no particular place to go

it is late here, almost 2008; that usually makes me sentimental. but i am awake and sitting up praying for some things, and i thought of you and wanted to write to you.

i wanted to write to you, but what i wanted to say, i'm not sure.

now i feel stupid. why would i want to write when i don't know that i have anything to say?

...

i think this is why:

it's too easy to restrain an emotion until there's some excuse for it, like a birthday, or couched as a specific message..."the Lord put this on my heart to tell you." but i don't have anything right now that i think you need to hear.

relationships are hard over long distances because they have to be maintained with words. sometimes there's only an overwhelm of feeling that can't be excused or expressed. it's this that makes me want to write to you without any words in mind.

hearing someone say "i love you" can be embarrassing when there's no particular reason for them to say it. but if they catch your eye, and smile, if your gazes meet unexpectedly, if you suddenly feel their eyes on you while you're chopping onions or mingling at a party...doesn't it kind of rumble through you like an express train? don't you wonder why no one else seems to feel the earthquake in the floor?

knowing someone is thinking of you for a minute, for no reason, is the surest sign of love that i've ever had.

so, i guess, this is just a note to say, hi--i was thinking of you.

(first published 12.31.08, 11.48pm)

where are you now?

Lisa has squinty eyes, and a haircut that makes people wonder if she is a lesbian. Most Italian women are built along sturdy lines, but Lisa's sturdiness is turning to fat, and she knows it. She makes coffee in the mornings at a suburban watering hole, but she isn't very fast; to compensate her wounded pride at dragging down her morning team, she draws long interchanges from the customers while she rings them up, and over the counter where she serves their drinks. She tells them, in a confidential tone, "The company is always pushing efficiency, but you know? I like to focus on the quality, even if it takes a little more time. It's the Italian in me." The truth is that she's not very adept with the espresso machinery, either.

She has a daughter named Jennifer, who is almost fourteen and lives with her father, in another suburb of the same city. Lisa does not see her much, but calls her every day. Jennifer is very sullen on the phone. Lisa chalks that up to teenage angst. She doesn't let it deter her from saying, "Is the TV on? Are you doing your homework? Don't tell me you don't have homework, you do have homework." Lisa considers herself a good mother. Jennifer mutters, "How do you know?" Lisa answers, triumphantly, "I'm your mother--I know everything."

Lisa is not a lesbian. She had a short-lived affair with the manager of another coffee shop in the chain. They did not go out much, but they cooked dinner for each other several times. She came into work one morning radiant with triumph, and when questioned about it, she answered, in a scandalous whisper, "I got a foot rub last night." That thrill is gone, however; she is back to watching skin movies, while cooking dinner. Lisa loves to cook.

She says she is writing a cookbook that is also a mystery novel. It is to be called "Nonna's Kitchen" and the main character is based on the person she declares she is meant to be, the best self that cannot emerge until she is about sixty. Lisa says she cannot wait to be a grandmother. The book also pulls several elements from her own life, characters and places she has known. At times, one of her coworkers, who also would like to be a writer, solicits details of Lisa's life. Lisa gladly makes mention of a pair of parents, a grandfather, a cheese and pasta shop frequented by, presumably, one or more of these characters and, presumably, herself. But the details are vague and their geographical location is never divulged, not even the city where, presumably, they must have all coincided for some period of time. Perhaps the lacunae are due to the erratic nature and sudden urgencies of the coffee shop business.

Lisa also works at a kiosk in the mall, where she sells bags of sweet roasted nuts. The mall is outdoors, so she has to wear a thermal layer and gloves while she works, to keep warm, and also has to eat a lot of the nuts. It saves her the price of a meal each night. She has worked for the nut kiosk since the business opened, a few years ago. She is close with the owner and his elderly wife. She used to live in a room over their garage, and and she still watches their dogs for them and waters their garden when they are away. They have been good to her.

Lisa is training a tomato vine and a basil plant in a couple of plastic pots meant to look like terra cotta, which she has set in her kitchen window. They are not thriving, however--she is seldom home to water them.

When Lisa gets upset, or hormonal, or depressed, she says that she craves salty carbs. When she is eating potato chips at work, her coworkers stay out of her way.

