I, too, wondered where time had gone. There was an inactivity that, ironically, charged me. Perhaps, it was a result of anxiety. But to blame anything other—especially that which is abstract—was a useless discarding of time. And like I said, or rather implied, I want to take time back or at least use it—exaggerate it.
Something at home always felt “off”. I can’t remember how I use to think, but supposedly others’ memory of my behavior—back then—was always being on the go. Distant and involved in a sort of freeing up of myself. I was younger wanting to advance age. Let go. Let my body loosen. Perhaps, it was my way of avoiding an instability sensed at home. You fragment yourself, so your self-conscious is attracted inward rather than outward on others who are affecting you, but that you can’t control. Perhaps, jarring my heels on dance floors was my way of cushioning the noise of parental arguments. It’s possible, and although it sounds trite or even like I am whining about how “my life has been soooo hard on me,” that isn’t my intention, nor the truth. The fact is I felt it was worse. I felt it was a feeling. Imagine that! Talk about abstraction. And inevitably, it is an ambiguity that I am still trying to translate—silence, acting, projecting expectations, a routine model of life, you versus your other, deflated romance. Where had desire gone? And why weren't they trying to get it back? Did they not want it? From those I thought they were after?
Three times in the last week and a half, I admitted to a sort of query—a query that was intended to explicate this path I am on. Aloud I wondered whether I had simply woken up one day within the last year and instantly recognized that I was so far deep—consumed, committed—to writing, that I was just going to go for it and that couldn’t not because, like I said, I had devoted years trying to write myself and others out. I wanted this role to be the one that didn’t change. I was always changing. Trying to find a sense of self I admired.
Now, I sit on porch steps at parties, looking out at dazzling lifestyles and ask people I have only just met how to make this happen. Others my age don’t ever seem to have an answer, just a nicotine exhale—trying to dispose of fear and expectation for our futures. I think the hardest thing is accepting that in a culture that demands immediacy, we will have to work just as hard and just as long to achieve quality. Of course, in the next few months if I find out that I wasn’t accepted for my MFA or that I will have to move away from Manhattan, I will cry. I will cry for a relationship that just begun, that was severed. I will think the dream has no future in reality. The ironic part is I have always been turned away from my dreams—Gallatin, New York City, goalie—and I always made sure I got there, even if I had to circle around three or four times.
However, no matter how much I prepare—consciously—I will never be ready. I will be surprised. And on Monday when I spoke, hypothetically, about being a visitor in New York—my voice wavered so much, that I had to stop speaking all together. What is this all about? Oh I don’t know. But I will say I have absolutely devoured Susan Sontag’s Reborn and the more author’s diaries I read, the more I acknowledge that I shouldn’t leave out the daily things affecting my writing. I do want to say what I did, and he said, and she said, and why we laughed, or why I left, and what I ate, and what I wish I ate. Whatever it is.
Three days ago, I took down ornaments with Jonathan. If I hadn’t taken the first ball and begun wrapping it, the tree never would have ended up outside. He loved talking forever. It reminded me of last November when I was reading Octavio Paz out by the pond, and he came around back, pulled up a chair and spoke to me underneath the umbrella table for two hours. I have many notes from that day. He left and I called my sister, saying we needed to do a documentary on him. He could open eyes.
The tree began looking shriveled and depleted of meaning, as he told me about the poems he writes and the letters he wrote for other people to give those they were after. He told me it was a rare gift to write what you feel, because most people don’t know how to articulate it. I thought it sounded unimaginable, but I told him I thought people did not write because they didn’t like the permanence of it. They didn’t want to isolate moments that they so desperately needed to let go of. They did not want to admit feelings. He told me about John Travolta’s son dying and how he use to race home to watch Welcome Back, Kotter. He told me he was waiting to hear about whether he could own the house in Homestead. He told me neighbors stared at him, not wanting color in the neighborhood. I told him he should see Gran Torino. We packed boxes full with Christmas decorations in the garage and just outside the fence, a car drove by and stole 11 pieces of equipment from the yardman at my house. They all took off running into the street. People have no conscious. Not the kind that matters anyway. My grandmother found out right before Christmas that she had breast cancer. Yesterday she did a radical surgery to remove one of her breast. In recovery, they let my mom know that she had more in her lymphs. My dad told me she would be in chemotherapy. I got my nails done yesterday. I go there just to check in on life with Shawnna. I showed her pictures. Talked about sex. What I was trying to communicate in writing. She told me about her hours, being too exhausted once she got home. But she was happy, absolutely. She would tell everyone that came in and asked. And then, she would wink at me. She mentioned my dad was getting knee surgery at the end of the month. Then she realized, I hadn’t known about it. That’s right. No one had told me. Just like so many things I was beginning to realize.
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