Obliviation. I define it as the act or process (obliviating) of becoming oblivious to the world around you. It can be an active process, but is mostly passive. I think it is not relevant how you reach that state. Many circumstances and behaviours can lead to the state of obliviation.
It is not in my dictionaries, but the word has been similarly coined by others.
I came face to face with obliviation last week.
Walking in midtown, I spotted a penny on the sidewalk. I knelt down and picked it up. I stood up and found a woman looking me square in the face, smiling and wide-eyed, her eyeballs quivering like JACKPOT!
Looking right at me she said “LUCKY YOU! CONGRATULATIONS! THAT SHOULD BE ALL YOU NEED!”
I looked at the penny, then back at her. I started to say “Whaaaa?”
Then I recognized that look in her eyes: Vacant, nearly psychotic. She did not even know I stood two feet in front of her. Her eyes moved away from mine and I saw that she was talking into a cell phone headset.
I have been blankly yelled at like this by others whose use of their cell phone headset effectively eliminates the reality around them. In certain circumstances I consider it borderline psychotic behavior.
That was the first time someone like that address me in a seemingly meaningful way, commenting on the one cent I had found by congratulating me and thereby initiating a fascinating conversation.
For a few seconds I thought there was some attempt at communication. I was genuinely intrigued. Was it brazen sarcasm she blasted at me, or something more profound? I actually wanted to explore her point of view, to see if she had some world view where happiness and prosperity were attainable through nothing more than a penny found on a sidewalk.
Did she want the penny? Did she place it there as bait of some sort? Was this a set-up for a radio or television show?
No. There was no communication here. None at all. Just a vacant, bug-eyed stare directed at someone far away.
I remembered the first person of this ilk that I encountered in New York. It would have been 1990 or 1991, at a McDonald’s on the Upper West Side. Crowded and noisy, a woman sitting next to me sat talking in full voice. I caught something about “Goddam problems? I get up at 4am every day, I’m a fuckin’ whore, lemme tell you about my problems…”
For a moment she looked me square in the face and delivered her seemingly coherent diatribe. Thinking she was addressing me I said “What?” She did not stop talking. She gesticulated around her words, crushing a coffee cup to punctuate her anger, and as her eyes drifted past me and back at the table I realized she was babbling. The talk about getting up at 4am turned into “Goddam cocksuckers at the post office walk like pigs” and then something about Woody Allen.
Now that I think of it the “walk like pigs” line puzzles me. I am no connoisseur of racist spew, but I don’t think I’ve heard anyone accuse their enemy of walking like a pig. I remember her saying it, though, and how my mind rambled with strange images of postal workers waddling about like sow.
Somehow I never questioned that phrase until now.
She was obliviating. At first I felt ill at ease, but she simply did not know I was there. The discomfort partly disappeared because of that. Our eyes met for a full 2 or 3 seconds, though. When I said “What?” I swear I detected a glimmer of recognition. Recognition of the circumstance, and even an ounce of pity for me and the confusion in my eyes. I imagined the incoherence existed on one level and a guiding sanity (which gave her her freedom) sat on some other level, supervising.
I may have fully invented this.
I wanted to sit and listen.
I obliviate all the time. Unlike the woman at the McDonald’s I am not disturbed, at least not demonstratively so. And unlike the woman last week in midtown my path to obliviation does not require a cell phone or any technological intervention. I simply let my brain clatter with the noise of anxiety, and I suspect that bewilderment follows me more often than I know.
∞
In the second grade, at Bay Crest Elementary school in Tampa, I remember a girl named Magdalena playing checkers against another kid from her class.
The other kid touched one of the checkers but did not move the piece. Magdalena, for several minutes, shook her head and repeated
YOU TOUCH IT YOU GOTTA MOVE IT!
YOU TOUCH IT YOU GOTTA MOVE IT!
Demonstratively shaking her head in disapproval, repeating those seven words, she illustrated her point by touching the checker and moving it to a legal position, then moving it back to its original square on the checkerboard.
By demonstrating how to touch a checker, then move it, she offered visual cues implying that he, having touched the checker, should follow her example and move the piece.
She had long, long hair and wore Pippi Longstocking type outfits.
I felt her commitment to this unwritten rule was self-serving. I felt it stemmed from believing her opponent had limited options by moving that piece, and that victory would be hers once he, according to her prediction, wasted his move.
If the details of this memory seem too thorough, it only reflects the nature of her tirade. I don’t know how many times she repeated the statement but it seemed like all of eternity. The fact that I remember it tonight, over 30 years later, could prove that she has said it all along, and will say it forever.
She never embellished or modified the statement. I shortened the phrase in my mind to “TOUCH IT YOU GOTTA MOVE IT,” unconsciously editing out a redundant use of YOU.
A teacher, very tall, walked over to the table but soon walked back to her desk, bringing no resolution to the matter.
Today I think of this one-line lecture any time I see a chess or checkers board.