Lisa wanted to go to Italy after college. But she never went to college.

numb fumbling

there are two kinds of empty. one is that dank smelly confusion of vapors that you feel when you're depressed or lonely. all the things you thought about yourself seem unlikely, the good and the bad, so that being anywhere but your own hole in the ground seems like a bad act. you feel like the most obvious kind of fraud, the kind that nobody confronts because they feel too sorry for you.

and the other kind is how you feel after a good conversation, a good workout, or a good...you can imagine. it's how i feel after writing, sometimes...in fact my rule is never to post anything here that hasn't made me feel like i've taken a good...you can imagine. it's the way you feel when you finish doing what you were made to do. some people get it after playing a sports game, some people get it after watching a game. some people get it after a lifetime of work, some people can't get it until their lifetime of work is over and their retirement begins.

at the moment, i feel full. full isn't bad, like the first kind of emptiness, but it's frustrating, it's maddening. i feel like your five-year-old in line for the bathroom, hopping up and down. don't ask him why he didn't go before you left the house...he would have if he could have, but it wasn't his time!

when is my time? it's likely to come all of a sudden. until it does, my stomach rumbles, my breath labors to regulate the burgeoning energy, my head buzzes. i feel like i'm living in a perpetual freeze frame of the part of the movie where the music swells.

you could well ask what kind of cue i'm waiting for. why don't i just get started?

how would a born basketball player be able to just get started if he'd never heard of the game? how would a great dancer get started if she had no access to music? that's where i seem to be, fans and critics.

where are you?

what cue are you waiting for?

(first published 1.9.08, 7.24pm)

hey hey hey

guess what i said today? you will never guess, so i will tell you.

i said, "thank you for letting me be here, now."

can you believe that?

maybe you don't realize what a big deal this is. maybe you don't know me personally, or you haven't been reading this blog for very long. it is a big, big deal.

the title of this blog is "the rampant idealist," which generally refers to the headstrong nature of my intrinsic optimism. sometimes i embrace this attribute and sometimes it drives me crazy. lately, it has been driving me crazy, because few circumstances in the present state of my life warrant any optimism. i suppose most of the optimism is due to my long-held belief in God, and his promise to continue the good work he begins in his children at the onset of their relationship. there is also, in the title and in my optimism, an aspect of amusement that cynical people inspire in me. i have been depressed, and angry, and hopeless, but there seems to me something quite ridiculous about habitually assuming the worst about life. as often as life blindsides you with misfortune, it surprises you with unmerited and unexpected blessing. edward murphy is quite as unrealistic as pollyanna whittier. so much of what you experience in life depends on what you're looking for.

but taken apart, the "idealist" in the title also refers to my chronic wishful thinking, and "rampant" refers to my wanderlust. there's a hole in my heart, and i'm still figuring out the shape of it; some things fit it better than others, but i've never found the perfect fit, no matter where i go. no matter how happy i am somewhere, within a little time i usually find myself wishing to be somewhere else.

at present, i am in a place that i once devoutly wished never to return to, at least not for any length of time. this place is emotional and spiritual, as well as physical. ...although, having writ that, i suppose i never quite left it in spirit. and that is probably the reason why i'm here again. you have to do the things that you fear the most--this is a moral imperative, in the spirit of eleanor roosevelt, and it is also a law of nature, at least in my experience.

anyway, i just wanted to let you know that today, in the unlikeliest and least logical of places, i thanked God for being where i presently am. let us build a monument and call it קהוי סוף סוף , which in the hebrew means "'it's about time, moron."

fortune cookies

here are some things recently brought to my attention by certain severe mercies:

running is great because it makes you exhausted at the day's end, as if you've been cutting down trees all day long. sometimes you might be fortunate enough to fall into a deep sleep in the middle of the afternoon, waking up after the sun has gone down with an unwonted sense of secret brilliance. also, running gives you blisters, and if you can wait a couple of days until they have deflated, blisters can be a lot of fun.

being sick is great because you feel so good when you wake up, and it's over.

if you don't stir the sugar when you put it in, the tea is bitter but the last sip is so good.

a month without a haircut is like a month in a hairshirt, constantly irritating. but two months or more without a haircut is like taking a vow of silence. besides looking forward to the day when you will at last display the sartorial expression of your personal aesthetic, you find in the meantime the true self of your hair, which you were before always curbing and exaggerating. it may subtly alter the direction of your goals.

lack of success may indicate that your destined avenue for success lies outside the bounds of your imagination. perhaps it is best to devote a period of time to incubation of your talents and passions, without even examining them, so that when the period is over, you can find out which ones are tapping at the glass, most insistent for exercise. some of the things you thought you were might have died out for lack of persistent feeding, and new growths might have emerged that you never suspected could be within your constitution. be brave enough to allow the natural self.

local atmospheric pressure variation

“I’m going to marry Carl,” she told them, her face blank and her voice toneless.

