Saturday 5 September 2009

Katharine Hepburn's Smile

For some reasons, I chose (or I should better say "my mind" chose) to have a little breakdown after my dinner with J. It was not too serious a breakdown (although it worried J. a lot).

When I wrote "for some reasons," I had in fact rather concrete reasons in mind (my mind never rests, does it?):

1. I had an overloaded week as the semester began on Monday, and I overtaxed myself physically and mentally (which was not unexpected at the beginning of any semester);

2. I had a wonderful night watching La Bohème on HD under the late-summer sky right outside the Met, and my mind probably told the rest of my body that it was time to unload my negative energies;

3. I had a margarita, which further sent signals to my brain that it was time to relax, and in order to relax, my mind decided to let all the repressed negativities back to the conscious level;

4. The food was not so great, I had to admit, and one of my credit cards was declined, thrown in front of me by a rather "unsmiling" cashier.

I can analyze this to no end, and all I want to do at this moment is to apologize to J. for my putting an unpleasant coda to a lovely evening.

What saved me out of my death drive (as Freud would put it), was a still frame of a close-up of Katharine Hepburn on a window display (not the one shown here, for that moment of revelation can never be replicated, although it does stay in me in a perpetual way; but, having said that, the picture I chose to put here is probably the way I would see myself as Hepburn, if I were to put myself in drag and be her) while I was walking down 52nd Street. Again, I don't believe that I would need to explain why and how I was ready to "live" again as I saw her smile--I believe that any fan of hers would understand it.

Let us bask in her smile, and throw any analysis to the trash bin.

Henceforth, here is the lesson of today: I guess that some people see the Virgin on their pancakes or bathroom doors, and I saw Katharine Hepburn inside a department store window.