we were here
reimagining
Richard Mcguire’s Here with Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway
Richard Mcguire’s Here with Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway
“You’re going to remember this day for the rest of your life,” — with that line, he got up and left the room. “Where did he go?” What did that mean? As Clarissa sat in the couch that felt like had been there for an eternity, she thought about whether it could have been her instead that had been eternally there. But she also knew, for a fact that eternity had not passed — but I wanted so many things to last forever!; she would say, and there he would protest with her. They built this place together — and it was their choice to move down there too — so certainly there was so much to remember; what was the rush to separate today? She knew that the to-do list was idle and empty. Was that the meaning to fill it, for that reason? What would she have to do to not forget, to remember until her death — beyond his leaving? He was her life, or what else was there?
Looking up from her feet and away from the door, she saw an answer. In front of Clarissa lay the two walls that felt like had been with her all her life, though she knew that these walls had remembered lives many more than hers or his, who had just left — I guess the story for him here just ended. But on the other hand, she knew that she was not the wall’s only life, no, it had seen many: the tears of joys and sadness, the lamentations of the Smith family, as their jovial elders broke their hips and were sent to the hospital, the jarring moose heads, the drunked insults and heated battles — that cane slamming him to the floor, really shouldn’t have; shattered the precious glassware too — the shrieks of horror, the falling of ladders, the mundane reading of the New York Times, the beats and steps accompanying the waltzes and tangos. Even the nature of the walls’ skin had their own lives: just years ago they had gotten the paint redone: no more of that Art Deco bullshit, she was sure about that. But though she was not the wall’s only life, the walls at times felt like they held her very own. She once heard from someone that everytime she smelt, she was absorbing the molecules that have detached from whatever she was smelling. Perhaps that explained this feeling that she was physically more and more integrated with these two walls, the walls that had dominated her life. After all, it was their fort — password-protected, remember? Containing so many things rushing by, moments they wished that lasted forever. All the parties they were once together: holding babies, holding birthday bashes, holding bashes for those babies. They were giving birth to something they knew they would end, but for some reason they wanted it to forever continue. The games of Twister they conjured while he had the giraffe’s head over the boob lasers, blue blazers was it? Oh you look wonderful! — oh it was so ridiculous! Oh, you’ve gotten older! Indeed, Clarissa felt like she had been feeling the age pile on, the less fun she found those antics that used to be burned into her memories. But then again, so was this space around her. “The older I get, the less I know. Eventually I’ll know nothing,” she said to herself with a wistful sigh. After all this time, what did she remember?
To clear the confusion, Clarissa thought about heading out. What did she need to remember for it — right, watch, wallets, keys — but who made that decision for her? She looked down at the leather that held her cash and cards, her time by her wrist; why did this bind her life? Would she lose out if she had lost any of it? How surreal it was to think the leather was alive at this very spot — moo!; they heard; whoosh!; an arrow flying, or a blade slashing through the air as they were cut down for cattle. Were they already domesticated back then? No, they wouldn’t care — just in the middle of living. What did they care for? Did they know they were being killed? She thought whether that was her, at that moment.
But as she rocked back and forth in the chair with her sweater on, staring at the corner of the wall’s purple wallpaper, rocking back and forth amidst the shadows cast by the window, she watched a television programme: first it was about Three Mile Island, then the sun, expanding in size in a burning crimson red. At that moment, she did not fear death, for she did not have to see — seated with her sweater; a little too hot! — the flames, the light. But certainly that was the same light, at some point, eight million years later or before. Or maybe not. But she could discern from the light that was pouring through the windows that it was the morning. She knew that very much even without seeing, hearing greetings passing by, through the window from beyond the wall, outside on the everyday suburbs — good morning! Realising that she decided to celebrate by singing a song — for some reason, it began: row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream… ah yes, just like what I’m doing now, just floating about. She’s lost it. Where had that tune come from? Tapping into her subconscious jukebox, she thought: she lost it. She could have been singing anything beyond the nursery rhymes of yore: the jazz dances of the 20s, singing for the rituals for newborns at the harvest, what if she had celebrated the Jacksons’ child that way — “merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily…”? Why would that have been strange?” The birds outside sang along: now that was a song that never ended — tweet! Tweeeet! tweeeet! She lost it again — after scrolling through her Twitter, she shrieked at the tweeting outside, only to be met by rage that she could not yet match, not at least in this age.
