Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Troy, I need my book back

I am afraid of losing my parents. When I see movies where characters die and other grieve, when I read books about loss, when I dream terrible dreams. I was coming down the stairs the other day and had an image of my father staggering over, falling and felt tears prick in my eyes. I don't understand this morbidity, this fear that has come upon me in the past few years. I mourn the possibility of loss. I am sure we can point to some origin - when my father's best friend had a heart attack, when my uncle had his heart attack, when my father told me he felt old and meant it, when my parents sent me instructions about their trust, their will, my inheritance. That was an amazing day. Dear Alison, I hope you are well, we drew up our will today and made plans for our cremation, love Mom. (I hardly paraphrase). I think somehow I am going through empty nest syndrome, despite being the one who left. The problem is I never know when I'm going back or for how long. This is the choice I made, in the next few years my precious time away from school will be aimed squarely at Chicago and while I do not regret it I rue the necessity of it and the outcome - it is not ideal. Utopia would be school in the west where I can have both at once. I guess we're back to a cake equation and somehow we've run out of flour.

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

The backs of my LEGS

I am sticking to the desk as I type, the top check carbon unpeels from my arm when I reach for the mouse. Outside today felt like wading through a large bowl of tepid, putrifying soup. I wonder when I wake up in the morning how little clothing I can wear and still be decent, if I need to worry about the blinds being open - we are so high up, and yet there are windows everywhere. Sitting here, in front of our portable heat-producer is the worst place in the entire apartment unless I am in the middle of foolishly baking brownies or making a roast. I realize the sadness of the fact that I am already melting at the first sign of summer humidity, with the temperature well below ninety today and the humidity as well. The coolness and dryness of California beckons me and I am ready to answer the call, winging west in a few days for a few weeks where these difficulties (humidity, laptop heat) and their solutions (air conditioning, ceiling fans) are absent. Where you don't start to sweat sitting at a bus stop in the shade. Where blogging will be painful again only for lack of words, not for the toll of heat impressed by the equipment. I almost wish the thunderstorms would knock the power out.

Monday, May 29, 2006

Twist Road

Friday.
We chase after the sun. I can see out the hatchback and in my side mirror the deep indigo of the sky towards the city we have left behind. The tires grind softly against the road and the engine mutters quietly to us as we speed to pass, slow to remerge. Ahead is the trailing edge of the sun, the sunset, the oranges and reds long absent but an odd dull yellow fading into an intense washed out blue. The sky is huge. I had forgotten the space of the midwest, the immensity of the sky. The lights make patterns more brightly on the asphalt and with every passing minute I worry more about the directions, lost in some fold of my bag, buried under food and clothing. Still, we find Rochelle, turn right at the stop sign, go on until the next one (at least ten miles) turn again, turn again, creep along until we find the right road. The gate is just how I remember it and Joe, scrambling out to unhook the chains, looks much happier than last time when it was closer to zero degrees and the ground was icy with refrozen snow. But we pile into the house just as happily and stow our precious cargo of eggs and cheese and spinach. There's nothing for it but a bottle of wine between friends.

