Relics

It is a month now. Since I took the GRE. Since I came home to crow my delight to a receiver 2,839 miles away. Since I was coolly received. Since I was asked whether I remembered a conversation in which I’d stated “If ever you cheat on me, it will be over.” It has been a month since I replied a sinking, tentative “I remember,” and a month since he hung up, signing off with only a choked, “say hi to your mom.”

At first hurt the large, systemic questions hulk in the foreground, bustling and crowding one another like a pair of chubby thighs. They scramblestep fast, struggling against, jarring past one another, working up an untidy, embarrassing friction that creates a “shush, shush, shush”  as background music for each step. Did he ever love me? was he lying all along? for how many days, weeks, months was nothing as true as I thought?

Did I coo  “I love you” to an unfeeling, remorseless person who had lost his mind, or to a boy who had simply lost interest?

But, then, thirty days of chipping away at the big questions yields no satisfaction. Now in their place are unanswerable, fragmentary queries that used to comprise the big, unanswerable wholes. Now I wonder the silliest, smallest things. I cry over the tiny injustices, over the things I have yet to send back in an unceremonious cardboard box.

How does he think of me? Have I gone from Peachtown, from tiny dove, to simply “my ex girlfriend,” or does he dare name me when he speaks to her, to others, to himself?

Does he speak of me to her, to others, to himself?  Am I still there, dirtying up his head? Or has he zenned me away with willful, mindful mindlessness?  Am I as invisible, impossible, as the future he could not see for us? Am I as unwelcome and feared and unloved as that thing I represented?

Does he sing to her, ridiculous, made up, ebullient songs?

I am, even with a month intervening, unable to call him “my ex,” partly because I feel no right to the possessive, partly because he is, and always was, simply Greg. I have not been able to stop wondering why, or wishing I could wake up tomorrow and it wouldn’t be true. And I think about how it started, and the sweetness in between, and I think about seeing the green and gray stripes of his shirt from a high-up airplane window and wish–God, how I wish–I’d known that was the last time we’d suffer a  goodbye. I would have looked him–really looked him–in the eye. I would have kissed him goodbye once more, hoping it would somehow matter. And I wouldn’t have taken his sweatshirt. It would have been one less thing to pack in the cardboard box.

Walking home in the cold, shoulders hunched against the wind, I wondered: does he look at the wool hat I brought him from Morocco and does he feel sad? Did he cut off the long, funny tassle, or did he throw it–the entire hat–in the trash? I hope he at least found a nice bum somewhere, a nice bum that needs a nice wool hat.

Does he ever think of me at all, and did he cry? Does he still miss me?

Why do I still miss him?

Nacho the otter has been exiled from my bed. He lies on his back on a notebook on the floor, stuffing leaking out of a seam I never got around to sewing shut. The last time Greg called me before The News was in the middle of the week. It was to tell me that he’d just seen a dog get hit by a car, by the car that drove behind him, then drove away. He’d pulled over and gotten out to hold the animal as it bled, squealed, cried. The owners rushed from their house and took the dog away to the vet. I don’t know if it died.

“Why did you call me to tell me?” I’d asked.
“I just though I should tell somebody,” he said. He had to go. He just wanted to say it. He hung up. Compassion or curiosity?

And now I  have dreams of him mowing down animals with his car–flocks of chickens and one snow white rabbit–and I am holding open a gate that he’s meant to drive through. We have been escaping, through tall grass, to somewhere, from something. We are both tense. I yell to him to stop–he’s going to kill these animals. He doesn’t see them. He doesn’t stop in time. He is focused on driving.

I wonder why he called. I wonder if it was in that moment I asked that I became just somebody to tell something to. Or maybe it had happened long before. Maybe I’d just been a voice, a vessel, for longer than I care to consider.

I wonder who he calls now when he sees animals dying in the street.

More author-love

“There is never anything conclusive, just an endless series of tests.”
-Lorrie Moore. “How,” Self-Help.

Thus writ the only woman (or man) I can tolerate writing at me in the second person.

Self-Help makes my third set of ravenously devoured short fiction collections by Lorrie Moore. I remain slack jawed, sore-hearted, admiring and astounded. One of my next full(er) blog posts shall doubtless be a paean to Moore’s talent and perspicacity. With deft humor, heartbreaking lucidity and resonantly right descriptions of feelings, meltdowns, love-loss-beauty-andbarbarism she reflects the world in exactly the way it feels. I’ve never known another author to have such a realistic, uncompromising and clarifying grip on the gritty, ineffable things that make us human–and often drive us farther out of feeling that way.

