notes from the hermitage

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Notes From the Hermitage

Ranbir Sidhu

When I get depressed I take a walk to try and shake it off or beat a path down into it, to uncover whatever's lurking there that baffles me. The other week was a bad one. It was one of those depressions where I feel no connection to anything or anyone and little hope of ever achieving one. These are usually the worst, the kind that if I had suicidal tendencies would push me to spinning thoughts of slit wrists or guns to my temple. Instead I send it out and just get pissed off at the world. That time I took the F train into Manhattan. It was raining and when I shouldered into the train car I didn't look where I was about to sit. My seat, I realized too late, was a sopping puddle of water. Without looking I moved over to the next. It was even worse. I heard muted snickers around me. Obviously everyone had been waiting for someone like me, oblivious in his depression, to the swamp that was these seats. I was too pissed off to move and instead, belligerently pressed my butt hard into the yellow plastic seat. They could all just fuck off, I thought. As the train clanked along I felt the water seep into my trousers and the crack of my anus. It was a horrible, clammy wet feeling, yet I perversely refused to move. The snickerers slowly left, one by one. I would wait them out, I decided. I saw two, as one was exiting, exchange knowing glances and the briefest of humiliating smirks. I could have punched both in the face. When I left I waited until I was a safe distance from the station to reach down furtively to check my out my ass. My trousers were wet through, and stuck irritatingly to my butt as I walked along. God, I was an idiot, I thought.

I wound up at the park at 23rd and Broadway. There's a lovely building here, the Flatiron, perched where Broadway cuts across at an acute angle, one I normally stop to admire. This time I passed it by indifferently and sat down on one of the not too wet benches, not that it mattered much, and started scribbling painful nonsense in my notebook. A priest strolled by, walking his dog. He was well-dressed in an expensively tailored coat and his dog, some big pedigreed animal with a long snout, was beautifully groomed. It had one of those bright, glistening coats you see on stupid dogfood commercials. This priest had money. God had been good for him, I thought, considering our respective positions. Clearly God had forgotten me when the multi-million dollar parishes had been handed out. Good thing, too, I thought, as I was allergic to dogs. Then the dog plopped a big shit onto the wet grass. I was watching the priest but he wasn't watching me. He looked around nervously, seeing if he could spy any parishioners. I could see the moral battle he was struggling with. It was written all over his face. This was Christ's 40 days, I thought, and here I was privileged to watch it played out. After a minute of thus struggling with his inner demons, he walked tentatively to a trash can and reached in (perhaps he spied a possible parishioner) and tugged rather sheepishly at a plastic bag. Obviously, the dogshit was one part of God he found too awe-inspiring to touch directly. He pulled a bag out, held it in the air for a minute, then dropped it back. He couldn't go through with it. Then he saw me watching him and I saw surprise and embarrassment run all over his face. I tried to show no emotion whatsoever. I wanted to stare implacably, like some heavenly judgement, the burning sword of Gabriel or something, though probably I looked like some escaped loony. He turned away and walked quickly across the square and disappeared with his dog. I wanted to shout something helpful, like GOD is DOG spelled backwards, but simply continued to bore my eyes into his back with my simpleton's implacable stare.

A few days later my metro station burned up (not down, I figured, as the station is underground). It would be out of commission for some months, a cheerful metro guard told me, as we both dodged the swarming television crews. This made my own commute much harder, but the fact made me happy nonetheless, as it made my roommate's even harder than mine. I took a secret pleasure in this as I trudged the extra six blocks in the snow to the next nearest metro. I got the wrong train, which was packed, and switched over to a local in the Village, hoping it would be less crowded. It was for about a minute, then the swarms pushed my face against the glass again. I switched back to the express a few stops up, where they handed you an oxygen tank before you pushed onboard. I got out at 42nd, ten blocks still to go to work. Outside the snow blew into my face and I could hardly see a thing, and kept bumping into idiots with umbrellas large enough to slow a space shuttle landing. A man sung with operatic gusto, "Burn the cats... burn the cats..." over and over. I sympathized. My depression was slowly lifting.