Saturday
Inside I am fooled by the air conditioning which runs so silently I hardly notice. We step out into the screened porch, look at the thermometer and are surprised to find the red arrow unwavering at seventy-one. Cool but humid. Shoes on, we embark on the dirt worn from tires, let ourselves out of the gate, trot confidently down the road. I remember the first turn, remember my feet freezing in my lined boots and aching with the cold, my only concern to be inside but looking up to see horses across a fence just as curious back at me. It was best to walk in the drifts near the edge or right in the tire track - the grit bit into the ice enough for the rubber soles. Today, instead, there is dust and green leaves line the passage. This is not California forest, not the dry, earthy, open woods of my youth with squat bushes and pinched trees, where the sound of water was thrilling and rare. The green astonishes me with its fullness and unconcerned growing - seemingly without effort. You can't see more than ten feet into the trees before the undergrowth is too tall (or I am too short) and my vision is stopped. Soon I am tired enough to stop looking anywhere but shortly in front of my feet. I hear the voice of my coach in my hand telling me to run the tangents, to run from tree to tree, to stay on my toes uphill, to lean strongly from the hips downhill - let gravity do the work. I bring to mind repetitions by the Rose Bowl - the Flintridge hill, Yocum, Sierra Vista, Inverness. This is nothing like that but I am out of practice and my shirt is beginning to dampen from my exertion in the humidity. I am relieved at the end when we can pause and look at pack of alpacas with their dark hooded eyes, long noses, thick scraggly wool. They turn and look at us, evaluating. We wonder back. The owner steps out, tells us the far white is about to drop (what, I wonder for a moment) and when she steps towards us we can see her thickness far outstrips the others. Later, when the thunderstorm is thickening and we can hardly see through the dashboard she inside or at least out of view. I wonder if this is the weather for birthing, or for holding in until sunnier skies.

Sunday.
I am alone in my wakefulness. After sixty pages Ethan rolls over and we settle on the porch in the shade, looking over the pond shining in the heat. One hundred more and we stop for hot chocolate, french toast, scrabble. The menfolk head into the water with fish traps and ambitions; I dangle my feet of the pier into the water grasses and lose myself in Sabine's grief. It is hard to read but I have only a few more hours before this books is lost to me and I can't leave until I know how she manages, how she finds her joy again after Parsifal is gone. On the porch I reach for Ethan's hand as he reads his mathematics, take it and rub my thumb against the hollow where his joins the back of his hand. Something rhythmic, quiet, close to remind me we are still here, together. On the pier the water swishing against my ankles holds that promise, the distant laughter of the fishermen slipping on algae-covered clay. Later I push off towards the depths but the cold drives me back and even past that we are suddenly, almost abruptly, packed and waiting for Joe to reset the alarm and come from the side door. The eggplant, the bread, the polenta is gone and the mill closed for the day. I jump out and fix the chains - open, closed. Ethan remembers the way home.

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Professors Liebski

He sits at the table upright and alert, unshaven for days and his glasses shining in the light, wearing my favorite shirt (go Aggies!), torn jeans, grey socks, right fingers pulsing over the remote keyboard as they have been for an hour. Data entry. For future research - his own project, finally, not one he's paid for but one he can choose and direct. I have spent my time curled awkwardly on our couch with Pharr in my hands chunking out another hundred lines, this time about Jupiter talking to Venus and promising glory and kingdoms for her poor Aeneas. We haven't sat like this and worked together, academically speaking, in years and I had been afraid it was something that had been lost to us immediately upon marching through the grass, hot and sweating in black, two years ago. Our fourth year we saw each other mostly in the library: he would be there, I would come after class, start to read, fall asleep, he would wake me up when he left. The few times I managed to keep myself conscious we would read quietly and I would try to take his hand again and again but we would lose contact for every page turn and eventually give up. This is better: in our own space, the comfort of speech allowed, snacks on demand, breaks to buy plane tickets and search for Bears' hats. I look at tonight and realize that what they say is true - the future is now. This life works.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

I feel like peeling labels or kicking walls. Well, maybe not actually: I think my foot would hurt.

For some people it's socks in the laundry. I lose things when I clean. This is something that my mother never really understood when I was younger - it may be messy, but it's an organized mess. I know where things lie in the chaos, but once things are "cleaned" suddenly my spatial memory is entirely thrown off and I end up flipping through folders and rifling through drawers for hours. I looked for my AAA membership card for at least an hour today, examining the contents of 2 desks, 2 tables, a large envelope-filled box, my bookshelf, my floor, even the freezer (you never know) and never saw it. I remember it not long ago, looking at it near the desks thinking about going to the website, but my memory fades immediately after. The problem was I picked it up from where it has sat for days and apparently didn't return it precisely. Always pay attention, as I have known for years - it works consistently and fulfillingly but is so difficult to master continuously. I forget and then I end up here, again, stilted in the afternoon and frustrated tomorrow morning. At least I found the car keys.

