Right before I met up with Jim, my best friend texted me this final warning: "If you fall in love he will dick you over." When asked for details he revealed Jim's reputation for not returning calls and his proclivity to disappear all together. I replied, "Oh, that's all? I can handle that. I've been through that a hundred times." And so I walked casually, even cavalierly, into the fire.
In the usual fashion, we spent less than 24 hours together and I pressed my heart into your hand and my hope into your back as you walked to your car. You never called back, never responded to my letter. But what did I expect? It took you three years to call me back the first time around and my friend warned me about you, after all. At first I didn't care. Like I said, this is a familiar road to me.
After awhile, though, I found myself whispering the same old wish--about how perfect you are as poem-maker, construction-worker, herb-planter, if only you'd call me back. But I realized for the first time, through the example of you, that all of those things create your signature. Yes, you play the alto sax and yes, you disappear. I can't look at you in fragments. Embrace your art and ignore your practice. These are two parts of a whole person. Just as it can't be changed that you are an oboe-player so too is it a fact of you that you do not call back. What I mean is, I can't look at you and make exceptions. I need to look and see all of you at once, without wishing things were different or believing they can be.
That revelation tided me over for a few days before anger took over and I resisted the urge to leave a new voicemail describing meanness and disrespect. But for who? Was it for me, to resist being silenced? Was it for you, to make you understand? Was it for future women who might be left in your dust as you pull away? I revisited my revelation about the wholeness of your character and resisted placing the call.
Next came the sadness, which manifested as a postcard upon which I wrote the following Grecian poem:
The god forsakes Antony
by Constantine P. Cavafy, 1911
When suddenly, at the midnight hour,
an invisible troupe is heard passing
with exquisite music, with shouts --
your fortune that fails you now, your works
that have failed, the plans of your life
that have all turned out to be illusions, do not mourn in vain.
As if long prepared, as if courageous,
bid her farewell, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all do not be fooled, do not tell yourself
it was a dream, that your ears deceived you;
do not stoop to such vain hopes.
As if long prepared, as if courageous,
as it becomes you who have been worthy of such a city,
approach the window with firm step,
and with emotion, but not
with the entreaties and complaints of the coward,
as a last enjoyment listen to the sounds,
the exquisite instruments of the mystical troupe,
and bid her farewell, the Alexandria you are losing.
I thought, if you read it and you really got it you would see that I am Alexandria and you owe me a goodbye. But I didn't send the postcard. I realized that I am not Alexandria. And you are not either. My Alexandria is the entire collection of beautiful people who, for whatever reason, count the ability to ignore as one of their dearest traits. I can hear a certain kind of music and it is not Jim I need to send some final correspondence to but the bigger figure, the type of person he represents. God is not forsaking me forever, but He is leaving this city of unanswered calls and I am going with him.
So, this is goodbye, with all the courage and respect that I possess tonight--
I want to be hurt differently.
I think I am now ready to have my heart differently broken. It has become tiring to be hurt the same way over and over again. I have grown all I can from being hit at this particular angle. I am prepared and willing to experience a new kind of pain.
Which of course implies the possibility of a new kind of happiness as well.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
Letters not sent, #1
Dear Ansel,
Insurgente Lola writes, "don't hesitate, love profusely." It's frightening work, but it's the only way I know how to do. I think that this is true for you, too. I feel like animal tracks in desert dust, and you know how to read me. Like a constellation in the night, and you know how to find me with a naked eye. Like the moon roused during the day, and you can sing me back to sleep. Maybe you are a library and I am a book kept inside you. You are stamped across my heart a hundred times since I met you and counting.
But then again Mom says, "You don't need to overdo it. He knows you like him. So stop it. Yeah, I can say hes a cute son of a bitch. But you got him, stop mooning. Don't be boring. Talking doesn't make it real. It only says 'this person can deal with this amount of stuff from me' but you've got to let it evolve. You've got to meander through the thrush with it and see how it evolves and see who the person is without you putting them on the spot. You have to let his part in it show itself so you can know who he is in a relationship instead of what you demand from a relationship. I think he knows how you feel but you don't know how he feels so you need to make room for him to start to have his own discussion, to bring up his own conversation about it so you can actually see who he is and not who you think he is or who you want him to be. Who is he really."
I'd like to think I know a lot of what you think about relationships but the truth is that I initiated all of those conversations out of some pressing need to know the answer to a particular question. Like your definitions of "friendship," "relationship," "non-monogamy," and so on. You said, "It's not relevant for other people to know if I'm sleeping with one of my friends. We should be friends first and lovers second. There is no useful or productive basis for a relationship except friendship/kinship. I don't see lover categories as a productive basis for relationships or romantic love as a totally different basis for a friendship/relationship. Especially if there's more than one. For people I want to know we're lovers, I can tell them. I think it's dehumanizing to label someone through the status of your sexual relations."
I've been thinking a lot about why I've found it so difficult to untether myself from standard relationship terminology ("relationship," "partner," "primary," "lover," etc) when, in spite of the language we choose, we relate to each other in a very particular, honest and tender sort of way. So why do I crave labels? What do they mean to me? Shakespeare asked in 1594, "What's in a name?" and I am still wrestling with the same question.
So far what I've been able to come up with is that relationship words do a particular kind of work, beyond relying on shared meanings. Relational words are a shorthand way of achieving the desire to be claimed. This was my revelation: I want to be claimed. Not possessed, but claimed in the sense of being proud to be with me.
I thought about presenting this new discovery to you but I held off and then at your birthday dinner everyone was talking around the table and you asked if you could tell how we met and I said yes. You told everyone, "We met on Craigslist." Someone asked how, and you said that you posted a personal ad that I responded to and that you think I'm totally awesome. I felt claimed in a way much more particular than the blanket terminology of "girlfriend."
Yet, at the same time I don't know if I can agree that friendship is a very effective term when it is so vague. In the new and frightening territory of tenderness, perhaps what is emerging is the unnameable-ness of the way people actually relate to each other. How serendipitous that you read to me Jack Gilbert's "The Forgotten Dialect Of The Heart" on our first date. I could quote it here for the hundredth time or I could say chirp, chirp, chirp and let that stand in for my love for you.
