17 posts from January 2008

On blue-sky days, when they are so transparent, full of nothing, floating by on some high altitude breeze that we mortals can't feel but the birds beat against it whirling and chirping.
Everything is primary colors bathed in this bald, metallic summer sunlight, that sticks in the back of your throat like the cool acid tang of a fresh, iced, fizzy cola.
The grass is a live thing under your hands, the earth moving like the breeze in the heavens (the worms till against it) yet we mortals are still here in the middle.
Watching clouds on blue-sky days, when they are so transparent and their cotton bodies just sigh.

Show us how your relax after a hard day of work.

I once worked for a large public health agency. They took their mission seriously and employee health was a priority. When I was hired I had a range of health insurance plans to choose from, the grounds were inviting for walking, and all the cafeterias had at least one healthy option. Other perks included on-site gyms with good hours and quality equipment and free confidential mental health or career counseling. There was also a standard, physician's-office scale in every single women's bathroom.

I like to weigh myself. Which is to say, when I go to the gym I get on the scale after I put on my workout clothes before I go to stretch. At this point it is less vanity than ritual. A 'good' weight will certainly bring a little tiny triumph to my day, like finding a dollar bill. But a 'bad' weight won't disable my psyche. My weight is important enough to me to check it when I have an opportunity but I do not have a scale in my home bathroom. So why, I found myself wondering, did my job think I wanted one in every single bathroom at work?

Certainly I had like-minded colleagues who might get on once in a while to make sure they were maintaining the status quo.  I can even see it as a cheerleader for someone who is struggling with their weight loss but might be using work facilities for work-outs or walks.  Maybe the number that person discovers everyday helps them take a stroll-break, instead of a web-surfing-break. Maybe it helps them choose the yogurt instead of the ice cream.  But what about the clockwork bulimic who can now account for every ounce before and after lunch? What about the rigorous anorexic who will just see an excuse for another hour at the on-campus subsidized gym? What about someone who just takes their weight really hard and finds the scale an offensive object? Or for whom that number will ruin their day? Instead of being part of a private, at-home bath ritual, the derision, confirmation, scolding or encouragement is now available every time you want to tinkle.

And what does it say about women? Or worse what does it say about what someone at this agency thinks about women? Whether it's a hint or commentary it is loaded with social importance that goes far beyond the simple function of the tool.

I was a hair under 136 (pounds) today. And I will admit this was the source of some silent, internal rejoicing.  I'm 5'7". That weight is healthy and comfortable for me. But like many women, I do have my little fantasies about the thinner, younger me. By a thoroughly unpleasant accident of GI dysfunction and being a camp counselor (constant vigilance!), my body once found 125 pounds. That autumn when I ran I was fast for a normal person (though still slow for a real runner). It was because I was 125 pounds AND because I was 19. These days I run about average for a normal person but I dream of my fleet feet and the idea that losing a little weight might make me faster keeps me running. As long as I keep moving my heart wins.

Tomorrow I actually have to go to the doctor.  I bet her scale will say something entirely different. *sigh*

I broke my rhythm with a few days away. Composition is sticky now. As if the words must come through a chute slicked with molasses. Flashes of history swirl and flicker in my mind like the last flakes of confetti. Drifting, settling, blown off again by a gust or a sigh. I see faces, smiles, hands, the backs of heads; hear laughter, snatches of conversation, a made-up, distorted sound track to the memories.  One friend's wedding, another's intense grey-eyed gaze. The tether in my center has a weight on it. I feel heaviness in my core. I am sad.

I am trying to feel it. To inhale and exhale with it. To stand up under it and walk. To be, with it. It should be no different than joy. We would not want it in equal measure but it has every right...

...to be here with us. Is here with us. Sadness is just another part of existence.

However, little makes me less patient.

The hours so slow. The heart in such a rush to get through this segment. But there is no rushing the saggy emotions. And one must pace themselves for sorrow. There is no telling at its outset if it will be a sprint or a marathon.

