Just a little bit slow to react these days. Those electrified moments are not as obvious or the dial has been turned way down low. Take it slow. I'm sort of enjoying the directions, although I don't know why I'm being given them (yet), but I'll follow the rules of engagement and slow everything down despite desire and despite time. This being quite the opposite of the American mania that I should be particiapting in: join all the clubs, get all the awards, make all the money. Instead I'm dreaming of some sort of fictional past that we all conjure up, the moral of every story when the everyman is the hero and the ones with the hustle and bustle are the losers. Culturally we certainly get a kick out of Hollywood, but we aren't going to make any examples of its narratives: the movie stars, after all, didn't slow down and take it easy until they were rich, rich, rich! How can we reward the everyman who works a normal day to pay the bills he has to pay, who doesn't over consume, so he hasn't any debt, doesn't 'want', which seems to be how we're being brought up. Want more and you can have more. Manifest.
Should I want to manifest freedom, freedom from want, where would I start? I should probably throw out the last three pairs of sinful high heels and stop lusting after that boy, I should probably stop competing and just ease myself in. But what would happen if you stopped in the midst of that manic flow? Common sense tells me I might be trampled.
A few weeks ago I listened to a girl from graduate school talk about her plan in action for art-world domination - at least, to put it fairly, the success of her practice, which rightfully she should want to manifest. In her voice however was that mania - a certain desperation to guarantee that this longing was useful, that this plan was going to lead to something satisfactory. I wondered how love worked in her life. Was it useful or wasteful - it eats up precious time after all. Was it natural and organic or an act? I had never seen her let her guard down even a bit, I describe it as 'being on message', so I have never been able to tell the depth of her soul underneath her mania. Everyone wants to see a crack, not in order to see weakness, but humanity. I see quite the opposite in people who are manically bent on success - their weakness if clearly on their sleeve. On the other hand the most intimidating people were those that never intimated any 'plan', but stepped comfortably through their life with their head up and a certain stillness. Not silence - just without the mania. I think its old fashioned confidence, but without the trappings of American mania or coastal neuroses, we can't recognize it anymore. Instead we call it aloof. Or other nasty things.
Take it slow. That's what I was told. I have the same tendancy for speed as anyone else here, and when faced with desire I want the shiney new object now, not later (I'll show you my credit card bills). And so I'm a little bit frightened of people who have that desire under such perfect control that other things bend to their will, or their confidence. I want that same stillness. Lately I've found myself slower to react - that part of me that is emotionally a day late and a dollar short has started to sync up with my willpower. But that sync hasn't kept me from confusing a good head of confidence with sheer stubborness. Sometimes my willpower, although less needy than when I was younger, just has more confidence in desire than in patience.
Monday, May 9, 2005
Sunday, May 8, 2005
1984
There's a smack-smack on pavement that bounces between the houses. I slide my window open as wide as I can and sniff the crisp evening air.
Smack-smack.
I can see the long, narrow backyard and the chain of identical yards as they curl down Ranchero Road. Cats parole the fence tops and lawn sprinklers fan back and forth over grass. I can see in to the neighbour's house across the alley - husband and wife at the kitchen table - the room simple and bare, their clothes the colour of nothing. It's not quite dusk.
Smack-smack.
I sit at the window and tell myself stories. I tell myself stories in the bathroom before the large mirror. I tell myself stories on the front deck, lying out on the wide wood rail tanning, precariously taunting a fall to the driveway and feeling a little bit dangerous, but I know I'm not.
Smack-smack.
My sister is out tonight. Her room is quiet and the door is closed. I sneak in there sometimes and breathe in the smell of Tracy. She's musky like a teenage girl is: part cheap perfume, part hairspray, part feet and part cigarette smoke.
Her bedroom has dark brown carpet for some reason, while the rest of the house has rust. My bedroom has white carpet because we moved in here when I was a baby. She has a red bedspread mom made printed with abstracted summer hats, a red phone shaped like a sports car and a red tape player. Her table under the window has a make-up mirror on it that has double doors covering the glass. It is covered in stickers and lipstick, as is the surface it sits on.
She has a jewellery box shaped like a dresser that places "Laura's Theme" from Doctor Zhivago. I always come in and wind it up, pull out the bottom drawer and let it play. It makes me feel sad, although I don't know why. I'm only 9 and I doubt I've seen Dr. Zhivago yet, but my parents have the record so I know the song.
I'd hung everything I knew about sadness on that clanky music box.
I creep around quietly in her space even though I know she won't be home. I had heard her on the phone after school talking with her friend, she's gone to a party down the street. She's mad at our mom.
She wore a leather jacket and a pair of black boots. She does her bleached hair like Madonna.
Smack-smack.
We'd gone away a couple weeks ago on holiday and Tracy had stayed home. I was depressed that she'd stayed, I wanted so badly for us to be friends.
When we were gone she threw a party at the townhouse, we could tell because everything had been moved around. It was clear that they'd tried to put things back as they should, but things were backwards and just a bit off. I could tell right away, it was like we had been burglarized.