Monday, May 22, 2006

A pound of Flesch

Clarity of tone is lacking, firm control and pressure but with a gentle glide. The timing is not right, the details. My pinky won't curve - it resists, pops in and out of locked position never quite supple enough. My thumb is static, the middle finger doesn't lead properly, the index won't lean. At least there aren't mites, and the seams all seem to be glued. The full tones wriggle out of half- and quarter-mistakes; I try not to grimace and hope the neighbors can't hear. Precision lacks. I start off with scales, arpeggios, sixths, finger exercises to work on the bow which has always been my weakness and to find the right pitches again. The metronome blinks and clocks at me unrelentingly - I had forgotten the way the numbers don't quite line up with the dial around 132 - and even still I have lost my counting. I switch over to Mazas to have the excuse of difficulty, but I know I flee the harshness in the easy places where there is no excuse. I need the cats and Ruth on the sofa and my mother reading at the table, the windchimes on the porch and the dogs barking between the houses. I forgot the way my back hurts when I'm done, how I can't play with shoes on anymore, even the shoulder rest feels wrong, but I know visually that's how I've worn it for years. I did remember that I have to play alone and that I have to not think too much to start or I'll get so frustrated I won't keep going. The intonation will come most quickly; the fingers start to remember; by the end I can shift without thinking (almost the right pitches) despite my fatigue. The bow will take work, as I know and have always known, but I have my book from Ruth with exercises and pictures from my last lesson, five and a half years ago. I could do this once, passably, with the best examples surrounding me. The stand is down but open, feet splayed around my running shoes, waiting.

Saturday, May 20, 2006

Lions and tigers and hairs, oh my

My father tells me it can all go away if I just get a series of shots. He's right, I know, but it's not covered by my insurance and I don't particularly like the idea of going week after week or month after month to have sharp metal objects stuck into my arm and then strange liquids injected. A not very pleasant sort of experience, although the one I'm stuck in now is hardly fun either. Enclosed in a self-induced fog I am fascinated by repetition and shape, by light, color, sound, lulled easily by the whir of the wheels on the pavement or the freezer cycling in the next room. I hardly pay attention to what I type here, my finger moving slothfully across the keyboard and my brain for once moving as slowly as I type. It will wear off by tomorrow morning but I know that it awaits me every time I go back for a visit and carefully avoid the silky tails and rasping tongues that I miss so much. A warm, vibrating body nestled against your feet or in the crook of your arm or comfortingly weighing upon your stomach, velvety paw-pads tucked under or splayed out or rhythmically pulsing. It bothers me to push them away (without even my flesh touching them!), to inconvenience hosts, to deprive myself presumably forever. But the drugs don't even work that well with this odd zonking effect and I can't quite imagine paying hundreds (thousands?) of dollars to avoid an inconvenience despite the potential quality-of-life benefit. Maybe someday I'll just get a snake.

Friday, May 19, 2006

I need about tree-fitty. Tree-fitty? What's that? It's three dollars and fifty cents, son.

We have our own language which I often forget in the company of others. Words, phrases, a look - we have our own customs and habits, our own practical jokes. We are like our own species. It infiltrates every part of my life outside - I have to delete phrases from emails to other people that I type automatically because they would be entirely misunderstood, look like gibberish, seriously offend. I have to watch my language in public so I don't throw out the same to the wrong person, and when I do make some obscure (but obvious to us) reference I always get the same look of incomprehensible acceptance. I have picked up some of his ways of speaking and I presume he has some of mine, although I suppose it's easy enough to pick up certain things from other people and make them your own - we do adapt to imitate and therefore please our conversation partners. We have adapted into a middle ground to the point where Ann Marie laughs at us and proclaims we have our own very distinct and odd sense of humor. I don't see it that way, but we'll humor her as long as she'll marry us in the end. It makes a space ours, lets us take possession of any moment. Something we alone share and has worked its way into idiom so that it can't even be explained properly to anyone else. Maybe we have built our relationship through this joined language more than anything else - the Liebski dialect, if you will - because it encapsulates our entire shared experience together. Like the rings on a tree. I just hope no one else ever manages to count them.

