Once the ketamine took its effect, I wanted nothing more than to step out of my body, and the only way I could do that was to extract myself from the party and find an empty room.
We were staying that weekend in a refurbished 12th century home in a sleepy French provincial town that, at its economic height during the late Middle Ages, converged trade routes stemming from all over Europe. Nowadays, the only spurts of commerce passing through are for the annual Renaissance festival and rose garden tourism. I’d already wandered through the property earlier that day to conduct a vibe check. Sadly, nothing sinister registered, and still everybody avoided the dank limestone cellar—and for good reason. It was pitch-black. The eyes, no matter how many blinks, never adjusted. All you were confronted with were the deep recesses of your mind.
There, alone that night, I existed only as consciousness. The ketamine addled state of my mind merged vividly with the method of loci. I walked through various scenes of my novel, a sensory experience beyond the sentence level. I paid no mind to the murmurs and rustlings around me. All that mattered was my mind’s body coursing through the story.
Christopher Isherwood’s novel (1964) and Tom Ford’s film adaptation (2009) of A Single Man each stand on their own as stylish elegies, moody and cerebral, but it’s prose that best captures Isherwood’s consideration of the body as object. Take this excerpt from the start of the novel, when the human known as George, 58, wakes up one morning to begin another day:
Staring and staring into the mirror, it sees many faces within its face—the face of the child, the boy, the young man, the not-so-young man—all present still, preserved like fossils on superimposed layers, and, like fossils, dead. Their message to this live dying creature is this: Look at us—we have died—what is there to be afraid of? It answers them: But that happened so gradually, so easily. I’m afraid of being rushed.
![The Progress of Love: Reverie, zoomed in The Progress of Love: Reverie, zoomed in](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F80cfa02f-e0ec-46fd-89a5-f5331a73813f_2184x3558.jpeg)
I turned 35 this past week. It took the dissociative aftereffects of the ketamine for me to realize the subconscious fears and desires I’d pegged to this birthday milestone. The emotional narratives I attached to certain people, situations, habits, and goals now feel somewhat flatlined. These expectations had unknowingly caused me grief, producing this dual tension of being bogged down and, at the same time, making me feel rushed. The more I prescribed meaning, the more these meanings became fixations that narrowed the scope of my life.
Last year, I had bemoaned not having enough certainties to fill in all the spaces. This year, following the k-hole, I want nothing more than to not know only without the longing. What good has longing ever done for me besides turn out disappointment? It’s a way, I suppose, for us to cope with not knowing, to process the tumult of emotions we feel but cannot do anything about. With the past and future beyond our grasp, all we can do is pine, yearn, and fantasize.
The more I prescribed meaning, the more these meanings became fixations that narrowed the scope of my life.
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Thing is though, I don’t want to feel stuck in the way longing can feel. I want the present to feel boundless and alive. The extent I wish to occupy is my presence, here and now.