On Doing Things More Than Once

In the “Abiquiu” episode of Breaking Bad, Jesse Pinkman and Jane Margolis discuss the idea of doing something more than once. Jesse doesn’t understand why Georgia O’Keeffe would paint her very average patio door twenty times. Jane protests, explaining that every time she painted it, she saw something different. “Well then why should we do anything more than once? Should I just smoke this one cigarette? Maybe we should only have sex once, if it’s the same thing. Should we just watch one sunset? Or live just one day? Because it’s new every time. Each time is a different experience.” While Jesse thinks that the door was painted over and over again in order to make it perfect, Jane thinks that it was done out of love. O'Keeffe loved her patio door and was trying to make that feeling of love last. Because nothing is perfect, everything has flaws, but we love deeply anyways. Something about this dialogue resonated with me, so I rewinded it. And rewinded it. I must have watched that scene as many times as O'Keeffe painted her patio door.

I’ve always been a fan of doing things more than once. My dad never understood how I could keep rereading Harry Potter. Or how I could listen to the same song on repeat and not get tired of it. And why spend money on clothes if you feel like you can only wear an outfit once?

Repetition is something that dominates all of our lives. Every morning, I wake up. I scroll through Instagram. I brush my teeth. I change into clothes. I make breakfast. I go to class. Repeat, repeat, repeat. It’s a little bit depressing, how much of our lives are taken up by these ordinary actions. I have always been scared of slipping into it, of watching each day bleed into the next into the next into the next.

But there are so many moments where I long for repetition. It comes with the times when I look around and think- Wow. Can a night like this really exist? And there’s that overwhelming feeling of gratitude. That the moon can be so beautiful and the laughter so joyous. That I can dance on the grass and feel the heartbeat of the Earth throbbing against my feet. And it’s not perfect. There’s always going to be little flaws, like bare skin interrupted by itchy mosquito bites. But I fall in love in spite of the flaws. No, I fall in love because of the flaws. Because of the ways that the pesky mosquitos will remind me of summer and that night and the way that I complained even though I didn’t want it to end.

But it will end. And the knowledge of that brings a sense of dread that creeps up, unwanted. But what if it didn’t have to? What if we could relive it, again, and again. Maybe one night I would appreciate the singing of the crickets more than I did the night before. Maybe one night I would realize that something you said had more than one meaning. Hey, maybe the idea of the movie Groundhog Day isn’t as terrible as it seems. A day repeating. A moment that never ends. But it does end. It always ends. And I play it back in my head before I sleep. To try to not forget, to try to make the feeling last.

This fear of plowing through calendar pages, of the Earth spinning on its axis has haunted me my whole life. I still remember when I found out that I would one day die. I must have been around three or four, and I really thought that as long as I stayed healthy and ate my veggies, I would live forever. My poor dad had to explain to me that I would die, that he would die, that everyone and everything I knew would cease to exist, never to be seen again. But it would suck to live forever, right? To keep living while the rest of the world does not. It would be lonely and terrible. It’s always the villains in the books who want immortality, and it makes them do all of these terrible things. Voldemort killed seven people to ensure that he himself would not die. (And many after that). An immortal life is a long one. It’s a life spent alone. Who wants that?

But also... As selfish as it may be, I don’t want to die. The idea of death scares the living shit out of me. I love the trees, and the ocean, and the people- In all their flaws and magnificence- too much to part from it. And I hate how I lose moments like water through my fingers, and I hate that there’s nothing I can do about it. So yes, I understand why Georgia O'Keeffe painted her door twenty times. Hell, I’ll paint my own door twenty times. It’s about loving something so much that you just want it to last. It might be naive, I don’t know. But years down the road, will I remember how the cherry blossom on the front lawn looked when it sprouted flowers every year around my birthday? Will I remember how my little brother’s buck teeth jutted out of his mouth when he laughed?

In 1974, George Perec sat in the same square in Paris to collect observations for three days in a row for his book, An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris. In this book, he writes down every detail of what was happening in the square. He describes the pigeons, the sirens, the trucks. All of these moments are so wonderfully ordinary. They are here and then they are gone and they will never happen exactly like this again. Is that melancholy? Or is that exciting? I don’t know the answer. I think it could be both. But I understand that desire of wanting to capture everything, and tuck it away to relive it again later. And I know this longing to make things last is unhealthy. Jane’s monologue in Breaking Badabout this was ultimately used to foreshadow her relapsing on drugs. It’s why people get addicted to things. Even harmful things, poisonous things. All to make a good feeling last.

But still... I close my eyes and I replay the nights that I want to last forever. And the thought that there will be more nights that I want to last forever is a happy one. And I will dance, bare feet on the grass, until I can’t. And the sun will rise tomorrow morning, until it won’t. And maybe that’s terrifying. But maybe being here right now- With the moon, and the laughter, and the mosquitos, and you- Is enough.