All we really want, when we realize we've been terribly wrong, is to be forgiven. there is something to be said for the moment when you have to be brutally honest with yourself about what's happened, about what's happening in your life. That moment of complete truth can be a god unto itself, the Vishnu the creator and the destroyer both. It is metamorphic. but as a girl, as a human, I am weak in so many ways, and when I realize I've been wrong, the best way for me to find strength, is to find some tenderness in this great world which can plant the seed.
there's a moment when you look into a mirror and your heart is asking a question, and it's showing in every inch of your face, and your pupils become the tiny dots that sit at the bottom of every question mark. there's a moment when the mirror comes to life, and a finger points directly at you. and as every second passes it looks more and more like the pretend super death ray finger guns children play cowboys and indians with, and that gunpoint conviction is enough to nearly break you in half.
and we must choose. in the face of a threat whose only bullet is our own shame, we can either let the terror take us, and cry. We can be buried in it. Or we can see it for what it is, responsibility, waiting for us to take it up, to make it right.
Do you know me well enough by now to know that I have been making the wrong choice?
Because I most definitely have.
my little goldfish puck died last night. he was in a small bowl and i needed to go get an air pump for it, and i kept putting it off. I know he might have died for a million different reasons, the foremost being that he was a 28 cent goldfish intended for being fed to bigger, less peaceful critters; but it hit me hard.
Puck became everything i had been putting off, letting get away from me, using all the excuses of "I'm just going through something right now, I'm just under a lot of pressure." I was manipulating myself into believing it was ok to surrender, repeatedly, to what simply amounts to LIFE.
I've been letting that indicting finger intimidate me, and in the face of that imaginary threat, i've been quaking in my boots.
And so this morning, as the tears were threatening, as I almost gave up, the snow came. Fat drops, like flowers, falling everywhere, hushing all sounds, and upon closer inspection, upon venturing out coatless and mismatched; the tiny, breathless shhhh's the issued upon landing shamelessly on arms, on eyelashes, on ears and noses. Carelessly frizzing my hair with the wetness of it's absolution.
So yes, I suck a bit. I've been navigating as best I thought I could from some muddled crack of panicked resignation, but the goal today, for this week, because that's maybe all I can handle, is to start moving again, to stay in motion. And to let that inertia sweep me into saving myself.
I hope.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Monday, November 15, 2010
After great pain, a formal feeling comes --
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs --
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?
The Feet, mechanical, go round --
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought --
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone --
This is the Hour of Lead --
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow --
First -- Chill -- then Stupor -- then the letting go --
emily dickinson.
i am actually feeling so much more something today. if not more redblush vivid, then something closer, the pinktinged hope of warming fingers, maybe. but then there was emily, and she knew why my smile is stiff, why it takes me a few seconds to remember to laugh.
but this morning it was those last few words that made me curl my toes and stretch my arms, just to feel the blood rush to the farthest reaches of me.
to reteach my nerves their joyous pliability.
and celebrate lay-down casuality.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
at least for a little while
it's not safe out there, you know?
each day is a step further into a stream we are all trying to cross, in search of that secret, intangible something that touches our soul. we dangle these ideals, these goals in front of us, like golden carrots on strings, justifying each and every step across slippery stones, in rushing waters. We ask questions by our every action, we tell and we tell a joke, to which the answer is a smile, and we can carry on because i am thisclose to being loved, because she almost laughed. Those questions tell us where we are along the way, how much longer we have to stand here shivering, before we'll be home.
these markers tell us if we are making progress, and we use them to make it okay that we are putting our lives in peril of the McDonald's hamburged filled, speeding car driving, heartbreaking, disease bearing world.
yesterday, a very kind doctor took a very large piece of me away, excised it, put it in a jar, and sent it away, in hopes that he was giving me something back.
he glanced back as he left the room and this is what he said, "Just have a low threshold, don't be afraid to call." And I wanted to scream out and say, what in the hell would you say if i called? would you comfort me? What does that even mean? why did you pat my leg like you were consoling me? The questions flooded me. And i knew if I kept asking them to the closed oak door he left in his wake, I'd never get off that table, get dressed, go to work.
he was supposed to be my reference point. he needed to tell me where i stood. and whatever he said, his brow was furrowed when he came out from under that great awkward sheet, as it had not been before he had disappeared beneath it. and i could not help but trying to translate each wrinkle on his tall shining forehead.
