{"id":165159,"date":"2023-08-14T13:09:38","date_gmt":"2023-08-14T17:09:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=165159"},"modified":"2023-08-15T10:36:13","modified_gmt":"2023-08-15T14:36:13","slug":"the-animal-of-a-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/08\/14\/the-animal-of-a-life\/","title":{"rendered":"The Animal of a Life"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Yaddo, in Saratoga Springs. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons<\/a>, licensed under CCO 4.0.<\/p><\/div>\n

Saturday was Richard\u2019s birthday, and we drove to Yaddo, in Saratoga Springs, where we met seventeen years ago. We hadn\u2019t been back to the artists\u2019 colony together since. Standing on the lawn, looking up at the great mansion, we were a bit like bears on the wrong side of the zoo. When we were residents, we were free to roam the grounds, walking so close our coats swished together as we circled the four small lakes that dot the rich people\u2019s estate. You don\u2019t even notice there are visitors, welcome only on some woodland trails and in the rose gardens, laid out like those at a French palace.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Whatever memories were stirred as we retraced our steps weren\u2019t sharp. It was like rewatching a movie with different actors in the parts. Even if we\u2019d entered the buildings now and the rooms where we\u2019d talked, I doubt it would have made much difference. The movie I watch is in my head, and I run it more or less all the time.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is the movie. I arrive at Yaddo lost. I\u2019m absolutely lost in my life, and I turn sixty at the colony, and there\u2019s something about a man there I find easy to be with. The first time we talk, we\u2019re in a little parlor outside the room where meals are served, and I don\u2019t know how Foucault comes up. It will turn out Foucault is always on Richard\u2019s mind the way this conversation in the little parlor is always, more or less, on my mind. I say, \u201cI find Foucault overdetermined.\u201d Or maybe I say, without qualification, \u201cFoucault is overdetermined,\u201d and even though Richard loves Foucault and doesn\u2019t for one moment believe this is true, he bursts into a smile because he\u2019s never heard anyone say this before, because he\u2019s not sure what I mean by it, and because he\u2019s astonished by the chutzpah of such a blunt summation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Laurie, age 25.<\/p><\/div>\n

Honestly, looking back, I have no idea why I said that. My guess is I was showing off. I also did think Foucault was saying that people are organized, without knowing they are being organized, to think and feel in certain ways, by forces with money and power. We are plugged into a matrix, or we\u2019re chess pieces moved around a board, or we are sleeping beauties, who will die without ever having been awake. Richard says this isn\u2019t what Foucault is saying at all. It\u2019s some bullshit version of Foucault I\u2019ve concocted in order to assert a Laurie-made, Nietzchean, life-force energy that\u2019s bigger, in an animal sense, than the forces of capital and governments.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyway, when we were in the little parlor and he smiled rather than argued, when he said, \u201cThat\u2019s interesting\u201d in that fake polite and also genuine polite English way he has, when he said that, he was humoring me in order to see what I\u2019d do next. And I had no idea he was humoring me because I am always too into my own thoughts to notice what\u2019s going on around me. Thus love was sparked, as it always is, from a matchbox of mistaken understandings, plus the look and smell of the other person.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Richard, age 30.<\/p><\/div>\n

On the birthday visit to Yaddo, Richard was seventy-three. At twenty-three, when he was diagnosed with type-1 diabetes, he was told he\u2019d be lucky to reach sixty. Tactful, they are, in the National Health Service. After I got together with him, I met a doctor who was also a writer at another artist\u2019s colony. He said, \u201cGet out, now.\u201d He meant the probable strokes, heart attacks, kidney failure, blindness, and amputated limbs that were inevitable. I didn\u2019t get out (obviously).<\/span><\/p>\n

Richard has been in a long-term study of type-1 diabetes and has turned out to be what\u2019s called \u201ca unicorn,\u201d in that he still has all the body parts, in good repair, he had when we met. The key is controlling high and low blood sugars, and to do this, he wears an inserted pump that supplies insulin, and also an inserted sensor that reads his blood-sugar levels every five minutes and sends the information to the pump on a Bluetooth signal. There\u2019s no cure for type-1 diabetes. You adjust to its limits, the way you adjust to the limits of having a span of life.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On the sloping lawn at Yaddo, two women were taking pictures of the mansion with cameras on tall tripods. They were unsure about where they were. They knew the place had something to do with art\u2014all life has something to do with art, if you tilt the camera. Their husbands were nearby, at the famous racetrack, and the women were happy to be divided from the interests of the people they were spending their lives with.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Richard, now.<\/p><\/div>\n

