Dog

Conifer Garden

pressings

[the imperceptible furrow]

I have begun to notice the telltale signs of a burgeoning furrow in my brow. It has always been in the same spot, but now, now there is a shadow there when my face is still because it must rest in the muscles of my face more when I am not paying attention, and it troubles me that my recent state of mind means that I sit with a crease between my eyebrows, a skeptical glance, a puzzlement and soon, it will be permanent. Sometimes I get up and go the bathroom and when I catch sight of myself, almost like a surprise, because I don't always recognize the face that stares out from that glass, I see it, the furrow, and I force my face to relax until it is gone.

Also, there is the recent exhaustion I face on a nearly daily basis, where I want nothing more than to crawl into bed at nine o clock and sleep until the next time it is nine o clock and hope that no one notices that I am hiding away from them, haven't been to a bar in over two weeks, haven't talked about myself in two weeks, haven't cared in two weeks, just want to sleep. I'd guess that I might be depressed but there's nothing really to be depressed about. And if there was, it would have began sooner than two weeks ago. Two weeks ago (and just a bit longer) I had The Fall, which has become an important event in my world and I suspect the marker of my getting older, because I have not been the same girl since then.

It is cold here now and unlike before, I must have gloves and a hat and a scarf and I am a whiny baby without them, my coat snuggled under my chin, three layers on top, two layers on bottom, I am a bundled mass attempting to block out any chills. I used to be immune to the cold. I used to laugh at the cold. Now it laughs at me.

When did I begin to enjoy prunes? Really, prunes? I remember when he offered me one. It was the first time I had ever seen a prune up close. He kept his in the refrigerator, in a plastic container and when he peeled open the lid the smell offended me. It was like if you could smell wetness, if wetness had a smell mixed with a sickly sweet forgery of raisins. They had a similar wrinkle, but they were so big. And some of them were puckered and dimpled and others were like grotesque belly buttons and he shoved the bucket under my nose to make me see them up close and that smell filled my nostrils and I was so grossed out. He thought I was just grossed out because they were prunes and prunes aren't cool. He asked me, the way he asked me everything, the reason I loved him so, if I had actually ever eaten a prune because I might find that I quite liked them. He smiled and I ate one and he was right, I did quite like it. Now, I don't keep my prunes in the fridge, I keep them in my pantry and I try to eat five a day.

[time passing]

"She's been sober for a year," she told me. I can't quite say why this statement has been pinballing through my mind and setting off all the bumpers. The initial ones were all typical, shock, alarm, awe. Then as the details emerged, I felt a sense of affirmation, a prim nodding of the secretary in my mind who manages all the affronts incurred against my good name and even in that moment I could not resist saying, see, this is why I stopped being her friend. After that, I just felt kind of sad for her, that she's obviously looking for something and still hasn't found it yet, and maybe this is it for her. I hope so.

there was a suggestion that sobriety was part of growing up. I don't know what that means. I wish I did. I wish I hadn't held on to a semblance of what felt good for so long because I'm stuck now, this is it, I'm in the rut, I look up from the curb and see everyone passing me by, I'm in that last group of marathon runners who trained for nine months only to end up walking it, bathed in sweat which makes the perfect mask for tears. If I ever grow up it might be because I leave Chicago, because I'll be forced to do something else, anything else. Or it might be a slow steady crawl toward adulthood that I've already seen the signs of and once again I will know it's because I'm a late bloomer.

I want to be steered, to be shown what to do, because the ways that I used to do things haven't been working for me anymore. The impetuous decisions based on nothing more than a whim, it has failed me two years in a row. That has been my saving grace for two years, the one thing I could rest my fucking laurels on when cornered about what exactly I was doing with my life, I could say, with a sense of smugness and pretentiousness, I'm applying to grad school. Or, I'm applying for a master's degree. Even just the idea that I could say such a thing was a novelty, so I said it as often as possible. And now, it seems I've been bested, having failed to win those odds two years in a row, maybe I will not bother this year. Even then I could not say I will not bother. Part of me still wants to apply, part of me still considers it, and probably will until January 4th passes and I can say with a sigh of relief, maybe next year. And maybe the year after, ad infinitum until I die.

[them]

He comes to me at night for assurances. It has a pattern now, like everything; a couple weeks go by, I haven't heard a word, and I usually break my vow of silence. Lately it's him that wanders into my scope, greedy with questions, searching for love, wanting someone to tell him it's all gonna be alright. I do the best I can, for my heart is not for him and my answers seem to drop into an endless well of his own narcissistic making. I imagine all the good times we could have had if this well was absent, but even then, I was never someone he wanted that way, though somehow he desires the mother hen in me and I love soothing him. It makes no sense to anyone else, and so he will remain an enigmatic stain on my subconscious.

The day is arriving that I will meet him again, he only knows my past self from years ago, and I wonder what he will see in my future self, if he will have the same lure to me he once had, I am terrified that he will and even more concerned that I will not be able to deny him. Meeting him again has loomed over me these past two weeks (strangely coincided with my abrupt descent into exhaustion) and I know it's not worth the effort of trying to imagine how it will go, what I should wear, how much of a wall to hold up, but I endlessly find myself scraping away at those thoughts, even when I reprimand myself I still wander back absentmindedly and imagine it all. And it might seriously turn out to be nothing. A joke.

Except there is him and he has captured me with so many moments, so many reasons, but this one in particular might be the exact moment I fell like a great thunderous tree, boom! he was sitting in my kitchen and we were talking, talking about nothing, which we seem to do so well, and he was smiling and happy and we had already spent two hours next to each other, but there was no rush, and my roommate was in the other room unaware, but in the middle of saying something, he was struck by me and he whispered that I looked wonderful and me, typical me, I shied away and refused the compliment, even waved my hand as if to bat it away, but his sincerity in that moment, his carefulness in that moment was exceptional and I crashed.

Xmas Tree

our park

The leaves from the willow trees have covered the dying grass like a blanket. They've been cemented there by snow and ice. They are long and taper at both ends, yellowing, brownish, finger-like. Occasionally there is a slender branch tossed by the wind, stripped of leaves, but lying on top of them because it doesn't know how not to hold the leaves.

The ground crunches under my feet, and the park, my park, our park has undergone a drastic change from when I first encountered it with her, lying in the chaotic grass of summer and looking up into the sky at the stars. The prairie we watched change and grow is flattened, with signs posted detailing it's imminent burning. To imagine that it might someday be a razed, singed, blackened scab on the ground and in six months be full and lush and tower over me is incredible. The trees we watched change are barren now, and all the cement those leaves obscured make the park seem smaller now, less of an oasis.

What catches my eyes the most are the baseball diamonds, like an ice-skating rink, the street lamps cast long gold garland across its mirrored surface and at night, they look like silver circles. I remember how we used to race across them to chase the fog, finding that it could only be seen from far away, and discovering that the sandy surface was soft, like walking on sponges and now it is covered with a disc of ice that I skate on in my sneakers.

To say that I miss her is far too simple. Every single day I think of her, every single day I am disappointed by someone and I know in that instant, had she been there, her appreciation of my observations, my thoughts, my words would have been paramount and the person I am with cannot ever compare to her. In a way, it's worse that I knew her, because it hurts that much more that I don't know her anymore. It makes everything unbearable again. To be known, to be appreciated, to be loved, she gave me that so freely that I felt as happy as I have ever been in my life. I only hope I was able to return that gift to her.

Today was the first day since she has been gone that I traipsed through our park and it was the most I have missed her since her departure, the most angry I have been that she left (even though I do sincerely wish her well and hope she finds what she is looking for, but still angry in a selfish way) and the most sadness that my friend is gone.

Oh boy!

City scape

the burnham

It's funny how he the love of my lifetime seeps in my mind. His namesake, by coincidence, is the same as one whose architectural imprint from over a hundred years ago is still visible downtown. His friends, who slowly are becoming my friends. His habits, which slowly are becoming my habits. His ideas, which slowly became my ideas too.