Insurgente Lola writes, "don't hesitate, love profusely." It's frightening work, but it's the only way I know how to do. I think that this is true for you, too. I feel like animal tracks in desert dust, and you know how to read me. Like a constellation in the night, and you know how to find me with a naked eye. Like the moon roused during the day, and you can sing me back to sleep. Maybe you are a library and I am a book kept inside you. You are stamped across my heart a hundred times since I met you and counting.
But then again Mom says, "You don't need to overdo it. He knows you like him. So stop it. Yeah, I can say hes a cute son of a bitch. But you got him, stop mooning. Don't be boring. Talking doesn't make it real. It only says 'this person can deal with this amount of stuff from me' but you've got to let it evolve. You've got to meander through the thrush with it and see how it evolves and see who the person is without you putting them on the spot. You have to let his part in it show itself so you can know who he is in a relationship instead of what you demand from a relationship. I think he knows how you feel but you don't know how he feels so you need to make room for him to start to have his own discussion, to bring up his own conversation about it so you can actually see who he is and not who you think he is or who you want him to be. Who is he really."
I'd like to think I know a lot of what you think about relationships but the truth is that I initiated all of those conversations out of some pressing need to know the answer to a particular question. Like your definitions of "friendship," "relationship," "non-monogamy," and so on. You said, "It's not relevant for other people to know if I'm sleeping with one of my friends. We should be friends first and lovers second. There is no useful or productive basis for a relationship except friendship/kinship. I don't see lover categories as a productive basis for relationships or romantic love as a totally different basis for a friendship/relationship. Especially if there's more than one. For people I want to know we're lovers, I can tell them. I think it's dehumanizing to label someone through the status of your sexual relations."
I've been thinking a lot about why I've found it so difficult to untether myself from standard relationship terminology ("relationship," "partner," "primary," "lover," etc) when, in spite of the language we choose, we relate to each other in a very particular, honest and tender sort of way. So why do I crave labels? What do they mean to me? Shakespeare asked in 1594, "What's in a name?" and I am still wrestling with the same question.
So far what I've been able to come up with is that relationship words do a particular kind of work, beyond relying on shared meanings. Relational words are a shorthand way of achieving the desire to be claimed. This was my revelation: I want to be claimed. Not possessed, but claimed in the sense of being proud to be with me.
I thought about presenting this new discovery to you but I held off and then at your birthday dinner everyone was talking around the table and you asked if you could tell how we met and I said yes. You told everyone, "We met on Craigslist." Someone asked how, and you said that you posted a personal ad that I responded to and that you think I'm totally awesome. I felt claimed in a way much more particular than the blanket terminology of "girlfriend."
Yet, at the same time I don't know if I can agree that friendship is a very effective term when it is so vague. In the new and frightening territory of tenderness, perhaps what is emerging is the unnameable-ness of the way people actually relate to each other. How serendipitous that you read to me Jack Gilbert's "The Forgotten Dialect Of The Heart" on our first date. I could quote it here for the hundredth time or I could say chirp, chirp, chirp and let that stand in for my love for you.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Semester update #1
I listened to a 1996 broadcast of "This American Life" this afternoon while doing the dishes. You can listen to it here: link.
The subject of the show was obsessions, compulsions and rituals in many forms. The first interview is with a woman obsessed with the number two, the number guides her life. Drop the keys once? Drop them again. Set the alarm at for 8:02am, never 8:01. She says, "I was clued in enough to know that people would think it would be kind of weird."
The hosts propose that perhaps the obsessions and compulsions arise to fill the shoes of religion for the nonreligious, that perhaps these rituals perform the same coping mechanisms that religion offers to believers. I am annoyed by this proposal because I think it both trivializes the struggle for those trying to problematize their actions, trying to liberate themselves from these ties, and I think that it also speaks ignorantly and mockingly of religion to suggest it is merely a 'coping mechanism' to get through this world.
The next interview is with a woman whose case falls in the more severe end of the spectrum. Her story begins with simple things like checking the stove a few times before going to bed evolved into rules for walking, where the foot falls and what must happen before it does. She stopped leaving the house, afraid of what compulsions might be triggered.
"Say 'God, I'm sorry' 14 times."
"This is crazy."
"15 times."
She hospitalizes herself. She enrolls in an experimental drug program: Prozac (remember, this is 1996). After three days of nausea, she wakes up and the commandments have quieted. She could read again, "read with an appetite." She could go to work again. I cried over the dishes while I swirled the sponge three times around the lip of the cup I was washing.
"We have come to think lately of machines and animals, of machines and nature, as occupying opposite sides of the spectrum. There is IBM and there is the lake. But really they are so similar..."
She speaks about bodily experiencing the revelation that our brain is electrical, is the sum of some equations. Like Josiah had once put it simply for me when I was at a loss as to how to describe it: the brain as a bowl of chemicals.
One day the medicine stops working again. She has to count before every step. Every move takes ten minutes before she can feel safe. She gets stuck in a doorway. Her dosage is upped but things are never quite the same again. She has a vision of safety, outside of compulsions. Even though it was hard to come to grips with the fact the medications effectiveness had declined she says of that experience and of her vision of safety, "doors in me had opened... I was not completely claimed by illness, nor was I a prisoner of Prozac, entirely dependent on the medication to function. Part of me was still free, a private space not absolutely permeated by pain. A space I could learn to cultivate."
For the next interview, the hosts take the religion hypothesis further and decide to interview a Hasidic Jew about the rituals of his practice. They note that the interviewee's rituals connect him to his traditions, to his community, but the suffers of OCD are not connected to anyone or anything through their practice. Their ritual is alienating, "their path is much more lonely." The interviewee says that the only similarity he sees is the capacity to be devoted to something but that the similarities end there. I am glad they aired this part of his interview. However, he goes on to describe the fear of something bad happening if he does not fulfill his religious rituals. When asked about what this fear is he says, "The fear of not knowing. The fear of not belonging. Sort of like this abandonment. That maybe with my abandonment of God, God would abandon me. And I would be alone... and I'd be responsible for myself where, here I feel like if I can go and do the things that God wants, God is with me."
The final interview is with a woman whose obsession leads her to create a full scale beaded kitchen over the course of five years. The part of this interview that stood out to me is her confession to keeping endless To-Do lists. Her confession of feeling like a failure every day.
