tuckova

erasing the stars

Man, my desk is a mess. I've got a pile of tissues here, because I've been sneezy mcsneezerson all week. A bunch of pens I have neglected to return to the pen jar. The rings I was wearing last night. A few used toothpicks, which was my clever idea for helping to stop biting my nails, and it works, mostly, but it's maybe a little disgusting. The other day a man sincerely stopped beside my table in a bar and told me I was too much of a lady to be biting my nails. This is probably nicer than what I usually tell people, which is that their IQ drops every time they put their fingers in their mouths. so toothpicks. My favorite book by Josef Skvorecky, who just died. He and Havel off somewhere having a good beer together, I expect. I used to make little stars next to all my favorite lines in books, and then when I'd finish the book meticulously copy all the starred lines into my journal and erase the stars, give the book away. Now I have a house so I keep the books with the stars inside instead, which probably is a little irritating to people who borrow my books, all those Deep Thoughts so generously pointed out for them, but is easier on my poor old lady hands. My Christmas presents for which I have not yet written a thank-you note, and which therefore cannot be put away. A whole bunch of new music that needs to be put into iTunes so I can carry it around in my ears, so you can whisper to just me. My big Christmas gift this year was a washing machine. It is very happy with me and is not constantly making a break for it like the old one. Also it gets the clothes clean. Also the spin cycle actually spins the clothes, which means they get dry faster. It is not as quiet as I had hoped a new washing machine would be but then I'm hardly going to worry about disturbing my neighbors when they make plenty of noise of their own. Like right now. What else is on my desk? The rejection letter from the school that Squire had most wanted to go to. My voter registration form. Some useful things, like my timer and a calendar, but they're almost buried under what doesn't belong. You wouldn't think of me as a messy person, but this desk, this desk is my dirty secret. 

I'll probably clean it off now that I've told you about it. 

My new year's resolutions, since you didn't ask, have almost entirely to do with improving the quality of the media I consume. Whoa high goals. But seriously planning to read a Pulitzer a month worked out last year, so I'm going to continue with the remaining fifty or whatever that there are. Stuff like that. I have felt lately not very interesting, or not very interesting to others - and a lot of my brain space is taken up thinking about others, which seems perhaps not the best balance. So I will try to think more about fictional creatures, who do not mind my obsessions and whom I do not expect to return the affection. This year starts with The Shipping News, and Book Depository was serendipitous enough to send me a bookmark depicting several knots, so that's quite nice. 

shadow of a doubt

It is like in the horror films when the character is running and running to get away and turns back to look and see if enough distance has been gained. The running, this constant treadmill of activity is in itself good, and a solid, sensible plan is to keep moving. It is work coming in, and the pleasure in doing a job well. Friends who hold your hands to steady you as you run. It is feeling strength in the legs pumping under you, feeling again capable of getting away from it, away from it finally, away from it for good...and then you glance behind and trip over a tree root you didn't see. And you are suddenly down, raw and scraped, knees bleeding, tears pouring out of your eyes because it hurts and because you forgot to see it coming. And the tree root angry in the ground, torn because you weren't watching. And while you sit there picking the dirt out of your bleeding hands it has caught you, enveloped you again. Did you really, really think you could get away? Did you think you could just pause for a second there, lean on a tree, catch your breath, and nothing would happen? Sometimes you are foolish and silly, and sometimes you are just plain stupid.

diamond scattering in the park

How going out at night made me feel like being a teenager again, though I did not have to crawl out the window but just walked down the hall, quietly closed the front door on the sleeping family inside, gently turned the key in the lock and then skipped down the stairs. How the night sparkled, with frost on the grass, and how beautiful it is to walk with headphones, so that everything seems faintly unreal, like a film or more likely a music video. So many people are asleep and the streets deserted, and then inside it is so alive that the walk through the silent park now seems impossible. How you kissed me in the taxi and it was sweet and I skipped back to the door just like I did 25 years ago, as if I would never be tired.

frosty wind made moan

I dreamed I had lost the ability to read. The words were on the page but my eyes couldn't focus, or my brain couldn't sort it. I tried to Google to find out what was wrong: had I had a stroke? But I couldn't read any of the information. Absolutely terrible. My dreams lately have been this very literal and tedious expression of my basic fears. Thanks brain. Can't a person get a train ride with a good looking somebody wearing Chanel up in this bed? Torrid>terror.

