At The Water's Edge
Looking For Clues 8: Out on A Limb
At some point near December I became reconciled with my father. I can't remember exactly how this happened although I do remember seeing him driving around town and him waving to me so perhaps I felt it was okay to see him. No matter how, it was good that we were talking again. Not only for our relationship but also because my grandmother, whom had looked after me for a great deal of my childhood, had found the chasm between him and I deeply troubling.
In spite of the reconciliation, I still suffered from disturbed sleep. What is more, I was waking with thoughts of that taboo subject of university and the sense (that had started four months before and which I had done my best to forget) that my mother was still telling me to return.
This presented me with a dilemma. On the one hand I just wanted to ignore the idea of returning to university completely. On the other hand, it seemed that much of what interested me at that time was related to human potential, particularly aspects that seem ephemeral, quasi-religious and not fully understood. If I dismissed the university idea, would I potentially be rejecting some understanding? What's more, would I be rejecting a path "something" was telling me to follow? Whatever questions were being asked, the simple fact was that I had been unhappy at university, I hadn't found it fulfilling at all nor felt that I was meant to be there. What diabolical (and somewhat stupid) presence would even consider asking me to go back? Although troubled by these thoughts I was able to put them mostly to the back of my mind, safe in the knowledge that it wouldn't be long before the deadline for me to notify the university that I wanted to retake my exams again would pass.
It got to 11th December, my birthday, and I had the day off. My grandmother had sent me some money and I decided to go into Guildford to buy some records. I don't know why as I didn't know much about Lou Reed or The Velvet Underground, but I was drawn to buying two of their records two records which continue to be favourites of mine (The Best of Lou Reed; The Velvet Underground).
As I didn't know much about Lou Reed I thought I'd go to the bookshop and see if there were any books about him. As I navigated my way to the music section, the weirdest thing happened. In the middle of the column of shelves of books that I was passing, the spine of one particular book caught my eye, Out On A Limb by Shirley MacLaine. As I look at this book now, there isn't anything ostentatious about the spine, just black lettering on a orange background. It's just a normal sized paperback. I cannot tell you for the life of me what drew me to that single book in amongst all the others. I can't remember seeing any displays or promotional materials about it and I've got quite a good memory for these things. The only thing I knew about the book was that Shirley MacLaine was an actress and Warren Beatty was her brother. Reading the blurb on the cover I discovered the book was about MacLaine's exploration of her own potential. I was intrigued and so I took it with me to the music section where I also found an excellent book on Lou Reed and then bought both.
When I got home, I instantly liked the two records I'd bought and I later devoured the Lou Reed book in a couple of hours. The coup however was Out On A Limb. In many ways this was another Jonathan Livingston Seagull moment. The story Shirley MacLaine told was bizarre, otherworldly and fascinating and what's more seemed to speak directly to the questions I was barely aware of asking. I had never heard of the terms astral-projection or out-of-body-experiences before but could that have been what I'd experienced when I'd been out running the previous September?
Many people assume that I decided to go back to university because it was "the sensible" thing to do. Actually it was because of Out on a Limb.
Once the decision was made, my sleep returned to being undisturbed.
My understanding is that subsequent to publishing Out on a Limb, MacLaine suffered professionally and it seemed at the time that if you wanted to insult someone's intelligence you'd call them "Shirley MacLaine-like. Perhaps that was to be predicted since the book threatened established views and the doctrines of some religions. There were a few books by her that followed which although were in a similar vein and interesting didn't quite do it for me as Out on a Limb. (That's not quite true actually Going Within is a book that I have frequently referred to in 2012 /2013). And strangely, my interest wasn't piqued enough to read the two books she had written previously, it just seemed to be Out on a Limb that really interested me.
There's one final piece that I want to add to this chapter. Some years later I caught part of the made-for-TV mini-series of Out on a Limb. There's a scene that I can't remember reading anywhere let alone in the book. A character (perhaps MacLaine's, I'm not sure) was in a bookshop and as they passed a bookshelf, a book fell off in front of them. Intrigued by the book, the character bought it and found that it gave some of the answers to the questions that they were asking almost exactly in the same way that I had discovered the book.
