Losing It Read Online Free PDF Page B

into … what? An angry ocean below? A sea of flames and death? Into the abyss off the screen.
    “I just … I am so moved by this,” Sienna said. “It’s a miracle, the earth so still below. Whenever I’m taking off I have a sense of how large the planet is. It seems smaller when we’re on the ground.”
    She was trying to be sophisticated and Bob felt more sophisticated just knowing that. She had also, some weeks before, given him a sheaf of poems to read. They were in his briefcase and he planned to discuss them with her on this trip. They were extraordinary. Everything about her, in fact, was extraordinary, but for the moment Bob had to concentrate on mentally pulling the plane away from the ground, to grease the connections and hoist up the wheels and ensure the electronic system didn’t catch fire, to clear the pilot’s neural pathways to allow for correct decisions.
    It was an odd thing, this flight anxiety, a minor case he’d developed only after the break-up with Stephanie, although hisnear-disaster at customs was now contributing as well. It was as if he were being reminded that the end –
death –
was not just a theoretical, logical outcome, but inescapable and, quite possibly, imminent. Little mistakes erased entire lives. Valves gave out. Veins blew up to the size of balloons then burst. An argument in the morning with an ex-lover and a drink too many, a finger on the wrong switch, someone asleep at the air-control tower because the union failed to negotiate rest time and management squeezed an extra dollar …
    In large part the feeling went away after they levelled off. His breathing eased, heart rate subsided. It wasn’t so bad, after all, as far as anxiety could go.
    He ordered a Scotch for himself and Sienna took a brandy and sipped it competently, her lips leaving a small red mark on the edge of the glass. Bob took her hand and squeezed it gently, then let it go. “You are an astonishing poet,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to tell you. I am just … well, I was amazed by many of the poems. Really
striking
work. We’ll go over it in detail, if you want. But I just meant to tell you …”
    Oh, how she blushed! There is nothing a poet would rather hear more and Bob knew it, but he meant what he said, and his words made him feel even more deeply.
    “You have a
talent
, Sienna, and it’s something that can’t be taught. I mean, one can get people to think more deeply and carefully about how they use words. But there’s a
sensibility
that simply is there or it isn’t. A lot of students show their work to me, I can’t tell you. I’m happy to look at it. But most student writing is, well, dross. But
your
writing …”
    How she hung on his words. He could feel her heat rising. It was heady and he had a sense that he had to be careful, for himself as well as for her.
    “Well, I don’t want to go on about it,” he said. “But you havea resonance, a sense of complexity of life and spirit.” He fumbled under the seat to pull up his briefcase, fought again with the combination before freeing the lid. There was the special package, still, thank God, wrapped in its thick brown envelope, and there were his conference papers, and there on the bottom was Sienna’s poetry. The first poem was “Night-time in Cellophane,” which Bob read quietly out loud:

    “It’s very … evocative,” he said, fighting for a proper word. “I’m having a hard time describing it. You know, when a brain gets older it calcifies. That’s why it usually takes young people with nimble, unconventional minds to string together words like this. ‘Thunderslips and aphids.’ Wonderful! It’s nonsense, on one plane, and yet it has a resonance of received wisdom. Do you know what I mean?” She nodded but looked at the poem, not him. “ ‘There are no confectioneries here.’ It’s Joycean. I don’t mean to puff you up, but it took him years to string together words like this, the layers of