Smack-smack
The little clay family that our Aunt had given us at Christmas had been on the bookshelf. There was a dad and a mom and two sisters: one big and one small. When we got home the big one had been broken. I'll never forget.
Smack-smack.
Tracy had played kick the can on the front street when she was younger with the kids from the houses across from our's. Their's was public housing. I couldn't figure out how that meant anything, because their town houses were the same as our's, only with bigger front yards. There were more kids on that side though. On our side there were a lot of single women or childless couples. The neighbours on our left changed constantly and on the right was a quiet immigrant couple who worked nights as janitors. They had had a baby girl the year before.
Across the street there was always something going on. Bobby was a football star but one night they came and took him to jail. The folks next door to Bobby fought pit-bull dogs in their basement and some mornings there would be bloody carpets hosed down on the front yard.
Smack-smack.
I never played out front or knew any of the kids.
Smack-smack.
I'm back in my window and I'm waiting.
Smack-smack.
The sun went down a half-hour ago.
( )-( )
I can hear the TV downstairs.
( )-( )
It's 11:30 p.m.. MST. Longest day of the year.
( )-( )
It's quiet and still. He's gone inside. He's no longer playing basketball on his driveway.
( )-( )
It's not that late but my parent's are looking for Tracy. I'm worried about my sister. I don't really get it yet that teenagers stay out as late as they can.
She's told them she was sleeping at a friend's. She'd let me in on the lie and I had warned her against it. I lied all the time too but I didn't want to be held responsible for her.
( )-( )
There's an argument rising from downstairs. I haven't really heard a noise like this come from my family before. I stare hard at the clock in my room and it's 1 am. Their voices undulate up the stairs from the narrow hall leading to the front door. I can't make out anything but crying and agony.
My sister is yelling at dad: "fucker, fucker, fuck you", she's slurring. There's a tension that makes it under the crack of my door and into my bed; it invades my sleep and grasps my lungs. I'm scared. I can't make out the situation until mom starts to read the room back to dad: "She has puke in hair Bill...she's missing her boots.....her ear is bleeding and the lobe's split open..."
I hear the kind of thumping that people never make on purpose and I get to my feet. I don't know who I'm trying to save, dad or mom or my big sister or all of them, as I race down stairs to find my dog at the top of the stairs, petrified despite his size.
Thmp-thmp.
They don't see me as I see them.
Thmp-thmp.
Three people equally terrified.
Thmp-thmp.
I knew where Tracy had been. She said she was staying at a friend's. Mom had asked me if I knew anything when they were calling around. I had slunk away to my room for bed: "I don't know anything!"
Thmp-thmp.
I see her little white socks crusty with dirt. She has the tiniest feet I've ever seen.
Thmp-thmp.
I'm frozen where I stand and the sound is pinched off. I don't know how long the struggle carries on.
Thmp-thmp.
Dad took her to the hospital that night.
Thmp-thmp.
I get up in the morning for a softball game. I dread going (I'm the worst player on the team) but I dread staying at home.
No-one says a thing out of the ordinary.
I trudge down Ranchero Road in grey polyester uniform. It's to hot for ball.
Smack-smack.
No-one ever says a thing out of the ordinary.
Smack-smack.
Tracy left home at 17.
Smack-smack.
I can see the long, narrow backyard and the chain of identical yards as they curl down Ranchero Road. Cats parole the fence tops and lawn sprinklers fan back and forth over grass. I can see in to the neighbour's house across the alley - husband and wife at the kitchen table - the room simple and bare, their clothes the colour of nothing. It's not quite dusk.
Smack-smack.
I sit at the window and tell myself stories. I tell myself stories in the bathroom before the large mirror. I tell myself stories on the front deck, lying out on the wide wood rail tanning, precariously taunting a fall to the driveway and feeling a little bit dangerous, but I know I'm not.
Smack-smack.
My sister is out tonight. Her room is quiet and the door is closed. I sneak in there sometimes and breathe in the smell of Tracy. She's musky like a teenage girl is: part cheap perfume, part hairspray, part feet and part cigarette smoke.
Her bedroom has dark brown carpet for some reason, while the rest of the house has rust. My bedroom has white carpet because we moved in here when I was a baby. She has a red bedspread mom made printed with abstracted summer hats, a red phone shaped like a sports car and a red tape player. Her table under the window has a make-up mirror on it that has double doors covering the glass. It is covered in stickers and lipstick, as is the surface it sits on.
She has a jewellery box shaped like a dresser that places "Laura's Theme" from Doctor Zhivago. I always come in and wind it up, pull out the bottom drawer and let it play. It makes me feel sad, although I don't know why. I'm only 9 and I doubt I've seen Dr. Zhivago yet, but my parents have the record so I know the song.
I'd hung everything I knew about sadness on that clanky music box.
I creep around quietly in her space even though I know she won't be home. I had heard her on the phone after school talking with her friend, she's gone to a party down the street. She's mad at our mom.
She wore a leather jacket and a pair of black boots. She does her bleached hair like Madonna.
Smack-smack.
We'd gone away a couple weeks ago on holiday and Tracy had stayed home. I was depressed that she'd stayed, I wanted so badly for us to be friends.