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Needing a compass

I waver between respect and contempt for professional athletes. In my cynical moments, my economic socialist moments, I despise them and the sort of living they make, although an honest soul might (correctly) name that jealousy. I proclaim to people that I want to be a professional ultimate player (if I had any choice) and yet these past weeks when I have had the opportunity I haven't used it. Evident it was today, panting up the field, pivoting weakly, throwing behind my cutters, half-heartedly falling towards a rapidly descending disc. Which I didn't catch. I felt it coming up the stairs tonight, the dull ache of no energy and the protest of muscle that has been ill-used. I read about football players in the offseason, working three or more hours every day to get into playing-level shape and hotly protest that I see no great effort or martyrdom in that - they are paid to do it, they have personal trainers and teammates: motivation. And yet I cannot seem to muster the enthusiasm for a two mile run, crunches in the morning, throwing (with effort) in the park. It is so hard to pull yourself back into the game when you have been out of it for so long. I remember the days when I could run every day without being exhausted, the miles slipping by in peaceful thought. I looked for rabbits, crossed streams, counted golf balls and jumped over horse manure. Somehow I have lost my way. Tomorrow, I say, tomorrow I will. But eventually I have to say "today".

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Apron strings

The kitchen adventures continued tonight for better or for worse. I'm glad that Ethan is so patient with me, since things come and go. I overdid the mustard, gave the sauce a serious kick in the end (it's for your sinuses, I tell him, I'm just trying to clear them out for you, get your cold better). A less than perfect attempt tonight, following a mediocre stab at two Yan recipes last week and an excellent first try at lamb. I wonder sometimes at how satisfying I find mixing and chopping and stirring and watching. I spend as much time (or more) picking something new and then worrying about it as I do actually making preparations and assembling the final product. I suppose food is a way I define myself, and I am afraid when I try something new (or err in an old favorite) that somehow I may be defamed. Negative face, they say in politeness studies; that's not quite appropriate here but it is what comes to mind. I am not sure if it is always more about gaining positive face or avoiding negative - one would hope the former but surely it must depend on my state of mind, the expectations, the excitement. Tomorrow I hope to redeem myself fully with some time-honored classic - a burger and fries and a pitcher of cider, shuffleboard and pool. You can always pay someone else for satisfaction.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

See: Porcelain, Moby

[DSL was out last night]

Last night I was abandoned at sea by my mother, my father, my sister, Ethan. None of them heinously, just a quiet dismissal of my presence and worth, leaving me alone to plunge myself off the freighter into the waves and strike out for land. I did catch up with the group eventually (apparently I have a fantastic sidestroke) and led it into shore where I found a friend waiting for me. A friend who greeted me with talk of going to dinner (Amy's, for crab), who slid over on the white marble step and put a welcoming arm out, took my hand. And I wondered to myself if this was allowed. We stood to go, and that was the end of it. It is not always the same person, it is not always the same situation but my unconscious finds ways to explore all the aspects of my life - sometimes in the context of present circumstances and sometimes not. In the bright grey light of the morning these concerns may seem trivial to most but I have a long history with these night-time adventures. There was a summer in high school I remember where every night my parents tried to kill me, or I had to kill them. Variations on a theme. The recurring mummy dream of my childhood - every time I had a fever. When I met death, when Ethan was assassinated, when I was pregnant, when I miscarried, the secret agent series. If I wake up with no new memories I feel as if something is missing. Sometimes I wake up truly terrified or exhilarated. When Ethan was assassinated, killed as we slept by a sniper, what woke me up were my tears, just as real in life, and it took several minutes of serious reasoning (it was just a dream, it's all fine) to calm myself down. They are more real to me than I should allow them to be. So I worry about this hand-holding, dinner dates, of people I know and of strangers; if it makes me a liar, a betrayer, less or more in real life. It is possible to exert some control, with practice, although my only real contribution is being able to fly when chased and I can never fly quite high enough to get my ankles out of reach. Imperfect skill. If I practiced more, perhaps I would be able to turn away in all the dreams, to say no to say what would Ethan say? and yet part of me wonders if this vicarious exploration - the "what if" I will never have - keeps me happy in the status quo. I suppose a girl can dream.