"Everyday you feel as though you've gotten nothing done. Five inches of work done. Five inches of an entirely beaded kitchen."
After listening to this broadcast I consider the work that I have to do today, already two days late. I consider the things I've done instead of doing work. I consider the amount of time it has taken me to leave the house everyday. How embarrassing it is that when I agree to leave the house with someone I eventually have to ask them to wait outside the room for me or to meet me at the car. How sometimes when eating with other people I try to say my prayers inside my head instead of in front of the people and can't get through them all without someone trying to get me to talk, having to go to the bathroom in the middle of a meal to finish praying because they are so long and I can't stand to have people stare at me while I complete them. Or question me when I'm done. Or make a joke. Feeling like if I don't kiss my hands the right number of times that something bad will happen. To someone I love. Line up my shoes before sleeping. Yes, check the stove. Put the Bible on the night stand and the cell phone on top of that. The glasses to the side. Kiss my hands 35 times before turning out the light only with my sleeve. Jump into bed from across the room without disturbing anything else in the dark. If I hit something on the way into bed, start again. Unplug everything before leaving the house. Wash my hands then spit in the sink then wash the hands... until the number equals 3 (rarely), 5, 7, or 15 (most usual) or higher. Touch the books. Line them up on the floor. Looks like a mess, but I made it that way. Fold the pajamas and lay them on top of the slippers, put them under the covers in the right spot, pull the blankets over them and make sure the tops of each blanket line up in a way that feels ok. Fold the bra under the pillow. If I can't fold it right, stick in my backpack for the rest of the day. Pull the edges of the pillowcases. Make sure the other shoes are lined up. If I'm leaving to do something fun, I need to make the entire bed and get rid of as many ripples in the fabrics as possible. Outside, don't step on shadows. Don't step on cracks in the cement. Or, stare at the sky so that I can't see what I'm doing wrong down there.
What does my family want? What does God want?
"If I knew those answers I wouldn't do it. Nobody who thinks like that would bead a kitchen."
The subject of the show was obsessions, compulsions and rituals in many forms. The first interview is with a woman obsessed with the number two, the number guides her life. Drop the keys once? Drop them again. Set the alarm at for 8:02am, never 8:01. She says, "I was clued in enough to know that people would think it would be kind of weird."
The hosts propose that perhaps the obsessions and compulsions arise to fill the shoes of religion for the nonreligious, that perhaps these rituals perform the same coping mechanisms that religion offers to believers. I am annoyed by this proposal because I think it both trivializes the struggle for those trying to problematize their actions, trying to liberate themselves from these ties, and I think that it also speaks ignorantly and mockingly of religion to suggest it is merely a 'coping mechanism' to get through this world.
The next interview is with a woman whose case falls in the more severe end of the spectrum. Her story begins with simple things like checking the stove a few times before going to bed evolved into rules for walking, where the foot falls and what must happen before it does. She stopped leaving the house, afraid of what compulsions might be triggered.
"Say 'God, I'm sorry' 14 times."
"This is crazy."
"15 times."
She hospitalizes herself. She enrolls in an experimental drug program: Prozac (remember, this is 1996). After three days of nausea, she wakes up and the commandments have quieted. She could read again, "read with an appetite." She could go to work again. I cried over the dishes while I swirled the sponge three times around the lip of the cup I was washing.
"We have come to think lately of machines and animals, of machines and nature, as occupying opposite sides of the spectrum. There is IBM and there is the lake. But really they are so similar..."
She speaks about bodily experiencing the revelation that our brain is electrical, is the sum of some equations. Like Josiah had once put it simply for me when I was at a loss as to how to describe it: the brain as a bowl of chemicals.
One day the medicine stops working again. She has to count before every step. Every move takes ten minutes before she can feel safe. She gets stuck in a doorway. Her dosage is upped but things are never quite the same again. She has a vision of safety, outside of compulsions. Even though it was hard to come to grips with the fact the medications effectiveness had declined she says of that experience and of her vision of safety, "doors in me had opened... I was not completely claimed by illness, nor was I a prisoner of Prozac, entirely dependent on the medication to function. Part of me was still free, a private space not absolutely permeated by pain. A space I could learn to cultivate."
For the next interview, the hosts take the religion hypothesis further and decide to interview a Hasidic Jew about the rituals of his practice. They note that the interviewee's rituals connect him to his traditions, to his community, but the suffers of OCD are not connected to anyone or anything through their practice. Their ritual is alienating, "their path is much more lonely." The interviewee says that the only similarity he sees is the capacity to be devoted to something but that the similarities end there. I am glad they aired this part of his interview. However, he goes on to describe the fear of something bad happening if he does not fulfill his religious rituals. When asked about what this fear is he says, "The fear of not knowing. The fear of not belonging. Sort of like this abandonment. That maybe with my abandonment of God, God would abandon me. And I would be alone... and I'd be responsible for myself where, here I feel like if I can go and do the things that God wants, God is with me."
The final interview is with a woman whose obsession leads her to create a full scale beaded kitchen over the course of five years. The part of this interview that stood out to me is her confession to keeping endless To-Do lists. Her confession of feeling like a failure every day.
"Everyday you feel as though you've gotten nothing done. Five inches of work done. Five inches of an entirely beaded kitchen."
After listening to this broadcast I consider the work that I have to do today, already two days late. I consider the things I've done instead of doing work. I consider the amount of time it has taken me to leave the house everyday. How embarrassing it is that when I agree to leave the house with someone I eventually have to ask them to wait outside the room for me or to meet me at the car. How sometimes when eating with other people I try to say my prayers inside my head instead of in front of the people and can't get through them all without someone trying to get me to talk, having to go to the bathroom in the middle of a meal to finish praying because they are so long and I can't stand to have people stare at me while I complete them. Or question me when I'm done. Or make a joke. Feeling like if I don't kiss my hands the right number of times that something bad will happen. To someone I love. Line up my shoes before sleeping. Yes, check the stove. Put the Bible on the night stand and the cell phone on top of that. The glasses to the side. Kiss my hands 35 times before turning out the light only with my sleeve. Jump into bed from across the room without disturbing anything else in the dark. If I hit something on the way into bed, start again. Unplug everything before leaving the house. Wash my hands then spit in the sink then wash the hands... until the number equals 3 (rarely), 5, 7, or 15 (most usual) or higher. Touch the books. Line them up on the floor. Looks like a mess, but I made it that way. Fold the pajamas and lay them on top of the slippers, put them under the covers in the right spot, pull the blankets over them and make sure the tops of each blanket line up in a way that feels ok. Fold the bra under the pillow. If I can't fold it right, stick in my backpack for the rest of the day. Pull the edges of the pillowcases. Make sure the other shoes are lined up. If I'm leaving to do something fun, I need to make the entire bed and get rid of as many ripples in the fabrics as possible. Outside, don't step on shadows. Don't step on cracks in the cement. Or, stare at the sky so that I can't see what I'm doing wrong down there.