When we were gone she threw a party at the townhouse, we could tell because everything had been moved around. It was clear that they'd tried to put things back as they should, but things were backwards and just a bit off. I could tell right away, it was like we had been burglarized.
Smack-smack
The little clay family that our Aunt had given us at Christmas had been on the bookshelf. There was a dad and a mom and two sisters: one big and one small. When we got home the big one had been broken. I'll never forget.
Smack-smack.
Tracy had played kick the can on the front street when she was younger with the kids from the houses across from our's. Their's was public housing. I couldn't figure out how that meant anything, because their town houses were the same as our's, only with bigger front yards. There were more kids on that side though. On our side there were a lot of single women or childless couples. The neighbours on our left changed constantly and on the right was a quiet immigrant couple who worked nights as janitors. They had had a baby girl the year before.
Across the street there was always something going on. Bobby was a football star but one night they came and took him to jail. The folks next door to Bobby fought pit-bull dogs in their basement and some mornings there would be bloody carpets hosed down on the front yard.
Smack-smack.
I never played out front or knew any of the kids.
Smack-smack.
I'm back in my window and I'm waiting.
Smack-smack.
The sun went down a half-hour ago.
( )-( )
I can hear the TV downstairs.
( )-( )
It's 11:30 p.m.. MST. Longest day of the year.
( )-( )
It's quiet and still. He's gone inside. He's no longer playing basketball on his driveway.
( )-( )
It's not that late but my parent's are looking for Tracy. I'm worried about my sister. I don't really get it yet that teenagers stay out as late as they can.
She's told them she was sleeping at a friend's. She'd let me in on the lie and I had warned her against it. I lied all the time too but I didn't want to be held responsible for her.
( )-( )
There's an argument rising from downstairs. I haven't really heard a noise like this come from my family before. I stare hard at the clock in my room and it's 1 am. Their voices undulate up the stairs from the narrow hall leading to the front door. I can't make out anything but crying and agony.
My sister is yelling at dad: "fucker, fucker, fuck you", she's slurring. There's a tension that makes it under the crack of my door and into my bed; it invades my sleep and grasps my lungs. I'm scared. I can't make out the situation until mom starts to read the room back to dad: "She has puke in hair Bill...she's missing her boots.....her ear is bleeding and the lobe's split open..."
I hear the kind of thumping that people never make on purpose and I get to my feet. I don't know who I'm trying to save, dad or mom or my big sister or all of them, as I race down stairs to find my dog at the top of the stairs, petrified despite his size.
Thmp-thmp.
They don't see me as I see them.
Thmp-thmp.
Three people equally terrified.
Thmp-thmp.
I knew where Tracy had been. She said she was staying at a friend's. Mom had asked me if I knew anything when they were calling around. I had slunk away to my room for bed: "I don't know anything!"
Thmp-thmp.
I see her little white socks crusty with dirt. She has the tiniest feet I've ever seen.
Thmp-thmp.
I'm frozen where I stand and the sound is pinched off. I don't know how long the struggle carries on.
Thmp-thmp.
Dad took her to the hospital that night.
Thmp-thmp.
I get up in the morning for a softball game. I dread going (I'm the worst player on the team) but I dread staying at home.
No-one says a thing out of the ordinary.
I trudge down Ranchero Road in grey polyester uniform. It's to hot for ball.
Smack-smack.
No-one ever says a thing out of the ordinary.
Smack-smack.
Tracy left home at 17.
Thursday, May 5, 2005
Bicycles: A Personal Account
I have a bicycle. An orange one that I had to have a garage sale in order to buy. I also sold a few of my CDs and took clothes into consignment. I was like an 8 year old, except that when I was 8, I probably couldn’t yet ride a bike. Such a late bloomer in certain ways, was I. Am I.
In the story I’m riding through downtown Calgary with my husband. It was the day of the Stampede Parade and so the streets were shut off and crowds were gathering early with their children, cups of Tim Horton’s coffee in hand and lawn chairs in position.
We rode in the crisp morning air - still cool, because mornings will never be hot in Alberta - planning to plant ourselves on the roof of the museum and watch the parade below us. Watch the floats float.
This is where I should begin:
"Hey howdy, hey cowboy," before we left our home, we were sitting on the fire escape talking, you smoking cigarettes and me hanging from the stairs above. (Why didn’t I smoke with you? I do with everyone else.)
We’d sit outside and talk sometimes. We’d go over to the convenience store and buy snacks and pig out with a movie and ding-dongs. Or no ding-dongs, but I’d eat Hotrods anyway, and you’d have peanut M&Ms and Coca-cola. A steady diet of those.
In the story schoolz out for the summer and we are riding our bicycles through Calgary like a couple of teenagers. We plan to plant ourselves on the roof of the museum and watch the parade below us.
Instead I find the letters.
We went to the fucking bookstore, how civilized. I came outside and couldn’t find you and thought you’d left us for good.