In mid-slurp, Adam set down the aluminum can, retaining it in his clutch. Before wiping his lips, he asked, “Why now?”

Josie slapped the back of his skull.

Linnae sighed, drew her wrist across her perspiring forehead under its fringe of baby-blonde curls, then moved her roving hand to her belly.

“Is it a problem, Daddy?” she asked, as her palms traced the sweet crescent covered in white eyelet cotton.

Adam wiped his mouth, snorted, scratched the spot where Josie had struck him, wiped the entire surface of his face starting and ending with his chin, the nbrought his hand down on the table with a dull report. With a philosophical flick of his wrist, he said, “No.”

She nodded. “Good.” Picking up a peach from the table, she made her laborious way out of the kitchen.

In the hall, Linnae momentarily weighed her choices—outdoors would be hot, with little respite, while the parlor would be uncomfortably solitary, and questions awaited upstairs. Heat presented the least evil, and she turned her face to the screen door at the end of the striped hall. However, Canna came galloping down the stairs, hissing in a stage whisper, “Oh, cripes, you told them, didn’t you? Cripes, you look awful. Well, how’d he take it?”

“Okay. Josie is in there scolding him now.”

“Yeah, she’ll keep him in line. Well, anyway, it was clever of Carl to beat it out of here before you told Daddy.” Glancing around, Canna lit a long grey cigarette.

“I don’t see how it helps. He’ll have to see Dad eventually.”

“Why?” Canna looked up over her cupped hand. “It’s not like this situation beat him out of the bushes the first time.”

“What situation?”

“The baby!” she said exasperatedly, motioning with her smoldering finger.

“Dad already knows about the baby, Canna,” Linnae said. “Good grief, I’m five months along. He’s figured out I’m not just getting plump.”

In perplexity, Canna’s eyebrows plunged like vulture’s wings. “Then what were you telling him?”

“I’ve decided to marry Carl.”

The cigarette scarred the floor. Quickly, Canna stubbed it out. “Marry?” she repeated.

“Yes.”

“Are you crazy?”

“No.”

“Did he ask you?”

“Of course he asked me.” She maneuvered past Canna, and up the stairs. “If you see Polly, tell her I’m up here.” Linnae clumped heavily to the second floor, clsing her ears against the successive inquiries with which Canna pursued her from the landing.

She went into her little white room, at the top of the house, separated even from the second floor by a little step ladder. The lace curtains listlessly fingered the inert windchimes, which had hung there since Linnae’s twelfth birthday.

She sat on the wide sill, her face patterend by the lace’s shadow, and lifted her cinnamon-sugar freckles to the breath of a breeze. A shriek below attracted her attention; as she leaned over the window sill, she saw a little three-foot dervish, crowned ina flaxen excess of curls, running in the spray of a broken lawn sprinkler from next door. Polly slipped, presumably on the wet grass, rolled over to regard the clouds, and caught sight of the upper window. With frantic delight, she shook her arm in salute. “Hello, Mommy!”

Linnae waved languidly back in swelling affection. Suddenly, she felt the slippery wood give way under her; in desperation, she clutched awkwardly at the sides of the window, and braced herself out over the expanse of air above the lawn. Slowly, Linnae eased herself back into the room, away from the window. In a moment, she could feel pain from the tension her wrists had experienced, bracing up her one hundred and seventeen pounds from a grassy lobby of eternity. She smoothed back her curls, which had fallen forward, and rested into her bed’s crackling pillows.

She loved the unsullied purity of her girlhood room. White had alwys been her favorite color as a child, even when friends informed her that it was not a color, at all. She loved the perfect fit of the planed boards against each other in the corners of the ceiling, how they kindly sloped to form a vault of ivory over her head. When at Sunday school she heard the story of God’s creation, she had always imagined the forming of the firmament, which He called Sky, in terms of her little loft room. Somehow, however, the remembrance bothered her, so that she was not sorry to find herself coughing against the tendrils of light-tar smoke that intimated Canna’s entrance.

Pushing aside Linnae’s feet, Canna settled on the bed, which sank unwillingly under her. She breathed in heavily several times, as if about to speak, but each time released the breath in defeat. At length, she measured LInnae’s downturned face with squinted eyes.

“Marry?” she probed.

Linnae did not answer for a moment; she met Canna's stare begrudgingly. “Is that so hard to believe?” she asked.

“What did he ever do for you?” Canna parried. With an abrasive snort of laughter, she motioned with her cigarette at Linnae’s belly. “Except…”

Linnae rose quickly from the bed and stared ou the window. Now Polly was gone.

“Careful,” Canna said. “Don’t get too close to the window. Your weight will carry you over. Josie really should put screens on them.”