I suggest you go to Amazon and buy one (or all) of her collections. I suggest you start with Birds of America, the most recent addition to the family. I suggest when you get to the part about the tattered last Christmas tree with the tired cigarette but dangling from its figurative lips, you come talk to me and we both laugh and sigh and have a mutual brown knit and an “oh.” Thank god for fiction and for art’s (and the talented artist’s) capacity to explain that which seems overwhelming and inexplicable.

I’ll be gone from the blogosphere a lot for the next few days. Those of you who know why, know. Those of you who don’t know why and want to know, inquire within. I’m not purposely secretive, just… protective.

To keep you entertained while I’m gone, read an awesome Moore interview here, or go check out her newest short story, titled “Foes,” here–courtesy of The Guardian. Or flick the bean. That’s always a viable entertainment option. ’til soon, dear internetz.

Really, really ridiculously excited

Those of you who’ve known me for a while (I know at least a few of you who read this qualify!) know that I was–and am, albeit in a less zealous, less frequent-listener way–a (I hate this word) fan of Ani DiFranco. I adore her little story-gems. I love the beautiful dischord featured in some of her music even though it makes my friends with perfect pitch want to plunge a safety pin deep into the meaty hearts of their own ear drums. I am very excited that in just outside a week I’ll be seeing her in Hartford.

In preparation for the night of songs which I’ll enjoy with the lovely Ms. Ford, her husband and, as a Christmas present, my madre, I started listening again tonight. To my supreme shock and bubbling delight, I discovered on my hard drive an Ani song I’d never before heard. This song resonated with me, so naturally I sought to post up the original version here. Unfortunately, the original doesn’t seem to exist in easily postable video or audio form, but the version by a YouTube user named elizlaurl does. Ordinarily, I don’t even watch artist “covers” by fanboy YouTube users–if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen enough to know that they are almost unexceptionably disasters–but this girl? She is talented. In addition “Letting The Telephone Ring” being an amazing song with simple, easily identifiable and resultingly powerful lyrics, elizlaurl’s guitar work and vocals are great–and of course make me ache for my lost vocal talent. Give a listen if you’ve got the time.

Click your ruby slippers

During my year in Madrid the American, home-centric time I most consistently missed was Sunday mornings. I fantasized about the special slant of sunlight, the early morning conversation over cups of coffee with my mother, and rubbing a sun warmed tabby cat behind the ears. Tonight I was reminded of the other time I love–also involving quality of light, my nonpareil of a mother and aforementioned winsome gray tabby. It’s close enough to Thanksgiving and Christmas now to lend the house that cozy, sealed-for-winter-hibernation air; there are few lights, shut shades, flickering candles that make it smell like a holiday. I went downstairs at around ten to visit with my mom in the kitchen, parking myself by the extra boot-donning chair and vigorously rubbing down the sweet little feline while my mom and I chatted. Flora squinted up at me between paw-kneads and purrs with flirtatious, smiling feline eyes. My mom tottered around the house, blowing out candles, humming, peppering me with questions about my writing, about my tomorrow. After making plans about what we’ll cook for dinner tomorrow we walked upstairs together and hugged good night. I closed my bedroom door and slipped between the clean flannel sheets I’d put on the big, oak bed only a few hours before. I felt my heart wander West–just for an instant–but I stopped it, reminding myself to stay in the moment. I am here. I am safe. I am singular but loved. I am home.

I miss Madrid at least once every day, and I wonder now–especially now–why it was that I left. I could be eating oil-drizzled, manchego topped tostas at the Rastro on Sunday mornings, cooking dinners with Morgan and grabbing café con leche with Rachel–hell, perhaps I could even be dating David by now! But, all pointless meditation on passed possibilities aside, I feel lucky, so lucky, to have this place to call my home. I am grateful I had a home to come to when my feet hit US soil in June. It felt a little like giving up to me when I made the decision not to move out for this year, to hold court in my childhood bedroom and lay me down each night between four pink walls and lace curtains, but in light of life’s recent hectic careering, I’m happy for the ways in which things decided to work.

At the risk of sounding whingey, I’ll admit that over the past few months I feel as though a lot of things I valued have been snatched from beneath my curving fingertips: droves of friends I deeply loved, the freedom attendant upon having my own wheels, the levity and fulfillment I used to experience upon going to work every day when that place was still like a family, and of course, the person I made the mistake of loving more than anything else–the person who very nearly redefined my notion of “home.” If I’d had to pay for an apartment after hours having been cut at work, if I’d had to find a way to get myself around without a car all the time, if I’d had to keep functioning without consistent, cheery company in the form of my mother after Greg’s casting my heart insensitively and willfully aside, I don’t know how upright or sweet or sane I’d feel today. I can, however, promise that I’d be a lot less all right than I am. I’m 23, yes, but I still benefit from a momma to hug and a sweet little kitty to cuddle. Especially now.

