be
funny and healing.
But here is God's own truth: I was in an exuberant mood the rest of
the day, and all the way back home. After Neshama left, I put Al Green on
the stereo and waited for Sam to come home. I began to do some serious
putter. First I straightened up the living room, and then I poured out the
malarial water in the kitchen sink and filled the plastic tub with hot soap
suds. I starting washing dirty dishes, and it felt so great to be in my
own home that by the time the last song on the album came on, I was dancing
around quietly with a sponge in one hand, a plate in the other. It
reminded me of washing Sam in the sink when he was little, how tired but
whole I used to feel. It occurred to me that if the magic maids had come
while I was gone -- if their coming had been the day's porch present -- I
wouldn't have had the other gift, the gift of being able to claim my
home, wouldn't have been able to clarify it, tend to it, and be so tended
to.
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