Sunday, May 14, 2006

Why bother? (When it dries up)

That's your job; you're supposed to think of something to say, right? And I can't deny it. I asked for a first sentence, and in the spirit of taking what I am given here you have it. It is my job, true, but I find inspiration lacking often these evenings when I sit to write. It is not even easier during the day, when Ethan is gone, as I had expected it would be. Instead I find my spare moments not filled with ideas for this space but thoughts of what to make for dinner, meditations on our relationship, luxurious moments curled up on the couch buried in a piece of good, or at least decent, fiction. Too much television, perhaps, rotting my brain. I forgot the siren-like call of weekend evenings on FX, TBS, TNT, Comedy Central. Tonight I have the choice of basketball, SWAT, The Fugitive, Bad Santa. It never ends. It is always so easy to lose your consciousness in that bright, shining oblivion right up to the moment where your brain explodes and you hit the cliffs, drown on the unforeseen rocks. It is harder, day by day, to have a first sentence that I can springboard from into the depths I hope to reach, slicing through the calm surface and bringing some sort of light or motion into murky places. Does my writing improve with practice? Have I found (can I identify) my own narrative voice? These are my hopes, and as easy as it would be to simply abandon this space in my current mood and distraction I would feel somehow traitorous. Maybe it's just the count I see every time I log in: this is 75; 100 is not so far off; 1000 only 3 years away. Maybe it's some sense of loyalty to the few of you who come and visit. Maybe it truly is the hope of a small slice of my childhood dreams coming true.

Saturday, May 13, 2006

My fourth-grade talent

The world breathes. I heard it today in the swell of the swings with the air rushing past my ears as I hung. Back and forth, in and out, a cosmic pendulum. The gentle heaving of a sleeping body - my vision changing as I moved closer to, farther from the ground. It was silent except for the wind and the small creaking of the chains in my hands. Cold out, cloudy, we were alone in the park, Ethan straining on the jungle gym with his pullups. Silent. Concentrating. Not looking at me when he rested. I swung, watching, hearing the wind breathe in my ears. A small sensation of flight - I lean forward at the crest, pull on the chains to jerk myself higher, pump with the legs, lean as horizontal as I can to help my momentum. I haven't been in that world for a long time, but the body remembers. The mind won't forget again.

Like a spy

I am infinitely adaptable. I feel it as I slip into a semblance of my old Chicago life and leave behind the me of Philadelphia - and yet the adaptation is not complete because I still remember, still compare to what was. On campus today, at the ATM in the student center I felt at home, until I saw the new card-value machine and the DVD rental kiosk. When did those appear? I snuck into the GSB computer lab, logged in and printed with Ethan's stolen password pretending that I belonged. I always feel underdressed surrounded by high-powered MBA students, my hair frizzy from the rain and my shoes falling apart. At least I had my corduroys on, my green sweater, my nice watch. But no one questions me. I have a password, I don't look too dodgy, I know my way around: I must belong. We take the train up to Belmont to eat cake - starting at 5500 south, up to 3200 north. The bottom half we are the only white people on the train. After downtown, we are reversed. Wrigley land, not Comiskey anymore. We spurn the Hopleaf (don't feel like drinking) for dinner but end up with wine and Italian food; at least we are consistent with dessert since we have each eaten a plate of cake and plate of frosting and filling. We go to see Thank You for Smoking for the second time, and for the second time end up seeing something else. With no popcorn. For me, reversion back to pre-Ethan. We are early, the first in the theatre and two minutes before the movie starts a couple asks us to move over one seat. We have been there for half an hour, playing cards, dead center; we move. Catch the bus home (was it still running? do we have enough for a cab?) pretend to fall into sleep. I don't stay up this late. I don't go out to movies and dinner every week. I don't debate the merits of mocha mousse on almond or hazelnut or chocolate cake. I don't spend two hours reading about cakes or florists or hotels. And yet this is how I spend my days, my week. Latin sits in a box, waiting for a moment to surface. I think it will be soon; I am in need of a change.