What does my family want? What does God want?
"If I knew those answers I wouldn't do it. Nobody who thinks like that would bead a kitchen."
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
About Face: a feminist weapon
It's been really difficult this semester to intervene in hot and amped up discussions in class. At the graduate level, students have joyfully abandoned the hierarchical and regulatory power (?) of "hand-raising" in class in favor of the liberties of free form discussion. My experience with this set up, however, has been less than ideal. In place of an institutionalized and obvious conversational hierarchy, the one activists all know, love, and fear has risen in its place: interpersonal dynamics.
It's funny, for example, that in a class particularly concerned with "Power, Ideology, and Domination" people would so unconsciously embrace the power of their own voices to the detriment and drowning out of others. I mean, people actually raise their voices in this class and cut each other off. But, of course, we're studying domination "out there," you know, by colonists, not in the classroom. Nobody here but us progressive and radical Diaspora scholars... No culprits here. (To be fair, my major gripes have not been with this class--but the example is still fitting).
I've been learning to use my face as a means of intervention in these sorts of situations. Whereas, in earlier years in school, people learn not to make eye contact in order to avoid getting called on, a newer revelation has found me. The ugly face. The best way to stop someone conversationally in their tracks is to make a very serious face, one of revulsion, incredulity, something that says--you really believe that? Upon recognizing this face, people will begin to stumble and comment on what's going on with those furrowed eyes and eyebrows. "What? You look like you have something to say."
Yes, motherfucker! Don't you ever take a breath?
I understand now why women and subordinates on the job are expected to perfect the art of emotion-management. You face can make spaces in places that your voice simply cannot.
I admit, it sucks that so far the best means I've found in order to create space for my own voice appears to be nonverbally insulting whoever has been thumping their Bible for too long but, so far, its been more comfortable than cutting someone off mid-thought. Besides, their thought is not necessarily the target of my attack; the target is their skewed perception of adequate space allocation. Basically, the idea has been to help them cut their own selves off.
Works on bad dates, too.
It's funny, for example, that in a class particularly concerned with "Power, Ideology, and Domination" people would so unconsciously embrace the power of their own voices to the detriment and drowning out of others. I mean, people actually raise their voices in this class and cut each other off. But, of course, we're studying domination "out there," you know, by colonists, not in the classroom. Nobody here but us progressive and radical Diaspora scholars... No culprits here. (To be fair, my major gripes have not been with this class--but the example is still fitting).
I've been learning to use my face as a means of intervention in these sorts of situations. Whereas, in earlier years in school, people learn not to make eye contact in order to avoid getting called on, a newer revelation has found me. The ugly face. The best way to stop someone conversationally in their tracks is to make a very serious face, one of revulsion, incredulity, something that says--you really believe that? Upon recognizing this face, people will begin to stumble and comment on what's going on with those furrowed eyes and eyebrows. "What? You look like you have something to say."
Yes, motherfucker! Don't you ever take a breath?
I understand now why women and subordinates on the job are expected to perfect the art of emotion-management. You face can make spaces in places that your voice simply cannot.
I admit, it sucks that so far the best means I've found in order to create space for my own voice appears to be nonverbally insulting whoever has been thumping their Bible for too long but, so far, its been more comfortable than cutting someone off mid-thought. Besides, their thought is not necessarily the target of my attack; the target is their skewed perception of adequate space allocation. Basically, the idea has been to help them cut their own selves off.
Works on bad dates, too.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Proudly dogwood
My friend told me recently that the source of his sadness was that he had been so ready to love but the subject of his adoration moved away from him. I shared with him that Donta kept canceling plans with me or claiming a broken phone or generally not calling back. I had held off on investing myself in him for quite awhile when he initially showed interest in me but, now that I'm excited, I can't quite catch a hold of him. He drifts out of my reach.
It's hard not to blame ourselves for the change of the currents. You think, but I was navigating this ship! I knew where we were going! How did we end up here? Love, I guess, is when both people are willing to face the open water and meditate on the wind together.
Perhaps we derive so much of our imagery of love from nature because, in Genesis, it is God's first expression of tenderness--a gift, for us. A heavenly valentine. I've been reading Annie Dillard recently and found myself moved by the following passage she wrote on trees:
"Sycamores are among the last trees to go into leaf; in the fall, they are the first to shed. They make sweet food in green broad leaves for a while--leaves wide as plates--and then go wild and wave their long white arms. In ancient Rome men honored the sycamore--in the form of its cousin, the Oriental plane--by watering its roots with wine. Xerxes, I read, "halted his unwieldly army for days that he might contemplate to his satisfaction" the beauty of a single sycamore.
"You are Xerxes in Persia. Your army spreads on a vast and arid peneplain... you call to you all your sad captains, and give the order to halt. You have seen the tree with the lights in it, haven't you? You must have. Xerxes buffeted on a plain, ambition drained in a puff. That fusillade halts any army in its tracks. Your men are bewildered; they lean on their spears, sucking the rinds of gourds. There is nothing to catch the eye in this flatness, nothing but a hollow, hammering sky, a waste of sedge in the lee of windblown rocks, a meagre ribbon of scrub willow tracing a slumbering watercourse... and that sycamore. You saw it; you still stand rapt and mute, exalted, remembering or not remembering over a period of days to shade your head with your robe.
