tuckova

at leatht you don't lithp

And here we are at the foot of the hill, leaned against the boulder, having a cigarette break. The saddest thing about this is now, when you're at the bottom and know you have to go up, that huge distance ahead of you. All that work. Put out the cigarette and throw the filter away responsibly because you don't want to be careless anymore. You don't want to be careless again, ever. Shoulder to the rock and up we go, slowly. Pushing against the forces of gravity. On the plus side your calves have never looked better. Let's think about those things for a while, the things on the plus side. On the plus side there's time to think. On the plus side it beats having nothing to do. When you get to the middle you can take another break. The saddest thing about this is now, when you're in the middle and you can't help but start to feel optimistic and glass-half-fullish even though you know how this ends, how it always ends. Well best not to focus on how things end. Best to get back to work. The journey is the destination, they say, and the journey is up, and up is always good. Better air. Nice view. And the struggle itself towards the heights, etc. Push, pause, a handhold, footing. Push, pause. And now we're at the top, and for a moment there is birdsong and endless possibility. For a moment a deep breath of pure air, of how sweet things could be all the time if you could stay here. The saddest thing about this is now, for a moment, when you've let your chest fill with hope. And then it all comes down. Rolls over your toes, smashing, hurts. Suddenly the only view you can see is how everything you worked for has ended. The saddest thing about this is now, when you realize that nothing you've done so far counted, and your toes worse than stepped on. No time for that though; now it is time to begin again.

And here we are at the foot of the hill, leaned against the the rock of our particular ages, having a cigarette break. What has been done to deserve this? No: what have you done to deserve this? You don't remember? You told a secret that wasn't yours to tell. You thought too highly of yourself. You didn't want to die; you didn't want anybody to die. Well who's a naughty naughty then, eh. Put the cigarette out and throw the filter away responsibly and take a second to think about this: You don't actually have to do this. You could stop investing muscle and bone and thought and tears into this. You could give up. You could walk away. And this is the saddest part, really, this part here. When you have to decide between thankless labor and possible boredom. When you have to choose whether to risk yourself in hope or in the unknown. Listen, don't look at me; I've got my own rocks to push. Busy busy busy.

sexual perversity in Brno

Did that happen or did I dream it? Did I in fact run my hand across the top of your head, the scritchy softness of your short hair like a cat or some other soft creature. Did I talk to you for hours and hours while spilled beer dripped into my lap, noticed and ignored. Was there something sweet at the end. Did we share water like Michael Smith and Jubal Harshaw, but better because in this story women are not objects, or not always. Did I have the same conversation with someone over and over, where he was white and trying to talk like a gangster and I was white and offended but trying not to be because I also was young, once, a long time ago. Did somebody hand me my cell phone when I dropped it. One can make such a good first impression but then somebody not you or me fell down the stairs, laughing. I have not lost so many ideas since 1995 I think. Flying out of the brain cave of my mouth like bats, they were, and some were voiced and some flew under the sonar. How I wanted to say you were beautiful. Someone kissed my neck and I thought: Now I know what to remember; I will remember this, this is when I was last kissed. Then he fell down the stairs, laughing, and a man from a seventies poster of a movie about pimps carried him back upstairs, a cotton scarf that looked like animal skin. The last time I fell in love was twenty years ago and the last time someone fell in love with me was never but love itself is not hard to feel. How things can sparkle: the stars; the window reflecting the moon; our eyes.

Splish, Splash, Splush

It is spring now and the trees are in blossom; also the young girls wearing their gossamer dresses and running everywhere. On Wednesday we waited for thirty minutes for a bus that did not come and watched at least a hundred people walking almost jauntily to where they needed to go instead. Then we went back home and cancelled the appointment because we were too late to make it anyway. The conversations that take place while waiting for a bus are less awesome than the ones that take place on a long train trip or in a car, but they are better than many others. I of course primarily favor the drink in one hand and the cigarette in the other, the plume blown upwards exposing the neck and the stories stories stories exposing the soul, but I'll take a bus stop if that's what's on offer. 