I know that I will never forget him. I know that I will instantly be able to replay some of the most amazing moments of my life and they will involve him. Yet, the other side of the coin is that so many of my unhappy times involve him. We had the kind of love that hurts, the kind of love that burns, the kind of love that is manic depressive, because when it was good, it was so good and when it was bad, it was really bad.

For a while I ignored all these niggling memories which seemed to encompass the entire city (there's where we had our first date, there's where we had our last fight), neighborhoods of thoughts, playgrounds full of our time together. I just stomped past them and pretended they didn't exist. Sometimes I would imagine moving away just to rid myself of thoughts of him. Because it seems that there isn't a beach we didn't crawl on, a street we didn't walk together, a place we hadn't been.

It has been a year now.

Slowly time has scrubbed away some of it. The biggest relief was his job, the place he worked, the reason we met, it closed and has something new there, something totally different. It is hard even to remember how it used to be. And maybe, someday I will feel that way about the rest of it, the rest of the memories I have surrounding him.

One of his friends told me a story that made my heart hurt for him, because really, he is still a man, a man with feelings, a man who is trying to find his way in the world, so I cannot hate him, despite who he was for me. His friend detailed how they traveled to her, the new woman, twenty hours in a truck with his stuff piled up behind him. And when they arrived, they unloaded it all, an array of boxes littering her apartment. His kitchenware was most prominent, he loved to cook, and she balked at exactly how he had ruined her clean floor with his dirty boxes. They had just settled on the couch, probably with a cooling beer they bought on the way, and he got up, sweaty, exhausted, worn out, and without a word, he cleaned the entire floor.

The writer in me, the revenge-monger in me moreso, wants to see him doing this on his hands and knees in an endless array of checkerboard linoleum, but it probably wasn't that bad. And the crossed arms of his lover, maybe didn't happen. The ridicule he faced in his friend's eyes though, yes, that was bad. He wouldn't like that very much.

But he made his bed and he finally decided to lie in it. I hope he finds that he is the problem, not us, not womankind, not the scourge of relationships, but him. He doesn't know what he wants, but he does know that he doesn't want to work hard at it, but maybe she has shown him that it is even harder work to love her than it was to love me. I didn't make it easy on him. I tell everyone that, because it would be so convenient for me to let everyone believe he was the villian, but I didn't make it easy for him to love me. Part of the reason it got so hard for him is because he gave up. He didn't put in the work of building a foundation, he just wanted to live in a half built home. He was in a rush to get to somewhere that wasn't ready yet.

I am sad that he never responded to my white flag, but not disappointed. I had a feeling when faced with my love, my caring of him as a human being in the world, with no hatred for who he had been, he wouldn't be comfortable with that. His regrets and sorrows are too big for white flags, and the heaps and heaps of drugs and alcohol he tried to rub them away with only made them stick around longer.

I look at us now with a sense of intrigue. How could I have let such a mess of a man into my life? The idea of us being together now seems ridiculous. And yet, I was a different bird back then, exactly seven years ago yesterday was our first date. We shared ourselves like two dresses being unravelled, and the love he had for me was brilliant. It's too bad he burned out so quickly. It's too bad that I discovered the facade of his life and was unable to keep quiet about its holes. But now, there is nothing to feel bad about. Whatever he is doing, where ever he is, he is not my problem anymore. And for that, I am grateful.

just let me rest in peace

I haven't mentioned the magnetic disc in a while. It's because of a series of events have fallen so fast, like dominoes, that I haven't bothered recalling them, the order of them, the line of them, the 1-2-3 steps. He has vanished from my life, much to my relief. I spent so much time fervently trying to forget him, but it was impossible without his absence.

Constantly running into him on the street, interacting with him (or not interacting with him) at my bar, seeing his profile in my periphery while at work, it was a constant reminder, a scraping of the scab, a misery. Then, like a secret wish fulfilled, the bar sank, a titanic disaster that we all knew was coming at some point and felt no surprise when we discovered that our bar, my bar, the place I've spent the last three frustrated years of my life trying to find some sense or rapport or affinity, was closing. It was hard to be sad, because of course I love that place, except lately, he ruined it for me, but I will never see him again.

Imagine after a few weeks, as the sting of what was began to fade, as I began to heal, despite the show he put on for me the last time I saw him--

it was the goodbye party-which was so fitting, for he was the only person I wanted to say goodbye forever to-and he wore his biggest grin and his crooked glasses, and he was just so jovial. he was everywhere and nowhere, I heard his laugh across the bar but couldn't find his eyes. I wanted to say the words that would make things not weird between us, but I couldn't find them. We talked about some things, all things I could tell he was tortured by having to talk to me about them. At one drunken point, I drove my finger through the air and poked his shoulder and reminded him he had one of my books, the only line between us that hadn't been severed and then I told him to just keep it. goodbye forever.

I breathed with a sigh of relief and flitted away into the party and forgot him until I opened the doors after a smoke outside and saw the image that has been burned into my brain and will not go away despite anguished mental scrubbing. She was next to him. The moony girl I've known all along was his. His hand was on the top of her thigh, that place where the hips meet the leg, and she had her back to him and was dancing against him as he sat in a barstool, king of the manor, with a shit eating grin and our eyes met and finally his cover was blown, this mouse was his; the pretense was gone, he didn't have that same discretion he'd always had about her, he was no longer sparing me the pain, because it was the end and no one cared anymore; and they looked so comfortable together, so perfect together, she will marry him, I thought to myself, and a flash flood of jealously filled me and suddenly there wasn't enough alcohol in all the world to make that go away.

I still fondle that image absentmindedly, shaming myself when I realize that I was thinking of that yet again, because it really shouldn't hurt that bad and he really wasn't good for me anyway, but nothing I say about it works, because that's what happens when your heart is broken, even a little bit, it just takes time to wear away that pain.

I left the party early, even though it was my bar, even though it was early, even though I wanted to stay, because I couldn't stand to hear his laugh, to see his owlish eyes sweeping past me as if I didn't exist. Maybe I can finally put all that to rest, I thought, maybe this is the end of having to think about him, the end of knowing him, the end of everything.

--a few days ago I had a dream about him. I don't dream very often. If I do I tend to forget them soon after waking. Sometimes I dream with awareness in the lapses between my alarm and its snoozing. I rarely dream about people I know in real life. When I realized he had wandered into my dream I woke up, startled and angry, mad that even though I haven't seen him in weeks, he infiltrated my dreams. I wish for the same carelessness he holds for me, the same indifference when it comes to him. I hope one day I can look over him and see nothing but a ghost.

Walk

Iced

The park today.

the lure of November

It seems odd, that my year in review occurs in November, and not, in say, January, or perhaps in March, around my birthday. I cannot find a reason for this, other than every couple years or so, usually around the end of October, my life seems to upend itself and unravel to nothingness, and then I spend two years on a blog detailing the reshaping, the weaving of the new life that began in November.

It dawned on me recently that I started this blog about a year ago. I won't go through the tedious work of listing what's changed and hasn't changed, since you have been here with me for the last year and lately I've talked a lot about my emotional state. Let me just say that it has been a very interesting year and I have learned about myself and who I want to be and how those two beings aren't so separate and distinct anymore. This year I really learned how to be comfortable in my own skin.

There is something to tell you. There is a man who shares my bed with me sometimes and I haven't talked about him because I didn't know what to tell you. He's not my next boyfriend, he's not going to be my husband, he may not be a long lasting part of my life. And yet, he has already had a huge impact on me in just a couple month's time. He's helping me get over the love of my lifetime and he is fulfilling a wish I made over the summer to have a man in my life.

He has this amazing solid huge body and I find myself fascinated by the way his muscles drape over his limbs, the way the shadows fall across his arms, the way his shoulders feel under my palms. I am amazed by his arms, huge heavy things I can barely wrap my fingers around and I am pleased to be given permission to touch and hold him. He sits next to me, afraid to disrupt my motions, while I explore his body as if on a topographical mission. I love watching the tree trunks of his legs move through the world, he is like a centaur and his body is sensual, suggestive, and he isn't even aware that it might be. He travels through the day in a tangle of awkward mentally induced bindings, but I get to see him unbound and it is the most beautiful thing.