he hoped to give me time, this i knew, he told me as much. he hoped to find the delicate balance between the hope of having my own life, and someday bringing forth another. this was the hope. a delicate hope that made my entire body tremble. i don't know his motives, i want to pretend to myself that implicit in his glance was altruistic philanthropy. i want to pretend he saw something in me worth saving, and so he was going to make very absolutely sure that he did his very very best. I wanted to believe I was an exception to him. But the truth is this; it's his job and his job is to answer the questions by cutting away what he can: the confusion, the ugly parts, the pain. But there are more questions than he has time, or words, or strength, sometimes, I'm sure.
so sometimes, in light of the scary places within and without, we have to shut down. shut it off. crumple up the questions and leave them behind in the biohazard bin.
let it happen, let an afternoon of pastry and tea turn into an easy night at work, turn into the next day where we leave the laundry, and go on a salvation army adventure. just let the air fill us up and empty us out. (expandcontractexpandcontract, all the while, the only focus). nothing complex.
sometimes we have to let it rush past; from cheap sushi, to the pedicure you can't actually afford (but the red wine is complimentary, so please budget forget me for an hour), and metamorphose into speaking too loudly of books we love, with strangers who may not love us and try not to worry, for just a second about the question we are asking with the endless prose, and whether or not they are giving the right answer.
sometimes we have to say to someone, "this day hurts me to my core." and curl up in a ball under the mere effort of reaching out to someone. we can't wonder if it was too much to tell them; if they'll care. in those moments we are not allowed expectation or reservation.
there are so many questions, and no peace treaty which might let them cross over into the place of answers and find their justice. So Tuesday I stopped shooting questions into the air, trying to flag down some sort of rescue. I am fortified in the simple act of letting it all slide by, in watching things take their course, in doing only what must to carry on. I am not asking, I am not explaining. I am not apologizing.
my hope will not be pillaged by the desperation of questions unanswered, of the need to be validated. i have made myself a tautology, and at the risk of being a heretic, have taken a page from that great yahweh. and today, i am.
All our questions are a way of asking directions to a more permanent refuge from the storm. We are all asking for directions home. No, I can't be safe, it's not the nature of this world I'm in. I can duck into the cramped doorways of love around me, though; the free latte, the hair brushed out of my face, the i miss you text from my mom, the generosity of new gloves on cold fingers. If my hand shake, I won't stop them, I won't ask why, I don't need to know.
each day is a step further into a stream we are all trying to cross, in search of that secret, intangible something that touches our soul. we dangle these ideals, these goals in front of us, like golden carrots on strings, justifying each and every step across slippery stones, in rushing waters. We ask questions by our every action, we tell and we tell a joke, to which the answer is a smile, and we can carry on because i am thisclose to being loved, because she almost laughed. Those questions tell us where we are along the way, how much longer we have to stand here shivering, before we'll be home.
these markers tell us if we are making progress, and we use them to make it okay that we are putting our lives in peril of the McDonald's hamburged filled, speeding car driving, heartbreaking, disease bearing world.
yesterday, a very kind doctor took a very large piece of me away, excised it, put it in a jar, and sent it away, in hopes that he was giving me something back.
he glanced back as he left the room and this is what he said, "Just have a low threshold, don't be afraid to call." And I wanted to scream out and say, what in the hell would you say if i called? would you comfort me? What does that even mean? why did you pat my leg like you were consoling me? The questions flooded me. And i knew if I kept asking them to the closed oak door he left in his wake, I'd never get off that table, get dressed, go to work.
he was supposed to be my reference point. he needed to tell me where i stood. and whatever he said, his brow was furrowed when he came out from under that great awkward sheet, as it had not been before he had disappeared beneath it. and i could not help but trying to translate each wrinkle on his tall shining forehead.
he hoped to give me time, this i knew, he told me as much. he hoped to find the delicate balance between the hope of having my own life, and someday bringing forth another. this was the hope. a delicate hope that made my entire body tremble. i don't know his motives, i want to pretend to myself that implicit in his glance was altruistic philanthropy. i want to pretend he saw something in me worth saving, and so he was going to make very absolutely sure that he did his very very best. I wanted to believe I was an exception to him. But the truth is this; it's his job and his job is to answer the questions by cutting away what he can: the confusion, the ugly parts, the pain. But there are more questions than he has time, or words, or strength, sometimes, I'm sure.
so sometimes, in light of the scary places within and without, we have to shut down. shut it off. crumple up the questions and leave them behind in the biohazard bin.
let it happen, let an afternoon of pastry and tea turn into an easy night at work, turn into the next day where we leave the laundry, and go on a salvation army adventure. just let the air fill us up and empty us out. (expandcontractexpandcontract, all the while, the only focus). nothing complex.
sometimes we have to let it rush past; from cheap sushi, to the pedicure you can't actually afford (but the red wine is complimentary, so please budget forget me for an hour), and metamorphose into speaking too loudly of books we love, with strangers who may not love us and try not to worry, for just a second about the question we are asking with the endless prose, and whether or not they are giving the right answer.
