In April 1965, Harper’s Bazaar unveiled an edition of the magazine guest-edited by photographer Richard Avedon and dedicated to “the off-beat side of Now.” Borne of a moment of upheaval not unlike the one we’re currently living in, the issue explored the people and ideas that were shaping the era. Sixty years later, we’re marking its anniversary by talking to some of our own era's most influential figures and faces about the idea of the Now.
I opened my laptop to write something, but what? I am trying to remember what Dr. Terry/Dr. Simpson said about “my anxiety” and “my anger.” My anger is a bright cobalt blue. My anxiety is gentian. I see how people get them confused. He said one of them sits on top of the other and clasped his hand over a clenched fist. They feel distinct in my body. Anger is tense. I can feel it in my jaw and my stomach. It’s hot but heavy. Slow. Silent. Summer in the desert. Anxiety is quick on her feet. It moves me, lifts everything up and out the door. When I had panic attacks every day, I would lace up my shoes as soon as my heart started pounding, my head started buzzing, and I could hear every light and electronic device.
Where’s the pressure from? This feeling that I am supposed to be doing something, but what? That I’m good or bad depending on what I’ve done. If I get more good days than bad days, there will be a cosmic prize. There’s a big clock or calendar or surveillance camera in the sky and I am late. I’ve missed it. I lost the plot. I made the wrong decisions. Now I’m stuck with nothing, a vast emptiness, a gaping hole, darkness, madness. Or this terrible choice leads to a penetrative fear. An evil spirit kills me or possesses me. My home is invaded. I’m raped. Someone somehow steals my identity and I can’t get it back. I am conscious but dead, unable to move or speak or communicate. Nothing is real. I don’t exist.
Those are the existential fears. There are also more rudimentary ones: not belonging, being different and disliked for it, excluded, in unknown conflict, misreading the situation, amorphous feelings of badness, otherness, punishment, exile. Some of these—conflict, punishment—have become erotic. Only recently did I realize that love could be uncomplicated. That you, that I, could simply show up and be received with warmth and kindness and desire. That there would be other obstacles, yes, but the sky would be blue and the river would flow.
I love you. I love you too.
Last night I reread the emails between me and my first love. My aura was so tiny. A little flame I held in my hand like a firefly. I kept trying to show it to someone, anyone, him. Opening and closing my hand, trying to keep it safe. As if it could be blown out. Sometimes I looked into the flicker and saw my mind. My breath, my bandha, my drishti in lockstep with the universe.
Lately I feel like pouring that positive regard upon myself. I am god. I am love. I am the observer and creator of reality. I mean, I would have sex if approached. I’m not initiating at the moment. No, that’s inaccurate. I’m not not doing anything. I am letting it unfold.
I haven’t felt like anyone this year. When I do, it’s fun and rich and unwieldy and I feel okay with the existential and mundane. I can sit with the kind mess of (my) life. I keep fantasizing about living somewhere where I have no friends. Like Harriet. Of course it would only last a few months. So is that what it is? I want to make friends? No, I want to be alone for a few months with no social pressure. I want my aura to get really big. I want it to be visible from down the block and around the corner. What’s the big purple orangey blob? It’s me, motherfucker.
