Durga Chew-Bose - Too Much and Not the Mood: Essays

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For Dulcie, Felix, Amiya, Chameli

To my family and Sarah, and to hurrying home

I just had this one image of Jack Nicholson holding a pink balloon.

POLLY PLATT

T HERES an emoji on my phone that Ive never used, of a shell-pink tower-block building with blue windows. Smaller than an apple seed, crumb-sizedif thatit stands six stories high. Six windows going up: three square, three rectangular. I counted them and double-checked because extra-small things bring out the extra-small person in me who sometimes even triple-checks things; who still chances certainty might exist in asking, Promise me?

This emoji is further detailed with a letter H pink too, but more or less magentathat hangs on its front and is matched in size by a pink heart floating above the buildings extension; like a shiny Mylar balloon escaping into the sky. The buildings roof is maroon, and an awning, also pink, shelters its two-door entranceway. Unlike the house emoji, for instance, this one has zero greenery: no shrubs, no tree. No landscaping. Just a stand-alone building that, until recently, I thought stood for Cardiologist. The H and its accompanying heart were an expression of, in my mind, heart hospital . Or heart doctor. And not, as I later discovered while scrolling through an emoji glossary online: Love Hotel. I was sure the building stood for all matters having to do with that four-chambered, fist-shaped muscle we carrythat carries uswith constancy. That beatsdid you know?more than one hundred thousand times a day.

Imagine that. Even when were pressing snooze and rolling over in bed, folding ourselves into our covers and postponing the days bubbling over, and soon after notching cold butter on warm toast, or later coming to a halt as we bound up a flight of subway stairs only to stall behind an elderly woman whose left leg trails behind her right legone leaden step at a timeeven then, when time decelerates and the relative importance of our lives, of our hurry, undergoes a sudden, essential audit; even then, our heart never stops.

Even when a name Ive long ignoredblotted from my mind in order to safeguard some good sensepops up bold in my inbox. Even when I notice three consecutive missed calls from my father and, as if metronomed by doom, fear the worst, my heart does not stop beating.

Even when I hear a sound or count footsteps following me at night, or spot two rats darting from a pile of trash, or hold my breath as Lisa Fremont climbs the fire escape to Thorwalds apartment while Jeff anxiously sits guard in his wheelchair, watching with his binoculars from across the courtyard. Even then . Even Hitchcock. Despite pure movie frighthow it skewers memy heart doesnt stop.

Even when the cab all of a sudden breaks and jerks forward. When anything lurches. Careens. When Think fast! trails the toss. When my leg involuntarily twitches and I sense Ive lost my balance, only to wake up having dozed off. Even when I watched Man on Wire , bewildered as to why anyone would perform such a stunt. Eight passes back and forth. A quarter mile up.

Even when a thought springs fresh in my mind on the subway and solves an essay Id just about abandoned. On the rare occasion my subconscious welds, language has a gift, Ive learned, for humiliating those luminous random acts of creative flash into impossible-to-secure hobbling duds. The best ideas outrun me. Thats why I write.

Even in June 2011, when my roommate and I paused Game 4 of the HeatMavericks Finals because: CRASH! The soundthe loudest, most intense crinkletraveled from my bedroom at the front of our apartment, which faced the street. Wed only lived there, on the second floor, maybe two or three months. As we walked slowly down the length of our long hallway, I noticed my window was broken, the glass veined. A single hole in the bottom corner. Flattened on my floor near my bed were the pummeled shards of a bullet. Some kids on the street, my neighbors later told me, had been playing with a gun. My heart clamped and didnt recoup for days. I slept on the couch, not out of fearI dont thinkbut because, no matter how diligently I swept, I kept finding slivers of glass on my floor. They seemed to suggest its okay to be someone who is slow to move on.

Even when pointe shoes flit down the stage like muffled hazard. When a fur coat slides off a womans bare shoulders. Or when a kiss on my neck obscures all clichs about kisses on necks and I am no longer human but merely an undulation.

Or when Mariah pleats a litany of notes into Vision of Love. When her finale crests and becomes tendency. Even then, my heart upholds.

Or those first ten seconds of Man in the Mirror. Right before Michael sings, Im gonna make a change , and those early notes sound like crystal snowflakes falling on sheets of sugar. Or my favorite: the undervalued Who Is It. Jealousys anthem. How it thumps. How its obsessed. Paranoid. How its frantic enough to summon past jealousies, no matter how beyond them you think you are. Who Is It is a maze. Its the sound of being stuck in one. Its the pursuer feeling pursued. Betrayal can debilitate but it can also animate. Its how even at ones most suspicious, the heart speeds upticks, twitches, is a grenadeyet never stops.

Or when I meet someone new who loves a movie just as Ive loved that movie; who speaks at such a clip about ittenderly, contagiouslythat I forget to speak at all and smile like a fool because, now and then, meeting new people isnt so terrible.

Even when the ATM reveals my bank balance unsolicited. When a strangers ringtone is the same as my morning alarm, waylaying me with acute dread midafternoon. When lifes practicalities knock the romance out, and money, time, sense syndicate my passions into bills, deferred goals, and all the boring bits.

Even when a buzzer-beating shot bounces on the rim. When Steph sinks a no-look. When Kerri Strug landed her pained, team-winning second vault at the 1996 Olympics and I watched with my eyes half covered, sitting on the floor of my aunts Atlanta home, not far from the Georgia Dome.

Even when Im startled by an object flying in my periphery. Dust. Refracted light. Anxietys UFOs. Or when a GASP! is disproportionate to why Ive gasped, my heart continues, as ever, pulsing toward its daily quota. More than one hundred thousand times a day. Eighty beats per minute.

Even when I stand naked in my room after a long day of stupid letdowns, when I consider becoming a woman who screams or hacks off her hair, or tosses her purse instead of hanging it. Even then, when nakedness cant undo the day, when my heart is lodged in my throat and my whole body falls limpmy whole body like my left wrist when I fasten my watch with my right hand. Limp like that. Even then, when I feel completely poured out and defeated. A Dyson in the desert.

Or what about the day MCA died. My heart seemed to chasm because the Beastie Boys wereIm not sure how best to say thisone of many attributes, albeit a critical one, that firmly positioned me as a younger sister. They were the music my brother listened to with his door closed. The CD he wouldnt let me borrow. Still now, on those hot summer days when the sun lacquers Manhattan storefronts into something aureate and amber-rich, when the air is impenetrable, blistered, and rank, and when brick tenements on Ludlow evoke whatever decade speaks to your nostalgia, my brothers copy of Pauls Boutique comes to mind. What I perceived back then in its cover art was the possibility of New York, New York: a city so in possession of itself that I fathomed an entire kingdom in those five-by-five inches.