tuckova

hand me down my walking cane

I love editing, but it seems increasingly true to me that the things that make me really good at my job can make actual life with myself kinda hard for me sometimes. And I presume for other people, too, though I don't know. My friends seem to like me okay. Perhaps I choose friends who like hanging out with a person who can turn coal into diamonds; what do I know.

I mean: my mother sends me this adorable postcard from Turkey and tells me that turquoise comes from there, and I can't be all "That's nice!" or anything; no, I have to be totally ahem-ahem about it, because turquoise does not either come from Turkey and I see no reason to perpetuate mythology, particularly now that the internet is always open. I should point out that she's somewhat complicit in this ahem-ity, as (at least as I recall it) we were allowed to get up from the dinner table only for emergencies, and that "emergencies" extended to "consulting a reference work in the course of settling an argument". It may not have been that strict, but I remember running for the World Book more than once.

I come home from a night on the town and then send the people I just saw links to back up the facts I presented over the course of what was a perfectly lovely evening. See?! I'm yelling across the midnight internet. I was right!* I will first drink and then fact-check you under the table, is all I'm saying. On the plus side, nobody sends me "funny" email forwards anymore. Or political stuff either. If only for that reason, I don't think I'm going to change; I'm just observing that what is "giving up a cheap instant laugh for the prolonged thrill of learning and discovery" for me may come off as "a lot of furious knicker-twisting for no good reason" to people who think that it is fun to build a straw man and set it on fire.

I also send links to funny (thoroughly vetted) stuff, so you don't need to be scared to be my friend or anything. And I make good martinis, not least because I'm on a constant quest for the perfect one. Come over and help.

*ETA: If I was wrong? I will send you the links to show that I learned that you were right.

how do you like what you have?

So, where were we? Oh, yes, my tragic sleeplessness. Well that seems to be over now YAY. It is funny how when I'm in a happy moment I am usually able to name it and enjoy it even though I am aware of its transitory soap bubble status, but when I'm unhappy it takes me a long time to figure out where it comes from, and in the meantime it's always what if it lasts forever this time? And then of course the moment it's over I'm like, oh yeah well of course. Of course I couldn't sleep; I was in a burning building.

Fortunately I have outstanding self-preservation and thus continue to go through the motions of removing myself from said burning building even when it all seems so hopeless, because some clever part of me knows that if I run, I will eventually be standing outside with all what's really important, what I have that I love, and we will have sooty faces maybe but we won't be dead or anything.

And you know, I don't mean possessions, but the people I love who really make it possible... no, that make it necessary to run. Because I am surrounded by expanding circles of awesomeness, and from the people I interact with daily to the people I only talk to a couple times a year, I am so extraordinarily lucky that I can only bear to think about it very rarely or my heart would explode. I live with an amazing pair of guys, I have friends that I see regularly, friends I see annually, and friends I've never met, and yet I know that each of these people has my back. There are couches around the world that I could distressed damsel-esquely collapse on, and those people who would hand me tissue and tell me jokes, and I know this is true not least because it is unquestionable that I would do the same for them. Gertrude Stein asked, "How do you like what you have?" and I have to say I like it really, really well. I have friends who will help me sift through my shit and laugh about it. I have people who know how to distract me from my own stabby moments by discussing stab binding. I have a sister I can call at 3 in the morning who will remind me that you cannot go wrong re-reading your favorite childhood books. And there I was, curled on the couch an hour later sniffling because Taran couldn't make pottery the way he wanted, and he had to move on... I felt nevertheless finally as right as... no, more right than rain.

I just mean to say: I know I am really lucky. I know I am so unbelievably blessed to have the life I have, to have so many people making that life rich and wonderful. I know that the moments of bliss, like the moments of despair, are just shifts in the wind, and that a good gust of laughter can blow away even the acrid smell of smoke from a building I didn't have to stay in, and the rest of the neighborhood is intact, because it's filled with good people. I'm counting you.

stair master masters the stairs

Every time I got to a staircase on Saturday I couldn't see the stairs. All I could see is the floor I was on and the floor below that I was going to and the giant falling place in between, swirling with danger. I could see myself falling and falling and then at least broken bones, words like crumpled and shattered. I made a system where I would explain to somebody nearby about the vertigo, an odd dizzy trepidation, which I have gotten before. Some of them just put my hand into theirs before I even finished explaining, and they would take me down the stairs while I stared at their shoulders or some other vague horizon and chanted don't look! down! in the rhythm of the descent. Squire took me downstairs, and my first boss when I moved here, and a doctor I knew for a while. Strangers, too. So many kind people, so much sweetness. It's embarrassing to have to keep telling people that there are some things you can't do. I can't go down stairs. The amount that it is embarrassing to tell is the same amount that it is liberating to say out loud, and I had to learn every time, and there were so many stairs.