""He had its form wrought upon a medal of gold to help him remember it the rest of his life." Your teeth are chattering; it is just before dawn and you have started briefly from your daze... But it goes without saying, doesn't it, Xerxes, that no gold medal worn around your neck will bring back that glad hour, keep those lights kindled so long as you live, forever present? Pascal saw it. He grabbed pen and paper; he managed to scrawl one word, FEU; he wore that scrap of paper sewn in his shirt the rest of his life. I don't know what Pascal saw. I saw a cedar. Xerxes saw a sycamore" (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek pgs 87-88).
I told my friend that one day someone will see us. Someone will stop the army of their busy schedule--just for him. Someone will contemplate me for days. Someone will water his roots with their words. All the world will become flat in comparison to my loud laugh, his smile. We deserve that kind of care and attention. And we will have it, one day.
I had an entirely fabulous day today for the first time in a few weeks. The sun was shining and I had a delicious sandwich while walking down the street. A stranger told me that I am beautiful. A friend I haven't spoken to in months called while I ate lemon sorbet. I talked to cats on the sidewalk and in the bookstore. I met a new neighbor who calls herself T-Bird. I played Boggle with a roommate. I began to read again with excitement (Foucault's Discipline and Punishment, of all things). Suddenly I knew that Donta would finally call today and, without a strategy, it could ruin my day and take all of this away from me, the self-certainty and the cockiness that has saved me from giving in to tears. I decided that if he did try to reach me, I would wait and return his call another day.
When the phone rang this evening I was playfully arguing with my roommates about coursework. I waved the phone around to show who was calling. I didn't answer. I felt good about it. I thought about the sycamores and cedars and how I have never seen a tree cry.
It's hard not to blame ourselves for the change of the currents. You think, but I was navigating this ship! I knew where we were going! How did we end up here? Love, I guess, is when both people are willing to face the open water and meditate on the wind together.
Perhaps we derive so much of our imagery of love from nature because, in Genesis, it is God's first expression of tenderness--a gift, for us. A heavenly valentine. I've been reading Annie Dillard recently and found myself moved by the following passage she wrote on trees:
"Sycamores are among the last trees to go into leaf; in the fall, they are the first to shed. They make sweet food in green broad leaves for a while--leaves wide as plates--and then go wild and wave their long white arms. In ancient Rome men honored the sycamore--in the form of its cousin, the Oriental plane--by watering its roots with wine. Xerxes, I read, "halted his unwieldly army for days that he might contemplate to his satisfaction" the beauty of a single sycamore.
"You are Xerxes in Persia. Your army spreads on a vast and arid peneplain... you call to you all your sad captains, and give the order to halt. You have seen the tree with the lights in it, haven't you? You must have. Xerxes buffeted on a plain, ambition drained in a puff. That fusillade halts any army in its tracks. Your men are bewildered; they lean on their spears, sucking the rinds of gourds. There is nothing to catch the eye in this flatness, nothing but a hollow, hammering sky, a waste of sedge in the lee of windblown rocks, a meagre ribbon of scrub willow tracing a slumbering watercourse... and that sycamore. You saw it; you still stand rapt and mute, exalted, remembering or not remembering over a period of days to shade your head with your robe.
""He had its form wrought upon a medal of gold to help him remember it the rest of his life." Your teeth are chattering; it is just before dawn and you have started briefly from your daze... But it goes without saying, doesn't it, Xerxes, that no gold medal worn around your neck will bring back that glad hour, keep those lights kindled so long as you live, forever present? Pascal saw it. He grabbed pen and paper; he managed to scrawl one word, FEU; he wore that scrap of paper sewn in his shirt the rest of his life. I don't know what Pascal saw. I saw a cedar. Xerxes saw a sycamore" (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek pgs 87-88).
I told my friend that one day someone will see us. Someone will stop the army of their busy schedule--just for him. Someone will contemplate me for days. Someone will water his roots with their words. All the world will become flat in comparison to my loud laugh, his smile. We deserve that kind of care and attention. And we will have it, one day.
I had an entirely fabulous day today for the first time in a few weeks. The sun was shining and I had a delicious sandwich while walking down the street. A stranger told me that I am beautiful. A friend I haven't spoken to in months called while I ate lemon sorbet. I talked to cats on the sidewalk and in the bookstore. I met a new neighbor who calls herself T-Bird. I played Boggle with a roommate. I began to read again with excitement (Foucault's Discipline and Punishment, of all things). Suddenly I knew that Donta would finally call today and, without a strategy, it could ruin my day and take all of this away from me, the self-certainty and the cockiness that has saved me from giving in to tears. I decided that if he did try to reach me, I would wait and return his call another day.
When the phone rang this evening I was playfully arguing with my roommates about coursework. I waved the phone around to show who was calling. I didn't answer. I felt good about it. I thought about the sycamores and cedars and how I have never seen a tree cry.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Secret weird feelings
Well, Donta,
I've promised myself not to call you anymore. At least, not until after you call me first.
So, do you miss me yet?
I read "Giovanni's Room" by James Baldwin for the first time. The theme of waiting was very salient for me cuz I've been waiting for you since I've come back to California and I'm waiting still. There's this part where David tells Giovanni that his fiance has gone to Spain "to think" about their engagement and what she wants and that he is "waiting." Giovanni pokes fun at the idea that Americans are always thinking and waiting. He asks, "and when you have waited--has it made you sure?" (53).
I keep telling myself, you know, I didn't ask for this. You're the one who said hello first. Not me.
My friend Dan pointed out that I have never waited for people in all the time he has known me. It's amazing how quickly things can change. I blame urban planning. Leaving New York has crippled my sense of self by curtailing my movement. The public transportation in the Bay area is such that I can no longer make multiple plans for one night. The list of tasks I can accomplish in a single day has become finite. Buses only come every half hour (or longer) and they stop all together around midnight. There are no more 2 and 3am trips to Inwood and back, no quick runs to the Bronx or Crown Heights just to say hello. Now, the suggestion of possible plans with you means that I have to clear my entire schedule, which I do readily and wait for your call.