As if the pleasure I derive from his physical being isn't enough, he has a brain that would stir envy in the hearts of most men and he shares it with me, in short bursts throughout the day, in occasional long conversations on the phone (which is rare for me) and I am constantly intrigued by what he has to say, how he views the world, what new piece of knowledge he happens to be dissecting every day. This is the part I fear the most. I could easily not fall in love with a body, but I find it hard not to love his brain. I relish in just about every interaction and constantly long for more, knowing full well that I could wring a wet rag out to stiffness and still not be satiated, so I try to leave him be sometimes.

I think more than anything, this year, I have finally found the freedom to be pleased, to have pleasure, to seek out pleasant things. As a kid, as I grew up, I was very careful not to have too much fun. Having fun was how you got hurt. This summer and my friends have helped me learn how to reap a joyous pleasure from life as a adult.

So I will spend the next year continuing on this libertine path, I hope I will learn how to relish with words what I have learned to do so well in person. I have never been able to celebrate the good things and always been better at moping over the miserable aspects of my life, especially in my writing. It'd be nice if I could find the words to celebrate my life. If that is the case, perhaps that means I will blog more often...

as always, thank you for being here with me.

Leaf collectors

why why why

One of my newly acquired friends seemed to have dissected me well enough in only three months (he is smarter and more observant than most) to declare, when someone asked how I could say such a thing about myself (some deprecating statement about how I am most certainly not awesome, especially when you consider that things which are truly awesome are vast and amazing and do in fact incur the awe of the viewer, admirer, etc.), that I, Christine Fugate was full of...(and here he paused in an effort to find the exact word he needed to fill in that blank, which, had he held it up in the air a second longer, I might have added the word shit) he said,...doubt.

And there, in one word, in one statement, in one fell swoop, my life had been summed up for me and presented to me as a thing not to worry about anymore. It was his complete and succinct definition of me that I had been trying for so long to grasp, what was it about me that always led me not to trust anyone or care about anyone or question everything everyone said to me.

[In fact, I questioned myself out of many things that weren't so bad for me, with assurances now by hindsight, because I simply could not accept that there might be something valuable about me that made those things part of my life. I peddled in doubt, which I masqueraded as love, sex, violence, anger, bitterness, envy, hate, etc, just to give myself something to pass the time. My mistrust was heralded. Hating never felt so good. Nothing stood a chance in my life. I wore everything down, whittled away at all that was good, wiping wiping wiping with questions, concerns and wonderings. Or as Kurt Vonnegut said better in Cat's Cradle:

Tiger got to hunt,

Bird got to fly

Man got to sit and wonder

Why? Why? Why?

Tiger got to sleep,

Bird got to land,

Man got to tell himself he understand.

because you see, I kept asking why and I kept trying to convince myself I knew all the answers. And I didn't know anything and there was nothing to know; I just had to see myself from this alternate perspective, which had been tried before, but this time, it was so simple, just that one word (doubt) struck through the entirety of my being. There are no more questions to ask about why I am the way I am, that is why and that is all I needed to know.]

It's funny, because I keep thinking I'm at the top of where I can ever be emotionally, that I've reached the absolute summit and when I get there, I feel good about for a little while until my eyes adjust and my vision clears and there in the distance I see another peak I have to climb. What surprises me sometimes is when I look the other way at exactly how crazy far I've come and I see that there were shorter ways to get where I am now, with less struggle, less angst, but I went at it full of doubt. I didn't trust the way or myself to know the way.

Fuck doubting. Fuck doubting everything for doubting's sake. I'm tired of it. I say I'll be bold and saucy, a truthteller, a lover, a person who doesn't hold back. The pleasures I've garnered since that thick crust of misery was pulled away has been amazing. And I want more. Problem is, I can't stop being addicted to that shit. I can kick it for a week or so, maybe a month, but then I mess something up and it all comes raining down on me and I feel that familiar sense of failure and then the flood of questions and I hate myself more than I've ever hated anything. Because if I can't love myself, how can anyone else love me?

Table

Sunset

swallowed whole

When I was living alone, I was desperately lonely. Now that I have roommates I am desperate to be alone. It's not just that though, it's a seemingly unending demand on my time, a whirl of Things To Do starting with work and ending with sleep. I am experiencing a toxic overload and I am suffocating under the weight of it all.

It began innocently enough when my days off began to dwindle. I was experiencing two days off a week, a first in my working career, a novelty. I spent one of the days off doing the things you do on your day off, laundry, grocery shopping, maybe some tedious personal grooming. The other day off I spent in a totally frivolous manner, perhaps an afternoon reading a book, or wandering around the park or spending time with a friend. Life was good. I smiled for no good reason.

When my jobs demanded I work another day, I relented with good cheer, certain that having at least one day off was enough, since I had been enjoying myself so much.

Then I got a cold, which happened sometime around Labor Day, and typical of me, I ignored the thing until it knocked me into submission and I missed nearly two weeks of work. Since then, playing the game of getting back to normal, both physically, mentally and work wise has just about ground me down to numbness.

Now I can't remember the last day I had off, I haven't been doing my writing or any of the things that bring me joy, reading, knitting, making things, even having fun with my friends...it's like the only thing I do day in and day out is work and then I go home and sometimes I have the most fun I've ever had in my life with my roommate and now good friend, the sort of friend who I will always be able to resume where we left off, no matter how much time has passed between us. The thing is, I need some time to recharge, to unfurl the stress of the day and I don't get to do that if I'm doing disco lights in the stairwell, giggling over music or enjoying being playful with someone just for the sake of fun.

This weekend and the next will be full of good times; a grown up pizza party at Siena, Gary's studio walk; halloween, Jessica's going away party. I don't have to work as much next week and I'm planning on taking a couple days off to catch up and climb out of the quicksand. There are letters to write, a dinner to make, the book to read, phone calls to make, a haircut to have, a knitting project to finish and at the end of it all, my sanity to reclaim.

Oh the joy! MIKA in concert.

Flower

the statue

He scampered into the open doors with a wide grin. His clothes were all spray painted silver. He is one of those people that stand on busy streets pretending to be a statue and then moves when people give him money. Up close his clothes looked shabby even under the silver sheen. His pants were too large for him and had many rumples from extra fabric. His layers were all silver and he wore them like a hanger, flat and loose. He was a small slight man, malnourished and sad looking.

He spends all day downtown pretending to be an inanimate object so it seemed like no surprise to me that when he was finished and on his way home, he would spend the entire ride speaking to any passenger on the train who would interact with him. His face was painted silver but a long day and the creases of his wrinkles from smiling had worn away some of the paint. Most notably, he was missing six of his front teeth, which made him look older than he probably is, it made him look like a relic, an ancient man in silver, a strange enigma.

The way he spoke was unsophisticated, like a man from some backwoods somewhere, but it was lively and enthusiastic and I imagined he had a million stories to tell and had experienced an array of adventures. I could picture him traveling through the country by hopping trains with nothing more than the clothes on his back. I wondered if he enjoyed being a living statue more than other things he'd done to get by in life.

He spoke to the woman closest to him and she politely exchanged banter with him, and the train car stiffly tolerated his presence. When she got off the train he waved at her and she insincerely waved back, already wording the story in her mind of this encounter with the strange silver man.

The lake today.

Surprise, I'm a writer:

At work today, my boss was showing me a website of an artist she knows and navigating the artwork until she got distracted by a phone call. With her attentions otherwise absorbed, I began clicking on some of the site, focusing on "press" and then finding myself intrigued by the first listed link titled, "Fall Gallery Walk 06." As I began to read the piece, it felt vaguely familiar, as if I had read it before. And then I realized it was familiar because I was the one who'd written the piece.

It's odd because I have been thinking about that thing I used to do, where I would go to events in the "art" world and write about them for a blog. No one really ever read it (except my delightful father, I suspect was our only avid fan/reader), and it was the sort of thing I did just for fun and because my friend Natalia liked to go to art galleries and wanted to do a blog about them and wanted a writing partner.