Finally I was sitting at the top of the flight, above the stairs I couldn't bring into focus, waiting for somebody friendly to come along and hold my hand. Squire's most amazing babysitter, who is now a most amazing woman, came and sat down next to me as I finished my cigarette. I started to tell her how I couldn't see the stairs, how I needed help. And she said, you know, the stairs in this building all recede when they're not being used: you have to push a button to make the stairs come out. You probably just hadn't noticed because you'd been afraid to look. And she pushed it, and I looked down for the first time, really looked, and watched the stairs unfold below me. And then we walked down the stairs, and I laughed, brave and giddy.

Dear brain, I wish you would let me sleep past 4 a.m., but I thank you for waking me up laughing. And for giving me the best metaphors, all the time.

list

Five things I am good at:
editing
explaining how I feel
arguing
playing games
organizing

Five things I suck at:
sports
taking things at face value
forgiveness
keeping routines
naming my weaknesses

Three things I am surprisingly good at:
making up new lyrics to songs on the spot
dealing with bureaucracy
haircuts

Three things I surprisingly suck at:
keeping my desk clean
making phone calls
figuring tips

spider catches fly.

You are angry, and then hurt, and then angry at yourself for being hurt. And then hurt again. This is pretty much all there is to work with, and you are working at it whenever you are not consciously working with anything else. You cannot tell the difference between licking wounds and picking scabs, and you are doing both. You spend days working, trying, but every moment is a reproach, and each reproach is three-fold: what you heard, what you listened to, what you keep replaying. The shadows made by cobwebs have an opinion about you, and they aren't impressed. This is what it comes to. Not least because of the cobwebs, not least because of the shadows, the dirt, the secrets and the lies.

This is what it means to know better. It means that you get five seconds of breathing room, five seconds of living with knowledge, and then for a moment, really only, you forget that you know and then you are down again, spiders crawling in your heart, and hitting yourself with your own fists because you should have known better. Worse: because you did.

jump

The rope goes up and down and the girls holding the ends swing it out and around, beautiful arcs, it's perfect. My hands out in front of me, cupped towards the rope, moving with the rhythm, and at the right moment I run and jump. I will run and jump soon. Not this swing, but the next, the next, the next. There's a line behind forming behind me. I don't want to hold things up. I'll go on the next swing. Maybe there's not a line; maybe it's my own impatience with myself. I can't look because I'm watching the rope. The rope slapping the ground, rising in an arc, slapping the ground, and my hands cupping the rhythm, and all I have to do is jump, and all I can think about is the sting of the rope when it hits my legs, when I miss. Not this swing, then, but the next, the next.

washing dishes

It's hard to enter a room without soaking up all the emotion in it. If you watch what you're doing it is okay, because you can absorb amazing quantities. Just take in what wants to be observed, one quick coast across the surface, the prepared face. Then slide under the surface of that to find the secrets. It can be done. But a moment's inattention and you're taking in too much, more than you can. Or should. Touch of a hand and you have cleaned the spill and taken off the layer of the surface and now you've got a mess you didn't mean. Something to cover up. You shouldn't have seen that, you say, that shouldn't have happened, I shouldn't know this, it was too secret, but also you keep looking to see if that's really what you saw. You cannot pretend for long that you intend the best if you are going to insist on being so curious, yellow and blue.

And it's hard to remember that most of what you absorbed was meant to be discarded. You chop insults and carry grudges all day long, til there is no time left for anything else. Squeeze the secrets from you and there will be nothing left of you; squeeze away those things you weren't meant to keep and you will be as empty as the cracked bowl. In the absence of what you've collected you would be so empty that you could never be filled; not even suitable for folded bits of paper. They wouldn't throw you out because of sentimental value, and that is all.

So this is what you hold: nothing of your own. Nothing you were meant to have.

a few clowns short

In this act, you are the one who doesn't get hit. They throw all kinds of shit at you and the trick is that you knew where they were going. You'd be so pretty if, they say, and the knife lands a millimeter away. You never used to, they say, and that hits below the belt but it's still just a shade off. Four knives, five if you count the one, and every one of them is short of the target, because you were the target and you stood so still; you were always ready.

In the next act, you ride on the backs of lions, or horses in a pinch. It's always glamorous.

And now you conjure. In this world, you create empty spaces where people put their secret wishes and then you fill the emptiness. Flowers, a scarf, a rabbit: the thing that is missing. You return what you stole at the beginning. Or better you give back what they didn't know they lost, and they act like you did them a favor. It is not a surprise given your skills of prestidigitation that you would would always wind up with your own hands empty. You flourish.