Yesterday I was pissed off at my roommate for simply existing. I decided to go for a walk. Abortion, I decided, was an option underutilized by the modern woman. What had my roommate's mother been thinking? But I had met her sister and she was stupider than two boards nailed together, so I figured the mother must be deficient in the brain cell category too. If we could have divorces and annulments, why not very late-term abortions, like 29 years after birth? I imagined a device, two slender lengths of gleaming steel, issuing dramatically from between the mother's legs, in this case in Boston, and arcing attractively across the eastern seaboard until they reached into our apartment to pleasantly crush my roommate's skull. The structure could remain in place and later be used as a stunning pedestrian walkway or the superstructure for an elegant high-speed monorail service between the two cities. After thinking this, I realized the walk was definitely a good idea. I smiled pleasantly as I left, and said I'd see her in a few hours.

I decided to search for a bottle of pastis. This is a lovely drink, much smoother than arak and more flavorful than uzo, though all three are distilled from anise seeds. It's perfect for a warm summer afternoon, and though this was a cold, winter morning, I decided there wasn't much point in waiting. Who knew if another warm summer would ever arrive? The last time I drank pastis was over the previous summer, when I was excavating in Israel. I'd finished off several bottles with Anna, a sixteen-year old German who drank me under the table more than once. Between us we also knocked back a few bottles of arak, some whisky, rum, tequila, vodka, red and white wine, and countless, countless bottles of beers. I don't drink much normally, not anymore at least, but there wasn't much else to do in Israel. For a while, I was worried she had a crush on me. She would burst from nowhere and start battering me with her fists never for any apparent reason. I took this as a sign of affection. But I think she just liked me because she could drink with me without me hitting on her. I couldn't stand most of the dim-witted Americans I had to deal with, and she was bored to tears by the dullard and serious Germans. She was bright: spoke several languages, including some dead ones, was interested in a range of obscure subjects, and was a rising star among the juvenile delinquents and potheads of her hometown of Dusseldorf.

So it was with a feeling of pleasant nostalgia that I wandered finally into the Upper West Side. It was raining and I had my umbrella out as I strolled along the western edge of Central Park. It's beautiful in the rain. A film crew had taken over one block and covered the sidewalk on both sides with fake snow. It looked like rolls of fluffy, white cotton wool. Quite realistic, really. Some well-dressed guy striding determinedly past me, sporting a neatly trimmed moustache, veered away from the sidewalk and into the park. But within a few steps he had left the path and was walking along the muddy grass on the other side of the short wall demarcating the parks boundaries. He strode directly toward a huge, black rock, one of the granitic, bedrock formations that only poke above ground here, giving an idea of New York before there ever was a New York. I thought he was going to slam right into it. The guy came on so fast the poor rock had no chance of escape. Being a rock, it couldn'zt do much of anything anyway. Before he had even stopped moving his hands were at his fly and a steaming arc of hot and yellow piss was preceding him on his way to the rock. He finally stopped, but the piss didn't. He was still at it by the time I walked by. A couple of minutes later he was sprinting past me again. "Nice show," I offered, as he stomped along. He grunted his appreciation and motored on. What an asshole, I thought.

A few blocks along, as I was stopped at a light admiring a splendid old apartment building, I heard a voice behind me. "And where does Yoko Ono live?" I turned around to see a group of dithering New Yorkers ogling the same building I had thought, a moment before, was my own private, if brief, joy. "Up there, in the corner apartment with the balcony. She owns several apartments in New York. This is the one she uses herself and the others she lends out to friends." They dithered on and I walked away. I was happy to think of Yoko Ono up there, staring down on me like some harpy goddess. I always liked Yoko, mainly because everyone seemed to hate her so much. But that never bothered her. She just did what she wanted. And every now and again, one of her songs was almost bearable. And suddenly, thinking of Yoko up there, I felt incredibly happy. The city was beautiful and it was raining and my umbrella, though it was tearing, still kept most of the rain away. I strolled into the park, smelling the crushed grass and putrid mud, and could imagine no better city to be depressed in.