I am having the same damn parenting struggle I have in other relationships, which is "when should I do something for someone's own good vs. when should I let them learn from their own mistakes". I'll dole out advice at the drop of a question mark, but keeping my mouth shut otherwise is an endless battle. My general feeling is that my job as a parent is to be a safety net while he does all the highwire action; the funambulism of adolescence in particular is best conducted independently. But lately I've found myself up at the anchor point, nudging nudging nudging him just to take a damn step out on the wire. GAH! DO IT! It is not good for me, because I feel less human doing it - having for example learned for myself the lesson that the teenage lesson learned alone is the one learned most thoroughly, it irks me to feel like I'm robbing someone's independence by telling them what they should learn for themselves. On the other hand I was a teacher once, and I know sometimes a steadying presence is needed. So I'm up on the anchor, cajoling, motivating, etc., and then it's like I wake from a dream in which I have become the very person I didn't want to be, the over-controller, and I scootch back down into safety net mode, where I feel better, but then I see my tiny boy way up there on the wire, a little fearful, and does he need to learn for himself that he is brave or shouldn't I just whisper it to him etc.

I'm glad I only had one kid. I frankly don't have the guts for more. Hats off to anybody who does; that's tightrope walking while juggling.

I have plans for pretty much every day from the 25th to January 1st, but I don't feel particularly festive. We decorated some. I'm mostly excited about midnight tonight, when the days officially start getting longer and I can stop worrying that I won't make it through a Czech winter. I'm not saying it's OVER, but every minute more of sunshine counts.

YEAR IN REVIEW

The theme for 2010 was THIS SUCKS. I started freelancing, which was okay by November but was tense and hard for a long while. I had a cancer scare, my oldest friend died suddenly, my marriage ended, and two friends ended their friendships with me (for different reasons, and respect and love to them because all my friends are awesome, even the former ones, but still, it was hard for me). My goal for 2011 was PLEASE SUCK LESS and I have to say it has been very successful. Work is not yet sufficient in quantity but it is much better & I still love what I do, health is okay, I've managed to regain friendship with the ex, strengthened some older friendships, and made some new friends besides, and I only lost one whole friend. Collective win! We went to Costa Rica and California, which means I got almost enough sunshine to carry me through a bleak winter. I would summarize the things that went badly in 2011 as "Yes, but it's not my fault, because I didn't do anything wrong, so I'm not going to feel bad about it" which is a refreshing change from the open-throated agony of "What did I do to cause this?" or the even more waily "What did I do to deserve this?" Thumbs up for therapy, y'all. And assuming the world doesn't end in 2012, I have really high -yet reasonable- hopes. I might, for example, start going to the gym regularly again. IT COULD HAPPEN. 

December will be magic again

Squire drew a picture of me. It is probably true although I think my eyes are less clear. My eyes are my feature (my one feature) but I don't think they actually glow in the dark. The wrinkles coming up now are mostly the result of gravity, which is interesting. When I was younger the hollows under my eyes were caused by sleeplessness and a hunger that had nothing to do with food; now they are small sacks in which I can carry a pint of tears, the memories of things I've seen, and possibly a small loaf of bread. Poor eye sacks, so laden they will burst at some point.

Also I have jowls, but let's not think about that right now, as there is nothing poetic about the gravity plus weight of that.

I've been quite social lately, which is interesting to me. I've had a bottle of wine in the fridge for about two weeks and haven't had any of it after the first glass, which at first struck me as odd as I was once incapable of keeping an open bottle of anything for more than a day or two. But I've been out out out, dinner party quiz night game night coffee date tour guide whatever. I'm a butterfly is what, a social butterfly. According to Wikipedia I will be dead in a week or maybe a year. 

As is my wont in winter I have been looking at places warmer and varying distances away. Somewhere better than this place, with its promise of snow that never comes true, just bitter cold and wind that freezes my tears to my face. California for Christmas is more expensive than in the summer, ridiculous, so out of the question. Egypt is temptingly hot and reasonably priced, as is Turkey, but being sensible I decided to save the money for the summer and stay inside for the holidays instead. Stacking up the Christmas movies, starting with Die Hard. And I want to work on being still for a minute, and on resolve, and Squire needs to study for the high school entrance exams in January, which promise to be horrifically difficult. 

Sometimes I feel like I would be better cut off from people altogether, but then we are on the leather couch in the corner of the bar, talking about the transformative powers of ballet, and I think: nowhere better than this place, right now. 

Propinquity

I had nightmares on Saturday from which I have not yet recovered. The feeling of being trapped inside of a need I fear to articulate, and then, having spoken it aloud not having it met, or not merely not met but not even acknowledged. Please help me carry this or I will drop it, please call me when you get there so I'll know you are safe, please look at me when I talk to you and I'll believe you're listening, please please please. And then the vase shattered, flowers strewn, water soaking into the carpet; or the phone unrung, deciding when to call the police and admit how afraid you are; or the sentences unspooled from a broken mouth, unheard.

Sometimes the level of fierce independence that I claim to practice runs up against my frank need with such force that everything is broken for a while. 

