Tattoo removal shop

The last day in 2006 found me sleeping off the Cajun breakfast from the Uptown Diner. I’ve had a bad head cold all week, and the prevailing notion states that spices unclog sinuses, but the spices in this case made my throat all scratchy and then put me in a coma for six hours during the first snowstorm of the year. It wasn’t just the Cajun breakfast, really, but it’s never just the Cajun breakfast.

New Year’s is usually my favorite holiday because I like do-overs, but I’m choosing not to begin this year with a blinding torch of hope or whatever it is I usually feel on this night. I don’t think this is necessarily negative. I’m just choosing to slide in neutral, not pushing for one thing or the other, instead of being all glittery and full of promise. It might speak to my mental health, or just the final acceptance that January 1 doesn’t mean anything, not really. It’s superstition. I can start over any day I want, and I’m not picking tonight.

Tonight, I’m sitting in my wedding slip with my husband, the last dregs of that fucking crazy and unnaturally colored Cajun breakfast out of my system, feeling sleepy, feeling queasy, feeling resigned, watching the wind blow the new snow into the trees. You see, what gets me each time, after the New Year, is that my same old fears return: I am stuck, inside this body, and my entire world hinges on the soft mushy soup of my brain, and if that stops working, I’m dead, and how do you deal with that? How do you deal with knowing that you can die of anything, at any moment, that you’re going to die anyway, that it’s all for nothing, really?

How does one become zen about that fact, is the question. Because people do become zen. They make millions out of wrestling with the existence question, comforting others with their books and retreats and one-liners, but it doesn’t comfort me. I move through the universe like a jumpy zoo bird, too watched and dull and aware and sick of being dull and aware. My hope for 2007 would be to weave that awareness into something utilitarian, something with a certain gravity and function. And once I can be functional, I can be wild, reckless.

But tonight I’m not placing bets. Tonight is for rest and stillness and maybe a little champagne leftover from the wedding. I’ve never tried it this way before, but I’m holding no hope for this either. It’s just being, and doing, using the weight of my body to hold me straight to the earth, expecting nothing out of January than for it to be here, like it has every time. January, January, January. The month I turn 26.

(OK, I can’t completely devoid myself of the New Year hope. It comes, anyway, and that’s what’s so frustrating. That stupid will to live and not only live, but live well and keep trying. What if I just want to sulk? What if I just want to disappear, become furniture? No such luck, each time. An enemy.)

Posted by: Zosia | 12-31-2006 | 09:12 PM
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Anecdote

The day after my wedding I broke a glass in the bathtub. It shattered into three large pieces, and then into six million smaller shards, carpeting the the bottom of the tub. I’d craved that hot soapy bath for three damn days, and when the glass smashed against the side and the pieces sunk to my feet, I didn’t flinch. I didn’t even sigh. I just squatted over the water and then opened the drain, shoveling the glass down the hole with my bare hands.

I’d read a book where the main character was killed by a glass-laced hamburger. It wasn’t the same thing, I decided. I wasn’t going to swallow the glass, not on purpose. So I waited until I didn’t feel it anymore and refilled the tub with lukewarm water. I spent twenty minutes sitting stiffly, thinking about glass in my hair and my stomach and my face, too afraid to use the soap.

But wouldn’t it be funny to walk out of the bathroom bloody. Face all cut up from a stupid water glass. Who brings water glasses into the bathtub, anyway. Not grown-ups. Not that funny, this type of thing, anymore. In the living room Chris asked if I cut myself shaving. There was a small spot on my ankle, just above the bone. Yep, I replied. That’s what happens when you don’t shave in three months, am I right? You forget how to hold the damn razor. I forgot how to do it, can you believe it, all of it, so clumsy, the whole thing.

Posted by: Zosia | 12-22-2006 | 01:12 AM
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Restless warriors

And then! More marriage! This time, it was at a music store.

Pictures! Write-up to follow someday.

Posted by: Zosia | 12-17-2006 | 11:12 AM
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Falling is like this

Oh, I’ll write more later, but guess what: Chris and I got married! And the world was sweet again.

Photos. More to come after tomorrow night’s party.

Posted by: Zosia | 12-15-2006 | 11:12 PM
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