Richard looked neither happy nor sad. He\u2019d had no burning wish to see Yaddo again, even though it was the place where we\u2019d met and even though it was where, once again, he\u2019d opened a door, as if going out to buy bread and milk, and had kept walking. \u201cAll the times I did that, I only felt trapped in retrospect,\u201d he said. \u201cI needed to get out in order to see what had made me leave a life I was in. I\u2019m a strange person.\u201d I thought, not so strange. I said, \u201cDo you think you feel trapped in our relationship?\u201d He said, \u201cI\u2019d only know that if I left.\u201d We were having a good time. <\/span><\/p>\n

After we left Yaddo, we walked long the main street of Saratoga Springs, looking for a place to write. I found the bakery I remembered was good, but it was noisy and crowded there. I bought an apple tart, and we drove to a grand hotel I\u2019d been to, situated in a state park. We sat outside on white rockers, looking at garden beds that were going out of their minds from all the recent rain.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The other night, I was looking at reactions to a piece I\u2019d published, and I couldn\u2019t tell if I was satisfied or even what satisfaction would feel like. I said to Richard, \u201cI\u2019m very ambitious, nothing there has dimmed.\u201d He said, \u201cWhat a shocker. It\u2019s not as if I don\u2019t know you.\u201d I wondered if there could still be surprises for him. It was just a thought. He likes to say, joking and not joking, \u201cYou have no idea who I am.\u201d Who am I to argue with a person who plays his cards so close to his chest?<\/span><\/p>\n

We wrote on the rockers and afterward read our pieces to each other, as we always do. Richard wrote, \u201cI don\u2019t know what seventeen years feels like or any other amount of time. Memories are each in their own separate space, and all memories that are bright have the same brightness, and they all feel the same distance away. It takes a separate thought to place them in some sort of order.\u201d Yes, I thought, that\u2019s right, and it was a new thought, and I loved the way I\u2019d received it in Richard\u2019s writing.<\/span><\/p>\n

At every age, you think about the age you are in the animal of a life, and at every age you think about your place on the track you are circling with other people your age. Richard and I have arrived at the hindquarters, probably, approaching the tail. At every age, you are also the face\u2014looking out, listening, feeling things, tasting and sniffing around. In this way, you are all the ages you have ever been and will ever be. In the car on the way to Yaddo, I said, \u201cWhen you\u2019re young, you dread getting old because you have to look like shit, but when you are old, it doesn\u2019t feel like an especially different time in terms of what you know or understand. I think, though, something has become easier.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Some kind of happiness has settled over me. It\u2019s not about knowing I will die. I was born knowing I would die. It says so on my birth certificate. It\u2019s that I\u2019ve become better at things I\u2019ve practiced my whole life. I was saying this recently to a friend at lunch. I said, \u201cWhen I look back, I can see more clearly the ways I\u2019ve been an asshole to other people. There\u2019s less defense.\u201d She said, \u201cHow were you an asshole?\u201d I said, \u201cIt\u2019s hard for me to see what other people need and give it to them.\u201d She said, \u201cAre you less of an asshole now?\u201d I said, \u201cNo. I\u2019m a better writer. The writing forces you to know things that are true.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Laurie, age 76.<\/p><\/div>\n

When Richard and I met at Yaddo, for a long time I didn\u2019t know if he was happy to see me when we crossed paths or if he was just being polite, the way he is to everyone. I didn\u2019t know until one morning he came to find me in the room where we checked our email and asked if I wanted to go for a walk. I still don\u2019t know half the rooms inside him. At the beginning, he made me wait, and it made all the difference.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Laurie<\/span> Stone<\/span> is the author of six books, most recently<\/em> Streaming Now: Postcards from the Thing that is Happening, which was long-listed for the\u00a0PEN America Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. She writes the<\/em>\u00a0Streaming Now\u00a0column for LIBER: A Feminist Review, and she writes the<\/em>Everything Is Personal<\/a>\u00a0Substack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cAt every age, you think about the age you are in the animal of a life.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2320,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4393],"tags":[8769,10031,67827,2111,11074],"class_list":["post-165159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person","tag-aging","tag-anniversaries","tag-featured","tag-love","tag-yaddo"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Animal of a Life by Laurie Stone<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"August 14, 2023 \u2013 \u201cAt every age, you think about the age you are in the animal of a life.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2023\/08\/14\/the-animal-of-a-life\/\" \/>\n<meta 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