Experiments in living
“Perfection this time,” she said, as they added the testosterone. The name? Alain, the image told her: film-star good looks and a cinematic mix of sunny and something more. “That!” she said, and it was so.
They set him within the floating world of art and design, a substantial line of credit to get him past any need for background. He immersed himself in it, a man of no fixed abode, always brilliantly turned out, shedding the clothes bought in one season and acquiring others. He spoke whatever languages were needed, with Parisian French as his mother tongue, lending plausibility to his cultural nous.
See and be seen was his opening gambit. It led to proposals of different sorts, including offers of small roles in films. He found that he made much faster progress there, and it connected him to fashion. The small roles led to more serious ones, and soon he didn’t need to talk his way into fashion shows, he was welcome and seated accordingly, a comer, and yet a mystery.
Part of the press thrives on deconstruction. Its methods are deductive, questions to be answered. He gave no interviews and declined to comment. “A citizen of nowhere,” someone reported. “No trace of a background.” Yet there he was, speaking like a native. This sparked rumors and theories.
In April, he flew to Granada and took a bus south to the Alpujarra, where he’d rented half of a house from a psychoanalyst, trained in Madrid, who’d abandoned it to learn about the medicinal plants of the region. Alain had long since paid down his credit line, and here he could live indefinitely. He befriended a founding family living lower down, riding in their van to the nearest market town. He helped the naturalist plant and tend his garden. And he befriended an American a few minutes’ walk away, 21 or 22, described by the naturalist as quite interesting but a bit crazed.
She came here to learn Andalusian Spanish, her preferred variety, and to get away from everything one comes to Alpujarra to evade. She felt it was better to work through things here than to inflict it on others there.
HHe immersed himself in conversations with his neighbors, assisted in local tasks, which often depended on strenuous cooperation, and began to write up his impressions of the world he’d left. He discussed this with her, reading from his drafts and talking about the whole of it, finally divulging the fact that he was a mere essence, as he thought of it, although tangibly present here and there as matters of choice, the life he’d wanted to lead. What life, he asked, did she want to lead?
She didn’t completely follow his explanation of self, but his question she answered immediately. “It’s why I came here, having no idea what to do with what I know.” Alain pointed to the naturalist as an example of how some find their way, since one profession is something like another. He noted how acting in films relates to fashion or resonates there, and how clothes are one way we signal or mask our intent. Analyzing, cataloguing, and determining the effects and side-effects of his previous world was for him like the naturalist’s work, “pointing to hawthorn as opposed to foxglove, as he might put it.” She said she felt her life required exactly this learning or these insights, to navigate it successfully.
“We’re here to get past ourselves,” he told her. “We arrive prewired and navigate by probabilities, but this is ‘human, all too human’ and misses our possibilities. Desire is in the mix with its destructive birth-and-death conflation and the way it causes collisions with others as we try to find a suitable partner. Getting past ourselves can be a lifetime project if we have the patience and the stamina. It means consciously acquiring imperfections, the missteps that go to the heart of nature’s approach to us as a species.”
She saw how perfect he was beneath the stubble, the dirt and scratches. A bit weathered, but that seemed to be one of his goals for coming here.
“We chalk life up to randomness or destiny,” he said. “Our moods hinge on whether our past is something to build on or a hindrance. If, by some quirk of fate, you could choose your life in order to know it and know yourself, you’d still need to live it out, find the through line of experiences as you take them in and work with them.” A remark about Freud and Rorty that one of her professors made that she didn’t get at the time came to mind. They went together, she realized, much like Freud and Lacan.
He waved his manuscript. “This is done. I have to get back to the world I left, and you should do so. A useful break in our respective lives, but it’s time.” She nodded. “I’ve kept that door open, knowing I’d want to return at some point. These conversations have helped me, a seminar of sorts.” He laughed. “Just whatever I’ve picked up. And whatever it was that ailed you, you seem to have recovered.”