It was not until today that I realized that you are busy. I mean, you told me that you have a lot of responsibilities, that you are heavily involved in school and work and clubs, but busy? Busy, as I've said before, is a life without choices. I want you to choose me! When I meet someone new all I want to do is be near them, search their face, and dream out loud together. This desire reminds me of Bernard Scott's description of the Beat Generation agenda:
"When you meet a Beat at a Village party he never asks you what you do because he's not interested in your economic definition. But what you do is one of the first questions you are asked on the outside. Our culture defines people in terms of their utility. The Beat wants to know what you are thinking, what's licking inside of you, how real are you in your heart, what you've got to say, can you help me see anything, can you turn me on...?" (qtd in Fred W. McDarrah in Beat Down To Your Soul pg 383).
What's licking inside you, Donta? I realize that maybe I've been coming on a little strong. The crazy clothes, the questions, the laugh. The anger at not being called back. But it comes from a genuine place. I want to know what all this about, what will happen if we are together? Where will it take us? There is an uncontrollable immediacy. I want to know how my knowing you will help me to live my life better. How do you fit into the great and heavenly mystery? Howard Hart describes where this comes from for the Beats and, humbly, I confess that he nails where I'm coming from as well:
"It's an obvious manifestation of the fact that the whole structure of American life is phony. The clothes and the manner immediately call attention to them [the Beats] because they are declaring something which is really a fact and they want to proclaim it. More than protest, there is an affirmative thing there... they are really looking for God... and after all, God is love. If they didn't have so much of a longing for God in their hearts they wouldn't come on so strong. It's a real search that gives them a kind of right to flaunt themselves even when they haven't got the talent or anything..." (qtd 383).
I was hoping that this was something we could share together. This inadequacy and this honesty. You stalked me off the bus. I invited you into my empty apartment. We made plans to drive down to Long Beach together, two strangers. I tried to trick you into meeting me somewhere and you loved it. I flaunt myself in front of you, bad skin, big hair, and hope that when you see my whole self, the hairy legs I've so far hid from you and my virginity, that you'll still want to stick around. What do I know about you except your major and your lisp, your soft face, and your criminal record? I guess I've gotten upset when you haven't called back because I'm certain you're going to miss out on something really amazing: me. Or maybe I'm not angry, I'm afraid. Maybe I'm acting out in defense of my own right to not have to miss you. Allen Ginsberg says,
"Life is a nightmare for most people, who want something else... People want a lesser fake of Beauty... We've seen Beauty face to face, one time or another and said, 'Oh my God, of course, so that's what it's all about, no wonder I was born and had all those secret weird feelings!' Maybe it was a moment of instantaneous perfect stillness in some cow patch in the Catskills when the trees suddenly came alive like a Van Gogh painting or a Wordsworth poem. Or a minute listening to, say, Wagner on the phonograph when the music sounded as if it was getting nightmarishly sexy and alive, awful, like an elephant calling far away in the moonlight" (qtd 381).
When you came up to me at the rally that last time to say hello and shyly fingered the button on my coat all I wanted was to kiss you but my eyes were glued to my shoes. I was smiling, could you tell? My body was electric. I couldn't go to the next Oscar Grant rally because I began to conflate my notions of justice with my crush on you.
You said to call you and I tried a few times but there was no answer. We were supposed to see a movie, I thought. My roommates convinced me to go to an open mic and I read my awkward, sexy poems and everyone loved me. I felt at home on that makeshift stage--like that little seed of Manhattan beginning to bud again after a long season of self-doubt.
Then, when I got home, I found out that my friends are getting married.
Mary Nichols admitted in the 1950s the omnipresent threat of the H-bomb and the very real possibility of that the world might end in her own lifetime. She said, "Perhaps that's why I always look so happy. There may be so little time, it doesn't seem worth being any other way" (qtd 387). Jeffrey once told me, in response to my concerns about safety as a new East Bay resident, that you cannot predict when earthquakes are going to happen. He said, perhaps that is why Californians are so laid back--because they know there is nothing they can do prepare for or prevent catastrophe.
At the end of the day, I don't think we distinguish between natural and man-made disasters. Rubble is rubble. Once we recover from shock, we search out who or what has survived and begin to build again knowing full well tomorrow is not guaranteed.
Every one of us is an architect. Late at night I wonder if you know that. If you know that I have been stock-piling raw materials in my heart. In my bed alone I imagine the mortar of your arms holding me and all my nervous bricks in place.
As badly as I want that, I know I can't keep waiting for you. I need to take care of my own shit. I daydream about pulling pranks on you or leaving poems on your voicemail but I can't keep dropping quarters into this slot and still expect to have the energy to smile for the H-bomb. If I call again, it will have be collect. Whether or not you're willing to accept the charges, that's your call.
So, do you miss me yet?
I've promised myself not to call you anymore. At least, not until after you call me first.
So, do you miss me yet?
I read "Giovanni's Room" by James Baldwin for the first time. The theme of waiting was very salient for me cuz I've been waiting for you since I've come back to California and I'm waiting still. There's this part where David tells Giovanni that his fiance has gone to Spain "to think" about their engagement and what she wants and that he is "waiting." Giovanni pokes fun at the idea that Americans are always thinking and waiting. He asks, "and when you have waited--has it made you sure?" (53).
I keep telling myself, you know, I didn't ask for this. You're the one who said hello first. Not me.
My friend Dan pointed out that I have never waited for people in all the time he has known me. It's amazing how quickly things can change. I blame urban planning. Leaving New York has crippled my sense of self by curtailing my movement. The public transportation in the Bay area is such that I can no longer make multiple plans for one night. The list of tasks I can accomplish in a single day has become finite. Buses only come every half hour (or longer) and they stop all together around midnight. There are no more 2 and 3am trips to Inwood and back, no quick runs to the Bronx or Crown Heights just to say hello. Now, the suggestion of possible plans with you means that I have to clear my entire schedule, which I do readily and wait for your call.
It was not until today that I realized that you are busy. I mean, you told me that you have a lot of responsibilities, that you are heavily involved in school and work and clubs, but busy? Busy, as I've said before, is a life without choices. I want you to choose me! When I meet someone new all I want to do is be near them, search their face, and dream out loud together. This desire reminds me of Bernard Scott's description of the Beat Generation agenda:
"When you meet a Beat at a Village party he never asks you what you do because he's not interested in your economic definition. But what you do is one of the first questions you are asked on the outside. Our culture defines people in terms of their utility. The Beat wants to know what you are thinking, what's licking inside of you, how real are you in your heart, what you've got to say, can you help me see anything, can you turn me on...?" (qtd in Fred W. McDarrah in Beat Down To Your Soul pg 383).