It occurs to me that I do not remember the last time someone wanted to kiss me. Did you read the David Foster Wallace story in the New Yorker about the boy who was kissing himself? I can kiss the inside of my elbow still. The freckles on my knees. Also my fingers though more often I bite them, gnawing off pieces of skin. There is so much I don't need. I may die before my clavicle is ever kissed again; I can't reach it. How to feel about that? I sometimes think if nobody touches me I will collapse into dust. I sometimes think that if someone touched me I would collapse into dust, too. And shock. The truth is we're all going to dust anyway, right, so it's just math and probability at this point. 

Speaking of the New Yorker there was a Stephen Dunn poem that sort of killed me about imaginary people and what they give and take away from real people. Imaginary people are so important, not just the fully imaginary ones but the ones we imagine people we know to be. Way to project, yo. How you thought somebody was that way and then they weren't... because they never were, and because you didn't THINK, you IMAGINED. Dreamed. And how I thought myself so awesome because I stopped stretching the skin of my wishes over the faces of my loves but still. There was a film in my eyes and maybe I didn't see well. Though it is nice that moment when your eyes fill with tears and it's like you have a tiny microscope in there, everything so sharp and bright and pretty. But still not quite true, is it. 

Some days I can't leave the house; other days I flit from one thing to the next and it's a good day that ends with someone holding their sides and laughing and there have thus been many good days. Some days I hold my keys so hard they cut into my palms; other days I stomp around mud puddles with the frank pleasure of a child, splashing. Some days I think I'll never write anything I'll ever want to read and other days it comes out faster than I can transcribe. Some days I miss you, but then some days I don't, or not much.

past tense

recently constricted
formerly wound-up
beyond tightened
departed grammar
previous suspense

I put birds all over this post

 It seems to me that a lot of people who break up immediately start repairing or improving the things about themselves that were, if not the cause of the break up, certainly a lightning rod for the fights. Quit smoking, finally start therapy, go to the gym, talk about their feelings, whatever. I'm not sure what the motivation is. Wouldn't you like to take advantage of your freedom from the badger, carp, grouse, shrew, hen-pecked past to finally be what was more important to you than being loved? Or is the point to prove that you could change any time you wanted, any time at all, but you just were never going to change for that person? Check out how I brought these big scissors with which to remove my nose from my face. I'm not just talking about one person; I'm talking about everybody. I'm talking about form; I'm talking about content.

I said you meaning me. I said she meaning me. I have noticed that it is easier to stay in first person when I am not angry. I'm sure it means nothing, she said.

I read something I wrote the other day and every sentence started with a little qualifier. It seems to me. I think. In my opinion. To be fair, the sentences were all observations, not facts, but still: every. single. sentence. This is not actually because I am tentative at all, but because I feel so absolutely sure that it scares me, and I need to tell myself out loud that it is possible that other opinions exist. At least I'm pretty sure. 

I'm over the jet lag almost entirely but at night I have to anchor my hands so they don't keep talking. Shoved behind my head, wedged between the headboard and the mattress, tied together with a scarf. They want to flitter about, commit a crime, tell a story about that one time, touch your face along the jawline. They will not be still: small flightless birds. Shhh, I need to sleep. Last night I dreamed about coins falling from my eyes and they were all expired currencies.

The thing about being single is you don't have to worry about Valentine's Day. The thing about being single is that you have to remember how to behave. The thing about being single is it's harder to play games. The thing about being single is that you can pick something up and put it away and it stays put away until you get it out again. The thing about being single is that you don't have to restrict your singing to the shower. 

It is harder to be back from Costa Rica than I had hoped, but easier than I had dreaded. I feel like... restored. I can work again, write little lists and expect to accomplish them, make eye contact. I didn't realize how unwell I had been until I had time to recuperate. I expect that flying south for the winter is not a thing I should save merely for crises, but a habit I should adopt.

so bitter, bitter and so sweet

Yesterday, someone logged onto the account of my friend who died in August. That green gmail light came on and brought all the Saturdays when that was the most welcome thing in the world, yay now we can talk. My heart flooded happy and drained cold. I sent a message anyway, because I couldn't not. Whoever it is is still there, still active, though not responding to chats. Is it his mother? Someone else? Are they going through and reading all his old e-mails, trying to piece it together? Would I do that, if someone died? Someone I loved? Would you? Could you let them go; would this be part of letting them go? 

