“I awoke sweating and chilled. Jacqueline slept peacefully beside me, the light was leaking through the old curtains. Muffled in my dressing gown I went into the garden, glad of the wetness sudden beneath my feet. The air was clean with a hint of warmth and the sky had pink clawmarks pulled through it.” (42)<\/p>\n
This passage is presented after we find the narrator starting to question their commitment to Jacqueline, they presumably have sex with Louise for the first time, and they have an uncomfortable dream about an ex. The narrator is in purgatory, as they straddle between two relationships, a more foreign one which they know is \u201cproper\u201d but unfulfilling, and one similar to those of their past, with a married woman, and for the first time, being the adulterer (although unmarried).<\/p>\n
The passage is riddled with opposites, the narrator\u2019s clammy awakening adjacent Jacqueline\u2019s peaceful sleep, the light of the new day through the aged curtains, the damp chill they felt while waking subsides with the \u201chint of warmth,\u201d illustrating the narrator\u2019s sense of conflict, and their anxiety about being in limbo between two unfamiliar situations.<\/p>\n
The narrator uses the words \u201csweating,\u201d \u201cleaking,\u201d and \u201cwetness,\u201d all evoking water or moisture, but each received differently. First, they wake in a cold sweat, a contradiction in itself showing their discomfort with their current situation. The light \u201cleaks,\u201d
\nimplying a slowly growing change, one that needs resolution lest it flood the entire space, perhaps to wake Jacqueline from her sleep, or, maybe, her ignorance of her partner\u2019s infidelity. Finally, the \u201cwetness\u201d gladdens the narrator, who, cold and sweating, feels more comfortable standing upon similarly damp the dewy garden ground than they did sweating next to the peaceful, presumably dry Jacqueline. The \u201chint of warmth,\u201d like the leaking light, will likely spread, warming the narrator the longer they stay outside, the farther\u00a0she is from Jacqueline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“I awoke sweating and chilled. Jacqueline slept peacefully beside me, the light was leaking through the old curtains. Muffled in my dressing gown I went into the garden, glad of the wetness sudden beneath my feet. The air was clean with a hint of warmth and the sky had pink clawmarks pulled through it.” (42) … Continue reading “~Moisture is the essence of wetness.~”<\/i> – Derek Zoolander<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2277,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123782],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2277"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}