Last night I rode out to the shore and found all the houses under water - or flooded I guess. They looked like they were bobbing in the sea, the waves lapping around the front steps and covering the lawn. It was a pretty foggy night and the water was awful black. I may have been riding in it or may have stayed on shore, I don’t know. I just know that I turned around eventually to head home and I felt like I was being followed. I stopped and called Dad to pick me up - I was at the cross-roads - but of what and where I don’t know.
I didn’t see Robert Johnson there.
But I got home and found the bike seat missing the next day.
So you’ve been out boozin’ and whorin’ eh? Just like you’d always wanted in your poems. I don’t know anyone who’s more of a romantic than you, young man. Maybe me. I have that paper bag still, that you gave me the Oreos in.
Man, we built 6 yrs around junk food and couldn’t gain a pound.
"So I’m at the doctor see, and he says he has to check for a brain tumour and I says, what would I want with a tumour?"
(They took a flashlight and looked into your ear for that tumour, the light came shining out your eyes.)
And so I say: "fuck - give me a break, you’ll call when you find out right? Were you going to call or what?"
And I imagine you in your new bar - some strip mall pub in Winterpeg - telling them you talked to your wife on the phone for the first time. Maybe you don’t tell them a thing, being the romantic that you are, you probably want to remain a mystery. Good for you, I wish I could maintain the same composure.
But in the story I’m walking down 14th street in a flowered dress. I think it’s hot outside, I may have brought my cardigan. Karen is somewhere on the other end and we’ll have fish with her. For some reason I hate you only in moments on that walk because I still know we’re on the brink of love.
We were awful young baby. Way too young for how intense and hard we were on one another. Lying in bed in the dark and falling so hard and fast inside - to places I know I’ll never go again.
What did we do again? Go to Superdrug and buy snacks and then that video store in Chinatown and rent Japanese anime porn and lay out blankets and pillows and turn off the lights. It was like building a fortress with you every night. Until something snapped.
Was her name Joanne?
And snapped again.
I sat down on the street and wept.
I lay down on 8th ave and yelled.
I lost myself inside my head - I’m allergic to wine by the way -
We snapped.
I can’t imagine a depth of pain that is any farther down. That’s the truth. You.
So I was on my bicycle you see, coming back from Evanston at around 8pm and it’s misty out. Just spitting rain. It takes about 30 mins and I’m riding through Roger’s Park and it may or may not be a good part of town - I don’t know - but I feel alive. I feel like I just want to stay on my bike in the dusk in the rain forever in a neighbourhood I don’t really know in a city I’ve barely seen. I want to be suspended.
And then the doctor says: you have scar tissue on your heart, you’ve been having a series of small heart attacks.
And I wonder: is that real? Or is it just us and is it just us? Will we die of that exploded heart, when that one last small heart-attack becomes too large?
And we’re in British Columbia in the motel and lying in the bed watching marathon TV and making plans for mini-golf or go-carts. Its deserted. I want to cry to think about it, you and I building forts like that.
You know, we stopped making love. We even stopped fucking - until of course you were leaving.
So I’m on my bicycle and I’m thinking only of that day like I’m watching us from above the roof of the museum, and I see us on our bikes riding into our fate. My hand on that locker door and on the sheets of paper I find there. Something else guided my hand I swear - it was all so fucking karmic. Who could’ve said then, that this is where we’d be now? You in Winnipeg and me in Chicago? Me the drunk, and you? The smart ass I guess. I’m sure you haven't straightened out that piss-poor attitude yet.
Sonorous, rich, cut to ribbons. When we danced around the family room and you sang me songs. I swear to God there’s not a person in the world who knew our love. Not that feeling.
In the story I’m riding through downtown Calgary with my husband. It was the day of the Stampede Parade and so the streets were shut off and crowds were gathering early with their children, cups of Tim Horton’s coffee in hand and lawn chairs in position.
We rode in the crisp morning air - still cool, because mornings will never be hot in Alberta - planning to plant ourselves on the roof of the museum and watch the parade below us. Watch the floats float.
This is where I should begin:
"Hey howdy, hey cowboy," before we left our home, we were sitting on the fire escape talking, you smoking cigarettes and me hanging from the stairs above. (Why didn’t I smoke with you? I do with everyone else.)
We’d sit outside and talk sometimes. We’d go over to the convenience store and buy snacks and pig out with a movie and ding-dongs. Or no ding-dongs, but I’d eat Hotrods anyway, and you’d have peanut M&Ms and Coca-cola. A steady diet of those.
In the story schoolz out for the summer and we are riding our bicycles through Calgary like a couple of teenagers. We plan to plant ourselves on the roof of the museum and watch the parade below us.
Instead I find the letters.
We went to the fucking bookstore, how civilized. I came outside and couldn’t find you and thought you’d left us for good.
Last night I rode out to the shore and found all the houses under water - or flooded I guess. They looked like they were bobbing in the sea, the waves lapping around the front steps and covering the lawn. It was a pretty foggy night and the water was awful black. I may have been riding in it or may have stayed on shore, I don’t know. I just know that I turned around eventually to head home and I felt like I was being followed. I stopped and called Dad to pick me up - I was at the cross-roads - but of what and where I don’t know.
