As Still

Someone once told me that soaking in tepid water will slow your heartbeat--the quietness, and the calmness of it--until you feel as still as the surface.

In a Tub scared me. At first, I was not sure how I related to it, or more importantly, why - but somehow, there was a connection. There was something there that evoked a feeling of familiarity; something there that frightened me in a way the other stories did not.

I am a very visual person, and although I thought, at first, it could just be the imagery of bathtubs, and their whiteness, and coldness, which I’ve always felt some sort of strange attachment with, that drew me in. As to why, I do not know. Bathtubs are one of those things that are very oddly beautiful, and yet there is certain darkness to them. Bathtubs remind me of clarity; bathtubs remind me of suicide; bathtubs remind me of wine, and healing, and memories. So maybe, I thought, it was simply because of the title – In a Tub that caught my attention and carried the rest of my interest throughout this very brief story. However, by the time I had finished, I found out I was wrong. It was true I could not help but let it leave me with a sickly feeling – but this was something more than just the eerie familiarity of bathtubs and how, in my life, bathwater, lazily draining, reminds me of the detachment one can sometimes feel towards the world – just as the main character does here in the story.

As she goes searching for a church – anywhere, any kind – simply somewhere to find some sort of comfort and solitude, she does not really care what kind she finds. Whether it be Episcopal or Methodist, she needs someplace to find this unknown comfort she is looking for. But what exactly it is seems to be very evasive, very subtle – and yet she is looking for it in a place very potent and strong – with the stained glass, and that cutting quietness.

This reminded me of how I had left a place very deserted, and somber, strangely enough, to find some solitude. After graduating from high school last year I spent a quarter at a very desolate college, and ended up packing my bags after 90 days because I could not stand how close it made me to myself – almost as if every thought, even the quietest ones, had so much room to breathe in this empty place they reached a shrillness that became so sharp I ended up just like the girl - needing to leave – and searching for something I was not sure I could find. I needed to leave – even to fail. Failing alone would bring more comfort than not even having the opportunity to fail did – so I returned to Seattle. For the next eight months, after enrolling in Seattle Central, I spent most of my time wandering around Capitol Hill. Sometimes the streets would be grim, and cold, with only rumpled paper fluttering throughout them - and sometimes the colorfulness of Broadway with all its lights would make me feel like I was sitting in that church with stained glass windows. I was not looking for anything, really, except some loneliness, and quietness – and I found it. It may have been how the character in In a Tub seemed to have a romanticized idea of what solitude was, but somehow it made me feel just as I did during my months wandering the hill. My friend Amy and I found our loneliness together – and once we had found it, we knew how to craft it into something we could use, and learn from. We found it inside the record stores on Pike. We found it when flipping through Man Ray photographs in a stuffy bookstore where the man working there remembered our names. He put a picture I had taken of Amy dancing in a side street a few blocks away, and wearing a red dress, in the bookstore window. Strangely, this made me feel even more secluded – but it was because everything we did, everything we created, would collect, slowly, in such a dense space – and we would be able to memorize and remember every action because our daily walks became so familiar.

Everything along those streets was so chaotic it calmed us, and we ended up frequenting a certain coffeehouse– not because we particularly liked the coffee, but because of that familiarity it brought us - just as the girl did not care for anything particular about the church – but found comfort merely in the fact that it existed. Our coffeehouse was cramped, the tables jammed together, and filled with raggedy books. The air was thick, and stale, and we would sit there – sipping bitter drip in our own strange quietness. My favorite table was in the cramped corner of the second floor. Gradually, friends we made would collect there, and we would sit, everyday, like dampened moths, unable to leave. Meanwhile, I was underneath the cluttered voices coming from Scrabble games, or exasperated sighs of my friends as they angrily scribbled on, and then crumpled crossword puzzles. I was sipping in the density of everything that had collected here, along our streets, and it filled me up so I could think. That thickness of all the conversation was necessary for me to feel solitude, like the main character’s bright bathroom light – because it left everything exposed, all my thoughts vulnerable, and so I simply soaked in them like water, waiting to hear my pulse.

Just as the girl in In a Tub did, I listened – and soon the muddled mess of voices would become a dull hum. At first, it would happen very slowly. Each day, after school ended and we met, I cringed, feeling that shrill voice inside my head that came from not having any distractions - and knowing my calmness would drip in slowly as pitch. But then, as my walk to the coffeehouse became more common, more routine, and soon occurred several times a day, I learned how to become quiet inside nearly on command – simply from the wood grain of my favorite table, or the clock, always an hour too slow, on the apartment complex across the street. I thought, maybe, as long as I sat inside, I could move just as slowly as the clock, amongst all that warm, stale air, and cluttered papers of strangers, and hide – just as the girl did, in the shadows, or against the dark mahogany.

I do not know why, exactly, being in that kind of madness, beautiful as it was, helped me find my solitude. I think that it is somewhat like the light of the character’s bathroom. Did she need that potent light to really see clearly? She was frightened, and it seemed she needed excessive, sickeningly strong light to see it at all:

"I look at my nails in the harsh bathroom light. The scare will appear as a ripple at the base. It will take a couple of weeks to see." (4)

I think what Hempel is trying to create here might be the thought that, sometimes, we need that kind of potent, uncomfortable clarity to really see – and still, we have to wait before we see anything at all. It seems that because of that light, that romanticized chaos I found on Capitol Hill, I no longer felt like a smudge, dark and rich, showing up on the pallid bleakness of somewhere as isolated and stark as I had been. Instead, I was like the girl – as quiet and empty as a church, but surrounded by stained glass. I felt like an indistinguishable smear, washed out by harsh bathroom light, and I felt such a comforting loneliness because of this. All the elements of the story seem to work together to help the girl hear herself. She looks for emptiness in the church:

"I thought about the feelings of the long missed beat, and the tumble of the next ones as they rushed to fill the space. (4)

I feel as though, for the girl, being in that kind of space – so quiet, and strong, and startling, in a way - where her thoughts could collect, and finally, spill over, so she could feel again, was just how returning to my home felt for me. She speaks of how the heartbeats rush in to fill the space, and I believe that somehow, that is just like wandering the streets was for me – because thoughts no longer had room to scatter and flutter away, for they were in far too enclosed a space – and when I returned, all the missing feeling I had came pouring in just as suddenly. I felt, again, that sad comfort, and solitude, white and cold as bathtubs. On it shone the stark light from a few familiar streets I now walked so often – all their dim dullness was soothing, and clear now – just as the girl’s fingers were in the bathroom light. It took me awhile to see it, but eventually, I did.

I do not know why being surrounded by something greater, and denser, than yourself can somehow make you feel as though you matter more. As the girl floats down through the waters, or sits surrounded by stained glass, she is somehow comforted. As she stands beside her bathtub, near the sounds of water running, something just as overwhelming as crowded rooms of the coffeehouse, she does not even hear it, but sinks beneath it into her own heartbeat - just as I, after awhile, would not hear all the cluttered muttering around me as I sat at those tables day after day, but sunk into a quietness I could only find, strangely, because of the noise, and the density of it all. It was like stained glass, and this cramped, stuffy room was my own pew, or my bathwater, tepid, and still.