Please friends, embrace me, wherever you are.      

I was flipping through a little notebook I carry around for grocery lists, great ideas, and pan drippings from my friable mind, when I came across directions to Dan's house. They were handwritten in my characteristic distracted scrawl. I was copying them from the Google maps site. I remember.  The words were water-stained --dripped snow probably-- and some of the black had defected to the margins of the drops' ghosts leaving pink skeletons of letters in its wake. But more importantly, when I saw his name my heart sat up.

Dan is a possibility. Not just because he's single and I know him. But, apparently, because I feel some kind of connection and kindness and desire for him. This was news to me. I had always considered him a contrived choice, derived from convenience and a certain Machiavellian calculation I lean to. It hadn't occurred to me that this was this layer of float above my heart where some hope was buoying something that my soul seems to think is a good idea. Or maybe I've just been stifling the desire. He is fifteen years older than me. I'm not quite sure how to approach him. However, I think I might want him. And that lifts me just a little. Just a little

I had to go to the grocery store this morning to get candy for a classroom project. The man was standing with his body-sized placard doing a dance that suggested all his bundling was not fending off the cold. I thought he was crazy. But then I noticed that he was standing outside a Planned Parenthood clinic. My heart softened. I was moved that someone cared so much about frightened, confused, disenfranchised mothers that they would stand outside a PP clinic in 23 degree weather, early in the morning, to direct the bleary-eyed and skulking who woke up in an 'Oh my god the condom broke!' post-coital panic. I resolved to bring him tea. Warm his hands at least. 

I realized too late he was a witness for the prosecution. Just as I approached with the tea he accosted a couple who had just exited. He was too persistent to be offering company-line help. 'We weren't in there for what you think.' They defended themselves as they tried to walk away. The security camera visual is probably great. Me chasing the placard, the placard chasing the couple. I gave him the tea, though I thought twice about it --my adamantly pro-choice heart pounding a little harder in my chest. He thanked me. He blessed me in fact. 'What's your name?' He called after me as I walked toward my car. 'So I can pray for you.'
 
I gave him somebody else's name.  I bet plenty of Katies need to be prayed for too. 

Like most humans my day has been one of listening -- to students, to peers, to the radio, to my own thoughts. The stories that stuck me were all from the Middle East. Explosions in Afghanistan and Beirut. 

The rumble of far away,foreign, only-imagined explosions has become so constant it is almost white noise. An expectation of the news, not a novelty.  But, like the view out your favorite window, even though most times you look without seeing, every now and again your are seized by the beauty in that snapshot of the world. 

Today's bombings gave me pause. There were no unusual body counts, no unusual motives, and the U.S is hardly an unusual target. But the blasts rang in my ears. I guess I think something might have changed in Afghanistan some little tick of the scales away from equilibrium towards 'the worse'.

Like most of us, I wish for many things daily: more sleep, more time, more love. But I would eagerly give up those extras for a profound and lasting change in parts of the world repeatedly cleaved by violence. 

It is not the annihilation of infrastructure. It is not even the bursting of individual lives. It is the repeated disrespect and destruction of humanity. How can we even remember what it feels like to be safe with these booms all around us? How can we teach children what safety is and peace if we are always at war? This is a cycle that gets bigger, not smaller, the longer it runs. We will only breed generations that make more war if we cannot end these.

Tomorrow I think I will wish for more peace. 