I didn’t see Robert Johnson there.
But I got home and found the bike seat missing the next day.
So you’ve been out boozin’ and whorin’ eh? Just like you’d always wanted in your poems. I don’t know anyone who’s more of a romantic than you, young man. Maybe me. I have that paper bag still, that you gave me the Oreos in.
Man, we built 6 yrs around junk food and couldn’t gain a pound.
"So I’m at the doctor see, and he says he has to check for a brain tumour and I says, what would I want with a tumour?"
(They took a flashlight and looked into your ear for that tumour, the light came shining out your eyes.)
And so I say: "fuck - give me a break, you’ll call when you find out right? Were you going to call or what?"
And I imagine you in your new bar - some strip mall pub in Winterpeg - telling them you talked to your wife on the phone for the first time. Maybe you don’t tell them a thing, being the romantic that you are, you probably want to remain a mystery. Good for you, I wish I could maintain the same composure.
But in the story I’m walking down 14th street in a flowered dress. I think it’s hot outside, I may have brought my cardigan. Karen is somewhere on the other end and we’ll have fish with her. For some reason I hate you only in moments on that walk because I still know we’re on the brink of love.
We were awful young baby. Way too young for how intense and hard we were on one another. Lying in bed in the dark and falling so hard and fast inside - to places I know I’ll never go again.
What did we do again? Go to Superdrug and buy snacks and then that video store in Chinatown and rent Japanese anime porn and lay out blankets and pillows and turn off the lights. It was like building a fortress with you every night. Until something snapped.
Was her name Joanne?
And snapped again.
I sat down on the street and wept.
I lay down on 8th ave and yelled.
I lost myself inside my head - I’m allergic to wine by the way -
We snapped.
I can’t imagine a depth of pain that is any farther down. That’s the truth. You.
So I was on my bicycle you see, coming back from Evanston at around 8pm and it’s misty out. Just spitting rain. It takes about 30 mins and I’m riding through Roger’s Park and it may or may not be a good part of town - I don’t know - but I feel alive. I feel like I just want to stay on my bike in the dusk in the rain forever in a neighbourhood I don’t really know in a city I’ve barely seen. I want to be suspended.
And then the doctor says: you have scar tissue on your heart, you’ve been having a series of small heart attacks.
And I wonder: is that real? Or is it just us and is it just us? Will we die of that exploded heart, when that one last small heart-attack becomes too large?
And we’re in British Columbia in the motel and lying in the bed watching marathon TV and making plans for mini-golf or go-carts. Its deserted. I want to cry to think about it, you and I building forts like that.
You know, we stopped making love. We even stopped fucking - until of course you were leaving.
So I’m on my bicycle and I’m thinking only of that day like I’m watching us from above the roof of the museum, and I see us on our bikes riding into our fate. My hand on that locker door and on the sheets of paper I find there. Something else guided my hand I swear - it was all so fucking karmic. Who could’ve said then, that this is where we’d be now? You in Winnipeg and me in Chicago? Me the drunk, and you? The smart ass I guess. I’m sure you haven't straightened out that piss-poor attitude yet.
Sonorous, rich, cut to ribbons. When we danced around the family room and you sang me songs. I swear to God there’s not a person in the world who knew our love. Not that feeling.
Once Removed
There is a cliche - you can never go home; which I think means you can never return to that complete utter innocence of home and childhood folded together. Now physically removed from home, having set myself facing another direction I wonder which thing about home is more resonant with me. Was home my mom and dad's house? Was it my ex-boyfriend? My old job? Sunny afternoons on the porch with beer and Jason? I have long felt that the uncomfortable and feeble severing of my friendship with Jason was the last snip of the apron string. Now home is a place again, just a city, but one that no longer has an emotional pull. My friends have scattered and my loves have all died away.
Why is puppy love and friendship so bound up in comfort? I think of the anger and fear that welled up inside of me between leaving Rich and Jason and I severing contact, and I realize that was the pivotal moment of growth. I was actually becoming - nothing Deleuzian here, more Oprah - (an adult). I was responsible for me and was painfully certain I wouldn't return to the bosom of home, where I knew as well as anyone, there was no one waiting. And even if there was, it would be bookended with misery, not a fete for the returning heroine.
There's that song - Prodigal Daughter - "look here comes the prodigal son, fetch him a tall drink of water, but there's none in the cup, cause he drank it all up, left for the prodigal daughter". I think both my sister and I have ejected ourselves - we know there is nothing waiting for us when we return, so we keep going. She astounds me with her steam, her perseverance. I feel on the other hand that mine has only picked up since that fateful winter. Now I have that perseverance, I have abandoned fear, but also feel a bit of an urge to taunt fate. Isn't it time to go again? If you can never go home, why turn a temporary sojourn into one?