Sometimes you need to grow up, branch out, and have an adventure–I know, because I’ve done it now–in a foreign country–twice. This is not to say that I’ll never again run away to Iberian landscapes, to orange trees at night, to copas and cañas and anonymity and Spanish noise. This is just to say that sometimes, even if you don’t recognize it right away, even if you worry it’ll hurt your overblown, smart-kid, overachieving pride, sometimes you just need to be in a bed with a footboard and flannel sheets on your bed. Sometimes you need home.

The end.

A missed morning phone call. An afternoon of wondering. Late night, poorly planned, alphanumeric tapping.
She writes: “Why did you call me?”
He writes: “To see how you are doing.”
She writes: “And why in the world do you care? You wanted your freedom from me and you got it. Run. I’m not holding on.”
He writes: “How are you doing?”
She fumes.

She writes: “You have absolutely no right to know: you forfeited that two weeks ago. Stop acting, unless it’s to do me the same courtesy I did you and exit yourself from my life. I don’t know you anymore, and you don’t know me.”
He writes: “Then how are the cats?”

She waits. She writes “You must be retarded.” She erases it lest he think she’s being cute. She stews. She decides that maybe he should know. Maybe he should care.

An hour later she writes: “What precisely do you want to know? That the cats loathe you? That I range from being excellent to forlorn and fucking weeping from hour to hour? Is it that you want to survey the damage you’ve wrought? Does it delight you? Does it remind you how to feel? What? You’ve got it now–all the news there is. Now, let me get on with a life that does not include you.”

He waits. He writes the only two words that would have alleviated anything had they arrived two weeks earlier.

“I’m sorry.”

She doesn’t reply. She knows there’s nothing left to say.

What do you mean you don’t have a favorite supreme court justice?

Sadly, I don’t have time for a real post right now (and may not for a while) but from the moment I first saw it yesterday, I knew I’d have to slap this up here as soon as I could. Behold: the best drop-down menu I’ve ever seen.

UChicago application

Before I feel tempted to answer all of those questions for you (for the record, my favorite non-carbonated beverage is iced tea–or café con leche!), I’m off to work! Hurrah!

*thanks to Laura for forwarding this gem from her app.

A Small ode to autumn wind and rain

Tonight is a truly beautiful one. I walked home from the gym–which consisted of 45 minutes of punishing stairmastering, 15 minutes of interval runs, then pushups and a bosu ball weighted workout hard enough to make my shins sweat–in what I now am able to identify as my favorite kind of weather. In the warm, blustery dark, I was pelted by hot November rain and slapped by errant brown leaves. Quite quickly my clothes, my bags, grew so drenched that I lowered my umbrella and surrendered myself to the rain. All the way home I focused on the channels along the curb, formed by dips in the pavement and swiftly running rainwater. Since I was a child I’ve always loved the false canals created by rainstorms and streets. Seeing them tonight took me back to being a sweatshirted, soggy child walking a golden retriever on a wet night in New Hampshire, only there there were no street lights to reflect in the dimpled water.

There’s a smell that accompanies a fall rain unlike any other I know. It’s a deep, sweet, earthy potpourri that incites me to remember all of the goodness of summer and the inarguable beauties of autumn, momentarily abetting the fear I have of long winters and dark mornings. I think there were at least four or five minutes during that walk in which I thought of nothing–not of aching hearts, not of hours and employees being cut at my job, not of the terrifying test I’ll take on Saturday–and it was a beautiful, beautiful freedom.

When I finally reached my house I was soaked through; the rain hadn’t let up. I stood for a while on the back porch and watched the half naked trees sway to and fro in the gusty, warm wind. There was a moment–probably more than one, really–in which I considered abandoning my bags and walking, just walking until I had no thoughts at all. But the cats were hungry, as was I, and so I went in.

There are some unexpeted beauties that present themselves in moments like these and demand your full attention, that pull you outside of yourself, just as there are some kinds of good that cannot be undone. I’m thankful of having been reminded of that tonight, and I’m happy for the rain.

Search terms to boggle the mind!

I find it disturbing that search terms people are employing to find my blog are:

“Real pictures of Henry VIII and all his six wives” and “pour alcohol all over naked woman ha.”

