undertow

 

I was trying to contemplate and write about a feeling I get once in a while, which I can't name or really describe.  Cannot pinpoint.

     There's a book I have somewhere--the author talks about a feeling of "slippage."  Thinking of the uneasy feeling I get when hearing certain narratives, I keep coming back to that word, slippage.  Even though I can't explain it.

I can think of three times in my life I've had this sense of slippage:  uneasiness, uncertainty.  Like--what am I getting into, here?  It's kind of like I feel there's some problem, something not quite on the up-and-up, but don't know what it is.

1.  Long time ago, when I was just a few years out of college, someone told me a bunch of stuff, and when I got home I felt kind of funny.  Like I was being pulled down, and must try to find solutions for unsolvable problems.  Not depressed--just--like something was off, and I didn't know what.

2.  During the past week, when I watched The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe, and Life with Judy Garland.  During both of these films, as I mentioned here yesterday, I "would get an uneasy feeling...like I was being dragged into something negative and dangerous."

3.  A few years ago, reading parts of a book by J.D. Vance online.  Just--I don't know....

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Some Reader Comments under an interview with Mr. Vance that I could kind of relate to:

~  Superficially, a friendly and sympathetic portrait.  But the undertone makes it clear that Vance is an opportunistic chameleon.

~  Yes, I came away with the same impression.

~  You hit the nail on the head.  The equivalent of an ambitious Celt negotiating with Romans, utterly self serving and opportunistic.

~  Mr. Vance is very coy.  His behavior in this interview replicates his calculated, faux humility in an interview by Brian Lamb on C-Span when the book was first published.  Living in Columbus is hardly moving back to [Appalachia].  He will soon run for public office.

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