Something Happens and I’m Head over Heels

This past Saturday, as evening collapsed on the orangeade drinkers carousing the boutiques, I put my hand down my throat to touch my heart and it stung.

That’s a line from my uncle Dean’s poem “Dog Toy”–a line, I once told Deano, that I would forever try to commemorate in my own life. The tang of orangeade. The art of carousing. The urge to feel my own heart. The sting of trying.

When I read this line I think of Icarus. In the myth, Icarus flies to the sun, burns his wings, and plunges into the sea. I look at this high-flying champion. I see the self-destructive attitude of the spirit. I see the self-obliteration of a man in whom the spirit is strong. This is spring to me: the season of self-obliteration.

The spring always fucks me up. Recently, I’ve suffered a flare of my gut illness, ulcerative colitis. Every year, it’s the same: spring rolls around and I experience a fresh slew of autoimmune symptoms.

And yet, I love the lunacy of spring.

Jubilant crowds take to the streets with no other design than to enjoy living. Young couples kiss in full view on the crowded streets. Old ladies eat fruit on the corners. Old men bound up steps, two at a time. Everyone’s making important decisions and making the exact opposite decision the next day. The weather, echoing the mood, changes erratically, hour to hour.

This past Saturday I was walking with Karen down 17th to Rittenhouse Square when we came upon a massive black man strutting in orthopedic shoes, wearing fat, old school headphones, and singing Tears for Fears at the top his lungs:

Something happens and I’m head over heels
I never find out till I’m head over hee-ee-els
Something happens and I’m head over heels
Ah, don’t take my heart
Don’t break my heart
Don’t, don’t throw it away

He seemed to have a foot injury, something that made him lunge forward, on one foot, then the other, from side to side. He didn’t really walk; he bounced. And yet, somehow, he had made of his foot injury a swaggering style. He was all confidence. His voice, high-pitched and somewhat melodious, was flawed, yet he sang without inhibition, with the fist-clenching braggadocio of a diva.

The man infected me. I’ve always loved Tears for Fears. I couldn’t help myself: I sang along at the top of my lungs.

The street was jammed with the tipsy affluent people you’d expect to see on Rittenhouse. We walked through the crowds, down 17th, singing, past Bleu and Devon, past the glamorous line of wood tables outside Parc. Two springs ago I sat at one of these tables with Karen, Suzanne, and Andrés. We drank too much wine. At one point, I bolted up from my seat and challenged the entire street to a bet.

“I bet I can run around Rittenhouse in three minutes!”

A few people flashed five dollar bills in the air. Andrés set his watch.

“Ready?” he asked.

I took off.

Empty glasses

Whenever I feel ill, I lie in bed and daydream about a different life: a different body, a fresh hack at my twenties, my thirties. I’m not sure why I just can’t lie in bed and simply think about my life as it is. Someday, I hope to no longer dream about being anything or anyone or anywhere different. Someday, hopefully, I’ll just dream about being me, as deeply me as possible, alive to my triumphs, my failings.

I will recover from this latest relapse, no doubt. And then, sometime, I will relapse again. When will I actually accept this cycle?

“We must change life,” writes Rimbaud.

Following this dictum for years, I’ve played the role of a change-pusher.

“This book changed my life,” I’ve said. “Read it!”

“This mango changed my life!”

“Eat this mango! Read this book!”

But what’s the point? To be different? To go elsewhere? I’ve spent a lot of time trying to change. What if the point is to merely fulfill, not change, life?