“Do you remember the time Max saved my life?” Linnae asked.

Canna was inspecting the room, her head turning like an owl's, this way and that. “What a dump,” she muttered.

“I was seven,” Linnae mused. The curtains brushed against her cheek tenderly. “We were playing on the roof of the barn at Aunt Cilla’s, up north. And I almost fell down the side. Remember that? I don’t’ know how he did it—he just dove after me—he ought to have fell, himself. After that, I thought he could fly.”

“What’s that you say?” Canna asked.

“Remember when cousin Max saved my life?”

“Max? He wasn’t our cousin, featherbrain. Cilla took him in when some lady from church had cancer.” Canna blew out oa jet of smoke. “He never saved your life.”

“He did. I was seven.”

“You were twelve.”

“Canna, I was seven. I remember it.” LInnae did not mention the wish she had made on her eighth birthday, four months later, concerning Max, the New Hampshire autumn, and Aunt Cilla’s white clapboard church covered in glowing moss.

“Well, I guess maybe you were eleven,” Canna conceded. “You worshiped Max after that little prank, didn’t you?”

The telephone rang, and Canna rose. The matterss sighed with relief. “That’s probably my agent,” she explained under her breath, as she hobbled from the room. “I’m fed up as hell with these two-bit printers she digs up under every rock.” Despite her professed annoyance, she shambled away with dispatch when Adam’s voice wafted up.

“Canna! It’s that writer’s mack from Savannah!”

Josie came in with Polly in her arms, and laid the child on her little corner cot. “She fell asleep watching the cloud shapes,” she smiled. Linnae put out her hand to stroke Polly’s flossy curls. “Don’t’ wake her up,” Josie cautioned. “She’s a light sleeper. I could kill your father for hollering like that.”

“We all learned to sleep over Daddy’s voice,” Linnae smiled.

The red and purple print of Josie’s skirt spread copiously over the bed. “How you holding up?” she asked solicitiously. “Come sit down, baby, let me rub your feet.” A breath of wind followed Linnae from the window, cooling the toes she cushioned in Josie’s lap. “Did you ever know a summer so hot? Makes me think of those summers we used to spend up north, when I was a girl. All them maple trees never let the heat through so bad as here. And fall time! Well, I guess it’s now wonder Priscilla stayed up there when she got older. She was the only one went to college, you know. Did you ever think about college, Linny?"

Linnae shook her head with a sad smile. “When did I ever have time to think of that, Aunt Jo?” she asked. “I met Carl in high school.”

“I didn’t mean for you, sweet pea. I meant for Polly. College might be a real good thing for her, someday. She’s real bright.”

“Do you ever hear from Aunt Cilla anymore?” Linnae asked. “Does she write?”

“Sure, baby. Nobody like a sister for company, even when you’re twelve hundred miles apart.”

“Does she tell you anything about Max?”

“Max?” Josie’s brow crimped. “Well, I guess she does talk about him sometimes. All those babies, and no daddy!” Josie bit her lip in a rare flush of embarrassment. “Adopting, I mean, you know.”

“Max wasn’t a baby when she adopted him, though, was he?” Linnae asked.

“Seems like he was thirteen when Cilla took him in. I guess we all though she was in for it, with a boy that big. He was always real quiet, and we guessed he was up to mischief, or hiding dirty books, or something. Shoot, maybe he was. But he helped her with the babies, and kept the place looking real spruce. Cilla dropped about ten years after he came, she was that relieved.”

“What’s he doing now?” Linnae asked, thinking of ten years dropped like a garment around the ankles.

“Oh, working, I guess.”

“Did he stay in New Hampshire?” LInnae was desperate to know that he had stayed, never migrated south of the Mason-Dixon. Max belonged to that cool, shadowy realm of falling leaves and pristine clapboard houses, where water tripped over stony brooks instead of lolling sluggishly in cricks, puddling muddily in hollers.

“Seems to me he went somewhere round there. Mayb New York. I guess Cilla said he takes some trips to Montreal on business.” Closing her eyes, Linnae drew deeply of the thick air, steadying herself.

“Max was real smart,” Josie conceded. She looked at Polly againk, then back to Linnae, stroking her face tenderly. “I’m so proud of you, baby,” she said affectionately.

“Oh, Aunt Jo,” Linnae murmured. The comfort and sadness of her bed cushioned her thickly from a widening split she felt within.

“Polly’s such a good little girl,” Josie continued. “She’ll be a real star one day. Anybody can see that. She’ll come to something real fine. You’re doing just fine, baby. Don’t forget that.”

