I hope that I am not giving the wrong impression, that language has not again taken me beyond where I mean to go. I love Helena, and I believe she loves me without having to make more of me than I am. I have not said anything about sex. We Freudians tend to overstate its importance, to see it as the central mystery, the anima of all other pleasures and pains. A delicacy of feeling restrains me here. I find myself hesitant in saying that sex with Helena is one of the major pleasures of this middle aged therapist. It is said. I move on.
Now I come to another admission that for different reasons I have been reluctant to make. Though my life is good, I am not gready happy, not happy enough of the time. This awareness taunts me. It is as though just behind me, just out of view, something is missing that completes the puzzle. It is a sadness that occupies me even in moments of intense joy.
I am a more successful therapist for what I’ve gone through. I’ve had successes recently with patients who had been judged untreatable by certain esteemed analysts. I have a gift. I am gifted at therapy. It has taken me a long time to be able to say this.
No tragedy, my life. No one has died of grief or heartbreak. No one has killed herself. (I’ve had this feeling all my life that I am doomed. That I will die young. Yes, but I am no longer young.)
It is sad to me that Yuri doesn’t want to be my friend. (We had been friends in our way for such a long time.) If only for Rebecca’s sake such reconciliation makes sense. Maybe Yuri hasn’t allowed himself to forgive me. (In time.) Our exchanges are mostly abrupt and businesslike. In my dreams, he is like some relentless figure of vengeance pursuing me. He will never forgive me, never let me go.
Yuri knows what’s between us (let him deny it), and what he has with Helena, whatever he thinks it is, is not the same. I have lovers too. (I protest too much. It doesn’t matter.)
I am not so blindly romantic as to believe my former wife the cause of this unresolved free floating grief. I am a rational man who likes to be clear about what he’s doing and why he’s doing it. It is my life’s work after all to make clarity out of confusion. That’s the side of me that others value most. The other side is fathomless and dangerous. The other pursues only the elusive and so courts disappointment.
For all that I understand, I understand nothing that matters. I admit that without embarrassment. I go through life blindfolded in an endless tunnel of my own imaginative creation and what I want — that insatiable ache — what I reach out for in the mysterious dark, touches me briefly then slips away into the ether. I have had for the briefest time whatever it is I have lost, and I have somehow let it escape my grasp. It is no wonder that some kind of irremediable illness looms behind me when I turn my head.
My art is the most fulfilling thing I have. Sometimes it seems the only thing. My vision. Each time I believe I am through drawing birds, the same elegant erotic studies, I rediscover my subject. Some day I will give up doing therapy, and concentrate (full time) on my art.
Whatever the rumors (such talk echoes), I am not unhappy, I am not depressed or anxious much of the time. I feel I have to announce that to myself and to those who want to pity me. (Pity is just malice in black silk.) This woman, Adrienne is not unhappy with her life. She knows that there is nothing to regret. She knows that love is only one of a number of illusions that dies and never comes back to life. Love died with Yuri; love left us for good. It doesn’t matter. (Forgive me, Yuri.) There is no recovery from this illness.
The Dzanc Books rEprint Series
The Dzanc Books rEprint Series is dedicated to publishing great works of contemporary literature that are deserving and clearly will benefit from having their work appear in electronic form. Our efforts include works that have recently gone out of print, books in print that have yet to be converted to e-form, as well as titles where the author holds the eBook rights and is looking for a publishing partner for the electronic version of their book.
For more information and the current list of available titles:
http://www.dzancbooks.org/reprint-catalog/