It surprised me the way it might surprise someone to casually bump into a family member you haven't seen in a while. Enough time has passed so that they seem slightly different, maybe they have grown a beard or put on weight, but with a good scrutinizing glance, you recognize the face from long ago. In other words, my writing, my babies, my work is out there in the world being put to good use and it was heartwarming to see it fulfilling some function. At the time I wrote that piece, I didn't know the artist and had no idea that my boss knew the artist. I simply loved her work from seeing it at a gallery.

It also made me aware that I used to lend a lot more of my time to intellectual and cultural pursuits, opting to skip a night in front of the tv on the couch getting high with Eric and his roommates. Of course, I was still in school and bone crushingly busy so was just part of the rigor I subscribed to without thinking very hard about it and sometimes when you are busy you are more productive than when you have all the time in the world to do anything.

The other thing that surprised me about the piece is before I knew it was mine, I was impressed by the writing. Generally I scoff at most online reviews, finding them dull and meandering or too full of excitable language (written by a marketing major, most likely). Of course, looking at it now, with three years distance, I can see obvious mistakes and edits I'd make. Yet, it just reminded me that writing isn't about thinking about it, wanting to do it, conceptualizing, it is about doing it and having something to show for myself. And though I have quite a lot of words behind me, there are a lot things I don't give credence to, for whatever reasons (those screenplays, that piece on oprah.com, the stuff I do here--hehe--because largely they are not exactly what make me thrilled as a writer) but they are still a part of me.

Bean

Now I understand why van gogh painted sunflowers.

the burn

It happened the way those things always do, I meant well, time blinked, and all of sudden, I had burned the tenderest skin on my thumb, the part at the bottom of your finger nail, where your nail grows, with that little ridge of cuticle to protect skin from nail. The water might have been at boiling or higher and I gasped out loud (which I normally don't do anymore, having burned myself so often but because it was such a tender spot, I gasped). I set about the elaborate process of tending to my burn, a mix of running cold then warm water over the skin, maybe a half inch wide and a centimeter high. It had the pinkness of pain within minutes, and it seemed to be a deep down burn, the kind that would not stop throbbing. I then moved on to a piece of ice, which I held in place with my fingers until it melted, and another and another and another.

It is at moments like these, where I wonder what am I still doing there? I try to pretend I am good at that place. And sometimes, things just make sense there, it's true. I move like a drop of oil through water, slick, fast, and smooth. I make people do whatever I want them to, I can deal with just about anyone, and it doesn't seem like a good thing sometimes.

The other day, it was busy. It was the kind of busy that is reserved for two people, but even with two people racing behind the counter like rats in a maze, it would still appear busy. I did it all, managing not to piss off everyone in line and maintain a conversation with the cardboard cutout (an unlikely new fan of mine, a strange jelly has been formed between us, one that seems to require his visitation of me despite the fact that I would rather he disappear into a brine of my own disappointment and never be seen again).

[The cardboard cutout--or as you know him, the fire--has been rather baffling of late. He has been arranging times for us to meet up and in my presence he is merely a smiling anime character, to which I can relate, but he is unable to say more than a few sentences. He has a girlfriend now so his insistence that we have some sort of friendship seems odd, especially given that I know for a fact his girlfriend is the jealous type--he has suddenly removed photos of his ex from his facebook profile, for instance, and when we happen to have a facebook interaction, she'll quickly chime in with her undying love. I say no problem and thank goodness I did not land the beautiful, lovely cardboard cutout. I did however find him somewhat intriguing and told him as much, so maybe that is why he puts in the effort with me, because I had put in the effort with him, before he became girlfriended. My friends wonder why I still consider him someone worth wasting time on and all I can say is that he didn't do anything wrong, per se, he just didn't really do it right. He is a good guy and very sweet and there is nothing wrong with having more of those people around, I say.]

The burn on my thumb was so bad that it looked like my skin was glue. It began to collect lint on its surface, just in that small area, black cotton lint from wiping my hand on my apron and it wouldn't wash off. The next day I forgot all about it. The burn, the gasp, the glue.

Sometimes when people come in who haven't come in for a long time, they express their amazement at still seeing me there with a sort of cheerful pity. I feel the effects of their remarks, which range from, "Oh you're still here!" to "How long has it been?" to "You must really like working here...obviously."

A week or so later, the burn turned into a brown mark. My skin had died so deep down that it was finally ready to scab up and get crusty. It was the tenderest of skin. The brown mark registered in my peripheral as a surprise for a while, always accompanied with the worry, What's that on my thumb? until I would remember with annoyance, especially after the dozenth time that it was just the burn working itself out.

Last night, a customer who I have had some good interactions with was walking down the street right in front of my house. I was so surprised to see him that I blurted out his name even though he was on the phone and probably didn't recognize me in the darkness. He seem startled to see me and in his demeanor was a bit of dismay at realizing it was me and especially moreso when I pointed out that I lived right there. He just moved into a place around the corner, he mentioned in response, and with that, he continued his cell phone conversation and I tried to figure out why it bothered me so much.

Was it just the fact that everywhere I go there is some customer whose face I recognize that I am a stranger to because I don't have my apron and am not behind the counter of Siena? Was it his lack of enthusiasm at having me as a neighbor? Or the fact that I felt like saying, hey, I promise I'm not stalking you, I really do live right there, because he seemed so weirded out by seeing me.

When the welt grew new skin under the burned skin, it began to peel off around the edges at first. After a couple days it was gone, picked away by my nervous movements. The edges still had a some dead skin which I rubbed away with the pad of my forefinger. The skin is so tender there it can just be exfoliated by light pressure. Today was the first day I realized the burn is gone, there is no trace of its happening at all, except my memory of it and one day even that will be gone, rubbed away by alcohol or need for remembering something else, and maybe that is a good thing, to not remember everything.

As for them, and that place, the sting of what was, what could have been, what is, that is what keeps me from submitting myself further and that is what makes me want to run and cower. I won't as easily forget that time my new neighbor and I talked about my writing, or the time when the cardboard cutout made his giant laughing impression on me.

More pears!

Week five

the land and its lies

It has been way too long.

Here goes nothing:

I am fine. Nothing is wrong here. It is the strangest sense of clarity I have ever purported to have. Sometimes it even sits with me for days and days. The urgency I once had; gone. The guilt over not doing everything I ought to be doing; gone. The sadness I felt for time passed and lost; also gone. It is strange. I have reached some sort of mega zenith in which I know that exactly where I am is exactly where I'm supposed to be. I know that all the things I have surrounding me are things I want nearby. I know that everything my thoughts turn to is good.

I miss a lot of things. I miss my father tremendously. I haven't spoken to him in some time and I find there is no better reason than I simply lack the time I would like to give him. I cannot seem to muster it up in some chunk enough to supply him my absolute attention (which is want I want to give him) and so I keep saying, tomorrow, next week, next month; and I think of him in the way that someone tries to see stars, that seeing them seems to rest on so many things coinciding on one perfect point, by following the routines, and I have lost that routine.

I never expected my routines to be so disrupted by my moving in with people. I've lived with people before and treated those people as if they revolved around me, as if they were mere entities in my way, obstacles, mosquitos. I would like to pretend it has nothing to do with moving, but it is apparent, if you look back, that my life has not been quite the same since I obliged myself to moving in with them.

And oddly, I love it. I love them. I love the feeling she gives me. She as a friend is like having a twin sister, someone who knows you and your movements and their meanings so completely and finds them so enjoyable because they are the same. And then there is him, who I've inherited, who I cannot imagine never having known, the absolute best person I have yet to meet, for all of his giddy statements bring me joy, all of our interactions make me smile. I love the appreciation they give me. I have never had people in my life I so fully enjoyed who so fully enjoyed me that it is almost tiring, the being with them, because I don't want to stop, I get exhausted. And generally, this involves nothing more than their presence. I languish in their words, in their laughs, in their company like a contented cat, fattened with cream and tuna. For the first time in my life, I understand a love given entirely from friendship. They make my heart happy.

