Tag: writing

Andra and I met for dinner at Wo Hop on Mott Street. It serves what she calls the most “authentic New York-style” Chinese food. It is bright, loud and crowded. It smells heavenly. And the waiters rush dishes out as soon as they are prepared.

Because her flight from Europe was delayed, we met there at 9:30 pm, shortly before closing.

We sat at a booth in a corner furthest from the kitchen. She’d slept on the plane intermittently and she was ravenous. She ordered for the two of us.

 We spoke for a while about Budapest, her writing, and the course she taught there. She was animated but soon her mood shifted.

She folded her arms in front of her on the table and leaned toward me.

“I am spent,” she said. “I had such great hopes for my year away and much of it was wonderful. But I now feel lost, unmoored, and meaningless to a certain extent and that life, in fact, lacks any inherent meaning.”

“Andra,” I said.

“No, I’m serious. I was there for a year and my classes were going well. I even considered moving there, at least for a few years, but as time went on, I felt the work was dispiriting. I was diligent. I admit, I had high expectations. However, my students were unengaged, uncommitted, at least in the way I had expected them to be: European, whatever that might mean. They were no better by comparison to those I had been teaching here. I began to ask myself, am I making any difference at all in their lives? They certainly were not making any difference in mine.”

“Andra, I know you. You’re a good teacher. Your students speak highly of you.”

“Yes, yes, I know that, but…”

“And this just began in Budapest?

“No. In fact, I had taken the job there because I felt that living here, in this New York bubble, was, with the constant hype, celebrity, needy causes, acquisitiveness, and self-satisfaction, stifling. Don’t you feel that at times?”

“About New York or that I am going through life playing a part of some sort with no meaning?”

“Well, both, but more than that, that life ultimately has no meaning. We fill our days with work and phone calls and dinners out, and futile political conversations without any effect. When, in fact, they are simply diversions from facing that we are alone in the world which cares nothing about us and which itself has no meaning.”

The waiter had brought platters of chow fun, spareribs with ginger and scallion and a shrimp dish I could not identify. I spooned some of each dish onto my plate.

“Andra, I don’t disagree with you at all. The world is, in fact, pointless. But life need not be meaningless or pointless. If you are thinking that because, ultimately, as perhaps you are, we all die, therefore life has no meaning, I disagree with you. If anything, death gives us the opportunity to find meaning in life, in relationships, family, and creativity.”

She was quiet while the waiter filled our glasses with ice water.

“On the flight back,” she said, “I had this terrifyingly real dream that I had somehow contracted a painful and incurable condition, much like when I was younger and had endometriosis which they could do nothing for except remove my uterus which I refused to do, and now I had this disease, equally painful and incurable. I woke up in fear. I may have screamed, because the attendant came over to me and she actually sat down next to me and asked if they should divert the fight for me, and of course I said no, I apologized and passed it off as nothing of concern.”

“That must have been so frightening.”

“Yes, yes, it was, but of course I don’t have such a disease. Not that I know of, but what if I do? It would be all over. How could I go on? Maybe I could. I mean it just shows you how flimsy life can be. Ultimately how meaningless it is. Do you ever feel that way?”

“Yes, I said, “I am constantly aware of the tenuousness of life and, and, how close to death we might be at any moment. Even at this very moment.”

“Doesn’t that terrify you?” she said, “I try not to think about that. I don’t think I could get up in the morning or go to work if I thought like that. But you have not touched the kung pao shrimp, it is truly scrumptious.” 

I took a bite of the shrimp.

“And then,” she continued, “just when I was considering lengthening my stay there, to focus on the book I had started, there was this student, an attractive young man from the Pest quarter of the city, who was clearly one of the better of the group, invited me to lunch after the semester ended. We went to the Espresso café near the Montenegro Embassy. He was an earnest young man and quite well dressed. I admit I felt a twinge of what, affection, perhaps. But as the afternoon went on, I was unprepared for what he began talking about.”

“What was that?”

“Well, at one point over our coffee, he said, conversationally, that he was studying acting and that Stanislavski taught that the essence of acting was to constantly ask oneself, ‘Who am I? Why am I here? Where do I come from, and where am I going?’ And he told me, again quite earnestly, that to truly live we must ask those questions of ourselves. Only then, he said, can we act with honesty, compassion. and empathy. Only then can we live rather than just perform.”

“That is remarkable insight is it not? I mean, for a young man. And, was that not what you yourself had been feeling? Did you see him again?”

“Heavens no,” she said. “Why would he say such things to me? His former teacher. I had no desire to spend the rest of the afternoon at a glorious outdoor café by the Danube or any time or any place, being lectured by him about how I should live.”

“But, Andra, was he not being sincere and caring and relating to you, just as you wanted. Just as we all want?”

She looked at me as if I was talking gibberish.

“I don’t know what we all want, and don’t think you or he know either. I toldhim that what he was suggesting to me was, by implication, impertinent and glaringly inappropriate. I am an educated, aware, and accomplished person. Thoroughly cognizant of my own mortality, and that, as a path to gain authenticity in life that I should engage in some theatrical trick is in any way superior to, say, just waking up each day, having a cup of coffee, breathing in some fresh air and saying, ‘fuck it, let’s see what happens today.”

Her watch beeped. She checked and moved to stand up.

“I am tired now. I am exhausted, and I am going home to sleep. I have come home from a situation which no longer worked for me. And tomorrow I will undoubtedly awaken, say ‘fuck it,’ perhaps out loud, and feel boundlessly better.”

I started to say something when she stood up. She waved me not to, thanked the waiter, gathered up her package of leftovers, and said, “This has been fabulous,” and, pointing to the check, she said to me ,“I have only a few Euros in my pocket. Please be a dear, will you?”

And then she was gone. Her footsteps clacked on the concrete steps up to Mott Street.