Angel Gabriel

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 Angel Gabriel 

Marcel

Uncle Albert asked me two things this morning. First, when, if ever, were we going to get out of the house? If I was going to stay penned up for the foreseeable future, he wanted to know; he was going to call a cab and get a ride at least to the coffee shop we went to once, where even if no one talked to him, he could see different people and smell different smells. And the cab driver would talk to him, he was pretty sure. Second, did I know anything about Gabriel Marcel?

     I didn’t know, I said, when I was going to get out; I did have an appointment at two with Dr. Feight, if I went. (I’d ducked out of my Monday appointment, though I did call to say I wasn’t able to come.) If he didn’t mind sitting in the waiting room while I was in with the doctor, we could go somewhere after – if I went.

     I didn’t know anything about Marcel. Did he invent the wave? “No,” Uncle Albert said, “he didn’t.” Then: “Don’t ask me how I know this, but that was another Frenchman, François.” “Maybe they were related,” I said.

The question about Gabriel was related, it turned out – loaded. It also had to do with my not getting out, my crispation (contracting) into a shell of indisponsibilité.  

     “You think of yourself as a philosopher,” Uncle Albert said – to which I responded I did not. “You would like to think of yourself as a philosopher,” Uncle Albert said – which I wish were not true. According to Marcel apparently, Gabriel, who was a philosopher, a real one, the primary task of the philosopher is to be disponsible, “disposed, available,” and that meant “to . . . whatever might be out there,” Uncle Albert said. He went on to compare me to a roly-poly being poked at by a pencil, “except the pencil is imaginary,” he said, “in your mind.”

Riich

I thought – I’m sorry, but this is what I thought – I thought, “Fuck this shit. Fuck this shit. Fuck this shit!” But I said, “Okay, fine” by which I meant we’d get out.

     “Good,” Uncle Albert said. “I won’t mind waiting, but we do have to go somewhere after.”

Out the window: sun. But it’s cold, and the wind is poking at the tops of the trees, hard, and they can’t roll up, or run away, though they are trying to.

02.16.17