What's licking inside you, Donta? I realize that maybe I've been coming on a little strong. The crazy clothes, the questions, the laugh. The anger at not being called back. But it comes from a genuine place. I want to know what all this about, what will happen if we are together? Where will it take us? There is an uncontrollable immediacy. I want to know how my knowing you will help me to live my life better. How do you fit into the great and heavenly mystery? Howard Hart describes where this comes from for the Beats and, humbly, I confess that he nails where I'm coming from as well:
"It's an obvious manifestation of the fact that the whole structure of American life is phony. The clothes and the manner immediately call attention to them [the Beats] because they are declaring something which is really a fact and they want to proclaim it. More than protest, there is an affirmative thing there... they are really looking for God... and after all, God is love. If they didn't have so much of a longing for God in their hearts they wouldn't come on so strong. It's a real search that gives them a kind of right to flaunt themselves even when they haven't got the talent or anything..." (qtd 383).
I was hoping that this was something we could share together. This inadequacy and this honesty. You stalked me off the bus. I invited you into my empty apartment. We made plans to drive down to Long Beach together, two strangers. I tried to trick you into meeting me somewhere and you loved it. I flaunt myself in front of you, bad skin, big hair, and hope that when you see my whole self, the hairy legs I've so far hid from you and my virginity, that you'll still want to stick around. What do I know about you except your major and your lisp, your soft face, and your criminal record? I guess I've gotten upset when you haven't called back because I'm certain you're going to miss out on something really amazing: me. Or maybe I'm not angry, I'm afraid. Maybe I'm acting out in defense of my own right to not have to miss you. Allen Ginsberg says,
"Life is a nightmare for most people, who want something else... People want a lesser fake of Beauty... We've seen Beauty face to face, one time or another and said, 'Oh my God, of course, so that's what it's all about, no wonder I was born and had all those secret weird feelings!' Maybe it was a moment of instantaneous perfect stillness in some cow patch in the Catskills when the trees suddenly came alive like a Van Gogh painting or a Wordsworth poem. Or a minute listening to, say, Wagner on the phonograph when the music sounded as if it was getting nightmarishly sexy and alive, awful, like an elephant calling far away in the moonlight" (qtd 381).
When you came up to me at the rally that last time to say hello and shyly fingered the button on my coat all I wanted was to kiss you but my eyes were glued to my shoes. I was smiling, could you tell? My body was electric. I couldn't go to the next Oscar Grant rally because I began to conflate my notions of justice with my crush on you.
You said to call you and I tried a few times but there was no answer. We were supposed to see a movie, I thought. My roommates convinced me to go to an open mic and I read my awkward, sexy poems and everyone loved me. I felt at home on that makeshift stage--like that little seed of Manhattan beginning to bud again after a long season of self-doubt.
Then, when I got home, I found out that my friends are getting married.
Mary Nichols admitted in the 1950s the omnipresent threat of the H-bomb and the very real possibility of that the world might end in her own lifetime. She said, "Perhaps that's why I always look so happy. There may be so little time, it doesn't seem worth being any other way" (qtd 387). Jeffrey once told me, in response to my concerns about safety as a new East Bay resident, that you cannot predict when earthquakes are going to happen. He said, perhaps that is why Californians are so laid back--because they know there is nothing they can do prepare for or prevent catastrophe.
At the end of the day, I don't think we distinguish between natural and man-made disasters. Rubble is rubble. Once we recover from shock, we search out who or what has survived and begin to build again knowing full well tomorrow is not guaranteed.
Every one of us is an architect. Late at night I wonder if you know that. If you know that I have been stock-piling raw materials in my heart. In my bed alone I imagine the mortar of your arms holding me and all my nervous bricks in place.
As badly as I want that, I know I can't keep waiting for you. I need to take care of my own shit. I daydream about pulling pranks on you or leaving poems on your voicemail but I can't keep dropping quarters into this slot and still expect to have the energy to smile for the H-bomb. If I call again, it will have be collect. Whether or not you're willing to accept the charges, that's your call.
So, do you miss me yet?
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Holding My Breath
My Grandmother died. My Mom told me a few days after it happened, I was in the Poconos and I cried about how sorry I was and she asked me to put Matt on the phone and she told him to hug me, which he did. Later, I talked to my Dad about feeling responsible for terrible things and he told me that these things are not in my control. After that, things were different.
I went to New York City. I saw Josiah and then I saw Clayton later that same day. We made out under a security camera in the game room of a dorm on 96th Street while employees were giving tours of the facilities and I thought more than once, "who am I?"
Adam educated me on the uses of the Kraken late in the night at Dunkin Donuts and pulled some tinsel from my hair. I tried my best to re-hard wire myself to respond to fucked up politics with a swift and mighty smiting of the Kraken but I still need practice. I came down from Rochester one more time to see a friend in New York I had missed the first time around and to see my old high school friend in Philly. In New York, this friend asked the table whether it is ok to date younger men (younger than ourselves). I said absolutely. In my experience they are actually more mature. She went on to claim that she was pretty sure this boy was a virgin and, if so, she certainly wouldn't date him. I had to stop her there before I jumped out of the booth. She and our other friend at the table insisted that there is a serious difference between a 25 year old female virgin (this is, apparently, fine) and a 25 year old male virgin (this is, in her words, a sure sign of a "psychosis"). When I asked why she was considering dating him she said she hadn't had sex in months. As I went off about how deeply and unnervingly fucked up this conversation was, I ended up getting the brunt of the blame for "not understanding" even though it is me and not them who spends the majority of her time contemplating the positionalities of late-life non-religious virginity in America. The words "essentialist" and "more than two genders" had no effect on the conversation. Fortunately, I received a phone call and excused myself from the table for a half hour. Kraken or no Kraken, I tried my best. It is exhausting to keep battling dear friends as they unwittingly remove themselves from my trust and confidence. Another tally on the wall.
Jeff asked to see me when I get back to California. Of all people, I never expected to hear from him again. I couldn't believe it. When I told him what day I would be free he replied that he was "booked" for that evening but he was free during the day. I realized that, without even knowing it, I had been holding my breath for him. I let it out. There was no reason to hope that he had changed. His concise, unfeeling language still hurt, even now.