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Perfume

The bananas are turning black, day by day. You can smell them as soon as you open the front door and they squish delicately under your fingertips. Ethan wants me to make banana bread but I know that as soon as I open up the skin and see the slimy mash within coupled with overwhelming scent I will feel sick and have to leave the room, open a window, turn the fan on high. I wish I could just throw them away but there is too much guilt about Somalia, about Chicago. Of course two bananas can't change the world but every little bit helps. Attitude, often more than action. And in truth, once it's made, I like banana bread almost as much as pumpkin.

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Love, part -1

The soundtrack for my writing was not selected by me, but fits the mood my writing. The rain rumbles lightly on the pavement out the open windows, the fans click periodically as they turn, Ethan plays something that I recognize as a minor-key Thom Yorke creation which I can never discern the words of - just the discontent - as they fill the space of the cluttered room. I felt oddly disturbed today by news that my first boyfriend was potentially blocking my path to a meeting. He was there half an hour ago she told me, sitting by the entrance. So I walked with purpose, didn't look around, stayed focused on the floor and the doors and kept moving. I didn't see him, don't know if he was still there. When I ran into him six months ago, entirely unexpectedly, I felt like I had lost my equilibrium. He asked me why I was there. But he was in my city, my school, my favorite curry-noodles lunch spot. Today there was no surprise and I know the reasons (and perhaps he does too). We haven't spoken in years. Sometimes I wish we still did, but how do you start a conversation with I loved you but I rejected you? Words we never spoke but both could claim. How can you look at someone you could still love and say I found someone else. Someone better. Someone more right. I feel guilty sometimes, like I betrayed something even though it wasn't ever quite right. This is the situation where love becomes selfish, becomes self-serving, personal and heart-breaking. If I am right that a real love never leaves entirely then what you have is an expansion or extension which you fall into and reach out to someone else. For your own good, for your own happiness. How can this be bad? And yet you have betrayed the faith and the hope of the first, however trivial it may become over time. I am often regretful that my previous relationships faltered in some way, regardless of where blame for that is due. I think mostly I mourn the loss of those I have been closest to in my life where now instead we communicate through a thick pane of glass all the time, electrons, memory. Someone wise will tell me I cannot have my cake and eat it too, but I always wondered why you couldn't just bake another. I suppose the singularity is what makes it special.

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

When does it count?

Things slowly become more real. I watched Gilmore Girls tonight (my vice, my trashy pleasure) in an episode all about relationships, more so than usual, especially upon Lorelai's frustration that her wedding was never going to happen. I am in the opposite situation, where every passing day brings it closer, makes it more real and complete. Today was about invitations - cardstock and scissors and hole punching and language. Tomorrow will be making flower and cake appointments, deciding if I want to order a different set of shoes. This weekend we have to start registering. The minutes tick by and the formalities are accomplished but at the end of it all it still comes down to the one moment where we sign the paper and our status legally changes. I suppose it's more romantic to talk about standing in front of family and friends but that part still scares me, the public confession and display of what we usually keep reserved deep within ourselves. I don't fear the meaning, just the action itself - so exposed, so raw and vulnerable. Rachel looked terrified at her wedding a month ago and I am sure I will be too - I asked Ethan to promise he would hold my hand the whole time, a small comfort, but we shall see how that would fit into the ceremony (a break after every three minutes to wipe off sweaty palms?) The normalcy of signing a document is easy to grasp, easy to anticipate. We've done that already, on file at the Field Museum. A declaration of love and faith and companionship that labeled us domestic partners, to human resources if no one else, but it felt like something real. I am not a terribly religious person but in one of the few moments in my life of spontaneous prayer I asked for our union to be blessed, years ago - is that not the essence of the sacrament of marriage? Being Protestant, I do not need the intervention of a priest but instead can go straight to God. So we have signed our paper, we have blessed our relationship. I feel married, or at least think I do. All that's really left is the party.

