Uh. Yeah. Hi. I don’t usually like to go a week without updating, but there it went. I know you don’t mind, but I do since I like to have a least one disciplined routine, beyond brushing teeth and showering, and even those I forget sometimes. (I kid! I’m the cleanest person in the universe.) I haven’t been overly busy; just distracted, but who cares, here’s some content:
Things that have happened today:
1. I walked into the living room this morning to find Rick and Andrew intensely watching a PBS show about fishing and the Bible.
2. I left the room, and then walked back in 15 minutes later to find Andrew beating one of the old broken chairs in our living room with a wooden bat while yelling, “I’ll show YOU the last temptation of Christ!”
3. I walked into the bathroom this morning at 5 AM, still completely asleep and heard a loud booming noise. Startled, I ran into the door frame and busted my lip open, then ran back into bed, only to figure out the cat had jumped onto Andrew’s bass drum.
4. Yelled at an old man in Walgreen’s who was harassing a woman about buying cigarettes. I don’t think I’ve ever yelled at a stranger before and truthfully, this wasn’t really yelling. I just sort of firmly mumbled, “Who are you to judge, asshat?” and then ran out of the store. So much for vigilance.
5. Tried to ride a bicycle for the first time in 10 years. It did not go well.
And that’s pretty much an average Saturday around these parts. More excitement to follow because, as I told you earlier, it’s been a nutty month and nothing indicates March is going to be any different.
I’m really feeling the strain of other people’s deliberate and innocent cruelties, and nothing exactly specific, just the day-to-day mini-dramas you witness, the sleight of hand kidney punches that internally bruise. I’m having one of those mornings where I woke up to a little barb, something meaningless and fleeting, and because of the weight of last night’s dreams, the barb feels sharper and present, like it confirms what I was thinking anyway.
I have the overstimulated restless youth urge to go away for the weekend without media. No books, no movies and especially no internet. I don’t know what this would accomplish, beyond retraining my brain to live without these means and escapes. I might stop dramatizing every life blip so much if I could accept the ordinary part of it, just as I’ve wholeheartedly friend-who-hugs-too-much-and-talks-too-close accepted the opposite spectrum. Sometimes cement is just cement, and the cracks don’t mean poetry or nuclear war; there’s no fanciful story of a kid on roller skates racing through the granite before it dried; the cracks are just there, erosions over time. They don’t mean anything and that’s neither good nor bad, just neutral. I need more neutral.
I’m also thinking of the defensive invasive feeling of someone who’s only read me online or even someone who knows me offline, who’s been to my house, my bedroom, seen me with my toothy-drunk smile at parties; I’m thinking of that naked feeling of someone saying they know you, they know you well, they have all the information they need to make assumptions and to categorize and to lock you into personality traits, the kind that even when you claim, “Actually, I’m not like that at all,” they laugh and say, “Of course you are!” and point to proof.
You want to say: you don’t know me. No one knows me. I do that on purpose; well, at least at I did once I realized I was a wall, the wall I always hated in other people. But do they know me? Can I write one sentence here and have it embody me in a way a lifetime of third-degree questions wouldn’t reveal? Can you watch me at a rock show, the way I throw the lime out of the drink, the way I make fists when I’m nervous? These are the principles I apply to other people in knowing them. I say: I see the way your teeth clenched when you spoke to me. I know you. I read what you’re not saying. I know. I mean, these are the very fundamentals of acting – it’s the characters’ silence and minute fiddlings that define them. So why do I feel I am above these definitions?
I want to be somewhere where I don’t have these analyzations at the tip of my brain. If there were time and money – but there’s not, so I have to find my escape from escapes somewhere within Edina, Minnesota, some quiet snowy place, some loud corner, somewhere in the middle of everything so the rest of everything will be the blur for once, and I’ll be solid and still, ever-present.
I notice things, and it’s a fucking curse. There are so many Hallmark phrases out there to remind people to notice things, to stop and smell the roses, to beware the cracks in the sidewalk, but this has never been my problem. I can’t think of a time when the roses weren’t burned on my brain, when I couldn’t get hung up on the spherical spiky shape of a thorn, and many times it’s beautiful, and often, it’s poetic, but most of the time, it’s debilitating, this eye for detail, this observation of small things. I was just in the grocery store, and I had a headache because I slept too long last night and because I didn’t take my vitamins and because I just had a headache, and I saw a black-haired baby yawning in a red cart, and then I saw a small stuffed pink bear in the corner by the leftover Valentine’s flowers, and I suddenly felt very very sad for the bear because who wants a pink bear beyond February 14th? And I had to stop myself and say: You’re a fucking dip. Get over yourself.
In the 4th grade, I nearly gave myself a stroke when I realized a girl with my same name in my class had a completely different life than I did, yet all with the same name. It blew my mind. Her parents yelled, “Jennifer!” and their Jennifer ran down a completely different set of steps into a completely different living room with a completely different set of legs. I couldn’t fathom this. How could two Jennifers co-exist in the same universe?