Recurrance of this memory has more recently found another slot in my mind: Listening to the song Pork-U-Pine, by Jeff Beck, the sound of the female voice that cuts in to the song sounds exactly like I remember Magdalena’s voice. Magdalena was patient, righteous, earnest, but her lecture still had a whine about it. Just like the Pork-U-Pine girl.
∞
I just posted my 3000th receipt. This dubious milestone comes with
uncertainty: I can not say for sure what transaction this receipt records.
Evidence indicates this receipt records the $4.50 toll I paid last month to cross
the Triborough Bridge into Queens. Evidence: that particular toll is $4.50, and the
receipt was in a pile of other receipts from that same trip.
But this receipt seems odd. The date should be August 19, 2006, but it says January
1, 2000. I don’t know if this is common among bridge toll receipts, but it
appears to bill separately for each axle of my car. I know that tolls can be based
on axle count, but do they usually invoice individually like this?
Maybe so, but this Triborough Toll receipt looks vastly different from
Triborough Bridge receipt that I possess.
This is the car my father and I drove to
was my idea to make the trek to remote Sneedville, having read some interesting
stories about Melungeons, a people of Appalachia whose mysterious origins have never
been authoratatively determined.
The Melungeons are a people believed to be of Mediterranean and/or Portuguese
descent who settled in Appalachia during the mid to late 1500s. Thought to have
lived peacefully for several generations they were eventually “discovered” and
singled out for their distinctive physical features. Pushed off one desirable tract
of land after another they were forced to settle in Sneedville, at the top of Newman
Ridge.
The story of the Melungeons contains too much history for me to succinctly
summarize, and new information has certainly come to light since my interest in the
topic came and went several years ago.
We got to Sneedville late in the day, and had no time pursue Melungeon-related
detail. I took some
pictures, and once in a while I get e-mail from Sneedvillians (I almost said
Sneedvillains) either asking about the photos or just writing to comment.
The most frequent comment seems to question a photo of a billboard announcing a
Supercenter. Evidently no Wal Mart has been built in or around Sneedville, and
some have questioned whether the photo is real. My response is I would have no
reason to perpetrate such a pointless hoax. That photo, like all the photos in that
set, dates from the summer of 2000. As best I can recall it was taken near the town
border, but I don’t remember the exact spot.
One of the funnier bits of detritus from that trip is the printout of the
Sneedville. Expedia would have
sent us on an astoundingly elaborate route to Sneedville via Nova Scotia and
Newfoundland.
I do not remember the exact route we took to get there, but it was a long,
slow drive over sharply twisting roads. It was remote, no question, but I’m
told by relatives in the area that houses are being built along the road to Sneedville and that the area
will likely change over the coming years.
We did not follow Expedia’s advice on driving directions, and it was years
before I contemplated online driving directions services without laughing about
the above mentioned attempt.
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At the risk of making myself look like an expert on the subject of Melungeons by spilling a too-large quantity of words about it, I’ll share this:
A friend of mine, joking around with a friend of his, told his friend to “Shuttup
I asked how he knew that word (I knew him well enough to ask without making a
He admitted that he had no idea what the word really meant, but that “everyone said
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The car that drove to Sneedville is also the car that I drove from Florida to
New York for he long, lumbering trip up here late last year. I stuck mostly
to Route 17 on that trip, and while there is much to remember about that drive the
highlight was driving over the
waves
thrashing against the bridges made for a dramatic drive that nearly produced the
illusion of driving on the water.
I had the car here for about a month last year, but decided I did not need the
aggravation right away. A friend generously let me park it on his property upstate.
With *only* a 2 hour trip needed to get my car, I briefly imagined I would make an
occasional trip up there to get the car for some purpose or other. But this is me,
and as I should have well known 2 hours away might as well be 2 years away.
A few weeks ago I forced myself to go upstate and get the thing, and I will probably
force myself to make some use of the car here.
Having never owned a car in New York I find that the common wisdom proves
true. For my needs a car is a generally useless luxury, and its use has mostly involved
moving it from one side of the street to the other to make way for street cleaning
schedules. As I also know from common wisdom, parking regulations are sometimes
obscure, and enforcement is arbitrary.
One fear I have about truly relying on the car is that I will get fat, or at least
very lazy, for lack of any real exercise. When I get back here from Florida, (where
walking anywhere prompts sarcastic gibes from car drivers to “GIT A CAR!“)
I usually feel bloated and pasty for having walked no further than to or from the
car (and for consuming ever-unpredictable road trip food).
The car is identical to the cars used by limo companies and car services. My most
distinct memory of driving the car in New York for the first time was seeing
numerous people attempt to hail me for a ride. There was no question of what was
going on: people on the street looked me straight in the eye and held up one hand,
thinking that I must be a limo driver if I’m cruising around in this type of
vehicle. The car also has a bunch of stickers in the windshield, making it look (from a distance)
very official.