I miss my writing. Around the time I moved, my writing partner disappeared into other projects on a temporary basis that has turned nearly permanent. I remember our meetings in past tense and it troubles me briefly until I am whisked away into the throes of pleasure (the summer, the activities, the food, the conversations, the smiles). I remember how for almost three months, we met three times a week (or attempted to), that in one of those months I completed a short story, a solid, well written piece of my novel and I remember how alive I felt. Even though Iowa had turned me down, I would not stop writing. I existed like a well run machine for those three months, churning day after day, each day of the week already known to me through the handshake of routine.

I went to the bar more then. It was part of my routine, part of my emotional rut, that I had nothing better to do and nowhere better to go than there. And maybe I needed to go there, to fuel myself, or find myself, or something. And he was there, the magnetic disk and I kept going there trying to find the answer and once I found it, I found I could not keep going there because I hadn't realized it before but I was embarrassing myself. I saw it the last time I was there when I approached him and everyone else's eyes met and lowered in embarrassment for me. There was a moment of tension, they quieted to hear what I had to say and resumed talking when it was obvious I wasn't professing my love for him. I can't deny their concern, but I still shudder over that moment.

And yet, we had so many good times; argued over a point in the sky (venus? no, jupiter), I gave him my favorite book with all the earnestness and delight of a child and he accepted it with the same pleasure, we ran into each other one especially warm day when I was wearing my cute summer dress and he was wearing a hangover and the displeasure of being punished for being late, when his eyes lifted at the sound of my voice, the excitement on his face was undeniable, he reached over to me and kissed my cheek and hugged me, bringing me close to him, feeling my back, and I know it was just a habit, but it was one that righted his demeanor instantly. Or the time he realized I'd been smoking again, his face mocking and skewed with fake shock as he pointed it out. Or that he still remembered all the things he told me that night, but carefully avoided the most important thing (that he still wanted to be my friend). It is all nothing and will never be anything more than a confusing series of circumstances; a mystery never solved.

I miss men. I didn't realize it until I recently hugged my friend, a well made man (who only loves men). He has a bulkiness and heavy strength I forgot. I generally feel so big and huge, but next to him, I am soft, frail and malleable. Having moved, I have a bed now, whereas before I slept on the floor; now--and again--I sleep with pillows next to me, to simulate the body that I'm so used to being next to. Before it was him (the love of my lifetime) that I missed, now I recognize that it is just the form and the warmth and the support of a body next to me that I long for. I don't know why I haven't had any men in my life in the last year. I think I am just beginning to get over the shock of what happened with him, but I still think I carry a sign around that may as well be visible and shouting out loudly GET AWAY FROM ME. Based on my results I can only guess that's what the sign says.

The random texter turned out to be the singer. I knew it was all along, but there was some part of me that doubted just for doubting's sake. He wanted to continue in the manner in which he'd been going, where he'd invite me to be a part of his life every three weeks or a month or so and leave the lapses in between us empty of explanations. He wanted me to be someone he could dump and pick up whenever he felt like it, but I didn't want that. So we have sorted that out, shared the necessary pieces of the puzzles that we mixed up and I have moved on. I am not interested in wasting any more time, at least not wasteful wastes of time. If we spent two weeks together only to have him depart, that would be one thing, but I won't sit for three weeks waiting.

the drunken ambusher returned to my scope for a brief moment in which I was able to fervently recapture the depth of my joy and passion for him, but it was still not enough for him and once again we are strangers. It is good to see that we still have something, that there is something between us that always been there and I think will always be there.

It is also good to see that I no longer prattle on and on about what could be when I very well know there is nothing. I spent a week wearing that old behavior (having a crush on someone, anyone, having someone to gush about, having a permanent grin on my face because all I need is a man to make me happy). And then I got rid of it. Let it go. I haven't thought about him in two weeks and today I was at work and it was the first time he crossed my mind and I was so proud of myself. I really am learning what aspects of my behavior are useful and harmful and unnecessary. My brain has a lot of idle power and it gets wasted on these ridiculous prospects (who might be better prospects if only one key, but unchangeable, element was in place).

I long to be in love again, to have that joy, that pleasure, but I understand now that it was sometimes contrived before and this time I don't want to settle for anyone less than worthy of my company. So if that means I will be single for five more years before I meet someone who is capable of meeting me eye to eye physically, emotionally and intellectually, I will savor those five years or however long it may be.

I miss my family. It is strange, but the summer months mean that I don't see them as much, for the family get-togethers are thanksgiving, christmas and easter. I generally don't see my mother very often, or my brothers, or his children. I sometimes have contact with them, but not often. I got to see my brother's family at the birthday party for his daughters and it was a delight as always, but it feels so far away now, that Sunday just six weeks ago, with the pool in the backyard, the kids running around, the presents, the pinatas, the drawings with chalk on the cement.

I've started thinking about if that will ever be my life, having kids, making parties for them, kissing their heads when they fall, and wondering if I've used up my time taking care of other people's children, if I've missed my chance, if it's too late for me. I suppose there's no way of knowing that until it is certain that I cannot have children, but some part of me doesn't seem too concerned about the absence of children from my life. I have seen so many children take their first step, say their first word, and even had one child give me the tenderest most absolute love I have ever received from a child.

Mostly, I think I am sitting at a point in my life where I don't know what's next. I have always known, or had an idea, or wanted something, and now, I have this vastness ahead of me and opportunities worth accepting, but I don't know what's next for me. I think this is what's given me the sense of peace and lack of struggle, because if you want to get away from something you have to have somewhere in mind that you're headed. It's not enough to want freedom, it must exist somewhere.

I know that I have an immense freedom in a lot of ways, because I am single and childless and without debt. I am still at the mercy of my routines and my cost of living and until there is a release in that, I will not feel free.

p.s. I know they say a picture is worth a thousand words, but given that all I've offered here for the last month is a couple entries and a bunch of pictures, I hope they were at least worth a hundred words. When I don't write or can't write here, I try, for the very smallest effort, to communicate through pictures and let you know that I am okay, if quiet.

In quotes

Inside

Hailed The Crotch and it certainly smelled like one last night.

seriously, where does the time go?

I look up at the calendar and August is nearly gone. I know I have had days that were chock full, either of work or fun, and I look around the table and their smiling faces bring a smile to my face. It has been a long time since I was able to just succumb to pleasure, to have it waiting and at the ready for me, and to have it be an offering I wanted to partake of, to share, to have.

I worry though, that my fun is taking over, that there's no time for me, that my writing is suffering (I haven't met with my partners in over two months), that I am losing myself in pleasure.

So for the first time in a while, rather than worry that my absences here mean I am spiralling down into darkness, it is a sign that I have been happily soaking up the joy around me.

I miss this, and the thoughts that get emptied out, but one of the benefits of spending time solely with people who bring joy is I have nothing to ruminate over and no puzzlements to work out. And, when those moments do occur (seeing him in the street, getting a text from noel, finding pictures of him with her) they weigh nothing against that joy.

