Over the weekend I was in Arizona for my cousin’s bat mitzvah. She is my first cousin on my dad’s side of the family, and it was nice to see her again. Of course, I also had to see the rest of my dad’s family as well. I was standing around at Friday night dinner, occasionally being approached by someone and was asked if I remembered them. My answer would almost always be no but they would continue on to say the remember me when I was three, or — six years ago — from my own bar mitzvah. I fell into a bit of a semi-depressed stupor as I gorged myself on chips and salsa from a nearby table. Was I supposed to remember family from ten years ago at my brother’s bar mitzvah? The seemed to remember me — or just mistake me for my brother — and all had plenty of stories to share about me. When approached about my cold behavior, I would just say that I was tired from traveling — which wasn’t a complete lie — and that I would feel better after a bit of rest.
I find that I am always a bit of a sour-puss at large family events. Even though they are family, they still feel like strangers and I find it hard to talk to others in a big group setting. I know that I am a rather introverted person, and that I feel drained from being in large groups of people. I am fine in small groups and can talk up a storm if the need arises. If I am surrounded by a group of people I don’t know very well, I close myself off and start reflecting.
Out of all the pieces we read last week I feel my experience most closely relates to Djuna Barnes’ essay The Hem of Manhattan. It is not a complete one to one analogy, but it has some similar elements. The speaker in the essay has detached herself from the people around her and is viewing everything as an outsider. She is “one who must become a stranger in [her] own house” (Barnes 71) as she takes the yacht tour around the city. She is on the boat with others, but does not feel like she is one of them. She sees herself as a true resident of the city, but separates herself and views it from the outside. She is on vacation but is not having fun because there is “nothing beautiful nor pleasant to see” (Barnes 73). She and I are similar, but different. She distances herself for the pleasure of watching her city, and I distance myself out of stress.
Barnes, Djuna. “The Hem of Manhattan.” New York Morning Telegraph Sunday Magazine, July 29, 1917.
ENG 195: The Literary Metropolis 