Angelica Lost and Found

Chapter 32. Double or Nothing?

The doubleness, always the doubleness! And so little certainty. None, in fact. For the present I seemed not to be subject to Ariosto’s words. Wait, I thought, as an almost-idea rose to the surface: a something, a what? The almost-idea of a key, an action, a repositioning of mind, a placing of myself in a new relation to my situation. The bitten biting? The doubled unifying? The lost finding? Hang on!

Orlando Furioso is fiction, right? Ludovico Ariosto made it up out of his head. OK, it’s a classic. I’m not saying that I, Angelica Greenberg, can write a classic, but maybe I can invent my own story and live into it. Why not? Maybe even octave stanzas. Here goes:

Angelica, now from Ariosto freed,

Thinks of her Volatore, wandering far;

To find him is her first and foremost need,

To seek him underneath his guiding star.

She knows not what Dame Fortune has decreed;

She’ll carry on, whate’er her chances are.

On the other hand:

Let me now bring my rhyming to a close

And what I have to say I’ll say in prose.

Because looking for a rhyme can drag you away from where you want to go. So I’ll start again by setting out my objective. Which is what? Well, I want to hook up with Volatore again.

I’ll do a little Q and A:

Q: How do you want to hook up with him, on all fours?

A: Let’s leave sex out of it for the moment, OK?

Q: So in what form do you want him, beast or human?

A: The problem is that when he’s human he’s someone else.

And when he’s a beast he’s not really a suitable lover. I mean, I couldn’t take him home to meet my parents. If I had any parents at home.

Q: Did you think your love was going to break an enchantment and reveal him as a handsome prince?

A: Spare me your sarcasm, OK?

Q: In the past you’ve had Volatore as idea without visible form. Want to try that again?

A: It’s too much like hearing voices in my head. I was able to do it for a little while but longer would drive me crazy. Besides, he’s got to be available for that to work.

Let’s back up a little. Why am I attracted to Volatore? Attraction is too weak a word — I am drawn to him as the ocean is drawn to the full moon. Why? Is it the animal of me being pulled by the animal of him? Like Pangaea that was one continent until the tectonic plates moved apart; now sea turtles have in them the cellular memory that drives them across the far, far ocean miles to the place that once was whole. In illo tempore. Do I believe that Volatore and I were once one? That we were parted so that a sea of emptiness appeared between us? Yes, I think I do believe that. I believe in the primal animalness of all of us. I believe in the imagined reality of us coupled with the ordinary reality. We walk on our hind legs and wear clothes but in our being are the almost-remembered selves that went naked and speechless on all fours.

With all due respect — not all that much, actually — I think the Beards and the Levys of this world have no idea how to come to grips with my problem(s). Maybe I’ll have to go it alone. All right then, I’ll see what I can do with the story of me by me. No Ariosto.