Amongst paper renditions of the Drowned and the Saved, Unspeakable Truths, Shattered Voices and other written fires of the human hells that exist on our earth, I am sorely nostalgic today. Perhaps it is the conversation today between a best friend who is now nearly a stranger, talking to the first love of my life about weather, folded between flat, fanatic expressions of hurt, missing, rawest regret. Perhaps it is the realization of all that I have left behind and yet what still awakens me at dawn, when I must remind myself of the cruelest of consequences. A first message this morning reminding me that I had killed our dreams.
There are things, within this, within us that I can never speak about now, that I try to say, but ashamed, shocked really, I cannot let out of my lips. And behind these shades that are mine alone, in this country untouched by this past, I feel somehow more exposed to that world: wounds ripped open by sudden rains or the scent of wood on someone's breath.
Growing up, that was what I gained, a slippage forward from being certainly spoiled, from an inability to care for even daily needs. I am hardly afraid anything else. But I lost so much more: from the mountains, the red brick abode to the heart of it all: the softest part of me. The hand that removed my glasses when I slept, the arguments of remote controls and frozen toes. An achingly innocent promise.
And, as friends are friends, and true to me, they reassure that it was the right step. That I merely made few mistakes. They forgive me in a way that I know I should not be forgiven.
I don't know how to say I'm sorry, in a real and lasting way, to him or to myself. I don't know how to release us both from the strangling grasp of our attachment, to believe wholeheartedly, to stop us both from grasping desperately into the last years, to remember only the laughing and the not the wrenching. I don't know how to say goodbye.
But this grasping, this gasping for something else, is moderated by a new home; by day-dreaming; by feeling again; by forgiving other, more recent, hurts; by returning, rebuilding, rewarding my most sensitive self; by letting in and slowly, slightly, if only sometimes, letting go.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Window Shades
I always wonder if it is better to have window shades, to shatter the sunlight, sweep back the mornings so that dawn dives into midday. I am still unsure whether slumber is a sweet escape or merely the place where pushed-back memories mark the present, stencil themselves sharply back into your life. Shadows of reality, rendered by the shades, by the shallow mornings, by the shaken.
I am looking for summer jobs somewhere beautiful. Of course, there are many options in Europe and, stereotypically, I am drawn to Tuscany and the Croatian Coast. Of course, I know that neither will actually involve money-making opportunities. But I also know that there, I could write.
I looked back last week, in a short attempt to organize my room, at what I had written as a child and an adolescent. I wrote about lives I did not know and yet embedded myself in all of these small characters. I wrote about what scared me the most. I wrote about what happened in the last few years. And while some of the writing made me laugh so hard I thought I would cry, I was fearless, at least, in my mentionings. I was fearless in what I read aloud to my middle school classmates. I was fearless in opening myself.
The farm in serene in winter, with pouncing animals, wood heat and a washing of white. My sister's belly is bold and strong, a baby foot often kicking to the side.
I need to attempt to read. Maybe books will bring me back, or blackout some of the memories that make my bed, however warm, awash in a time of the past. This feathery limbo is all that I left behind.
New York in the winter is different from Morningside Heights, which is oddly empty and cold from persistent rain. The lack of Columbia students, empty brunches, stores of memorabilia and mocking memories gives a familiar taste to it all.
I am looking for summer jobs somewhere beautiful. Of course, there are many options in Europe and, stereotypically, I am drawn to Tuscany and the Croatian Coast. Of course, I know that neither will actually involve money-making opportunities. But I also know that there, I could write.
I looked back last week, in a short attempt to organize my room, at what I had written as a child and an adolescent. I wrote about lives I did not know and yet embedded myself in all of these small characters. I wrote about what scared me the most. I wrote about what happened in the last few years. And while some of the writing made me laugh so hard I thought I would cry, I was fearless, at least, in my mentionings. I was fearless in what I read aloud to my middle school classmates. I was fearless in opening myself.
The farm in serene in winter, with pouncing animals, wood heat and a washing of white. My sister's belly is bold and strong, a baby foot often kicking to the side.
I need to attempt to read. Maybe books will bring me back, or blackout some of the memories that make my bed, however warm, awash in a time of the past. This feathery limbo is all that I left behind.
New York in the winter is different from Morningside Heights, which is oddly empty and cold from persistent rain. The lack of Columbia students, empty brunches, stores of memorabilia and mocking memories gives a familiar taste to it all.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Better Days
Being home is lying between childhood and adulthood in night sweat and sheets; it is a prolonged adolescence, etched out in films, the pink of my sheets, hung candy-canes, the blocks where I grew, granted, gave and took back. It is the place where I tugged my legs beneath a winter sled, kissed on stoops, danced inside, ate smores by the dozens, harbored barbies, blended to the wind. It is the place that holds my sighs, chartered my tears, tempted my senses to fight and, finally, to forgive. Being home is my height of melancholy. A sort of sad, but savory, sight.
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