Blues

the way I'll tell the story of the night we met

It was such a lark. I wasn't supposed to be there. I should have been sleeping. And you, you probably weren't planning on being there that night, which was not your usual night, but there you found yourself, a little drunk and happy to be dancing with one of the beautiful girls who sometimes worked behind the bar, probably on those nights that is your regular night, and you smiled at her face in the dark while you danced. You were hoping for something more with her, always hoping, and your pain made you feel a hundred pounds heavier, but you still tried because there was something about her, she just seemed so far away and brilliant and being close to her made you feel like you could catch the moon.
And then she left, like an eclipse, and there I was.
And instead of chasing stars and heavenly bodies, you felt like a mountain being blasted through for a tunnel, and I smashed you.
And I didn't even know. I was alone, trying to pretend I wasn't lonely, but even in that room of people all smiles I was in my head, in my own world, completely out of place and something about that appealed to you in a completely different way than the way she did, and you moved towards me, hoping above all else that I wouldn't drift off.
And we danced.
I'll interject here that my legs hurt for days.
You'll smile at me and say, mine did too, darling.
I wouldn't take any of it back though, I'll counter.
Of course not, then we wouldn't be here, you'll say.
So we danced.
And your body became a figure I was aware of, like walking through a room you know better than any, a bedroom, maybe, in which you could wander through it in the dark and you wouldn't fall, because your body could feel the room, remember the steps to take to avoid the furniture; that's what it was like to be next to you. I had no idea what your face looked like because of the dark, but in the dark your limbs and body were well known to me, as a familiar room in the night would be.
And for some reason, as soon as you engaged in dancing with me, the world fell away. I ceased to be part of the eternal flow of observations, thoughts, endless nuancing, excessive questioning and rampant worrying. I simply existed, without strategic manipulations of myself (the constant adjusting of my physical body is a tic of my thoughts). I was the way that I sometimes am when doing the things I love most. And you were still a stranger at that point.
Time flew by. It's a cliche, the best we can employ, for it really did whoosh around. The other day, well before dusk a flock of birds raced over the dome in the sky; they dived crazily and swooped ominously, and I was with a friend and we tried to figure out what sort of birds they might have been, until we got closer and realized they were bats, and those bats swooping around in a circle, that is what it was like to dance with you. Mesmerizing, I think I will say.
You'll laugh at me then, as the people across from us coo with delight, and your heart will swell a little and maybe you'll add your side of the story, that my face was like a carousel and I spun you around.
I'll continue, that finally, sometime after we began dancing, we arrived at the bar with merely a gesture of complete understanding, no difficulties, no issues, no concerns for disregarding something else, we both wanted a moment to size up our dancing partner's intellect and tastes before carrying on with our dancing.
We introduced ourselves and from my friend's point of view, we stood at the bar together, a mix of two long lost friends and also as two forces pushing wildly against each other. The bar felt us, it found us difficult to look away from, we were colliding and they all wanted to see the collision.
A drink was consumed. We were sweaty, thirsty, unapologetic.
I asked you a question, you asked me a question. We liked the answers. Your face twisted in puzzlement and your finger pointed at me, okay, you said, and I'll chuckle when I tell this, like it is the funniest thing anyone has ever said to me, because at the moment, really it was, and you said the word dealbreaker, in such a way that I understood the context of your meaning immediately and answered, yeah? in such a way that you knew I was ready for the challenge of your coda, that I could take any arrow you plunged in my direction and save it from falling into an empty field. You asked, firefly? in a tentative voice, because it really is a dealbreaker for you, no joke. And my face cracked instantly into a smile, which you say blasted another tunnel into your mountain, and I said, I love firefly!
Oh, then, I'll say, and you'll nod, I tried to make you understand that being a giant (relatively speaking) made us so powerful, and to prove it I held your arm out and we blocked the aisle with our arms outstretched and you grinned at me like we were two kindergartners who were having the best time doing nothing.
After that, we danced some more.
There was nothing left to say. We knew each other already, like two old friends, like two pieces of a shoelace pulled together to begin the lacing. We pressed against each other and knew each other. Collision. Not epic, perhaps, that epic one being so deep it still resonates inside me, like a pulse, but a collision nonetheless.
We danced so close that I could not dance and be that close to you, and our limbs tangled and my feet found yours instead of the floor so many times that I got a little self conscious and the spell was almost broken but you somehow managed to reassure me in a tone genuine enough that I ceased worrying and went back to that complete black abyss of nothing and just existing with pleasure.
The couple across the table might get a little nervous then, sensing the dramatic tone in my voice, seeing you lean in, perhaps you'll nuzzle the crook of my neck, it will make them uncomfortable how very close and delighted and able to share ourselves like this with them, so completely, so easily. This is the kind of behavior most couples reserve for their bedroom, they might think nervously, her twisting her napkin around her knuckles under the table top and him squeezing his wife's knee in the hopes that she is paying attention to how to treat him, how all men want to be treated, really how every one wants to be treated.
As if he/they/she/it/them are the center of the universe and nothing else exists.
we pretend this is false and unrealistic and unfair and yet we secretly crave that level of being known so completely that we are the only thing that exists for them, worth hearing every word, seeing every gesture, being in a sixth dimensional correspondence with.
I'll say, remember how we danced?
And you, hanging on my every word, delighted that I still remember, pleased that I smile and not just any smile, but a wicked one, the one where my eyes narrow and my lips pucker slightly, and you'll say, Yes, I remember, with the breath falling out of your mouth on the last syllable.
And somehow, even though it seems impossible, I will also be feeling that I am the only eyes in your universe, that I exist solely to languish in your presence, like a project, like an enjoyable venture, like a cross section of the most fascinating creature ever to be discovered, you will feel relished and enjoyed.
Then my friend broke the spell, he stepped in and time resumed, the clock wound itself backwards then forward to the present, reality reeled itself into focus, the room turned into a solid mass, where everyone had disappeared from, where the only people left were us, my friend, and the people paid to be there, it seemed the party I was part of managed to leave without my noticing. Ten people I'd interacted with that night became ghosts and slithered away while we danced, which is impossible to consider that I did not take any notice of their exit.
The couple will relax a little then, their shoulders will melt, their faces will slacken and a sense of relief will come over their faces, relief they didn't know they were waiting for, the tension over, the panic subsiding. You'll attest to the fact that I think incessantly, even though you try hard to create silence for me and many times have, it is hard, I am a tough case of overworking brain, or as David Caref (who has become an old man already, even though he is just a year older than me and I was shocked, just absolutely surprised to see that he is unrecognizable as the Adonis he once was, when I was in love with him and he was my moon and I was compelled by him and I managed to get him close up and I felt like I had the moon in my hand) said once, but not in the appreciative manner you'll do, "you think too much (which somehow struck through me like a sword even then, when I was sixteen and he was my everything, I knew it was wrong for him to say that, that it was wrong for him to declare that in that tone)."
And then you took my number, and again, it wasn't hard, not the way anything else with a girl has been hard, and that will be the reason it takes you a while, the reason it took me a while, for the ease to sink in, to bubble to the surface as a bubble of air will sometimes do, it mounds the water and takes on the light for a second before it pops into obscurity, with a splatter of the water across its surface and a motion that looks to the eye like the snapping of a twig.
And that, we'll declare, is the story of the night we met.

this not about love, 'cause I am not in love III

The thing is, I couldn't have planned it any better. And that's always the thing with him, the thing that makes the sheer frustration of his presence so unbearable, that there is no way I could plan the interactions we have and have them actually end up so well, with us landing in each other's proximity.

And so, I broke my word again, because there were more people than him I wanted to see, rather than him I didn't want to see, and really, this time I resolved even if he was there I was going to ignore him completely and hold myself erect and proud and unawares of his eyes and his laugh and his body and his presence.

So I staked out a chair and wandered away and said hello to my friends. He was standing nearby and I could feel his eyes on me but I refused to meet them, didn't look up, stayed loyal to my friends. Out of my peripheral I noticed him coming toward me and even then it was nervousness that held me rigid more than resolve. He squeezed my shoulder like it was for life, like he was drowning and I was there to pull him out and I looked at him, with the nervousness and rigidness solid in my throat, as if I was going to vomit and I tried to smile, but I don't think I did and no words would come out. His eyes met mine and in them was also that same nervousness and panic and concern.

And then I realized I am hopelessly in love (or whatever it is you could call this) with him.

And I hate myself for it.

As if that wasn't enough, when I turned from my friends to my seat, I saw that he was sitting right next to my seat and had been sitting there before I even got there. So without meaning to, without even knowing, I picked the one seat in the entire bar right next to the magnetic disc. Of course.

I was horrified. I spent as much time as I could outside with the smokers (even smoking a few cigarettes out of sheer terror) and pretended to engage in meaningful conversation except all the while my brain was operating at ten thousand times its usual overworked capacity and all it was saying to me was What the fuck are we going to do now?! We're fucked!