What puzzles me now is the emotional, physical feeling of home. A peace that envelopes a person when in the presence of another. Is this a deja vu or just pattern behavior? You are like my sister, so I feel 'home' when I sit beside you. But at my age, how many personalities must feel familiar now? Are they still only ones reminiscent of mom and dad? I'm certain when I sat a few weeks ago on C's back patio drinking beer in the evening sun and talking nonsense with his landlord that it didn't feel like home because he or his friends bare any resemblance to my family. Instead it is frame. I have somewhere remembered an experience that was pleasurable - was it my age? my company? the air that night? - that has been encoded as 'perfection'. Perfection = peace = 'home'. So you can 'go home again', when you find those isolated moments of perfection: the perfect light, air, conversation.
My sense is that I could reexperience this emotion over and over, if everyone in the picture was unknowingly complicit. I remember very clearly what was pleasurable as a child: sitting on the back balcony on late summer nights with my parents. I had been allowed to stay up late, it was 11 o'clock. The patio lanterns are lit and I'm playing with some toys on the green plastic carpet and my parents are drinking beer. The air is warm and mosquitoes buzz around and I feel complete. This is conditioning: now whenever I sit at dusk or in darkness on a deck and drink a beer in the warm summer air I feel the same pleasure. An inner satisfaction that is essential: to relive the sensation of staying up late for the first time again and again. The sensation of seeing the part of the world that had so long been off limits. This is going home.
Why is puppy love and friendship so bound up in comfort? I think of the anger and fear that welled up inside of me between leaving Rich and Jason and I severing contact, and I realize that was the pivotal moment of growth. I was actually becoming - nothing Deleuzian here, more Oprah - (an adult). I was responsible for me and was painfully certain I wouldn't return to the bosom of home, where I knew as well as anyone, there was no one waiting. And even if there was, it would be bookended with misery, not a fete for the returning heroine.
There's that song - Prodigal Daughter - "look here comes the prodigal son, fetch him a tall drink of water, but there's none in the cup, cause he drank it all up, left for the prodigal daughter". I think both my sister and I have ejected ourselves - we know there is nothing waiting for us when we return, so we keep going. She astounds me with her steam, her perseverance. I feel on the other hand that mine has only picked up since that fateful winter. Now I have that perseverance, I have abandoned fear, but also feel a bit of an urge to taunt fate. Isn't it time to go again? If you can never go home, why turn a temporary sojourn into one?
What puzzles me now is the emotional, physical feeling of home. A peace that envelopes a person when in the presence of another. Is this a deja vu or just pattern behavior? You are like my sister, so I feel 'home' when I sit beside you. But at my age, how many personalities must feel familiar now? Are they still only ones reminiscent of mom and dad? I'm certain when I sat a few weeks ago on C's back patio drinking beer in the evening sun and talking nonsense with his landlord that it didn't feel like home because he or his friends bare any resemblance to my family. Instead it is frame. I have somewhere remembered an experience that was pleasurable - was it my age? my company? the air that night? - that has been encoded as 'perfection'. Perfection = peace = 'home'. So you can 'go home again', when you find those isolated moments of perfection: the perfect light, air, conversation.
My sense is that I could reexperience this emotion over and over, if everyone in the picture was unknowingly complicit. I remember very clearly what was pleasurable as a child: sitting on the back balcony on late summer nights with my parents. I had been allowed to stay up late, it was 11 o'clock. The patio lanterns are lit and I'm playing with some toys on the green plastic carpet and my parents are drinking beer. The air is warm and mosquitoes buzz around and I feel complete. This is conditioning: now whenever I sit at dusk or in darkness on a deck and drink a beer in the warm summer air I feel the same pleasure. An inner satisfaction that is essential: to relive the sensation of staying up late for the first time again and again. The sensation of seeing the part of the world that had so long been off limits. This is going home.
Tuesday, May 3, 2005
The object that waits.
Shouldering. The mutual moment of supporting another with a balance of pressure. The impossible structure that has moved away from the scaffolding, the armature and the framework and assembled itself in the middle with balletic grace. This composite moment is magical, delicate, simple.
Last night I dreamt that you took me out to the middle of an endless, flat field and held me, enveloped me in your arms and your body, covering me in a woolen coat. The sky was dark and moody and I complained that we were in the open, that people could see us out here, but you kissed me and told me that the crowd couldn't see. They were moving the other direction.
It was true. When I looked their way, they were dissipating and I would soon be alone out here with you in a cold and vast flat tundra seated on the ground. I woke up. I couldn't tell if there was dread or complacency in my heart when I discovered that the one that was going hold me was also the one who could hurt me; that far from any enclosure there is a precarious feeling of freedom and fear.
We are here in the middle now. We've toed the marker and are waiting for the cue. But the cue never comes, and the action remains poised. You remain with your hand on my face - unclear whether you will slap or caress my cheek. The choreography goes unwitnessed without a dance, the stage directions are frozen and poise is intention. This assemblage of parts could spring to life or fall to pieces; spraying the air or the ground with its life. But there is none, just a taxidermied gesture that waits and balances, as the crowd backs away and the moment persists.
Peek over your shoulder: it is still there.
Last night I dreamt that you took me out to the middle of an endless, flat field and held me, enveloped me in your arms and your body, covering me in a woolen coat. The sky was dark and moody and I complained that we were in the open, that people could see us out here, but you kissed me and told me that the crowd couldn't see. They were moving the other direction.
