I had nightmares on Saturday from which I have not yet recovered. The feeling of being trapped inside of a need I fear to articulate, and then, having spoken it aloud not having it met, or not merely not met but not even acknowledged. Please help me carry this or I will drop it, please call me when you get there so I'll know you are safe, please look at me when I talk to you and I'll believe you're listening, please please please. And then the vase shattered, flowers strewn, water soaking into the carpet; or the phone unrung, deciding when to call the police and admit how afraid you are; or the sentences unspooled from a broken mouth, unheard.
Sometimes the level of fierce independence that I claim to practice runs up against my frank need with such force that everything is broken for a while.
I've worked at a job calling people for an English survey for the last two weeks. It is universally acknowledged that I have a very pleasing speaking voice, especially when my mouth is filled with other people's words and not my own blather (that is to say: you may not like what words my own brain puts in my mouth, but you very much want me to read to you). So I made a tidy just-in-time-for-Christmas sum calling people and getting them to give me their time, their honesty, and in some cases full life vignettes, just because I asked. Talking to a man in Ireland who was telling me about riding horses on Catalina, and I wondered why it was easy to ask him for things and how I knew I would get them. Later my mouth covered with my hands so that I wouldn't ask you for anything, for nothing at all. It's fine; I'm just noting it. Silently, just to myself.
I want to tell people when they're nice to me, too. I mean my desire for post-game analysis is equally strong after a win or a loss. I want to say, here is where you delight me. Here is where you are special. But when the game is lost it seems somehow nobler to just walk away, even while my pointy head arranges short time travel trips back to fix it where it went wrong. It is the worst form of staircase wit, the wagging finger of but-if-you'd-listen-you'd-know-I-was-right, the same thing that will wake me up in a week with regrets that don't matter because they are over.
What else?
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