And then, it was inevitable, I had to go in, I had to sit there, squished up next to him, his thigh jutting out toward mine, his work shirt on the bar in front of me, his hand on his beer, his fingernails, his hair, his face, everything just up closer than it has been in months.

He sat for a while talking to someone on the other side of him and because he was on the corner of the bar, he had to sit away from me, and maybe it was on purpose, for he held his hand up to his chin and blocked me from his vision the same way I have done many times in the past. I tried to ignore him as well, for some reason up close he was not so loud, so obnoxiously obvious everywhere and his eyes were trained away from me. I could almost pretend he wasn't there.

It was awkward, until it got worse and someone showed up, someone who the magnetic disc was angry that I got along so well with, and suddenly, I was between the two of them and I was so uncomfortable that it was almost laughable, that I was perched at this place I hated with two terrible prospects between me and a cloak of awkwardness smothering me.

Finally, he turned in our direction, the magnetic disc and things between us got slightly less awkward until I asked him the question that has been plaguing me for months: When are you leaving?

It was then that I found out that he will be here another year. And not just that, but he said nothing more about us, about me, about her, about what was to come. It was then that I knew that whatever the reason for his nervousness it was not from love, because he is not in love with me. I don't know what he feels for me, maybe some sense of regret, maybe some frustration, maybe some confusion, but it is not love (or infatuation or lust or wanting or interest or anything).

I fell into a tailspin then; I have been going through the motions and totally disinterested in life at large. I've spent the last two days since busy with work and let myself get swept up in the wave of my roommate's pleasurable company and tonight with another friend and I try to go to sleep with round eyes and dreams of falling and landing in my bed. Even now, I should be sleeping, but I can't stop feeling that moment, that slam of the door, that rush of understanding, that empty, that hollow ache, now there is nothing and no one who wants me.

That is what it's really been all about, that even though I knew I'd dodged a bullet with him and the universe saved me from complete and utter disarray in my life, I had some solace in the idea that maybe he was in love with me, and maybe someday I could turn to that love and find something worth feeling, at least for a little while.

I left knowing that I can never walk into that place again, at the very least, not for another year; and I am truly, completely alone.

rain rain go away

week three

the pears emerge from their protective leaves...

the game of chicken

Thursday there was a text, another observation, tidy and perfunctory, transportive. I stood on that corner once, just recently, so I went back to that day, when I waited for him to pick me up to drive me to the place he didn't want me to wander around, and I tried to remember if it smelled like anything that day.

It was just beginning to rain and the sky had that heavy humid iron smell and the rain drops were bigger and landed with a heavy splat! on my skin and t-shirt. And in my memory that is all I can bring back, is the smell of the rain in the summer, mixed with a thousand beakers of humidity and sucking blood out of a wound in a finger.

And so thoroughly did he move me, inspire me, impress me that there around me the walls began a quick crumble, the rocks began to fall in great heavy clumps, I turned and it was descending, like a building being demolished by bombs, like the building had knees that didn't exist before and it cracked in the middle and fell.

Yet still, I hesitated, still I let the bitterness of what's past swallow me and demand my silence, which I gave without struggle.

Then she intervened and suggested the invitation. I am so thoroughly repelled by them in general and don't consider the random texter a prospect (some loser I had the good sense to delete a while ago, um, yeah, how exciting?); I hadn't considered inviting him. So I did, just to see what the answer would be, to see if I could flush out the clues to end the mystery and I referenced his other half (the guitar he plays so well) so that if it is not the singer that is randomly texting me, they would immediately object this reference to an instrument they do not play.

I got nothing. Not a no, not a yes, not a word for a full day, nothing.

Of course, there is a worry that maybe it is not the singer and some random stranger who I once knew will wander into my home tomorrow night and I will have a choice to make about this person I hadn't considered before and hoped to never see again.

Or no one will show up and the bluff will be called, and then it will be hard to admit to not being the fool.

update: 8/2 no one showed...so, the mystery continues...

a memory flashback

Skinny TMNT?!

the view

Walking along the lakefront with Dan!

home run

I felt the shyness bubble up inside me and then let it burst and asked her some questions and we started talking and it was like we've known each other for a long time already and it confirmed what I have discovered and begun to realize that there's just a certain kind of person who is my type, the genuine, kind, lively, warm and fuzzy person (even though I wouldn't necessarily count myself among their ranks) and she was for me.

There are lots of people who are not for me. But her, with her wild mane of curly hair, which I demanded a detailed description of her regimen from start to finish, she is for me. We had such a quick and easy connection that I was already inviting myself into her world and she was tickled by the invitation. We exchanged promises of Barbeques, margaritas, and art gallery visits.

She had a big deep throaty laugh. She is a smart person. And she likes to read. And she was worried about my wandering off during the movie. I assured her that I was just uncomfortable, as I put it, "I'm a giant person with big limbs and I can't be contained in one small tiny area...!" It's been rare that I meet someone I feel an instant connection with, but lately it makes me happy that it is maybe not as rare as it used to be.

I seem to be going through a new cycle of friendships, where a lot of the friends I've had for the last three years I've outgrown. They were all very good friends and I love them still, but it's obvious and apparent to me that I just need something different in my life than what we had. I've noticed that a lot of the newer friends in my life are people who want to do something, be active, walk around, go somewhere, and that is the opposite of the crowd I've been in for the last three years, good great people who are perfectly happy to pass hours upon hours at a table in a bar talking about nothing (not that there's anything wrong with that).

I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that it's summertime and I just feel this inexplicable urge to go outside, to feel the sun on my skin, to partake in the glories of summer in ways I've never wanted to or cared to before. For instance, on Sunday night I went to Ravinia for the first time with a good friend from school who I don't see often. I received a Ravinia gift certificate as a birthday present three years ago that I never used until Sunday. I wanted to use it, I asked my friends (in my close circle) and they seemed open to it, but we just never got away from that table and that talk about nothing long enough to actually go.

With the park next door to my new apartment being so accessible, I went out yesterday and sat on a bench and read a book and rolled up my sleeves and pant legs so that the sun could hit the pale parts of my skin and I used to laugh at those people and now I am one of them.

And tonight, in a big crowd of people so big it made me hate that I live in a city, I was moody, achy, disinterested and she wiped that all away and made the night worthwhile because she's for me.

Willow

the constant itch

My curiosity got the better of me, and maybe I felt a little guilty too, for ignoring the random texter, so I sent a message Friday morning to him (her? the singer? the know-it-all prospect from forever ago? who is it?). My message was meant to nudge him into correspondence, and encourage him, since I had ignored the two previous messages. I also wanted to show some appreciation for the cleverness and humor of the last message [rats are to cheese as hipsters are to pitchfork].

I didn't expect to hear back for a while, and certainly not relatively quickly, so the response was surprising and fun, we had a couple volleys back and forth before I let it expire, with the hopes that I would hear from him later that night. But nothing came until the next day, and that was an invitation, but I couldn't go, so I gently pushed him away.

Knowing myself better than I thought I did, I deleted all the texts so I could not write during an idle moment of boredom. The mystery of it is consuming me, like a constant itch, I just want to know, but for some reason I don't want to ask.

For one thing, if it is someone I know, and wanted to talk to, I would have their number programmed into my phone. And if it is a guy that I have met over the last nine months, it's probably not someone who I want to hear from. Unless it is the singer and he's coming to his senses and realizes that I am worth doing the work for.

Also, it's kind of fun sending messages to someone and not knowing who it is. A lot of my conversations via text rely on my referencing information and details that only the other person and I know about. I have a very referential (elbow nudging, wink wink) kind of humor with people.

I feel like there was a time period (maybe after that first text) in which I should have just fibbed about losing my phone and not having the number of this friend of mine programmed in my phone. For some reason, at the time, I just didn't care. I was a little put off by that first text [what's the plan tonight], as if I was just some desperate girl waiting by the phone for him to decide to spend time with me and would jump at the chance to do anything with him given the chance. I was mad at the gall, if it is the singer, that I'd deleted him from my life and he was going to swagger in like nothing had happened.

