The struggle of today’s teenage boy is real: how to obsess and drench oneself in cologne while maintaining the most offensively odiferous feet at the same time. These two things, seemingly and reasonably at complete odds with one another, inform the daily existence of the male teenager. Studies should commence on how to hold two such ideas and modes of living in one head at the exact same time.
How does this happen? I need to know. Because my head cannot wrap itself two mildly-opposing ideas without hurting itself – and I have to start learning, for my own ease.
Our Japanese maple has been aflame for a few days now, wind and rain and snow be damned. I’m dangerously operating on autopilot, at least on this blog, while the circumstances of life swirl madly around – all of which will be addressed at some point – perhaps here, perhaps not. The dangers of having a writer in the family include being exposed at any moment for the wretched truth of one’s actions, without sentiment or scorn. The court of public opinion is sometimes the most powerful court in all the land, and in the words of Taylor Swift, “I protect the family.”
My meditations have been bracketing the days – either at the very beginning, before the sun is up, or at the very end, long after the sun has gone down. Candlelight is the only light in the room at such times – a comforting glow that cuts through the darkest times. The power of a single candle has always proven immense – there is comfort in that, in the single light we can each conjure.
The days are growing shorter and darker – the nights elongate, and the darkness expands – in service and invitation to the light, I sit lotus-style and breathe slowly in and out. One can still the world at such times, quelling the doubts and worry that creep into the dark times, and in the slowed breath, the measured exhalation, there is an expanse of peace – an inner light that pushes the noise and night aside.
This is the first time I’ve fixed my car clock in under one minute flat upon the arrival of Daylight Savings Time. Previously it’s been known to have taken over 6 months, and then it was like, why bother?
My reputation occasionally precedes me. I feel it in the anticipatory tension of a room of people I know well, usually and most often family, but a few friends as well – and certainly in less-close acquaintances. Carrying that knowledge with me is its own albatross, and it rebounds on itself – one of those nasty little interminable cycles that spins round and round, only gaining momentum and surety. At this point in the story, it’s impossible to completely eradicate or erase the unease, so I turn to humor and quips to give myself and my image a fighting chance.
Occasionally I’ll walk in and say something like “Darth Vader has entered the building” in a disarming and silly attempt at relaying some sense of self-deprecation. It doesn’t negate the fact that, yes, Darth Vader is in the room, but Darth Vader is Darth Vader because the people in that room likely helped contribute to making him Darth Vader.
We are all complicit in who we become around each other.
Cradled between the palms of both hands, the cup of tea warms from the outside in.
Cradled within the throat and stomach, the cup of tea warms from the inside out.
Cradled within the confines of the mind, the cup of tea warms from abstract ideation.
This evening’s post is being written first thing in the morning – before the work day begins, before the sun has come out, before the house and husband are awake.
In this still and silent moment that begins the day, that you come to when it has already ended, I find calm and quiet, and a Zen-like start and finish at once.
Fire falls from the branches, as dripping flames drift to the forest floor, and not even the night can extinguish the fiery licks because the moon gives fuel to the burn below. Ablaze with the splendor of the season, the ground is covered in leaves of beauty, leaves of temporal splendor, leaves of fire. Fall peppers the air with its pungency – half life, half death, a dash of fungus, a pinch of decay, a solemn unlasting sweetness, and a smoky hint of burn. All the senses are fed at once.
My latest helpful habit is taking my glasses off – for no reason whatsoever – putting them down somewhere, and forgetting where I put them while also being unable to see anything because – wait for it – I just took my glasses off.
This enormous stand of fountain grass has been the semi-bane of our backyard existence for a few years now. It’s grown beyond the point of easy control, and my body, in particular my back, no longer possesses the ability to properly tackle it. That would require some incredibly deep digging and physical exertion – and as I recently explained in a text defining a sweet invitation to a ‘Bingo Loco’ rave, “Gurl, I’m fifty.”