Monday, May 08, 2006

Oddity (I'll find a real topic tomorrow)

I had a nightmare about school brought on by the heat of the morning and apparently some discontent in my psyche. We post-bacs left for class a good five minutes early and somehow got split up and then couldn't find the building. It was covered like a large yellow and dull-red striped tent - some kind of circus but more like a house under termite attack - and as we entered it was clear the tent was to keep the dust from construction off the neighboring buildings, the streets, the sidewalk. We came in on three and looked for the stairs, finding a narrow and steep set (almost a ladder) leading directly into a bathroom (for easy access from multiple floors?) but we took it and kept moving on two. Having come in through a different entrance than normal we realized we didn't actually know the room number of the class, just the location in a relative way, so we spread out to look for something familiar. Walked through a bunch of other classrooms (not much in the way of walls) including 300-level latin and finally found class about an hour late. Reading Ovid or maybe Homer. I can't be sure, and my backpack was stuffed full of notebooks and commentaries and the like. Class broke up and suddenly we were wandering the same building, in search of pastries and bread homemade and sold by students like an impromptu farmer's market. Maybe I also woke up because I was hungry. I am no stranger to dreams, or nightmares about school, and this was one dream of many that I do remember from a restless early-morning attempt to sleep and not cough, but rarely do I dream of places I have left with any sort of anxiety. Rarely do I dream of school when not in it, and I would be more inclined (based on history) to panic about Illinois than to continue in retroactive fear of Ker or Murnaghan. I am not sure why I have written this here, although it did come to mind and I try to write about whatever comes to mind without thinking too much. Some kind of catharsis perhaps, some kind of complaint, some kind of hope for better sleep tomorrow.

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Maybe the dog ate it

I have lost my courage. I was set this morning, nocked back and ready to fly, aiming here to split myself and bury the point deep within the white of the page, but now I hesitate and we all know that he who hesitates is lost. (Does she who hesitates ask for directions?) I could use some direction at this juncture, an avatar. The phrase that keeps running through my head is a title from Eastern Philosophy class in high school - the emptiness that is full - although I consider it in a much different context than the author intends me to. A full emptiness. Like a lot of nothing, I suppose, but nothingness can be quite a thing itself. Look at me ramble. Look at me avoid the issue. (See Lanski. See Lanski run.) I am in a perhaps enviable position - I have had five years to change my mind; I have had a year of genuine cohabitation and at least three more attempts; I have had a year to myself to ponder things, to verify, to explore being my own person, to live the single life even while attached. I still choose this. Why is nearly impossible to say - the words do not come, there are no images. But there is still a reason. My emptiness is full of possibility and meaning - to understand I must lose my analysis and surrender to the unknown.

Saturday, May 06, 2006

Epitomes

I am no longer used to this life. I see it in the little things - a second person in the kitchen, not being able to cough at night, papers heaped that I can't just move or throw out, communal bedtimes - bits of living that are simpler when alone. But the richness is gained in other ways - like how I sit now, awake, alone with the morning and the silent twisting of the fan, the dog on its walk barking down the sidewalk chasing squirrels, the leaves of the aloe and jade and attila glowing with infused light, and I know that Ethan is only ten feet away, through a wall, sleeping again, ready to wake whenever I want him to, rolling over when I slipped out this morning and finding me minutes later in the kitchen fixing tea. To make sure everything was all right. I sent him back to bed - we were up late with friends and it's early for us anyway - but he did come, ask, enfold me as I held in the coughing. The greatest curse and the greatest joy of the shared life: I am no longer alone.