I've been dreaming about him lately. Sometimes we talk the way we used to. We threw a ball back and forth and whoever held the ball had to be quick witted, one word, and throw it back, no beats missed. I mean we did this literally but it was figurative, too. Sometimes in my dreams he just comes and curls around me while I sleep, which is very sweet because even though I have mastered sleeping in the middle of the bed I sometimes find that in my sleep I've packed myself in with pillows. Or imaginary dead people, I guess. Somewhere I may still have a tape of us throwing a ball, sixty minutes of our brains dancing together, but I can't bring myself to look for it. Some things are better held in the memory.

like the shapes of dreams

Do you think I like being able to see the future? When they came with their clever present and I said don't let the wall down, do you think I told you because later it would bring me such pleasure to say "I told you so"? I never even say it. It brings so little comfort; certainly no pleasure. I see the destruction before it happens, the flames; there is nothing I can do to prevent it. It just means I see it twice: once in my mind and then once again. It doesn't make it better. Or I insist it doesn't, but maybe it does. Maybe knowing what will happen, seeing it first in my mind, seeing it alone, means that when the real moment turns I am ready. It still happens, still is awful. My city burning, my family slaughtered, the screaming. Maybe all that gets me through this is the slight detachment that comes from seeing it and seeing it again. I've seen it all before.

**

I keep wanting to summarize 2010 in some way to make it compact, foldable, something I can put in a drawer. Or maybe out on top of the garbage can. There were good things, I have to keep insisting: there were good things this year. If I made a list of pros and cons the pro list would be longer. It's just that the cons seem to occupy so much of my mind. It's hard not to feel like I'm a roller coaster, and the horrid carny running it, leering and taunting a girl in a short dress who is also me, and she'll be tempted and she'll go and scream and lose her sunglasses and possibly her dinner and she won't get a refund. I'm sure it was fun but I wouldn't do it again. No but I am trying to be good about it, to be positive. My friend died; two of my other friends had babies. My marriage collapsed; my friend got married and my sister celebrated her 10th anniversary. Freelancing pays less, but I'm not crying every morning from stress. CIRCLE OF LIFE, yo.

**

What else? There is this need to push through, to work beyond the pain, to focus on the goals and get behind the mule and put your shoulder to the wheel. There is the need to experience the moment, to be here now. They are at war. They are shouting and shaking their weapons at each other, and I cower in the DMZ and hope I don't get hurt. Yes yes you have a point. And yes, you too. Maybe we could work a treaty like, for three days we'll be some combination of ass-kicking and intellect and laughter, and then for three days we can stay in bed eating chocolate and reading pulp fiction and rubbing the fuzzy part of the blanket. Saturdays are wild.

**

We're going to Costa Rica, did I mention? Squire and I have taken on the wintery gray color of root vegetables and a change is needed. I rented a house on the beach for a month and we won't come back until we are freckle-coated, well-rested; as beautiful on the outside as on the inside. Because we are beautiful, even if we are not always pretty.

take your quirk and ...

 When did quirks become an important part of who we are, where announcing them is something like a handshake? When did we stop slowly revealing our pet peeves, our little habits, peeling back layers of politeness and tolerance to reveal the secret lacy hidden underbits of our hatred of broccoli, our strong preference for soft rock in the car, our dislike of lightbulbs over 40 watts? When did we start wearing our underwear on the outside?

I ask because I do like revealing things, secrets, the hidden surprise that becomes a thing we have in common, another thing. "I love cleaning my ears," and "Oh! Me, too!" and our friendship takes that little step closer. See how we have that in common? That frisson of recognition, that suddenly revealed secret passage in the house we share. What else can we explore? Or even it can be a thing that we don't share, but you respect it about me and that is how we are friends, is that you set out the q-tips when I am coming to visit. That I remember that you like olive oil more than butter, except for with fried eggs. That we remember these things and catalog them to show how much we love each other, that we're paying attention. That's how it used to feel, anyway. I thought.

But now it seems to me that these are things people expect me to accept right off. "I can't sit next to a double-paned window!" or "I can't touch things made from cardboard" are not things I expect to have to respect. My sister and son have a visceral hatred of polystyrene, which is sort of adorable, and one way that I tell them I love them is by taking things out of the packing before I give it to them, or wrapping things in bubble wrap instead. But that is because I love them. I do not expect to be asked to accommodate a person who doesn't like to eat off of real silver the first time they are a guest in my house. And yet... (well, obviously not exactly that, as I haven't hosted Billy Bob Thorton, but) I do feel increasingly asked to deal with people's preferences in a way that frankly prevents me from wanting to accommodate them, because if they expect this level of intimacy from near strangers, what obsessive nightmare maintenance levels do they save for the people who love them?