They heard Canna’s voice ricocheting off the hall’s peeling paper. Josie rolled her eyes. “Lord have mercy,” she said. “We’ll live to rue the day she took up with that writers’ club. But at least she’s got a job in the works.”

“Maybe I should have got a job,” Linnae mused. “Maybe it would have helped.”

“Nothing could have been better than these two precious babies you've got,” Josie said irrefutably. “You’ve done the best with everything you’ve had. Remember Della’s girls? All of them gave away the babies and went to California, trying to be film stars. Seems like all the girls were doing it at once—running off to Hollywood to be an actress.”

Feeling lost, Linnae said, “I never wanted to be an actress, Aunt Jo.”

“I know, baby,” Josie answered. After a pause, she scratched her head. “You were always the one I never understood too well.” She rose to leave, her flowered print clinging to her generous hindparts. At the door, she turned for a moment.

“So you’re going to marry that boy?”

Linnae nodded mutely. Josie sighed with closed lips.

“Well, that’s probably good,” she conceded. Then, in mid-stride, as if she almost had kept it to herself, she added, “Good to get a daddy for those babies.” She closed the door behind her.

Polly murmured in her sleep, and Linnae knelt beside her, not feeling the weight of her belly as much as before. She touched Poly’s cinnamon-sugar freckles, brushed the long black tendrils of her eyelashes, traced the round line of her jaw to her oyster-shell chin. Angrily, she pulled out of her head, like a hairy, noisome weed, the thought of any partner in Polly’s making. The child had seemed to sprout inside her, like a fluffy dandelion seed flying through the air in late summer, coming to rest in a warm, sunny hollow. Idly, Linnae wondered whether dandelions ever grew in New Hampshire.

There was a sound like ice clinking weakly in a glass. During one of the last summers she spent in New Hampshire, Linnae had admired the windchimes that hung in Cilla’s window, and Max later found her in the yard, with bits of string and broken glass strewn around her, trying to copy the chimes for herself. Max did not laugh, but took her hand and put her on the front of his bicycle; together, they rode to the general store, two miles away, where he took down a middle-sized ring of shining metal rods, threaded strongly together with a ball hanging in their midst invisibly. He could not have known that, when she would hang them up at her home, the air would be too stagnant for them to make any music. Once Linnae pushed it with her hand, and then harder, insistently.

The clamor woke Polly, who blinked, sat up, and giggled blithely, "Do it again, Mommy!" Seeing her, Linnae let her hand drop, and felt the fruitlessness of her anger.

The telephone rang, and Adam hollered again. “Lin!” he shouted. “It’s your boy.”

Linnae flatly answered his shout, “Tell him he can try again later.”

“We got the mail today,” Polly volunteered, wiping the sleep from her eyes. “You got a card, Mommy. It has a picture on the front.” She pulled a crumple of pasteboard from the pocket of her overalls. “I was holding it for you.”

Linnae smoothed the the wrinkles from a postcard that showed a tower of nineteenth-century prestige, rising against a blue sky from a lawn covered splendidly with leaves.

“Auntie Joe got a letter, too,” Polly said, pulling herself out of her cot. She made her own way down the stairs.

Linnae watched her go and wondered why she had never thought of going to college. Some people had talked of doing it, when she was in school. Probably she couldn't have done it, and maybe she'd instinctively known so--but still, Linnae thought, I ought to have thought of it! Polly was smart—Linnae wondered if Polly would think of going to college. She must, Linnae decided, she must think of going, before too long. All Linnae had thought of, in regard to the future, was having a baby.

“Well!” she thought fiercely. “Now I’ve got one.”

She wished there were an old dog or something near to kick. She had borne a baby before she was sixteen, and damned if she wasn’t going to have another one. She had never considered another.

"Just because I wanted one," she thought, balling up her fists, "doesn't mean I want another one!"

It was like she had pushed a rock, just to see how far its own weight would carry it, and the ground had turned out to be a slope, carrying the rock fast and far away. It seemed unfair to her, but there was no one to blame.

She wondered what it might be like to be an actress, to put on make-up and be somebody new all the time. Hollywood, where Della’s girls had gone, only meant tall white letters on a hillside to her. She wondered what they stood for, to lure Della’s girls and so many of the young girls away.


In the evening, Linnae lay on her back in the long grass, where the yard sloped away into nameless meadow. The sun was still high and insistent; hints of approaching twilight came in stealthy breaths through the grass. Polly came to her where she lay on the ground—Linnae felt the cool of her small shadow over her eyes. Polly settled her belly down on top of Linnae’s pumpkin-sized bump, laying her head against Linnae’s chest. With difficulty, Linnae heaved her breath in and out.

