I remember a time a while back when I was regarded as something not human. In the eyes of the beholder in this instance, I had transcended the human bar that had been set.
At the time, I was preparing to move. Again. In the process of packing for my trip I dropped a book and the cover cracked. I liked the book quite a lot, and I became embarrassed when I dropped it.
She laughed, of course. Often people laugh at others’ misfortune. But it wasn’t malicious laughter so I didn’t get bothered by it. No, it was what she said after she laughed that stung me. She told me that it was nice to see me make mistakes because it made me seem human.
From what I understand, in her mind I’d become something too flawless to be human, too perfect. And to her, my falter made me seem less than perfect. Thinking back on it now, I suppose this would have made me seem more obtainable to her, in a romantic sense, or even as a friend.
Regardless, she made me feel human in a way that I couldn’t have imagined up to that point. In just a few words, she made me see myself as something more, something perfect, and in the same breath she knocked me on my ass and made me understand that I was flawed.
I remember reading a while back, an excerpt from an interview with Neil Gaiman. He said that he’d tried to wear a baseball cap at the beginning of his career because all writers seemed to wear them. Even though he didn’t like wearing baseball caps, and everyone told him he needed to ditch them, he kept at it.
He continued on because that’s what he’d learned would make him more like a writer, despite the fact that he’d already see quite a bit of success in his career. I’m kind of inferring this last bit, but it makes sense to me. In this instance, perhaps he wasn’t his most confident and needed the affirmation that he was a writer, too, damn it.
For some odd reason, I have connected the two ideas in my mind. It might be due to the fact that I felt similarly in my moment, as I hastily hid the ruined book in the trunk I’d been packing. I wanted to fit into this perfect illusion she’d created for me. I wanted to be more than human. So I glossed over the fact that she’d laughed, and I moved on quickly, hoping that she’d forget the event all together. In other words, I tried to make the baseball hat work for me.
Neil Gaiman eventually started wearing leather jackets instead of baseball hats. They fit him nicely in his style as a person and in the tone of his writing. They are dark and smooth and they just seem right.
Eventually, I put my broken book out on my coffee table. Now it sits in plain view of whomever wanders into my home, a testament to my flaws, imperfections and humanity.
Holding the universe together 