I've worked at a job calling people for an English survey for the last two weeks. It is universally acknowledged that I have a very pleasing speaking voice, especially when my mouth is filled with other people's words and not my own blather (that is to say: you may not like what words my own brain puts in my mouth, but you very much want me to read to you). So I made a tidy just-in-time-for-Christmas sum calling people and getting them to give me their time, their honesty, and in some cases full life vignettes, just because I asked. Talking to a man in Ireland who was telling me about riding horses on Catalina, and I wondered why it was easy to ask him for things and how I knew I would get them. Later my mouth covered with my hands so that I wouldn't ask you for anything, for nothing at all. It's fine; I'm just noting it. Silently, just to myself.

I want to tell people when they're nice to me, too. I mean my desire for post-game analysis is equally strong after a win or a loss. I want to say, here is where you delight me. Here is where you are special. But when the game is lost it seems somehow nobler to just walk away, even while my pointy head arranges short time travel trips back to fix it where it went wrong. It is the worst form of staircase wit, the wagging finger of but-if-you'd-listen-you'd-know-I-was-right, the same thing that will wake me up in a week with regrets that don't matter because they are over. 

What else? 

 

I, being born a woman and distressed (by Edna St. Vincent Millay)

I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body's weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn with pity, -- let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.

 

Dummy

Okay, let's break this down into small, manageable parts. Let's get real on it. Let's call it what it is. There was something you loved. You loved it in the pure open-hearted way that comes from getting so exactly what you need without even asking that it seems like the object of your affections is itself perfect. I'm saying you loved it because it seemed to love you so well. It's okay, it's natural, everybody does that, everybody loves a provider. So that was the first part, the part where you loved that which met your needs.

And then that was irregularly available. 

And the thing is, the reason it was gone, the most likely reason? Is because you really didn't need it anymore. Somewhere along the line you I don't want to say lost interest but there were a lot of other things that drew your attention. Pretty things. New textures. Flavors. And that which you loved because it gave you what you needed became that which you loved because it reminded you of how you felt when you needed it. You went from loving it for what it did to loving it for how you felt about it. 

And then it was gone altogether. 

And then there you are, fist jammed against your mouth, weeping. Distraught. Casting about, as it were. And you fish up something shiny and smooth and new. A thing that makes you feel the way you used to feel when your needs were being met, a thing that you perform towards as you performed before. The crying stops. Things get hopeful. And this new thing is yours, yours, yours. Smells like comfort; is comfort. 

And then they want to take that away from you, too.

They say, oh, clever things. You're supposed to get over it. Move on. This love you imagine is deforming you in ways you can't understand. Oh grow up and stop crying. Try talking through your empty mouth, form your weak tongue around the words for how you feel, distract yourself with movement, let it go. And you want to, because everybody wants you to, but you don't want to really at all. They make a chart of how many days you can go without it, and you try to be brave but inside your mouth the sour taste of tears you don't cry and the lack of comfort, that little comfort that they insist on taking away. Why. 

And then it's gone. 

And you're ... okay. That small comfort, that dummy, that idiot, your little peacemaker, whatever. I'll tell you what, you can get over it. Because here's the secret they haven't told you; the thing that makes it okay is quite simple: you loved something, but it didn't love you back. It was incapable of loving you back. So it's really, really okay to let it go. You will not starve, because it never fed you. And now you are free to find something interesting, something complicated, something real. Something delicious.

here is 120 hours of your year back...

Names you do not need to click on:

Justin Bieber, Kim Kardashian, Lindsay Lohan

News stories you do not need to follow:

anything to do with the Republican nomination, Michael Jackson's death, or television shows

 

Comments you do not need to read:

youtube, any news story, or in fact anything with more than 20 comments

parlayed into a memory

When I met you, I was crying, because it was cold. An involuntary response, I would have explained if you'd asked. Fortunately I'm a master, and it is possible that you didn't even notice.

We talked for hours. I learned so many things about you. It is my best trick, to lay myself out as on a blanket at a flea market, so obvious in terms of tarnished and broken and hidden treasures. You couldn't help but pull the trinkets from your own pocket in response, a snowglobe holding a childhood memory, a knife you'd used to cut yourself free. By nightfall I'd wrapped my blanket back up again, stuffed everything into a carpet bag, and you were showing me your scars. It is interesting how quickly one can establish intimacy, when it's needed, how fast we can go from perusing the menu to tearing flesh from the bone. 

But eventually it is over. It is always over, one way or the other. These things don't end themselves, and so somebody has to end it. You did the honors, surgical and simple, none of the nonsense of waving a tear-soaked handkerchief as the train pulled away. I am glad it was clean like that, I am. And yet when you left I was crying, because it was cold. An involuntary response, I would have explained if you'd asked.  Fortunately I'm a master, and it is possible that you didn't even notice.