I mean, I guess it is nice to know what you like and don't, and to tell people in advance so there's no awkwardness. I guess it is nice to go out and know that people are going to do what they can to make you happy, and that your happiness will make them happy, too. I guess. But to a certain degree I feel... what about my feelings, while I sit and watch you count the tomato cans and only take every third one? Do we really need to leave the restaurant because you don't like being served by people with facial hair? I dunno. Do we chalk this up to another reason to find me a Victorian nursing home ASAP, or is this something other, less rigid people notice and find annoying? Is there a polite response other than the weak smile, the yield, the suddenly-too-busy cut?

foreground, background, playground

I've been reading about the woman (there's actually more than one person) who has hyperthymestic syndrome, and can remember everything. I am persuaded it is not a coincidence that she went by the initals AJ. Well actually I am confident it is a coincidence but it's interesting anyway. I don't think I have that, because there is plenty I don't remember, but there is so much I DO. For example arriving at the cafe to meet someone the other night, and I stood there for a minute thinking "How is this whole anonymous thing going to go?" when I already knew him. It goes without saying that he didn't remember me, but I told him anyway about where he was standing, who his date was, the music that was playing, and what we talked about, three years ago.

I wonder what AJ wants; I wonder what I want. I don't want to forget. I would like to put it away. Folded sweaters into cedar boxes that I can pull out when the weather is right but that are not crowding up the drawers of my every summery thought. I would like to have the past exist, but in the background.

And this lack of background means I have no perspective. Everything seems like it just happened. I had  assumed it was that way for everybody; that people who could not remember the stories were choosing to forget. "You can't hold me to what I said five years ago" I was told, and I thought: Why not? You can hold me to what I said. Word is bond, yo. But not if everybody forgets. And I am left with tangles of broken promises, or not broken or even abandoned: forgotten.  Promises that other people made, out loud in words or silently in deeds. I thought they were real forever but they are only real in my memory, now. And yet here I am, still holding them. The end of a jump rope after all the kids have gone back in from recess. Leaving me alone here to play with my memories.

3, 2, 1

3.

The more I want to say the more there is a magnet between my brain and my tongue. Cleave like meat, like twins, a hoof. Cleavage, too, okay, because I still have my sense of humor. Three months of this and I can't say it. And then on top of that, k tomu, the rice to the lemon chicken, three weeks of this other that I also can't say. Three weeks of dreams so vivid I am almost afraid to describe them, to speak them into life. I dance with skeletons and it is celebratory but it is also let's face it everybody is dead. At the skeleton's ball everybody swirls and whispers secrets and his hand is on my back, holding my spine like that of a much loved book, and I open to the favorite passage but then the sun shines through the curtains that never completely cover the window and my eyes are open and it's over. Those are the threes behind me.

The threes before me are all things I can babble over. Three chapters to write, three days to write them in. Three more weekdays til school starts and brings the hope of a bouquet of freshly sharpened pencils and the sadness of a summer more fleeting than summer has a right to be. Three weeks to get things in order and on track. Three people to make plans with. It's not a bad number, it just depends on how you look at it.

 

2.

I've been thinking about relationships, particularly friendships, and about conversations within them. Picturing it alternately as something natural, like the moon and the tides, or as something constructed: a tennis match. How some things seem inevitable, like seasons, but how others feel like "your move", a chess game. His affection waned. She opened with the liar's gambit. Thinking this way is like that picture that is either two black faces talking or a white vase, but it never seems possible to hold both pictures at once, even though they both have to be there for you to see either one. I expect most friends just talk to each other, though.

 

1.

I wonder if it is possible at this point to make any serious life changes. For me, dealing with most people is an awful lot like walking in high heels - it's not that I can't do it; I can. I can dance in the darn things. I just would so much prefer to be in my slippers, my comfy walking shoes, and somehow along the line people have confused my lack of interest in the Louboutin life with some inability, like it's a failure to see beauty or even a fear of twisting my ankle rather than my knowing what I like. Which in another month or so will be boots.