Acts of desire

"Writing is an act of desire, as is reading. Why does someone enclose a set of apprehensions within a book? Why does someone else open that book if not because of the act of wanting to be wanted, to be understood, to be seen, to be loved?

"And desire is also an act of reading, of translation" -Dionne Brand

It's been a few days, and I was starting to get The Fear, that I've lost my nerve as far as this writing thing goes. I've set the bar very high for myself-- regardless of whether this blog is any good or not, it has been good for me. My entries so far have been written with as close to my full heart and mind as I can manage. I feel good about what I've written and I've worked through some things. Where to go next?

I took the above quote from a random blog. I do find myself hoping that people will read this blog and understand me, and praise me for being so insightful and so creative. I can't seem to escape the gaze of my potential audience (which I suppose is a present absence; I'm sure not many people are reading). It's sort of annoying because escaping an audience was my whole reason for starting a new blog; my old LJ was just a performance for people I knew were reading it; each entry sort of shamelessly whored itself out for comments.

So, what to do about this writing for an audience thing? I think it's inevitable. Even in my paper journals, I always had in mind the idea that someone might read them someday, and so I censored myself a bit even there. Maybe there is no act of writing that is completely oblivious to the gaze of the other. So, I work through it. I just need to keep in mind that this blog is for me.

Lately I have been dealing with various calamities and thinking about the signifier, which is how the unconscious reveals itself, through speech, dreams, and most notably for this entry, forgotten acts.

Thanks to my knowledge of Lacan, I am struck with fear whenever I forget something that I really should have remembered. What does that mean? I think. What is my unconscious trying to tell me?

I'm sure most of these acts of forgetting are fairly meaningless, but for example, on the day I got married:

I remembered the marriage license. I remembered the rings. I remembered my wallet and even double checked for my Metro card. We dressed up, I did my hair and makeup, we brought everything the baby could possibly need, and we set out.

We got to Manhattan. We walked around and took pictures of City Hall until our two witnesses showed up. We went in. We got in line. I opened my wallet.

My drivers license was not where it was supposed to be. Immediately I knew exactly where it was-- in my jeans pocket, the jeans I wore two days earlier, when we got the marriage license. I had to show the ID to get the license, and instead of returning it to my wallet like I always do, I slipped it into my back pocket.

So, on our wedding day, two and a half hours before city hall closed, I realized that my ID was an hour train ride away. We had to drag Anthony's friends, who came along to be witnesses, all the way back to Queens. I ran back to the house while they waited for me on the corner. I grabbed my ID (just where I knew it would be) and my sneakers (I had been wearing heels but we would have to run to make it back in time, so I changed shoes). We caught a cab to the city hall in Brooklyn, which was closer. I changed back into my dress shoes in the cab. Only later, after we got married, when we were on the way home and my feet were aching, did I realize that I had left my sneakers in the cab.

I don't quite know what these forgettings mean, if anything. Anthony will joke that I was sabotaging our wedding day because I didn't really want to marry him. But I did marry him, happily, and so far so good on the whole being married thing! But I do miss my sneakers.