Read Online How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti - Free Book Online

curly-­haired woman by the shore: my Jungian analyst. I asked her what the number of the flight had been and she told me, but the numbers ­were not familiar. It had not been my plane at all!
    Now my airplane was very far away—­still traveling through the sky! I would not be able to catch up to it by running or even with a car. I would have to find my way back to the airport, back from this unfamiliar town, and take yet another flight out.
    I woke at four-­thirty in the morning, my heart beating fast. I had to discuss this dream with my Jungian analyst, so I went to my computer and made it gently ring.
    My analyst’s name was Ann. She was in her midfifties. Decades earlier, she had studied in Zu­rich, then moved to Toronto where she practiced for many years. I met her while I was studying at the university, taking her class on Carl Jung. A few years later, I returned to her as a patient. Two months ago, she moved to the En­glish coun tryside to live in a barn on a farm where her family had farmed for generations, which was now idle and was where she had been born.
    I felt so grateful when she answered my call. It was almost ten in the morning there. She asked me how I was; if I’d had any dreams. I told her about my dream, and she asked me if I had made any decisions lately. I ­couldn’t think of any, then I remembered my breakfast with Margaux and my desire to pull the play.
    Ann asked, “Did you imagine writing the play would get you somewhere higher and better, just like an airplane does?”
    I didn’t know how to answer such a plainly obvious question. “Of course!”
    â€œBut then writing it turned out to be dangerous, like the airplane in your dream. So you’ve decided to quit. You slipped out of your marriage, too, which you also hoped would get you someplace higher and better.”
    SHEILA
    ( defensive ) Wait! I want to cancel the play not because it’s dangerous , but because life ­doesn’t feel like it’s in my stupid play, or with me sitting in a room typing . And life ­wasn’t in my marriage anymore, either. Life feels like it’s with Mar gaux— talking —which is an equally sincere attempt to get somewhere, just as sincere as writing a play.
    Sheila sees Ann glance into the corner of her room.
    ANN
    But life isn’t only where things are exciting; it’s where things feel hard and stagnant, too. And arguing for a pure act that ­doesn’t have a product in the end—­well, there’s two things there: one is there’s not a concern for making a living; and second is there’s not a concern with working to the end and winding up with something solid.
    SHEILA
    Except for the story of what happened.
    ANN
    The story of you talking to Margaux?
    SHEILA
    Perhaps.
    Sheila becomes ashamed at the thought.
    ANN
    You slipped out from the plane at the first sign of danger, but then you returned to the airport to catch another plane? Why? Maybe there’s a good reason to fear planes—­one was weaving among the ­houses, the other one crashed. You could have walked from the dump. What’s wrong with walk ing? It might take much longer . . . forty years as opposed to four hours. But you’re more likely to arrive there, safely.
    I ­couldn’t help the sudden, hard laugh that came from my mouth. It seemed too simple—­a fantasy! I tried to cover up the fact that I had laughed.
    ANN
    There’s taking airplanes and waiting for airplanes, but another possibility is to make the difficult choices and decide. You remember the puer aeternus— the eternal child—­Peter Pan—­the boy who never grows up, who never becomes a man? Or it’s like in The Little Prince —­when the prince asks the narrator to draw him a sheep. The narrator tries and tries again, but each time he fails to do it as well as he wishes. He believes himself to be a great artist and cannot