In performance at the Mendocino Hotel January 26, 2007
NAKED IN THE BOOKSTORE
By Lydia Rand
As Marianne awoke her dream wrapped around her like a feather boa. She could no more resist the enticement to linger in bed than refuse a passionate embrace from a long desired lover. She adored this charmed state when her outlines became uncertain. Her whole being went soft and smooth, no sharp edges remained for life's frustrations to catch on, like jagged fingernails on silk stockings. Infused with a sense of benevolence towards all living things, she caressed the fuzziness of her naked shoulder.
When she finally tore herself away from her bed, she went to her rose-scented drawer to choose the clothes for the day. Each drawer had a different scent, and she refreshed the dried blossoms and petals regularly. She knew the mood of that day had to be rose and decided she would not go to work and ruin her state of bliss. She knew just what to do with her time instead: follow her nose wherever it led her. The sense of smell was most important to her, because it was the one her mind had the least control over. It penetrated her innermost recesses with each breath, and there was no way to contest its directions.
Marianne believed that direction was something to resist, a motivation instilled by parents and teachers in order to manipulate and force you to “get ahead,” which really meant to live someone else’s life. "You've got to get some direction," nagged her mother. "Follow directions and make yourself a place in this world," ordered her father.
For her, there had been such a fine line between being motivated and compulsive that she crossed over without noticing. Her tendency to follow one given direction to its bitter end with total dedication could blot out the rest of the world, even herself.
No more, she decided. She would change this on this beautiful morning and remain directionless until she caught a certain whiff in the air. Only the unmotivated being inside of her could sniff that out. That uncivilized being didn't believe someone else's code of ethic over its own intuition.
As she dressed she caught the whiff. It guided her to the back of the house where she kept her bicycle. She straddled it and pedaled towards town, picking up a pathway of scents that led to Lansing Street where the delicious smell of baked goods from the local bakery teased her nose. Ever since a lecture she had recently attended in a National Park, Marianne was training herself to recognize every ingredient making up a scent. She learned about the chemical messages animals leave for each other, depositing little pockets of scent from glands, rubbing for that purpose against trees, bushes, clumps of grass or bark. The animals intercepting those aromas could decipher the messages - enticing or challenging - contained within each chemical that composed them, like so many words forming a letter. Marianne fell madly in love with the woman lecturer and vowed to become a scents’ reader.
She was moving fast towards the bakery when a flock of blackbirds tracing hieroglyphic patterns in the sky caught her attention. It looked like Japanese calligraphy. She stopped to watch them as they flew swiftly into formation. They kept exactly the same distance between one another in spite of their speed, then abruptly dropped towards the ground but changed direction just before hitting it. They never once lost their perfect configuration as they rode the current back into the sky. The effect was Escher-like: collapsing dominos that suddenly escaped the pull of gravity, a twist of fate, an impossible possibility, an optical illusion that slightly disarranged her reality. The hieroglyphs inscribed a new path in her brain and this guided her away from the bakery. She followed the direction the birds took and turned on Main Street. She could see, above the corner bookstore, the flock of birds narrowing into a neck that pointed to the entrance. Marianne had spent many afternoons in that place where words traveled back and forth over the centuries. She often went there just to take in the scent of ideas and stories.
The day was so beautiful she wanted to stay outside longer, so she took the long way around and followed the headland trail along the ocean. She got off her bike and pushed it along in order to observe every small native plant, and enjoy the wild ocean in the background. She came across a small group of tourists in bright jogging outfits and she stepped aside to let them go by on the narrow trail. She felt so good she wanted to share some of that feeling and she greeted them, but they went on without even acknowledging her presence or her courtesy. Actually their eyes averted hers.
She was not going to let them get away with this rude behavior. She rushed after them and stood in their way, trying something she had used successfully in a lucid dream. She looked deep into their eyes and undressed them right there in her imagination. She quickly took off their shiny jogging suits, then their T-shirts, down to their Jockey-shorts, underwear and bras. She removed those gingerly so as not to cause too much distress and there they stood . . . naked as newborn birds, terribly awkward in front of her. Aware of their discomfort she took pity on them and removed her own clothes so they could be on equal terms.
Something happened then. No longer avoiding, they looked straight into her eyes and met her. They had nothing to hide, or maybe they came to terms with what had been hidden. They were willing to share their deepest secrets with her.
Not a word was exchanged. Telepathic communication was easy in that state of nakedness. They were thrilled to discover they had this ability and engaged Marianne in a silent conversation.
"If everyone was naked all the time it would sure change the nature of relationships wouldn't it?" they communicated.
"It would establish total equality. Any meeting would have great significance," she replied.