A) is the first searcher aware that, in the time of Henry VIII, cameras did not exist? B) What? WHERE is that anywhere in my blog?

All I know is that I’m caught between the conclusion that these search terms mean that I’m either incredibly awesome or incredibly perverted.

Incidentally, here’s what google image reveals when I search for “Real pictures of Henry VIII and all his six wives.” Notice the lack of photography?

Revelations

I was shocked. I was confused. In the space of two months his habits had drastically changed, his attitudes  shifted, along with his heart and his goals and his stance on everything that had once seemed so certain–his personality, his morals…me. I felt lost and surprised, lied to and let down and the only question that burned my heart, the only question I could gather myself to ask in emphatic, indignant capitals was “Are you becoming more or less like yourself?”

I suppose I didn’t expect him to be able or wiling to offer me an answer–of course, even three weeks past the asking, he didn’t–but this morning, scribbling in my notebook on the bus ride to work, I uncovered the answer myself. Like most great truths, I think that this was one that, deep down inside, I knew all along. It is impossible for him, much less for me–despite the fact that I’m nominally the person to whom he’s told his secrets and been the closest for two years now–to speak to whether or not he’s becoming more or less like himself. This is so not because he is terribly complex, or terribly secretive (although he’d like to be believed both of those things). The truth is uncomfortably simple; it knocks hollow like an empty gourd rolling down the front stairs of a southern porch in a breeze. The person I thought I loved does not exist on the level that real people do. I realized this morning with the help of my Moleskine that Greg cannot tell me whether or not he’s becoming more or less like himself because any core, identifiable self is a thing he lacks. He has a collection of hobbies, of preferences, of eccentricities and catchphrases and convincing platitudes and foils, but he has no idea who he really is. Instead of upon experience and settled, quiet self-knowledge, his notions of selfhood, of goodness, of rightness, depend entirely upon that by which he is surrounded.

Unluckily for me, for two years I’ve loved a person defined by the company he keeps, who is only as strong as those who surround him. For two years he tried to be “good.” He endeavored to let our relationship put him in a box in which he at least outwardly presented as a good, loving, reliable person. He found, however, that once distance pulled us apart and put him in a new social melange, he did not fit. With these new people he’s become a completely different human being. That mutable soul, that flexible moral code and that dearth of ties to dignity or honor free him to shape himself around the strongest template for success he finds. He’s finally getting to forge himself into the popular, beery, socially free young man I think he always secretly wished he’d been–something a little more exciting–something a little more like his twin, though he protested that that was a lifestyle for which he felt nothing but disdain.

On some level I think I always knew all of this. Foolishly, I simply wanted to believe that I loved and trusted to a real person, not a Potemkin Village, not a husk of a human. He made it easy: around me he was sweet and kind and good. As part of an “us,” and within the confines or our relationship, he could be a better person. Without me around to remind him of what it means to be compassionate, to give, to look outside of ones self, to care for and value another person, he faltered.  I always understood that it was not natural to Greg to be giving and thoughtful and loving. I was troubled by the notion of his compassion being a learned response rather than an upwelling of natural empathy for a fellow human. But I silenced my intuition, chalked my misgivings up to cynicism and distrust wrought by former entanglements and, for the first time, just let go. I never actually accomplished that feat until about 9 months ago, despite our having been long established. I know what it feels like to fully trust and believe and love now, and I know what it feels like to have it all dashed to pieces by a whim and miles and a creeping crush. I suppose that letting go was good practice. I suppose my getting-up-muscles are receiving a little more honing. I suppose that it was time I’d unfurled and refamiliarized with how to ravel myself about myself again. I’m doing it, if slowly, and I continue to not answer the phone.

I love him–or what I thought he was–but I realize that for my own sake, I really can’t anymore. For now I’ll take my cue from The Wife of Bath and recollect myself around my sovereignty.

I am an angsty bitch. Just for a second, though–promise.

This is miserable.

I want back the person I loved. I want the person with whom I’ve been digesting my day for the past two years. I want the person who held my hand through movies. I want the person who always took the uncomfortable side of the bed, who held me when I cried, who called me his little bee, who said that lying around and doing nothing with me was far better than doing anything with anybody else. I want back the person with whom I’ve explored so many cities, who excited my imagination more than anyone else ever has, who made me feel safe and valued and loved because I thought… I thought that he would keep me safe and value me and love me, I guess. I want my Greg–mine–not this strange creature he’s becoming. What the fuck happened, and why so fast? Was any of it ever real, and did I love someone who was only an act?

Stop the world and let me off, just for a moment, thanks. I need to go retch up my dinner.