“When does the baby come?” asked Polly. As Linnae tried to gather strength to answer, Polly gave a little gasp. “Oh! I can hear him.”

Linnae lifted her chin slightly, in surprise.

Polly cupped her ear attentively to the top of Linnae’s belly. “I can hear,” she whispered. “I can hear. He’s talking.”

They both lay still for some moments. Linnae felt tears squeezing from her eyes, running down into the cradle of her ears.

“Polly, don’t,” she croaked weakly. “It hurts mommy when you do that.”

Polly rolled off her belly and into the grass beside her. Tears welling from her eyes, Linnae lifted up a grateful inhalation. She felt her daughter’s knees clamber against her side. Polly seemed to be trying to tuck herself in along with the baby.

“I think we should name him Herman,” she mused.

"How do you know it's a boy?" Linnae asked, brushing Polly's flossy hair out of her eyes.

Polly cocked her head to one side. "Well," she slowly drawled. Then she closed her eyes and rested her hand on the side of Linnae's belly.

Josie came out to find them. "I've been waiting supper for twenty minutes!" she said exasperatedly. Polly popped up obediently.

"Did you get a letter today, Aunt Jo?" Linnae asked, remaining on the ground.

Josie paused, nonplussed.

"Well!--how did you know?--I had a letter from Cilla. And what do you think?” Her pause was punctuated by Linnae’s steady breath. “She's coming down for a little visit, and she’s got Max coming to keep her company,” Josie concluded. "How did you know?"

"She got a postcard!" Polly hopped up and down on one foot. "I saved it."

"It wasn't really for me," said Linnae. "It was for everyone." She pulled it out from her pocket, handing it up to Josie.

"Well! This is where he lives, now. That's real nice. He was always a nice boy, wasn't he? Says here that he wishes you could be here, when they come to visit..."

"I know!" said Linnae, starting to laugh. "He doesn't think I'm here! He thinks I've gone away!" Her laughter shook her with increasing violence. She saw Josie looking at her with alarm. Linnae feared she could not stop, that it would shake her to death. But then she thought she heard the resounding of the windchimes; the sun fell, at last, and dusk was bringing a rare breeze.

(from 6 October 2001)

christmas special

irving berlin wrote "white christmas" while sitting by a pool in phoenix, arizona--it has been recorded more times than any other american pop song in history. according to my extensive research (on wikipedia) "it has often been noted that the mix of melancholy — "just like the ones I used to know" — with comforting images of home — "where the treetops glisten" — resonated especially strongly with listeners."

there you go--the numbers indicate that christmas resonates of melancholy and comfort to the general public. but we already knew that, didn't we? think about the words to "god rest ye, merry gentlemen." when i was a small child, that song really bothered me, with its minor key and words like "dismay" and "darkness." i hid when the christmas album reached that track, because the song scared me.

"white christmas" reached its record peak of popularity at a time when a subtler reminder sufficed that christmas really is a season of melancholy, even if you're not in the midst of war. it's the end of the year. it's cold. we expect ourselves to perform more duties and spend more money in six weeks than in the whole rest of a normal year.

nonetheless, there is comfort, sometimes natural and sometimes manufactured. the earth's dormant season is the growth spurt of nostalgia, of a general expectation of cheer and gratitude and generosity, of value placed on virtues that get less airplay during the rest of the year. at this time, as at no other time, we prefer the feelings of others. we welcome the nasty family members into our homes. we put on the ugliest sweaters because an elderly relative knitted them.

christmastime is life as a cartoon. every hurt throbs, every joy is like a catapult, and it lasts for about five minutes.

green glass

In urgent quest of his mother’s choir robe, Brian Winslow found the vestry closet locked, with a peculiar sound coming from behind. Brian knocked at the door—the snuffling stopped and he heard shallow breaths biding the unnatural silence. A moment passed, the snuffling resumed. Brian called out,

“Somebody in there?”

A volley of curse words rang through the closet door at him. Their complex construction identified the speaker as Martin Saint. No other boy in the Sunday school, even under great emotional duress, could have equaled Martin's deft turns of phrase with profanity. And it was impossible that any of the grown-ups should use words of that kind in church, no matter whether their faces were hid by closet doors.

Finding that it was Martin locked inside, Brian’s impatience to get the choir robe was cooled by a pleasant sense of justice. Only that morning, Martin had stuck four matches in Darien Mooney’s new shoes and lit them with a flint. The pious Darien, holding forth on the evils of whisky-nipping after school, making veiled references to persons in the room guilty of that evil, began suddenly to hop and shout.