And now the crystal ball. There will be a beautiful person, your other half, you say, and they look past your plain face and transparent tricks to this ideal. Elusive. You fill the space until the one they want is there. They trust you, believe you, they could sit at your table til dawn looking at the props you use to tell them what's obvious. When everything you said comes true they say they always knew it anyway. Shove some paper at you, and they are so gone they were never there, and later they swear they were never at the circus.

Then there's the trapeze. So many things to be balanced. And throughout, there are the moments where you stop and wait until they clap, and they clap until their arms ache, though what you love most is the moment before the first applause. And sometimes you do it knowing there will be no applause. That they will wander back into the dark and not even know what a show they saw, thinking that this is just how their lives go.

And then there is a tent, or some space, and there is something to take off the greasepaint, and then you go to bed. And tomorrow is another day.

your seaside arms*

Here's what I think: I think we start adulthood with some basic materials. What happens with those materials is further shaped by experience and history, by artists and knives, by time. But there's this basic, this fundamental material that is who you are.

Like say you're marble. Hard and cold, and one artist who tried to work with you froze to death at your feet. Chip away what doesn't belong he said, and then he lay beside his tools and never woke up. Or you might be clay, thrown down and raised and fired. But you're still marble; you're still clay. I didn't go with the glass metaphor here, because I think shatter might lose its power if I throw the glass around too often, but don't think I wasn't thinking about it.

My point is that life shapes you, but your basic self remains the same. If you've ever gone to an elementary school reunion, you may start to think your basic self was already pretty clear at age six, but I'll give leeway for an undefined self before adolescence, maybe before adulthood. I don't think adults change. And this is why I don't forgive. I wanted you to be one thing. I believed you were one thing. And even if you stood before me again as seemingly perfectly etched, every line an echo of the words we spoke, the dreams we screamed under trains, there are the promises you broke... even if you looked as perfect as a wedding cake, I can never now forget that you're plaster of paris, and you've never even been to Europe.

I'm not saying nothing's possible. People change, or we are the change we are looking for, or spare some change. I don't mean that change can't happen. But there is a difference between a change in appearance and presentation (which I believe is --which I know is-- possible) and a change in the fundamental nature of a person. I thought you were marble until I felt your true measure and realized how fake something could be. You might say nicer things now that you used to; you might even now say you had loved me then. But I believe you're still an imitation, no matter how clever, and I expect that you can never love anyone half as much as you love yourself, and that's why I don't listen to anything you say.

Or another story, because I don't think there's nothing but betrayal in the world, you know: I thought you were gold. I wouldn't have traded you in the worst crisis; you were too precious to think of trading, though I knew your weight and its worth. You have changed shape, have been beaten and reformed and worn as one woman's decoration, one man's teeth. But I saw you shiny in the river and my history was changed by your glint in the light. And days or years cannot tarnish you. I know this much is true.

_{*"your seaside arms" is a phrase from the song "True" by Spandau Ballet; it was meant to be an allusion to a line from Nabokov's "Lolita" about a girl's "seaside limbs" ("“But that mimosa grove the haze of stars, the tingle, the flame, the honey-dew, and the ache remained with me, and that little girl with her seaside limbs and ardent tongue haunted me ever since.") The songwriter made the illusion to impress the woman who had given him the book. She reportedly missed the reference. This is the problem with making obscure references. I wouldn't know anything about that, though.}

you don't remember me do you

For this story you will require a shoe, a thimble, and a top hat, though you can also use beer coasters in a pinch. It would be great if you could tell the story with food ala Spaulding Gray, in which case you could be the lobster, because we're all the center of our own true stories, but beer coasters will do or whatever other game pieces you have around the house. It's not like anybody can follow the story to the end, even with elaborate props and a third hand.

You say it started HERE and that's as arbitrary as anything. Nobody is going to land on free parking, or get a quiet night, or pass on the next round, which it is your turn to pay for anyway. It started with a kiss, you might say. Never thought it would come to this. The person who breaks the rules first is interestingly involved in the cure later, though you haven't revealed that card yet.

What happened? Not just then but now, right now. Then was back when you weren't interested in forgiveness, remember. And you still aren't, remember. The stories are put into small ziploc bags to prevent mold and pests, like the person who wanted to know what happened was a pest and the person who didn't want to know ate through your carpets when you were distracted. Boy are we off topic now. But everything I tell you is true, except the part about the carpets.

All I mean to say is that Shelley and Byron had nothing on you in the day, not least because you knew how to pronounce a J in the periodic European language, which European languages are cool to know. All I mean to say is just because the world was shown to you in a handful of dust, recently stirred, it shouldn't confuse you: that particular housecleaning can never be done. A red velvet rope was placed across the door for a reason. Take pictures and post them on Facebook if you must, but nobody wants to go there, except some tour group of Japanese schoolchildren maybe, with their fingers in a peace sign because they don't remember the war.