Dear CJ,
I've been thinking about you a lot lately. I hate it when that happens. You sprang to mind today because of a story I read. Something in it snagged a thread in my brain and reminded me of your occasional Puerto Rican pride. I think I miss you, though I'm going to be rude and say that I'm not sure why. Some of it I think is a lack of closure. I don't keep bumping into you so I have no way to test the skin on the wound. I can't whisper vicious things at you under my breath after you pass me by. So I'm stuck with this clunk. I don't have any resolution and what was us doesn't have anything to aspire to. I don't want you as a friend. I kind of want you to evaporate from my consciousness. If I had some sort of cosmic white-out I would spot over the whole affair (yes that's correct, you ruined the whole thing for me. Congratulations on creating such a post-break-up conflagration that I don't think of anything we had as good). I think of you at this time of year because I broke up with you at this time of year. And since I don't have anything else to do while I'm slogging through the snow I reflect.  Do you remember that you screamed? Some weird freakish little-girl scream. What the hell was that? Was it supposed to be your barbaric yawp? Or maybe the anguished wail of your trusting, loving soul rent by my ruthless, heartless deception.

Deception?! I'm sorry. I was under the impression that we were dating. Let's be generous and call it a relationship. As far as I'm concerned the tags don't matter, the point is the same. We were in the process of getting to know one another. When one person realizes that the other is not someone they want to continue getting to know at that intimate level, the courageous thing is to be honest about it and quit. I was honest about it, in the moment. I didn't drag it out for four weeks to get us through Valentine's Day. I didn't try to make you feel like you had committed some horrible ambiguous sin. I didn't even try to blame you. I simply told you that this wasn't going to work for me. And then you got mean.

Yes, you certainly warned me.  But I'm afraid that doesn't excuse you dear. Kind of like how saying 'No offense' excuses neither the comment's offensiveness nor the person who decided to go ahead and say it. You are always responsible for your words and your actions. I don't care if you were hurt.  Do you know how many times I've been hurt in my life, jackass? And I have never called anyone the things you called me. I have never tried to excuse my meanness with my own sorrow. I tried to be friends and all you did was spit hate.

We have tried to be friends again of late. My last weak moment was Thanksgiving when I put you on my mailing list on a whim. My only triumph in this stupid game is that now you are initiating. You put me on your mailing list. I got the two about your coming wedding and your unemployment and your sister's engagement. What no pictures of you and your sugarmama?  And did you just put me on the list so you could rub it in that you met someone?  Oddly enough, mean as you were then I doubt that my inclusion was a last vindictive dig.  I think you saw my inclusion as an olive branch and called my bet. I've folded. I'm out. I deleted you from my contacts, again.

We don't love in the same way CJ and we don't believe in the same things. Maybe I'm completely stupid, but it seems to me those differences would have sunk us in the long run even if I had not kicked our love in the shins 2 years ago.  You met someone else within weeks! of our break-up and now you two are getting married. I believe she is the right person for you. And I believe she came along at the right time. But the rapidity of how that happened and some of what I know you've given up for your relationship with her suggests to me that, L and your current relationship were what you were seeking all along. You probably wouldn't have gotten what you are so blissfully happy with now with me. I know I would not have gotten what I want with you. Just because I saw that earlier then you did, I get beat up?  that just doesn't seem fair to me.  I don't know that I will be able to forgive you for being mean to me just because our relationship did not turn out the way you wanted. And we have never been able to see eye-to-eye on what happened next. Your herculean efforts to extend yourself to me were not even large enough to make a speck on my radar. And you refuse to see me as anything other than deceitful for breaking up with you. Because my feelings changed I am a liar and not a normal person.  Haven't your feelings changed?  Look you love someone else now, and you're even trying, at least as passively as I was, to be nice to me. How come you're not an awful, horrible, ogre-ish liar? How come no one is yelling at you?  Much to my chagrin I am not going to forget you easily. 

Which probably means that I liked you more than I am ever going to want to admit. And I'm confessing here that I'm still angry with you. That's not going to make a bit of difference in your life but getting rid of it is going to make a whole lot of difference in mine. You warned me once, so here's yours. One day I may decide to be as petty and small as you were.  And my success will be so true and grand that you will never get the smell of it out of your nose when I finish rubbing your face in it. Until then, I hope you stumble and whack your shins a lot and have a hard time getting a job.  And don't be mean to your wife. If she's any kind of woman she won't sit still for that. And sweetie you are NOT worth it. 