The days of whacking and hacking away at an enormous entanglement of roots are in the past – I can manage some surface digging and superficial pruning above ground, and that’s about it. That said, I’ll endeavor to get in slightly better shape before spring arrives and we start the growing season again. Is it sad to already be talking and daydreaming about the when we haven’t even started winter yet? Not a good sign, perhaps, but there’s hope in it – faraway and distant hope – the sort that will have to see us through the winter when it arrives next month.
The brilliance of this outside scene will swiftly diminish, as harder frosts will snatch the color from the leaves, and the leaves from the trees. Our focus will shift to the interior – where the attic exudes a rustic, tranquil white and gray scene, lit by candlelight and cushioned by piles of heavy blankets. The cozy season, blazingly at hand.
“I’m not surprised anymore by anything,” the woman sitting nearby said to her companion. I wasn’t closely following their conversation – this was the single stand-alone sentence that came to my ears over the drone of a song by the Carpenters (‘Close To You’).
Cafe culture is sometimes just a snippet of conversation that floats above the general noise and din, asserting itself as wisdom and truth and the declarative genius of the universe wishing you to hear those words in that moment. You can bring your own reading and baggage to it, or choose to ignore it entirely, assuming you’ve even accurately heard what was said.
Nobody really listens to anything anymore. That’s my dismal spin on the original quote I thought I heard – perhaps a more cynical take and view, but at least there’s some passion behind it. Anything is better than apathy. Apathy kills all. And to lack the ability to be surprised by anything speaks to a deadness of the soul I hope to never approach.
Hello old friends, if I may call you that, even if that’s never quite what we became. The term ‘friend’ is so broadly used, and it only applies to a select few of you who did in fact deign to incorporate me into your lives in some sort of friendship form. As was so often the case, this is once again me, talking to you, and just like old times you likely don’t even know and perhaps don’t even care, which has always been the way these things have gone. There’s some strange comfort in this space, however, at least in the mental and emotional place I am revisiting with this post, and returning to examine these ghostly hallows reminds me of them, as well as my own questionable behavior, when infatuation and the fever of a dead-on-arrival romance afflicted the simple machinations of going about an average day. A song then, long overdue and perfectly descriptive of my infatuations of all those decades ago…
NOW WHEN YOU SAY YOU WANT TO SLOW DOWN DOES IT MEAN YOU WANT TO SLOW DANCE? MAYBE YOU WANT A LITTLE EXTRA TIME TO FOCUS ON OUR ROMANCE WHAT DO YOU MEAN I GOT IT BACKWARDS? YOU KNOW WE’RE GONNA BE FOREVER WHY ARE YOU TELLING ME GOODBYE? ARE YOU GONNA STAY THE NIGHT?
This song very much personifies the frantic desperation I once felt and clearly exhibited in my dealings with would-be suitors and sought-afters. Back then, if a reasonably attractive gentleman expressed the slightest bit of interest in me, I would be off and running, heading in an unwavering beeline to the chapel, or at least a first date. And it was always too much, too soon, too everything. I didn’t know how to quell the heart’s riotous cries, and part of me still doesn’t regret expressing exactly how I felt in the moment. Why are we so ashamed to admit to the possibility of romance? Why is the keen focused interest of another person so repellant and off-putting? I’m asking myself as much as you, because once that focus sized me up, I often lost interest too. The foolish fickleness of human beings – make it make sense to me now; it never made sense to me then.
ARE WE REALLY OVER NOW? MAYBE I CAN CHANGE YOUR MIND… SOON AS YOU WALK OUT MY DOOR I’M GONNA CALL A HUNDRED TIMES…
In those days, and in my defense, there was often the slightest spark of an invitation, the whispered wisp of flirtation, the brief pause of a hand on a shoulder or arm, and the faintest hint or notion of interest ~ something to capture my attention ~ because it did take more than a pretty face to gain my sustained interest. Not very much more, but a bit. I didn’t just fall for you because you were cute – I was crazy, but not that level of crazy.