“Everyone would share their innermost self at first glance," they went on.
"No clothing for judgment to cling to, no blame, just the naked truth of self . . . and chance," she explained.
But the tourists who had been in a trance were starting to come back to their senses. They looked around suspiciously. "What is this?" they questioned afraid that too much had been revealed.
"This,” she replied, “is an animal world where scents are easily deciphered. No clothing, no deodorant or perfume to disguise your true smell. When there is no place to hide there is no way to lie."
The tourists had moved closer together and made a circle as though to defend themselves against her unpredictable and dangerous madness.
"Enough of this," she said, and willing her clothes back on she abruptly turned to the right on to a marshy trail, not bothering to put the tourists’ clothes back on their bodies. She left them to their own devices, at the mercy of any passing eyes. She did want to punish them for their rudeness so she neatly tucked their clothes in the very organized closet of her mind and pushed the door shut.
Her nose was urgently calling her back in the direction of the bookstore. A street musician standing next to the entrance was playing mandolin. She parked her bike and dropped two ten-dollar bills into his hat. He nodded and smiled knowingly.
She walked in, waving to her favorite saleswoman at the counter. Fortunately the woman was busy so she didn't have to stop and chat. The smell of freshly printed material from the front section jumped on her like an enthusiastic pup. Her nose led her straight to the novel section in the back. She went by the philosophy and psychology section without even casting a glance. It was stories not ideas she needed to sniff today. She wanted to come to the gate of language, hear the voices of raconteurs answering each other over the chasm of time. She gathered a few novels from shelves as she went by, picking up messages from book covers.
The bookstore was divided into three-sided cubbies with benches on the back wall for customers to quietly explore books before making a choice. She sat down and sniffed the printed-paper to get more information, then enrolled her sense of touch as well. Pages trembled like lovers’ skin under her caress. Smooth and fine grain, porous or glossy, soft or rough, all of them gave her satisfaction. Her fingers followed the lines on the pages, her nose trailed behind her fingers. She knew what was contained within the arrangements of these sentences. Before reading any of the words she received the deeper message when she met the book’s spirit.
She was familiar with those wild spirits. They might have floated around aimlessly for decades and centuries waiting for the moment someone would notice them and transform them into words. Once caught, trapped in language, they remained dangerous for a while, but when they had accepted their new habitat they became tame, reachable, legible. But this took time and Marianne’s long acquaintance with these spirits made her heedful of their eccentricities. They could become so demanding and invasive before they were fully tamed. She could never sleep in a room lined with bookshelves. All the little black-letter-spirits would escape from their pages and overrun her psyche, each with a voice wanting to be heard. They’d dance wildly, making sound patterns all around. She got no rest and would wake up exhausted.
It has been said that good writers were attuned to the messages transmitted from higher or lower sources, from physical or non-physical realities, that they had the ability to translate those messages most accurately. But nothing was ever mentioned about readers. Their role in freeing word spirits from the page and seeding the cosmos with them was unrecognized. If book lovers had a good nose, a good sense of touch and a developed inner ear they didn't even have to know how to read. Marianne surmised that this probably would be the way of the future since fewer and fewer children were able to learn to read even with the best of intentions from parents and teachers.
A Cheshire smile on her face, Marianne settled on a bench. She sensed that among the books on her lap she would find the story designed just for her on this special day, a story coming from her future to heal her past. All she had to do was to sniff it out and let her fingers trace the letters. But something interrupted her flow. A little alteration of patterns to the right of her that caught her eye as the flock of blackbirds had earlier. In-between the rows of books she made out a shape in the cubby next to hers. She pushed a few books aside to have a better view and saw a figure following words with fingers. Why were hieroglyphs so wildly dancing above this head? She got up to take a closer look, sticking her face in the space she had made.
A man was bent over a book so she couldn't see his face. She hadn’t made a sound, but he suddenly looked straight up at her. He was as dark as she was light, nevertheless he reminded her of herself, sort of like the brother who was inscribed in her future but never came to be. They both had the same high cheekbones, the same tiger-shaped eyes. He was small, slight of build like her. They stared at each other and she could feel how lovely it would be to direct those slender hips against her own, guide them closer and closer. His embrace, like the feather boa of her dream.
She didn't have to take his clothes off, they fell on their own. Hers flew off simultaneously. Their bodies' recognized each other under the books' naked stares. He reminded her of her father in some early picture, before the man ever had a daughter. She felt protective toward this father who was also a younger brother. She wanted to make him strong with unremitting love. Then he changed, looking like the child she hadn't had yet. And then he was her lover again.
"Hello," she said, "This is a very good day."
"Hello," he replied, "a good day to play mandolin and learn Japanese calligraphy.”