Friday, May 05, 2006

I'm not coming out 'til this is all over

I have boxes and boxes of books, of papers, old class notes, printed emails from my mother, cartoons and fortunes. We don't have space for it all so they sit in their dark corners slowly accumulating dust and waiting for the moment I have to find something and start digging through every one, leaving the contents shaken and disheveled from their initial standpoint. What is important enough to get out? My Latin, my favorite fiction, Marx and Freud; the dictionaries and Harry Potter and all the math textbooks. There is no real reason to hold onto many of these things - most of these books I can easily do without, running to the library if absolutely necessary. I have found it relatively easy in the past day to go through all my clothes and weed out the things I rarely or never wear, even things I have held onto for years "just in case" are now in the give-away box, but not with books. I am not sure what makes the printed word more special than an old pair of shorts - often neither quite fits right anymore but has a history of sentimentality behind it. Tony sent me a link today about a contest to create a piece of entirely plagerized fiction (properly footnoted, of course) drawing from at least five different sources. I am sorely tempted to give it a try, although I am not sure where to start and even in thinking about it have run into what are surely the greater challengers - finding a single narrative voice/person, not including too many characters, finding authors with similar enough styles to hang together. I wonder about splicing conversations from two books together, or even three - would it end up making sense? Like patchwork jeans it must be done with a good eye and a steady hand neither of which I am sure I possess in great enough capacity. Especially in my current frame of mind - restless, frustrated (why won't the plumber call so I can leave?) - I doubt if I possess the concentration. Perhaps I will rummage through a box, find an old sweatshirt and my Benner and give some Greek a shot. If I can do that, surely anything is fair game.

Thursday, May 04, 2006

paragraphing early

I am a morning person again. I always was, I suppose, but the difference is that once again I have something to get up for, someone to smile at me in the soft light glowing through the blinds. I forgot the brightness of this apartment, on the fourth floor, all windows east, nothing much taller around. It starts early and builds in intensity and heat until I can't stay asleep any longer. I don't mind it. Rolling out of bed to make a cup of tea, read a chapter or two, hear the bells of the trains and the birds in the trees across the street. A lazy morning, meant for Sundays but my weekend is today and temporarily eternal. There are plenty of tasks ahead in the day and the weeks but this is my new time for simply being. As much as I love the company and richness of a shared life I still relish the few moments I have to myself in peaceful quiet where I am unaccountable and completely free. This space is a reflection of that span, a two dimensional embodiment of it. We are immediately distant from the nighttime ramblings of a tired and lonely mind. Here, now, there is light, breath, joy.

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Letting go

The remnants of my life lie around not quite ready to leave. The lone paper on the bulletin board, the soap and towel and half-eaten bag of chips, an empty plastic bag and keys that soon will be gone from my possession. No matter how many images or words or objects you take from a place you can never recreate that space entirely - the connections and memories so tied up with the physical and real. How can you put those things in a suitcase? I have dreamed the past few weeks about the program, the places, the people that have surrounded my life for the past several months but they have been small dreams, moments in sleep that are not dramatic enough for real memory the next day. Last night's only enduring memory is of writing on this very page, although the words I cannot remember, but it drove me out of bed this morning to put something down on paper - on screen. I suppose this is perhaps the most enduring connection I will retain to this Philadelphia life for Flicked into the Void started in response to a need for expression, my loneliness, the perpetual wish that I could evoke feeling and image in words. It is utterly rooted in my experience here and would never have come about without it. The beauty of this page is that the html, the visual experience remains the same no matter where I am. This I can see anywhere in the world and be put right back into this chair at this moment. Like I never left.

[Note: I was in Washington D.C. for the weekend, and thus computer-limited.]