sometimes we have to say to someone, "this day hurts me to my core." and curl up in a ball under the mere effort of reaching out to someone. we can't wonder if it was too much to tell them; if they'll care. in those moments we are not allowed expectation or reservation.
there are so many questions, and no peace treaty which might let them cross over into the place of answers and find their justice. So Tuesday I stopped shooting questions into the air, trying to flag down some sort of rescue. I am fortified in the simple act of letting it all slide by, in watching things take their course, in doing only what must to carry on. I am not asking, I am not explaining. I am not apologizing.
my hope will not be pillaged by the desperation of questions unanswered, of the need to be validated. i have made myself a tautology, and at the risk of being a heretic, have taken a page from that great yahweh. and today, i am.
All our questions are a way of asking directions to a more permanent refuge from the storm. We are all asking for directions home. No, I can't be safe, it's not the nature of this world I'm in. I can duck into the cramped doorways of love around me, though; the free latte, the hair brushed out of my face, the i miss you text from my mom, the generosity of new gloves on cold fingers. If my hand shake, I won't stop them, I won't ask why, I don't need to know.
Monday, November 8, 2010
i feel you.
It was a wasted spark of deja vu, hearing her just inside his door like that. She stood, barely across the threshold, begging for answers She, the opposite of me: tall and slender, well-raised and well off, convinced and naive. So sure that no one could be wrong but the other; a quality I frankly both envy, and want to slap right off any face I see it on.
I can't deny that there are two sides to every story. Three, in this case. His, mine, and hers.
And the most painful thing; the thing that kept me from standing up so so long ago. The cage that trapped the tiny fluttering "enough" in the back of my throat, was built of the longe barbed prongs of my empathy.
Did you know that empathy will rob you blind? She is a good one to have on your side, that empathy. She's one of the people you need to know to really, truly be human. But if you are me, you will invite empathy to dinner, let her sit at your table, and she will be ravenous. I could not feed empathy enough, and so like the good, midwestern hostess, I fed her all I had, and starved.
That is why I have not been classy, on the blog. I have been this way because this is my place, this is the door empathy cannot break down. This is the place where I can commune with her and know that I must abide her, as she is thick in my blood, but here I have refused to be the better person, for the first time in nearly a year. Because I saw the other girl, and for all her visciousness I could not hate someone who stood in the same threshhold as me, with the same briny tide washing in and out of her eyes, taking away with it more and more of her resolve each time the tears abated. I could not hate the striking, angry girl who, after all, only had the same questions as I?
I could not begrudge that "why." So I followed her to the stairs, and I apologized. I cried, and told her I was sorry. I who had not knowingly committed any crime, was indicted by my empathy. The rest of the details are brutal, and mine. But I had to testify, that it was all my both-sides-of-the-storying that got me here.
My empathy for the both of them. For her, out of the aching knowledge that we are women, and we are fools. For him, out of a misguided love, that commanded I see, acknowledge, and fight his pain. Even if it leaves me jausting windmills.
I traded empathy for conviction, for self love. And for that, for a while, there was no room in my words for understanding, only for the rebuilding of fortitude, only for finding myself in the mirror at last, and not the negative space the filled the holes between all the qualities I didn't have.
I have been seeing myself, and I have acquired a feral hunger for my own strength. Angrily shooing those who might wish to partake. It will pass, of course. I will not be so demented with need, in time.
But until then, please forgive my need to be angry, to be right. To protect what is so newly mine.
I can't deny that there are two sides to every story. Three, in this case. His, mine, and hers.
And the most painful thing; the thing that kept me from standing up so so long ago. The cage that trapped the tiny fluttering "enough" in the back of my throat, was built of the longe barbed prongs of my empathy.
Did you know that empathy will rob you blind? She is a good one to have on your side, that empathy. She's one of the people you need to know to really, truly be human. But if you are me, you will invite empathy to dinner, let her sit at your table, and she will be ravenous. I could not feed empathy enough, and so like the good, midwestern hostess, I fed her all I had, and starved.
That is why I have not been classy, on the blog. I have been this way because this is my place, this is the door empathy cannot break down. This is the place where I can commune with her and know that I must abide her, as she is thick in my blood, but here I have refused to be the better person, for the first time in nearly a year. Because I saw the other girl, and for all her visciousness I could not hate someone who stood in the same threshhold as me, with the same briny tide washing in and out of her eyes, taking away with it more and more of her resolve each time the tears abated. I could not hate the striking, angry girl who, after all, only had the same questions as I?