It was true. When I looked their way, they were dissipating and I would soon be alone out here with you in a cold and vast flat tundra seated on the ground. I woke up. I couldn't tell if there was dread or complacency in my heart when I discovered that the one that was going hold me was also the one who could hurt me; that far from any enclosure there is a precarious feeling of freedom and fear.
We are here in the middle now. We've toed the marker and are waiting for the cue. But the cue never comes, and the action remains poised. You remain with your hand on my face - unclear whether you will slap or caress my cheek. The choreography goes unwitnessed without a dance, the stage directions are frozen and poise is intention. This assemblage of parts could spring to life or fall to pieces; spraying the air or the ground with its life. But there is none, just a taxidermied gesture that waits and balances, as the crowd backs away and the moment persists.
Peek over your shoulder: it is still there.
Monday, May 2, 2005
Perfect Lies
The story-shaped self - at least this decade's or this generation's version of authenticity, has required us to define ourselves by the words we use to frame our lives. The words we use over dinner, over beers, on a date, in school, on our blogs. We want to tell our lives, and have it unfold as we've seen lives unfold on television. My mind plays a few tricks as I imagine - prior to TV and movies, how did people conceive of their lives unfolding? Stories were anecdotal and meant to teach lessons, or just so morals, and not intended so much, as they were passed down, to illustrate a perfect start and finish. It was under these morals we fashioned selves that met socialized, religiously sanctioned lives, authentic or not - they were the lives lived. This isn't to say that books and their fiction didn't have an effect on one's determination of their being - influence their 'authenticity' somewhat, but a book unfolds slowly, where as the passive act of watching feeds you. You are taught by what entertains you, especially as communication methods become more savvy and fold in the psychology of Gestalt, and what we passively watch trains us.
Last week I heard film-maker Guy Maddin talk about his work. He told long, beautifully funny stories about being a child and falling in love with sights and sounds of film and radio. He spoke of the media as wrapping him, folding him in, covering him like a blanket. He eroticized his influences, the women of these films out his grasp but tantalizing and desirous, and out of this desire, an adult Maddin emerges - his adult self shaped by these moving memories - at once time based, and then contained. The narrative framework contains, the movie loop contains, and experience contained - a time capsule of desire that can be revisited and refelt again and again within hour allotments, re-experienced and relieved in every film Maddin makes for himself in order to satisfy this desire.
Maddin's stories sped onward - they were rapid and peppery - and filled with, lies. I think they were lies - the kind that leaves the audience whispering afterward - "was that part about the chimp, true??" But they were true lies - to coin a movie - because they were his. His embellishments and his narrative. These were the lies that Maddin shaped his self with, and his art, and because they were his - his creation - they were true. Who cares if the chimp really pistol whipped him (literally), the carnival ride we take hearing it, is worth the same suspension of disbelief. (You likely won't die on the rollercoaster, but you feel like you might be in danger). Thrills are great lies, but when you experience them, they are still true. The thrill is perhaps the perfect definition of the true-lie.
Is it the millenial moment to have to lie to tell the truth? Is this result of the society of the spectacle, that in our speech and in our framing out authentic selves that we lie, but these lies become and are more true than what other plain words might say? The truth of a story is useless, it is illegitimacy which has value. These little lies acting as manifest destiny, that with their retooling and retelling the narrator will get closer to the truth of themselves each time, until their story has completed the full circle. At full circle it might be bare, stripped, naked, without disguise. It may be uncomfortable or may be charming. But the truth must now be very charismatic to compete with the great lies we have been telling all along. These charismatic truths have begun to shape shift and appear like spectacle, confusing and maybe even conspiratorial.
Last week I heard film-maker Guy Maddin talk about his work. He told long, beautifully funny stories about being a child and falling in love with sights and sounds of film and radio. He spoke of the media as wrapping him, folding him in, covering him like a blanket. He eroticized his influences, the women of these films out his grasp but tantalizing and desirous, and out of this desire, an adult Maddin emerges - his adult self shaped by these moving memories - at once time based, and then contained. The narrative framework contains, the movie loop contains, and experience contained - a time capsule of desire that can be revisited and refelt again and again within hour allotments, re-experienced and relieved in every film Maddin makes for himself in order to satisfy this desire.
Maddin's stories sped onward - they were rapid and peppery - and filled with, lies. I think they were lies - the kind that leaves the audience whispering afterward - "was that part about the chimp, true??" But they were true lies - to coin a movie - because they were his. His embellishments and his narrative. These were the lies that Maddin shaped his self with, and his art, and because they were his - his creation - they were true. Who cares if the chimp really pistol whipped him (literally), the carnival ride we take hearing it, is worth the same suspension of disbelief. (You likely won't die on the rollercoaster, but you feel like you might be in danger). Thrills are great lies, but when you experience them, they are still true. The thrill is perhaps the perfect definition of the true-lie.