Brian did not mind the prank on Darien, but he did mind getting pegged for it by Miss O’Rourke, when everyone knew that only Martin Saint had the nerve and prowess to carry out a scheme of that calibre. So it was with satisfaction that Brian answered the insults,

“Can’t you get out, Martin?”

The door opened a crack.

“Look, Winslow…that’s you, isn’t it?” A tear-wet eye peeked through the inner darkness. “I…that was rotten stuff to say, Winslow. I’m sorry, really.”

The apology seemed to stick in the door, as Brian confronted it in disbelief. The door slammed vengefully shut.

Brian stammered, “Well, that’s all right, Martin. I forgive you.”

The door opened again, only a crack. Martin’s glassy eyes and sharp nose poked out.

“You do? Just like that?” His face squinted as if he’d eaten something sour. “What the hell am I supposed to do now?” He began to pull the door shut.

Brian started. “What?”

Martin’s eyes shifted across the floor. “You’ve got one up on me, haven’t you? Does that make it not count anymore?”

“Make what not count?”

“Saying I’m sorry, shithead!”

Helplessly, Brian shrugged. “I don’t care so much if you curse. I’m used to it,” he said.

Martin’s eyes emerged again. He whispered, “Look, Winslow. You’ve been at this all your life, haven’t you?”

“At what?” Brian asked.

“Being good.” Martin’s voice was hoarse with urgency. “Does it ever start to come easy?”

Brian chose his answer warily. “Sure, I guess. You stop doing bad things because you’ll be caught.”

“So it’s only bad if you’re caught, then.”

Brian felt safer, treading on Martin’s own ground. “Well, you can’t be punished if they don’t catch you.” He thought it quite diplomatic, and was pleased to Martin’s scowl fade a little.

“But He sees everything, doesn’t he?” Martin’s brow clouded. “So it’s no good.”

“Who does?”

“Jesus does, stupid prick!” It immediately gave him remorse, which he expressed with “Shit--sorry." Again, he desperately bleated, “Sorry!”

“What do you mean, Jesus?” Brian interjected.

“Father said so this morning, didn’t he? Said he sees everything good and bad, sh…stupid.” Martin bucked his head defiantly. “See? I stopped myself that time. But I thought it, didn’t I?” He began again to snivel. “Why’d He have to go and die, anyway? I didn’t ask Him to.”

Troubled by a vague sense of responsibility, Brian said uneasily, “It doesn’t work like that. If He waited to die until everyone asked…He’d have to die lots of times. It was once for all…” Heaven sent him a resource. “The petitions addressed to our Father, as distinct from the prayers of the old covenant, rely on the mystery of salvation already accomplished, once for all, in Christ crucified and risen.” He delivered it as he had memorized it, in monotone.

Martin looked at him with grudging respect. “Say, how’d you know that?”

“It’s catechism. You’d know it too, if you were listening in Sunday school and weren’t cutting the belt of people’s trousers.”

“Yeah. If I ask you to forgive me, will it be all right?

Gratified that Martin remembered the episode, which had given him such grief at his mother’s hands, Brian was not inclined to grant a swift pardon. “Well, it won’t put the belt back together,” he said.

“Yeah,” Martin said gloomily. “And what about Jesus?”

“What about Jesus?” Brian demanded exasperatedly.

“Well, you didn’t go and die for nobody, did you?”

The responsibility was wearisome to Brian. “Look, Martin,” he said, “I’ve got to get my piece of glass.”

“What piece of glass?”

“Just a piece of glass. It’s in my mum’s choir robe.”

“What’s it for?” Martin demanded.

“Looking through.”

“I saw you!” Martin pointed at him, wide-eyed. “You were doing it in church. Looking through that piece of green glass while the priest was talking.”

“Yeah, what of it?” It was altogether out of the natural order that Martin should scold him for misdeeds in church or anywhere else.

“Don’t get in a strop,” Martin said. “I’ve done lots of things worse than that. Took the Lord’s name in vain all the time, and…” He paused shamefacedly. “You remember what happened to Mrs. Gallow’s cat?”

“Look,” Brian interrupted quickly, “maybe you should tell all this to the priest.”

Martin cried, “I can’t do that! Bad enough talking to God. What’d I do with a real person I can see? Besides, they’ll never let me into confession. They’ll think I’m going to plant another stink bomb.”

His eyes fell. “Yeah, that was me.”

Brian sniffed. “We all knew that,” he could not help saying.

