tuckova

I guess I'm already there.

Last week I went in to the tobacco shop and the woman who used to run the little grocery was there, and I asked how things were. She said her husband was getting better and it looked like the store would re-open on Saturday. Then she left and I bought a pack of Lucky Strikes, which I cannot bring myself to pronounce Czechish, which is apparently charming, and I also got a copy of the Indiana Jones movie with Noah Wyle for a dollar. Then I went to the wine store. I keep wanting to write the story about how they thought I had a husband and a man on the side, which is funny partly because at the gym where my "man on the side" and I go, they think he is my son. Certain wise people are working hard to find this as funny as I do, how you can transfer from mistaken son to mistaken lover in just four blocks.

And then Saturday the little grocery store was in fact re-opened, with eggplants so pretty they couldn't be real, and we bought some and traded eggplant recipes, and also bought onions the size of your brain, and some bizarre nut thingies from Israel. And she said she was stocking up, that this time they're really going to have everything, even the foul unfiltered things that Friar (she called him "your man") smokes. So that's nice.

And we go to the video store and they say that they've ordered Mission:Impossible because we asked for it, and we go to the wine store and they're like heartbroken to be out of veltlin, but they have some chardonnay that might do the fruity white thing right for me, because I need wine that tastes like spring these days, and oh! I forgot to mention that on the way out in the morning our next door neighbor was telling about her son the doctor.

On the way home we walk past an old woman who is prone on the sidewalk but there are three people around her already and one has a cell phone so we just keep walking.

And at the pharmacy the Slovak pharmacist has the prescription ready, and I want to tell him how I am much more foreign than him, and how it's not his accent that trips me up, but my own stupidity, but I decide to be happy he remembers us and give him The Big Smile and we take the box and go.

I can't live in a village, really. I need movie theaters and a ballet and a train station and an awareness, at the very least, that other cultures exist. Yet what is most terrifying about a city is that the anonymity becomes too much, that you feel swallowed. And in the winter I maybe forgot that that there are people here who watch me because they are watching out for me, just as I am for them. That I live in a city that is just a collection of villages. That it is a privilege to walk to the store to buy arugula and walk past the pizza shop, where I don't know his name but we're practically ty-kating, and buy pizza with "Indian chicken" that I can eat on the way home.

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 allusion 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.}

poem

Freshman year in high school, poetry class, and I was reading through the book, and the teacher asked me a question and though I could normally answer a question without even one ear half-cocked ("It concerns man's inhumanity to man" was always good), the poem I had just read had so torn me that I couldn't speak. If I opened my mouth, I would start crying and I would never stop. I knew it. So I just shook my head at her, poor teacher of poetry to freshman girls, ever so many hormones and so much angst, and she blinked at me and I put my head down on the desk, where it stayed for the rest of the class.

I've thought about that poem a lot in the last couple decades. I can't describe it to anybody without crying afresh, and that makes it hard to track down. Anyway, via the magic of the series of tubes, I did manage to find it finally. And it is as good as I remember.

This story has three morals:

1. If you have created something, it meant something to somebody even if you never hear about it. Whether you draw pride from breaking a high school student's heart in a freshman poetry class or whether you have higher ambitions doesn't matter. What matters is: it mattered.
2. If you keep looking, you will find it.
3. If you are at your desk when you read this, it is okay to put your head down and cry (If it doesn't make you cry, I don't want to hear about it, because you are talking to 14-year-old me and you will break my heart AGAIN).

five

1. Possession of a musical instrument, no matter how beautiful and/or pricey the instrument, does not immediately convey upon one the ability to make music with said instrument.

2. In the past week, every time I've lost my temper it's been to do with somebody getting all up in my space or even just threatening to. My hatred of people is not to be underestimated. That said, I really do miss you terribly.

3. The decision as a parent whether to arm your kids or let them learn to fight their own battles barehanded is the hardest for me. What metaphor, what myth, where in the past is this grounded and how can I cut us free. Or maybe it's a good one to return to, a good wound to lick.

4. Every time I think of the story it becomes more complicated, to the point that I can't imagine I'll ever write it down without making it simpler, except every complexity makes me love the story more, to the point where it becomes cheating to leave anything out.

5. I hab a colb. I neeb somb tissues ad a nap.

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.

temper

Well, swords is the obvious example,
what doesn't kill you makes you stronger
and all of that.
Or in the case of chocolate
it makes you sweeter.
Or some spices,
releasing their magic.
Or in the case of glass
it can mean shatter.
There is also the aspect of balance
because it is what you do to
words, with wisdom.
Then also the time element creeps in
that job you had for a few weeks,
what were you then?
It also applies to music
though I don't pretend to understand that.
And of course there is anger.

You lost it so many times.

It has to do with the heat of passion
and the coolness of
maybe forgiveness, or
maybe time.