I could not begrudge that "why." So I followed her to the stairs, and I apologized. I cried, and told her I was sorry. I who had not knowingly committed any crime, was indicted by my empathy. The rest of the details are brutal, and mine. But I had to testify, that it was all my both-sides-of-the-storying that got me here.
My empathy for the both of them. For her, out of the aching knowledge that we are women, and we are fools. For him, out of a misguided love, that commanded I see, acknowledge, and fight his pain. Even if it leaves me jausting windmills.
I traded empathy for conviction, for self love. And for that, for a while, there was no room in my words for understanding, only for the rebuilding of fortitude, only for finding myself in the mirror at last, and not the negative space the filled the holes between all the qualities I didn't have.
I have been seeing myself, and I have acquired a feral hunger for my own strength. Angrily shooing those who might wish to partake. It will pass, of course. I will not be so demented with need, in time.
But until then, please forgive my need to be angry, to be right. To protect what is so newly mine.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
a free willy moment.
i'm aware that this is going to sound like me being a weirdo again.
and i'm aware this is deplorably cheesy.
and yes, i know this will solidify any looming optimism that i might be cool.
so bear with me.
I'll write something real tomorrow,
but tonight, all I can think of is that damned movie.
a big, black and white whale,
and how,
with winter coming
and my heart changing,
all i'm thinking of
is how pathetically
desperately,
strangely,
i want a willy.
i know it's a kid's movie.
but my whole life that kinship has spoken to me,
and so many times
when the human race let me down,
i turned to a stray dog,
or a turtle with a cracked shell
that my brothers found on the side of the road.
and tonight, seeing how far i feel
from so many of the humans in my life,
feeling a bit like the outcast,
irredeemable, unlovable
and embracing my inner jesse,
i just want a willy.
because it's so much easier than people who have expectations,
who have their own perspective.
because willy is all love.
and because i love willy with all my heart.
but alas, a girl can love a whale,
but where, oh where, would they live?
ugh, yeah. i'm a dork.
anyways this
on repeat
is the best i could do.
"but they told me a man should be faithful, and walk when not able, and fight till the end; but i'm only human"
'cause no one can say that like m.j., really. and no one should. ever.
and i'm aware this is deplorably cheesy.
and yes, i know this will solidify any looming optimism that i might be cool.
so bear with me.
I'll write something real tomorrow,
but tonight, all I can think of is that damned movie.
a big, black and white whale,
and how,
with winter coming
and my heart changing,
all i'm thinking of
is how pathetically
desperately,
strangely,
i want a willy.
i know it's a kid's movie.
but my whole life that kinship has spoken to me,
and so many times
when the human race let me down,
i turned to a stray dog,
or a turtle with a cracked shell
that my brothers found on the side of the road.
and tonight, seeing how far i feel
from so many of the humans in my life,
feeling a bit like the outcast,
irredeemable, unlovable
and embracing my inner jesse,
i just want a willy.
because it's so much easier than people who have expectations,
who have their own perspective.
because willy is all love.
and because i love willy with all my heart.
but alas, a girl can love a whale,
but where, oh where, would they live?
ugh, yeah. i'm a dork.
anyways this
on repeat
is the best i could do.
"but they told me a man should be faithful, and walk when not able, and fight till the end; but i'm only human"
'cause no one can say that like m.j., really. and no one should. ever.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
oh my baby, oh my darlin, i've been taking a beating
(there's a new lake in my neighborhood, and george eliot to be read.
"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it,
and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth
seeking the successive autumns." - George Eliot
the leaves are on fire, and my envy for autumn, and it's graceful capacity for change, to make even the leaves fall for it, is filling up my journal pages, faster than i'd like to admit.
it was so warm yesterday, i got to take off my cardigan and feel the sun on my shoulders just once more before the cold builds woolen walls between skin and sky.
btw, Nichole Krauss is amazing. I'm reading her latest "Great House" in between tests this week.
it's tickling my love bone.
(if you could pretend not to see my polkadotty bra strap, that'd be a-ok.)
and of course, zooey deschanel in all her way-cooler-than-everyone glory. :)
"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it,
and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth
seeking the successive autumns." - George Eliot
the leaves are on fire, and my envy for autumn, and it's graceful capacity for change, to make even the leaves fall for it, is filling up my journal pages, faster than i'd like to admit.
it was so warm yesterday, i got to take off my cardigan and feel the sun on my shoulders just once more before the cold builds woolen walls between skin and sky.
btw, Nichole Krauss is amazing. I'm reading her latest "Great House" in between tests this week.
it's tickling my love bone.
(if you could pretend not to see my polkadotty bra strap, that'd be a-ok.)
and of course, zooey deschanel in all her way-cooler-than-everyone glory. :)
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