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.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
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?
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