NOW I WALK UNDER A PINK SKY LOVE HAS FLOWN ALONG AND PASSED ME BY I POUR MY HEART OUT TO YOUR VOICEMAIL LET YOU KNOW I CAUGHT A BUS TO YOUR SIDE OF TOWN AND NOW I’M STANDING AT YOUR DOORSTEP WITH LOS ANGELES BEHIND ME IF YOU DON’T ANSWER I’LL JUST USE THE KEY THAT I COPIED CAUSE I REALLY NEED TO SEE YOU
Still, my level of crazy was certainly beyond that of most people, and I don’t use crazy in a derogatory manner. For me, being crazy was just another way of saying I was lonely, and I make no judgment or condemnation of either. My behavior, on the other hand, I do slightly regret, if only because it gave a skewed view of my intentions, and a warped take on what mostly counted to crushes and infatuations.
IF YOU’RE NOT HERE WHEN I BREAK IN I’M GONNA GO TO YOUR CLOSET JUST SO I CAN SMELL YOUR SKIN AS THE CHEMICALS SWIM I KNOW I’LL NEVER LOVE AGAIN I SWEAR I’LL NEVER LOVE AGAIN BABY ARE WE OVER NOW? MAYBE I CAN CHANGE YOUR MIND… AS SOON AS YOU WALK OUT MY DOOR I’M GONNA CALL A HUNDRED TIMES
Maybe I’m a bit too defensive on that point, and maybe that betrays something I’m not quite ready to admit, even all these years later, even after all this time apart. At its core, it always came down to one terrifying question: was I really that unlovable? If only it had only been possible paramours that made me ask such a question. If only the romantic landscape was the sole place such doubt and uncertainty resided. I could contain it then, I could compartmentalize it, I could pretend it wasn’t me. I could act like I wasn’t crazy.
I’M NOT ONE OF THOSE CRAZY GIRLS I’M NOT ONE OF THOSE CRAZY GIRLS I’M NOT ONE OF THOSE CRAZY GIRLS I’M NOT ONE OF THOSE CRAZY GIRLS
I know I came on strong. A fervent belief in the possibility of us – as a couple, as an entity – was just in my nature. I always knew it could work, because I knew I could make it work. It’s what Virgos do – we work, and we work hard, until we get it right. But a relationship – any relationship – requires two people, and I was a fool to think I could overpower or overwhelm that.
At the end of every never-to-be-but-still-hoped-for romance, I was left a little darker, a little sadder, a little harder, and a little less of the possible person I could see myself becoming by your side.
HEY BABY, ARE WE OVER NOW? MAYBE I CAN CHANGE YOUR MIND… AS SOON AS YOU WALK OUT MY DOOR I’M GONNA CALL A HUNDRED TIMES
When I look at some of you today, and the people you have become, I’ve mostly dodged bullets, and some likely horrible situations, and it’s in no way indicative of anything negative or wrong in you – we simply wouldn’t have been suitable together. It’s a testament to your sensibility that you saw it so much earlier. I see it now, and I’m grateful, and I never even wonder about what if, because the hole that was once there has been built around – not filled, because such holes can never be filled when they were empty in your past, and not erased either, because unlike a scientific understanding of emptiness, the feeling of emptiness is a very real and present predicament, and the space where it once pronounced itself, where it once made itself known and felt, will always be there. And I wouldn’t want it to go anywhere; I’m glad it’s there, glad that pangs of hurt still gently reverberate and echo to this day because they’re a reminder of how tender the human heart can be at such a young age, and how thrillingly the promise of possible romance teased such a heart.
NOW I’M ONE OF THOSE CRAZY GIRLS NOW I’M ONE OF THOSE CRAZY GIRLS NOW I’M ONE OF THOSE CRAZY GIRLS NOW I’M ONE OF THOSE CRAZY GIRLS