I told Vegan Liz that I needed guidance. I said, I am definitely going to see him so what I need to know is how I can see him and sustain the least amount of emotional damage. She said to me:
This reminds me of something else you wrote... "I used to marvel at the paradox that, radical as we are in all other departments of our lives, in the area of love we make the greatest concessions to people who deserve them the least. We return again and again to people who make us feel like we are being raped when we have sex. We come running through the darkness taking countless trains and buses to sit up all night with people who would never do the same for us. We wait for promised phone calls that we know will never come. We write poems for monsters who will never read them with the attention they require. We bear witness to their struggles in spite of our own, in spite of ourselves. What we are making with these people is not love but lies. By dint of our radical political beliefs, we already feel largely isolated in our work and are engaged constantly in battle. Such is the condition, perhaps, that causes us to move the bar lower and lower, letting just about anyone into our hearts. Why? Because, we tell ourselves, it is better than being alone."
I was shocked. How could I forget that I had said that? I laughed. I said, I'm feel like I'm destined to have the same revelation over and over again. Liz replied, "you're human."
So where do I go from here?
Each time I thought about Jeff for the rest of the day felt like being punched in the stomach. I could see that I was setting myself up but the clarity of that vision wasn't helping me to change my course. I decided I needed some clue as to how much of myself I should invest in seeing him. I asked if he wanted to hang out for the day or just meet up really quick. When he said, "the whole day!" my heart burst into butterflies and I immediately broke the bank. Shortly after this, however, I began to feel nervous and sick and afraid.
I never really ate a peach before I met you. Never let the juice run down my chin and fingers. Never washed my hands of the nectar with a half bottle of lukewarm water and backwash over the grass. Never ate more soft peaches out of the arm rest days later in lieu of breakfast.
It took me so long to get over you. I couldn't divorce the fruit from our afternoons. I had to stop buying peaches all together. I couldn't look out bus windows for weeks without thinking of you. Stores had to change their signs, go out of business. The landscape had to change itself.
In the parking lot of the lumber store in Pittsford I told my Dad that if I were my strongest self I wouldn't go but, I'm going, so what should I do? And he said, "if he says something - leave. Just walk away."
I went to New York City. I saw Josiah and then I saw Clayton later that same day. We made out under a security camera in the game room of a dorm on 96th Street while employees were giving tours of the facilities and I thought more than once, "who am I?"
Adam educated me on the uses of the Kraken late in the night at Dunkin Donuts and pulled some tinsel from my hair. I tried my best to re-hard wire myself to respond to fucked up politics with a swift and mighty smiting of the Kraken but I still need practice. I came down from Rochester one more time to see a friend in New York I had missed the first time around and to see my old high school friend in Philly. In New York, this friend asked the table whether it is ok to date younger men (younger than ourselves). I said absolutely. In my experience they are actually more mature. She went on to claim that she was pretty sure this boy was a virgin and, if so, she certainly wouldn't date him. I had to stop her there before I jumped out of the booth. She and our other friend at the table insisted that there is a serious difference between a 25 year old female virgin (this is, apparently, fine) and a 25 year old male virgin (this is, in her words, a sure sign of a "psychosis"). When I asked why she was considering dating him she said she hadn't had sex in months. As I went off about how deeply and unnervingly fucked up this conversation was, I ended up getting the brunt of the blame for "not understanding" even though it is me and not them who spends the majority of her time contemplating the positionalities of late-life non-religious virginity in America. The words "essentialist" and "more than two genders" had no effect on the conversation. Fortunately, I received a phone call and excused myself from the table for a half hour. Kraken or no Kraken, I tried my best. It is exhausting to keep battling dear friends as they unwittingly remove themselves from my trust and confidence. Another tally on the wall.
Jeff asked to see me when I get back to California. Of all people, I never expected to hear from him again. I couldn't believe it. When I told him what day I would be free he replied that he was "booked" for that evening but he was free during the day. I realized that, without even knowing it, I had been holding my breath for him. I let it out. There was no reason to hope that he had changed. His concise, unfeeling language still hurt, even now.
I told Vegan Liz that I needed guidance. I said, I am definitely going to see him so what I need to know is how I can see him and sustain the least amount of emotional damage. She said to me:
This reminds me of something else you wrote... "I used to marvel at the paradox that, radical as we are in all other departments of our lives, in the area of love we make the greatest concessions to people who deserve them the least. We return again and again to people who make us feel like we are being raped when we have sex. We come running through the darkness taking countless trains and buses to sit up all night with people who would never do the same for us. We wait for promised phone calls that we know will never come. We write poems for monsters who will never read them with the attention they require. We bear witness to their struggles in spite of our own, in spite of ourselves. What we are making with these people is not love but lies. By dint of our radical political beliefs, we already feel largely isolated in our work and are engaged constantly in battle. Such is the condition, perhaps, that causes us to move the bar lower and lower, letting just about anyone into our hearts. Why? Because, we tell ourselves, it is better than being alone."
I was shocked. How could I forget that I had said that? I laughed. I said, I'm feel like I'm destined to have the same revelation over and over again. Liz replied, "you're human."
So where do I go from here?
Each time I thought about Jeff for the rest of the day felt like being punched in the stomach. I could see that I was setting myself up but the clarity of that vision wasn't helping me to change my course. I decided I needed some clue as to how much of myself I should invest in seeing him. I asked if he wanted to hang out for the day or just meet up really quick. When he said, "the whole day!" my heart burst into butterflies and I immediately broke the bank. Shortly after this, however, I began to feel nervous and sick and afraid.
I never really ate a peach before I met you. Never let the juice run down my chin and fingers. Never washed my hands of the nectar with a half bottle of lukewarm water and backwash over the grass. Never ate more soft peaches out of the arm rest days later in lieu of breakfast.
It took me so long to get over you. I couldn't divorce the fruit from our afternoons. I had to stop buying peaches all together. I couldn't look out bus windows for weeks without thinking of you. Stores had to change their signs, go out of business. The landscape had to change itself.
In the parking lot of the lumber store in Pittsford I told my Dad that if I were my strongest self I wouldn't go but, I'm going, so what should I do? And he said, "if he says something - leave. Just walk away."
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