And don’t get me started on the details that remain in my head of places and people that are long gone. If I was motivated and not so much of a wreck half the time, I could put these details to some artistic use, but as it stands, they only seek to clutter me. Smells of basements, textures of earlobes, the color of cheeks when embarrassed, the sound of a microwave dinging in another lifetime. It’s a complete cacophony, constantly haunting. I can’t walk two steps without noticing a peculiar shade of gray in the cement, or the way the moon hangs on the white awning in the alley. Sometimes I’m dazzled and sometimes I’m stunned, but most of the time, it doesn’t feel romantic. It feels distracting, like I should be making something of myself instead of standing by the gas station coffee machine, inhaling the stale bread and old sugar smell of the room. I could be something, whatever that means, if I wasn’t so caught up in storybook colors.
It’s as good enough thing to blame it on as any.
June 2002
Dear Jennifer,
I am thinking of you and your courage to do whatever it is you want to do. I know that this situation has always been harder for you than it has been for me and now you have yet another burden to bear – my humanness. I have decided we were wrong when we decided the other night that you are not being hurt at all by this. You are – it’s just disguised as something else.
It’s like when you’re out for a deep woods stroll, miles from anyone, and you step in a bear trap. Luckily, or unluckily, one of the teeth of the trap is missing and your ankle is wedged in the space where the missing tooth of the trap should be. It doesn’t break the bone or even the skin, but it is far too tightly grasping your leg to escape. So you sit there, hour after hour, day after day, slowly becoming dehydrated and hungry, realizing no one is coming for help and that you have to get out of this yourself. You then have to use your four-inch Swiss Army pocketknife to cut through your own tissue and bone to separate your foot from the rest of your body. My empathy machine told me that this was the kind of hurt you must be feeling.
When I sad you damage me, I meant it as a compliment because I am indestructible; I am young; I am invincible. But you have burrowed deep into the planet of my thoughts, past the atmosphere of my dreams and the logical crust and molten memories, right to the indefinable core that is me and my bundles of ideas. You nestled into the part of myself that may not even exist, and then you exploded. Dreams are mixed with memories; my fantasies become logical; random pieces of everything are now just left floating around with no shape or order in the space where my planet used to be. The only consistency that can be derived from the chaotic maelstrom of consciousness is that there is a fragment of you in embedded in every piece. You’re mixed with everything. My cognitive space is speckled with your stars. They build the constellations that are my thoughts and ideas. You are so beautiful, slowly polluting all of my thoughts.
Good luck in your quest. Don’t do anything you don’t want to do just because of what I say or think. I know you won’t, but I just thought I would say that. The truth is, if truth exists, I will take your love any way you’ll give it to me. Beggars can’t be choosers. I will not begin to re-grow another heart until I receive word by carrier pigeon to do so.
Love,
Chris
Almost two years ago, I was in love with two people, one old and one new. As glamorous as it is in the movies, it was a painful, mind bending and all-around shitty experience in real life. Right when I was feeling the most trapped and guilty and confused; right when people I had thought were friends had proven whole-heartedly otherwise; right when I was about to make a choice based on routine and comfort, Chris wrote me this letter, liquefying me into a Victorian-worthy pile of love mush. I have never been so thankful to be mush.
Happy Valentine’s Day.
…mid-day, in which your author reveals she is still the broody-face she was at 17. Yellow legal pad, caramel high-rise, playing hooky on the second day.
How do you know what your heart feels? I’ve never know what I felt. Have I ever just said – fuck what I feel – and jumped into it?
I should take my coffee black. I should be vegan. This morning, I woke up and wanted to go to Ireland. For the first time in years, I felt capable of planning things. I live my life in a netherworld. My eyesight is only so-so and my brain is even less, creating a fuzzy landscape that doesn’t get close enough to burn the edges of the what’s up, the what’s real. But the difference is – when I’m fine, and listening to loud music, and spilling hot coffee on my hands, I don’t care. But when I’m not good, it’s all I can focus on.
We share the secret of the human condition in banalities – “How are you?” – “Getting by.” – “That’s the least any of us can do.”
I want to know people, but I don’t want to talk to them. I just want to know the parts they don’t say, the writings, the secrets. My curiosity has rarely been malicious. I just want to know people, but I don’t want to do anything with the knowledge.
And I was so afraid this morning, waking after 12 hours, feeling guilty for my happiness because of the cost it came, so afraid I would lose the drive, the sudden loss of anxiety. Ten sentences ago, I wanted to go to Ireland. Now I want to pull the shades. The swing makes the back of my eyes ache.
Effortless. If I was true to who I really was, I would sit back and observe. All the time. Maybe I should do that more – be the quiet one. Who do I need to impress anymore?