So maybe it's not the singer. I haven't heard from him in any other medium, and usually we corresponded on facebook, but he's no longer my friend, because I deleted him from my life. It could just be some random girl friend of mine I haven't talked to in a while, but I just can't tell right now. And I suppose the mystery will stay a mystery, for now, because I have to wait for whoever it is to text me again...and I look forward to the surprise of the when.

see you at jonquil

Today, while trying to acclimate the kid to the out of doors (look it's not so bad, okay there's a few bugs, but for the most part it's not so bad, yeah, just ignore those drunk people...) we wandered near the park where I spent the formative years of my adolescence, Jonquil Park on Sheffield and Wrightwood near Lincoln ave.

As young kids, we ran wild through the streets and the park was our tree house, our back yard, our place. In the summers we spent every day there, playing tennis, volleyball, baseball or just playing on the playground. During the school year, we spent the afternoons there, weather permitting or not, until it got too cold. Even when it was cold, we just dragged ourselves to the park to meet up before walking around the neighborhood with shovels to make money shoveling sidewalks.

I get nostalgic every time I wander through that corner, every time I see those bronze birds on its corner (where my brother skate boarded and did stunts on roller blades) and every time I realize that piece by piece, the park and playground are being altered.

I suppose it's all a change for the better, but they got rid of the volleyball court and put in some dumb cement planters. They tore down the putty colored cement tables and chairs (we used to call them Flinstone furniture) that had chess boards carved or painted into them and replaced those with beige plastic tables and square seats with a metal plate of a chess board (the squares were green and blue for some unknown reason) bolted to the table on the corners (it will likely not last long under attack of bored teenagers, unlike the cement furniture which could not be destroyed by idle hands).

The worst offense was the playground, where a sprinkler had been set up (a sprinkler, really?) and it was too near the tire swing so the "safety first" flooring of the playground was slippery underfoot because of water from the sprinkler. And the swings were all wrong, in the wrong place. They used to be set parallel to sheffield and the park was an expanse in front of your feet, green grass, baseball diamond, the big wide open sky. Now they sit perpendicular so the view is big fancy redone homes and old shadowy trees.

Among the obvious delegated areas based on age, there is the playground set of the future! that looked like some science project of k'nex gone bad, with long sticks connected by bulbous rubber circles and weird shapes that required savvy studiousness expected of kids who no longer enjoy the playground because it's full of a bunch of babies. The colors are dark, the structure itself looks like some deconstructed space station, and I would love to see how little kids interact with this thing. Do they ignore it or dig the hell out of it? I bet they try in vain to figure out what the hell those shapes are meant for and fall every time from those weird triangles.

In the end, even though the park has changed, I found I could still enjoy it, I could still see it in my mind as it was, and in my mind it was this huge expanse, even though now it is small and simple and different.

chalk bubbles

Thankfully, where there are playgrounds and sidewalks there is an ample supply of sidewalk chalk ground into images at the playground...

the light of day

I saw him at least half a block before he saw me, I think, and it was odd, to see him, striding on the sidewalk, his work shirt slung over his shoulder, his soccer feet kicking out. He has a little swagger I never noticed before and it made me smile.

When I realized it was him, my feet stopped moving for a second. I resumed my walk and frantically decided (my brain began to go into instant and excessive thinking mode) there was no way to avoid him, so I might as well say hello and be pleasant.

I said hello first and to be honest, his haziness made me wonder if he would have just walked right past me. He seemed out of it, tired, a worn out shell of the man I know. Talking to me was laborious and he was being careful again, because he's worried about me again.

So we tried to mutter out sentences and meanings, phrases and words, he mentioned something I was surprised he still recalled so easily, and it pushed the words into my throat and then I let them bubble up, I don't know why I said those two words, they were unnecessary, but I wanted to see if he remembered that too, so I said them.

His eyes narrowed in recognition of the the day it all started, with those words, that invitation. And then he panicked, and I could see his brain flustering and floundering behind his blue blue blue in the daylight eyes (made bluer by the t-shirt he wore) and his mouth jabbered something and his face looked so old and wrinkled and stubbly and worn out.

So I let him go, with words of parting and the relief in his face was like a present to me and I walked away.

Even though I have been avoiding him the world conspires to have us meet in the street like two strangers. When will it be enough to have us never meet again?

termination of lease

So, three weeks after abandoning my apartment, I guess it's safe to say I may have successfully terminated my lease. I am a little cautious still, but worried enough to write about it, I guess. I actually tried not to write about it so as not to jinx it (it would not surprise me one bit if tomorrow I received a letter in the mail informing me that I owe my leasing company twelve hundred dollars, because that is just how things work for me sometimes).

I have to admit, I had valid reasons for terminating my lease, but I didn't exactly go about dealing with the proper "legal" way. I looked online at the tenant's board association and I was supposed to let my leasing company know two weeks before I was going to move out that there were repairs needed and if they weren't done in two weeks time, I could effectively terminate my lease. I sent a letter after I moved out.

It's strange, but I really did love that apartment when I first moved in, and maybe it was just because it was so quiet and it had such a nice view and I could sit at the window and smoke cigarettes and be depressed without feeling like I was a mess (even though I was). Oh, and there wasn't a slimy cheating snake around, that probably had a lot to do with it.

Slowly, its issues began to annoy me. First it was discovering that my kitchen sink leaked. I didn't wash a single dish in that place for ten months. Yeah, urban camping. I had to blowdry my hair at my only available outlet (which was at the opposite end of the apartment) in front of my window. Then the outlet that was in the bathroom (the blow dryer has that big chunky plug with the built in reset buttons and didn't fit) didn't hold any plugs for very long, so when I flat ironed my hair, the plug would fall out without my realizing and I had to start all over and wait for it to heat up again.

Then there was that time I closed my bathroom door and the handle came out of place while I was inside. I panicked, feeling a sense of horrendous and irrational doom. I was running late, I began to sweat, I had my phone so I called Val and she laughed at me in sympathy. Finally I was able to turn the handle against the lock enough to catch the levers to open the door and I could never close the door fully again. Whenever people visited I would forget to tell them and they would find themselves stuck in my bathroom, but only for a moment, because I was there to rescue them.

And the list went on of little things that began to wear down the veneer of my pretense that the apartment was just fine. So I think because I tolerated its limits for so long, I should be able to get it all wrong about leaving it. I hope. We'll see.

week two

Week two

From a distance

and there I was

Lying in the grass, under the willow tree in the park across the street, with my friend and new roommate, but not with her, just lying there, looking up at the branches and leaves and sky and they way they intersected and how the wind moved them, and how birds cut across them and there was a butterfly too. The ground underneath me was at first a slab that felt hard and angry, but I softened into it, or it softened for me and as the time passed, I felt the nuances, my head was cradled by a dip in the earth that was so slight, but it fit the back of my cranium perfectly, as if it was made for me. My hips relaxed, I put my arms at my side and let my ankles roll out. Corpse pose in yoga, they call it. I laid there and just felt it all.

The sounds came in bursts, shouts from the kickball games nearby, people walking the paths, birds chirping, sirens wailing, mixed with the distant hum of constant traffic and the snore of airplanes. Eventually I let them wash over me until all I heard were the birds.

When I got up, my back felt moist, as if the ground and my body had been sweating against each other, and it felt good. I peeled leaves off of my legs and looked back at the grass I had trampled, seeing my figure like a pencil drawing you do as a kid, a traced outline of my body in the ground. Tomorrow it will be gone, the grass recovered, the earth hard again.

As if that wasn't enough, we decided to wander through two patches of prairie grasses and "natural" parts of the park, which have narrow paths worn into them. We pointed out flowers, felt the leaves of plants (one plant felt like velvet on the underside only), and watched bees float around. We guessed at plants and compared growth charts (some sunflowers already had heavy heads hung low, while others had giant leafy stalks with tiny concentric rows of the sunflower's hair huddled in the middle).

I would maybe not do these things on my own, but it is nice to know that I can be easily compelled into such behavior.