Peace,
EJ

A motorcycle just pulled off down the street. Music beats reassuringly in my headphones. External pulse goes to auditory center then straight to my gut, the shallow parts of my chest, relaxing all the emotionally knotted parts. I can feel the triple locked, garrisoned, barricaded, portcullised gates to my heart loosening a little. I've been angry a lot the past few days. The knowledge that the clouds will part does not make the experience of the pain any less.

Housemate, new friends, old friends, ex-boyfriends, students, the realities of this planet earth: disappointing, infuriating, unfair, painful, irritating, discouraging, saddening. Lonely. 

I want to be comforted. I realized that last night somewhere after art.  Who will comfort me? Could someone please?  I would like that. A strong arm around my shoulders, gently urging me to lean on his chest, smell him, let the worries go, whatever they are. Not trouble myself any further. 

I am coming closer to acknowledging what I want in this life.  This seems the inevitable first step towards achieving it. I was getting there, stumblingly, before this latest chapter in my life. Now for the second time in 3 years I have gotten off this high speed goose chase of my life for one reason and one reason alone and I cannot make the reason fruit.  I might not even be able to give it enough time to reveal itself before I make a change again. Changes are not bad.  They do not even necessarily have to mean changes in location, which I have been stirring up so relentlessly in my life for the past several years. But the basic truth is when I focus on my career (which would be the next change, again) I seem to do so to the exclusion of everything else, in particular to the exclusion of finding a mate. 

In plainer language: I am not sure I am going to have a career in education. I think I am going to go back to school and get my MPH because I want an international career and I want to do something I might be able to leave at the office sometimes. Because I want to get started on this. I will not be enjoying the luxury of my current life (lots of time) for more than two years.  Maybe the person I am going to be with for a while is here with me now or is going to walk into my life tomorrow but I fret that if I don't meet him soon, I will not. And that might lead to my ultimately failing as I go forward because I need a lot of support. 

Of course I have support. My family is near by. And though I do not yet say it often or loudly this means a lot to me and I am really enjoying having them near. This seriously diminishes my chances of leaving the area even though I a) HATE! the weather. Did I mention that I hate the weather? I HATE THE WEATHER !!! and b) I despair of meeting someone here. How do I do better in that latter category? How do people meet? Any suggestions or ideas people? Anyone? 

Settling down here is an idea I am slowly adjusting to. I feel like I am in too many things right now. Trying too hard to find the right fit.  Either that or I'm just tired or both. 

The last idea I want to vent tonight is this. There are 3 men here I am interested in. One is engaged so he is off the list. I have the tiniest fantasy of breaking that up but that only happens in the movies. And even if it worked the fallout has so much potential for ugliness. That's just the wrong way to go about getting someone. The second one is much older than me. I am afraid to make a move and seem, naive, young and stupid (though all may be true). Further he is a central figure in a social group I share with my older brother. Holy awkward Batman, right. The third one is a distinct possibility that I am going to pursue. I just haven't closed the deal yet. Maybe next weekend. It would just be nice to cuddle. 

However, in a bold move towards my goal I bought some hot pants so I am ready for a trip to the clubs and some dancing and friend-making. 

Love. Love. Love

Peace.

I went to an art opening today.  The images and objects were provocative.  A family friend eagerly introduced me around. I walked the corridor to the subway with my hands aching to create something. The painful portion of inspiration. Like the tortured side of arousal. Honest animal yearning. Nothing to fill it but empty space. 

Writing is creative and I enjoy it. Among other things, this craft currently tethers me to someone I devoutly (and dismayingly) lust for. But sitting and writing does not satisfy my taste for tangible creation. I want something under my hands. This craving is eye-opening. It is more challenge than plight. It shines an unflinching light on my current obsession with the sensuous. The question is when I finally touch it, feel the hope, run my hands over the realization, will it make me feel any better? Will it fill the void?

This is me, going to find out.