I dream about swimming, all the time, in oceans, in community pools, in Lake Superior. I don’t know how to swim, but in dreams, I am flawless, and it’s breathtaking. Those are the dreams that drab the world when I wake up.
Why would I be so afraid of losing my grip on reality if I hated my reality?
I feel like I just discovered America, and now I’m being ordered to clean the ship.
Even in the dawn of sore muscles and cold faces, and all those little signs of existence, I am still not really here.
“and I pushed through the screen door
and I stood out on the porch
thinking fight, fight, fight
at all costs,
but instead I let you in,
just like I’ve always done”
Also, I can’t help but feel all warm and grinny when I listen to this Ani DiFranco song because it reminds of two springs ago, when my nails were painted red and I was wearing my old jeans with the oblong rips in the left knee and right back thigh. I was sitting in my computer chair, with the window open, and Chris was on the couch in front of me. This was back in the ice ages when I was still with Erik, when whatever the hell was going on with me and Chris wasn’t beyond the tension and the calculated breaths of many many words left unspoken, and then this song popped up on my playlist, and he leaned over, touched my knee, flashed a wide half-smile, and – that was the end of my life as I knew it. (Which is awfully dramatic, but also awfully true.)
“I am looking for the holes
the holes in your jeans
because I want to know
are they worn out in the seat
or are they worn out in the knees?”
The only way the mundane is made bearable for me is by romanticizing it. Actually, “bearable” is a blue funk word, and I’m not in a blue funk, just a very dazed, “Oh, so that’s what 8 AM looks like!” cloud. I’ve never been a morning person or an afternoon person, or a before-9-PM person, so being awake when the air still has that sharp unused smell turns me into the glassy-eyed walking dead.
But the point was romanticism. Because I do that, as I’m sure everyone does. On the bus, I have my coffee-shop phenomena, where I fall in love with everyone in their mittens and snow-caked heels. Except for the shaggy-haired guy in the porkpie hat who I automatically sort of hated because he reminded of Porkpie Guy from that episode of Sex and the City, and did I mention that I’m tired?
But looking up into the tall, high windows of the dry cleaners, where the clothes are rotating like meat on hooks. The indents my painful, yet tall and trendy, boots make in the ice, a horse hoof without the horse. And the yellow bench in the waiting area of my new job. And let me tell you how hip this place is – when I walked into the waiting area for the first time, I didn’t know if that neon yellow bench was art or an actual piece of furniture, so I stood, my hand clutching the part of my jacket where a button is missing, staring at the bench, willing it to reveal its true purpose. Finally, I just sat down, waiting for an artist in black spandex to leap from behind the plant beside me and say, “NO! YOU HAVE RUINED MY LIFE’S WORK!” and he will be French. And did I mention I’m tired?
So I guess this is real life again. I won’t say I’m having revelations or life changing experiences or anything because there’s still the very significant chance that I’ll get off the bus one day, look up at my very tall, vulnerable building, and climb right back on. Because I do those things. But, for now, it’s dress-up clothes and tall boots and coffee breaks. And the point was romanticism, but suddenly, all I want is hot chocolate and the second season of Six Feet Under, and there’s nothing cinematic about that, just the warm sunk-in feeling of resting after a debut.
1. Buy groceries
2. Drink hot chocolate
3. Blink a lot
4. Close the shades
5. Play fetch with the cat
6. Look longingly out the window
7. Examine your pores in the bathroom mirror
All of a sudden, I’m falling in love with strangers at coffee shops again. I know that’s your standard tortured artist cliché, but it can’t be helped. I used to have the market cornered on falling in love with people over coffee. I spent the entire summer after my freshman year of college in a little corner of the local Barnes and Noble, pouring over poetry books and feminist texts, and falling in love with the physics tutor by the bar, or the tall thin blonde with the red shoes by the window. In the past year, I’ve spent a total of what feels like three hours in coffee shops, not more than five minutes each visit. This is for a reason I’ll explain later, but the point is, in those three hours cumulative, I glazed over the people, registered their attractiveness and intrigue, and walked back out into the street, completely indifferent.
But last night, I took a yellow notebook and a clipboard and sat in the corner, pretending to look busy. Next to me, a woman with wide blue eyes and smudgy red lips laughed at her laptop. I felt my heart twitch. In front of me, a girl with tangled unbrushed blonde hair that mirrored mine read the Opinion page and shredded a napkin. I blushed, a little. But it was the youngish guy in the black wool coat and square-toed Prada shoes that finished the job. On the way out the door, I knocked a honey bear off the counter as the man was walking in. He reached down, picked up the honey, smiled and said, “Do you need this?” and I walked out into the snow with my lopsided hat and coat with the missing button and leaned against my car, longed for the cigarette I don’t smoke.
It’s going to be a nutty month.