Is it the millenial moment to have to lie to tell the truth? Is this result of the society of the spectacle, that in our speech and in our framing out authentic selves that we lie, but these lies become and are more true than what other plain words might say? The truth of a story is useless, it is illegitimacy which has value. These little lies acting as manifest destiny, that with their retooling and retelling the narrator will get closer to the truth of themselves each time, until their story has completed the full circle. At full circle it might be bare, stripped, naked, without disguise. It may be uncomfortable or may be charming. But the truth must now be very charismatic to compete with the great lies we have been telling all along. These charismatic truths have begun to shape shift and appear like spectacle, confusing and maybe even conspiratorial.
Friday, April 29, 2005
Never kiss a fool and never be fooled by a kiss.
With every lover I reach a stand off where I decide - its me or him, and I delete their numbers, lose their gifts, throw away their letters. I erase them from my mind. Always the girl with a dozen ex-lovers, half who will never speak to me because I threw such caustic words their way.
We've gone in strange semi-circles never crossing paths, to seeing each other everywhere, or if not one another, some reminder of. I can't resist seeing in that some intention by the cosmos that our world's collide - and right now, it feels as though our bumpers grind uncomfortably against one another's. I want you out. I don't want you where I go, which is why, I drunkenly say: asshole. You fucking asshole. Because I don't want to find you in my house, where it suddenly seems that you've stepped, and at the same time, I can't tell why I'm so adament.
It is for one, that I want so much for us to be friends. I want to will you to know me for more than my body, my sex, my silence. I want you to hear me and watch me the way friends see one another. This is my greatest, aching desire that I carry from man to man, for one to love me like a brother would. I want all of our desire to be poured into our conversations, or chance similaritities, our passions. I want our minds to be all that is tantilized, and our hands to only care for the other. I'm jealous that I'm not that girl, because then we'd actually know one another - instead I am the skirt you chase. And chase for years on end. And I put up such a weak fight, as the first flutter of your hand melts my resolve and I must admit.
The first few encounters, I was on autopilot. I wanted something, I wanted you, but kept a thin sheet between us as protection, allowing for total detachment within a matter of hours. The next time I saw you I was able to slip easily into amusing banter, a stand-up act where I entertained you and your friends. I was able to play me, and I think, make myself likeable. Desireable again. Because it seemed, I think to you, that I didn't care. This one last time, this one last time I insisted that I wanted you and boldly placed myself in your way, steadying myself to allow my chest to be unzipped, my soul to pour out, and something to be given away that I couldn't recover. I don't know if you even noticed - as we rolled to face each other and our lips met, hungrier than ever before - I thought I felt our hearts leap in a kind of union that seemed out of place here. Here which is nowhere. Unlocatable. Dislocated. Empty.
I have noticabley become detached from your friends, who thought I was so likable before, they must wonder (or do they know?) why I don't love you like they do. They must think I used you cruelly. But in my ears her sing-song voice says your name "isn't it sexy?" and asks me who my lovers are. I think sometimes she was hunting me there and then for you, when she brought us glasses of gin, grinning. I think she was trying to make me love you, and I wanted to say: I do. You don't understand, I do.
We've gone in strange semi-circles never crossing paths, to seeing each other everywhere, or if not one another, some reminder of. I can't resist seeing in that some intention by the cosmos that our world's collide - and right now, it feels as though our bumpers grind uncomfortably against one another's. I want you out. I don't want you where I go, which is why, I drunkenly say: asshole. You fucking asshole. Because I don't want to find you in my house, where it suddenly seems that you've stepped, and at the same time, I can't tell why I'm so adament.
It is for one, that I want so much for us to be friends. I want to will you to know me for more than my body, my sex, my silence. I want you to hear me and watch me the way friends see one another. This is my greatest, aching desire that I carry from man to man, for one to love me like a brother would. I want all of our desire to be poured into our conversations, or chance similaritities, our passions. I want our minds to be all that is tantilized, and our hands to only care for the other. I'm jealous that I'm not that girl, because then we'd actually know one another - instead I am the skirt you chase. And chase for years on end. And I put up such a weak fight, as the first flutter of your hand melts my resolve and I must admit.
The first few encounters, I was on autopilot. I wanted something, I wanted you, but kept a thin sheet between us as protection, allowing for total detachment within a matter of hours. The next time I saw you I was able to slip easily into amusing banter, a stand-up act where I entertained you and your friends. I was able to play me, and I think, make myself likeable. Desireable again. Because it seemed, I think to you, that I didn't care. This one last time, this one last time I insisted that I wanted you and boldly placed myself in your way, steadying myself to allow my chest to be unzipped, my soul to pour out, and something to be given away that I couldn't recover. I don't know if you even noticed - as we rolled to face each other and our lips met, hungrier than ever before - I thought I felt our hearts leap in a kind of union that seemed out of place here. Here which is nowhere. Unlocatable. Dislocated. Empty.
I have noticabley become detached from your friends, who thought I was so likable before, they must wonder (or do they know?) why I don't love you like they do. They must think I used you cruelly. But in my ears her sing-song voice says your name "isn't it sexy?" and asks me who my lovers are. I think sometimes she was hunting me there and then for you, when she brought us glasses of gin, grinning. I think she was trying to make me love you, and I wanted to say: I do. You don't understand, I do.
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