Too Much and Not the Mood
Durga Chew-Bose
For Dulcie, Felix, Amiya, Chameli
To my family and Sarah, and to hurrying home
I just had this one image of Jack Nicholson holding a pink balloon.
—POLLY PLATT
1
Heart Museum
THERE’S an emoji on my phone that I’ve never used, of a shell-pink tower-block building with blue windows. Smaller than an apple seed, crumb-sized—if that—it stands six stories high. Six windows going up: three square, three rectangular. I counted them and double-checked because extra-small things bring out the extra-small person in me who sometimes even triple-checks things; who still chances certainty might exist in asking, “Promise me?”
This emoji is further detailed with a letter H—pink too, but more or less magenta—that hangs on its front and is matched in size by a pink heart floating above the building’s extension; like a shiny Mylar balloon escaping into the sky. The building’s roof is maroon, and an awning, also pink, shelters its two-door entranceway. Unlike the “house” emoji, for instance, this one has zero greenery: no shrubs, no tree. No landscaping. Just a stand-alone building that, until recently, I thought stood for “Cardiologist.” The H and its accompanying heart were an expression of, in my mind, heart hospital. Or heart doctor. And not, as I later discovered while scrolling through an emoji glossary online: “Love Hotel.” I was sure the building stood for all matters having to do with that four-chambered, fist-shaped muscle we carry—that carries us—with constancy. That beats—did you know?—more than one hundred thousand times a day.
Imagine that. Even when we’re pressing snooze and rolling over in bed, folding ourselves into our covers and postponing the day’s bubbling over, and soon after notching cold butter on warm toast, or later coming to a halt as we bound up a flight of subway stairs only to stall behind an elderly woman whose left leg trails behind her right leg—one leaden step at a time—even then, when time decelerates and the relative importance of our lives, of our hurry, undergoes a sudden, essential audit; even then, our heart never stops.
Even when a name I’ve long ignored—blotted from my mind in order to safeguard some good sense—pops up bold in my inbox. Even when I notice three consecutive missed calls from my father and, as if metronomed by doom, fear the worst, my heart does not stop beating.
Even when I hear a sound or count footsteps following me at night, or spot two rats darting from a pile of trash, or hold my breath as Lisa Fremont climbs the fire escape to Thorwald’s apartment while Jeff anxiously sits guard in his wheelchair, watching with his binoculars from across the courtyard. Even then. Even Hitchcock. Despite pure movie fright—how it skewers me—my heart doesn’t stop.
Even when the cab all of a sudden breaks and jerks forward. When anything lurches. Careens. When “Think fast!” trails the toss. When my leg involuntarily twitches and I sense I’ve lost my balance, only to wake up having dozed off. Even when I watched Man on Wire, bewildered as to why anyone would perform such a stunt. Eight passes back and forth. A quarter mile up.
Even when a thought springs fresh in my mind on the subway and solves an essay I’d just about abandoned. On the rare occasion my subconscious welds, language has a gift, I’ve learned, for humiliating those luminous random acts of creative flash into impossible-to-secure hobbling duds. The best ideas outrun me. That’s why I write.
Even in June 2011, when my roommate and I paused Game 4 of the Heat–Mavericks Finals because: CRASH! The sound—the loudest, most intense crinkle—traveled from my bedroom at the front of our apartment, which faced the street. We’d only lived there, on the second floor, maybe two or three months. As we walked slowly down the length of our long hallway, I noticed my window was broken, the glass veined. A single hole in the bottom corner. Flattened on my floor near my bed were the pummeled shards of a bullet. Some kids on the street, my neighbors later told me, had been playing with a gun. My heart clamped and didn’t recoup for days. I slept on the couch, not out of fear—I don’t think—but because, no matter how diligently I swept, I kept finding slivers of glass on my floor. They seemed to suggest it’s okay to be someone who is slow to move on.
Even when pointe shoes flit down the stage like muffled hazard. When a fur coat slides off a woman’s bare shoulders. Or when a kiss on my neck obscures all clichés about kisses on necks and I am no longer human but merely an undulation.
Or when Mariah pleats a litany of notes into “Vision of Love.” When her finale crests and becomes tendency. Even then, my heart upholds.
Or those first ten seconds of “Man in the Mirror.” Right before Michael sings, I’m gonna make a change, and those early notes sound like crystal snowflakes falling on sheets of sugar. Or my favorite: the undervalued “Who Is It.” Jealousy’s anthem. How it thumps. How it’s obsessed. Paranoid. How it’s frantic enough to summon past jealousies, no matter how beyond them you think you are. “Who Is It” is a maze. It’s the sound of being stuck in one. It’s the pursuer feeling pursued. Betrayal can debilitate but it can also animate. It’s how even at one’s most suspicious, the heart speeds up—ticks, twitches, is a grenade—yet never stops.
Or when I meet someone new who loves a movie just as I’ve loved that movie; who speaks at such a clip about it—tenderly, contagiously—that I forget to speak at all and smile like a fool because, now and then, meeting new people isn’t so terrible.
Even when the ATM reveals my bank balance unsolicited. When a stranger’s ringtone is the same as my morning alarm, waylaying me with acute dread midafternoon. When life’s practicalities knock the romance out, and money, time, sense syndicate my passions into bills, deferred goals, and all the boring bits.
Even when a buzzer-beating shot bounces on the rim. When Steph sinks a no-look. When Kerri Strug landed her pained, team-winning second vault at the 1996 Olympics and I watched with my eyes half covered, sitting on the floor of my aunt’s Atlanta home, not far from the Georgia Dome.