Oh my god!
Clarissa breathed in. She was losing it, indeed. Over the past few years, few decades, she had been losing her hearing, her self-control, her mind. In a way, he was a way for her to feel as well. How was she to remember now without her senses? But over everything, she hated losing her vision most. Just the other day, she couldn’t see the night papers without her reading glasses. How ludicrous. When she couldn’t see, she comforted herself by telling herself that she could compensate by dreaming — though sometimes they threatened to drown her. In one of the dreams, she remembered everyone had the same name, which scared her to death at the time. “But…everyone is just stumbling in the dark,” she suddenly remembered to herself. It was OK if people found her imperfections. Clarissa remembered the phrase from something she heard on a phone call with him. As she thought of that conversation, she suddenly remembered that absurd time when she saw on ABC when they uncovered the Terracotta Army straight out of a random patch of farmland — that was a definite stumble, she thought. Then the call from the archaelogical society came. At the time her grandma was over, and she had to make the room to her taste. But some things stay the same, the way she used to make lemonade for guests that were over — those were great, serious-looking historians — just like how Clarissa would for herself. Did they care about her house? How pretty she had made the place.
But maybe they were just pursuing something that she couldn’t understand. Just like how he had pursued her. Clarissa knew she was his muse all along. There are some words that are timeless aren’t they? “All’s fair in love and war,” one went. Whoever invented that phrase? There she wondered how they would say that in a distant time. Would that still hold true? She recalled when she was being pursued as well: it all began here. She remembered she was his muse — or did she make her his muse? Through screens, through the film’s canvas to the canvas that lay on the easel, she asked him whether he could make a portrait of her, and there she was, waiting looking into his eyes. Say cheese! She preferred to lay there, as she lay just like she always did. But she knew in his eyes as well there was something more universal than thinking about the art — more than the imitations of Johannes Vermeer he would use to stare at and hang on the walls, the — there was something more everlasting, something more primal about it. He was that way for years — perhaps he was like a hunter. Those barbs came about all day. Tschitgussil! I want to forever be with you. This is perfect. Merci. Hitami mitsu welsichik, kahtainhake. K’nis’gaxgelun’en! Where did he go? Why did he go? Ah, it must have been the family. It was always like this. Or was it? They talked about politics back then. Arguments about the monarchy, squabbles about the president. Shithead. Bastard. Wacko. Geek. Dunderhead. Dirtbag. Dipshit. Dweeb. Drip. Doofus. Kook. Klutz. Nerd. Square. Funny how these words stay around. Suddenly, she remembered she had to show people around the house soon. Keep those words in. Oh, a room tour, you say? She stared at the wall in front of her again, looking at the light. Perhaps this place saw the wall just like how the wall saw her. The mammoths and dinosaurs, the vermillion chaos that swirled in the soup of three billion years ago, the massive woods of prehistory — just think about the woods in the Pacific Northwest where parents were from and how immense they would be — the sublime sunsets on the primordial horizon, the radioactive haze in the year three thousands. What was this wall? A speck. Less than one. Suddenly, the wall stopped feeling like an enveloping home, but just a mere obstruction from seeing life as a whole. Perhaps that’s what he saw, what he sought to leave. It was a wall, after all. She stared at the column of light that trickled through the glass once more. It was a fire in her heart — but in a way, it was also the fire of everything.
Later she thought: what happens when this place burns down? If he had not already burnt her heart down, that was. What would she remember at the end of her life? What of today would she not forget. Strangely, a voice called out to her. “We do as we do. — welcome to Channel Six!” She stared at her watch, and barely any time had passed since she had woken up. As she shut off the fuzz of a futuristic laser buzzed through the CRT screen, illuminated by the moonlight that she had believed to be eternal, Clarissa suddenly felt a confidence that, at the very least, there was one thing that could never been taken away from her, a three word phrase that in her heart and soul knew was true. She picked up the phone, hoping to leave her message.
“We were here.”