Martin looked up at him as if from a great distance below.

“What’ll I do, Winslow?” His voice was dull with despair. “I didn’t know nothing about Jesus before today—I never listened, see. I was going to hell, but I didn’t know it. And now I do know it, and...” His voice drew thin like a thread, and he looked down. When his gaze resurfaced, his eyes were filled with tears. “Is it any better now? I still done all the things I done.”

Brian tried to think what to say, but could not rid the thought of his piece of green glass. So hard to see through, dark and cloudy, putting lumps in the faces of people he saw through it—even the priest’s. His mother had taken it away, hissing that it distracted him from the Word of God; it was galling she should know so well. Trying to decipher a face through the glass, putting the warped vision of the priest right with the knowledge of the real priest, he could only hear watery echoes of the homily. He could remember only snatches of the hymn. Without the glass to play with, the service was long and rather too much to bear.

on the necessity of believing in miracles

He loves you; and hourly miracles
For you, and such as you, is working now;
From all eternity has worked them for you.
(G.E. Lessing, Nathan the Wise)

C. S. Lewis has an apologetic that is, of course, great, on the subject of miracles. Either you believe they are possible or you don’t, and if you don’t, you will never see one, even when it happens.

That comes at it from the perspective of believing that miracles are possible at all. But what for those who, having committed themselves to the belief in their possibility, want to know how far they should commit themselves to the likelihood of miracles?

We’re not being skeptical. We’re only being polite. Wishing not to be presumptuous. It’s fine if there won’t be any available for us—just thought we’d ask.

Six years ago, I got kicked in the head that the whole issue of salvation is one of presumption. The better you understand Jesus, the better you understand grace, and the better you understand what an intolerable interloper you are.

And that you are just the cutest damn thing—to put it in human, grandparental terms that we all ought to understand—to the one who is granting you grace.

“Oh, look what a man he thinks he is, grabbing that toy out of my hands! Watch him run off to play with it. Oh, look out, he’s going to stab himself in the eye with it. Yeah, that’s right, come back over here, you can sit on my lap until it feels better.”

We get just a little bit older, to where we have learnt our manners, how to say please and thank you to God. And that it’s rude, when He gives us a new bike, to say, “but I wanted the one like the kids ride on TV.”

The differences are several, because God is not your grandparent. He only thinks you’re cute because, by virtue of being God, He has made it so, and there are plenty of other Godly character traits that would influence Him to treat you like the presumptuous interloper you would be if He had not made it so.

If you’re still following me, the point is that believing that miracles are not only in stock, but arrayed on the shelf, is directly linked to believing in this particular God and His salvation.

Shyness of presumption is good as long as it is shyness to make miracles the currency of our belief. That’s like marrying for money, and we all know not to do that. But think of it this way:

“Happy anniversary, darling!”
“Oh, Charles, thank you. It’s so lovely being married to you.”
“I’m ever so glad you think so, my love. And I’ve got a surprise for you.”
“Oh, you didn’t have to, Charles, really!”
“Yes, I have, darling! If you’ll come with me to the jewelry shop downstairs, I want you to look round and pick out anything you’d like to have that you see there. Anything at all.”
“Oh-ho-ho! Charles, what a sweet thought! But I don’t need fancy presents to make me love you. I love you just the way you are.”
“I know you do, darling. It means ever so much to me. That’s why I want to buy you something nice. Come down, let’s go!”
“Really, Charles, I can’t imagine… I mean, this really isn’t necessary.”
“I know, darling, but I want to do it!”
“But—”
“Whatever is the matter, darling?”
“Charles, how can you possibly? I mean, how can you? Anything in the shop? Without knowing what I might ask for?”
“I mean it, darling. You didn’t know, but I’ve been keeping by a little, and you can believe me, I’ve got the resources. No matter what you might pick out.”
“Charles… The shop below is Cartier.”
“Yes, love, I know.”
“Charles…”
“Don’t you believe I mean it, when I say I’ve got it?”
“Charles…I know what a hard worker you are.”

No, we should never marry for money. But should we marry for poverty? Or rationality? Or respectability? If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Jane Austen, it’s that we should marry for the man himself. Quite often he turns out to be much more agreeable or rich than anybody thought at first.

(first published 8.2.07, 3.23pm)

vive la revolution

Never tell me that coffee is not the source of eternal youth. I have been feeling absolutely dire for two weeks and, in desperate fatigue, drank a double espresso yesterday afternoon; within an hour’s time, the clouds parted and the world was new and fresh as a dewy rosebud.

I woke up regrettably early this morning and, acting on aforesaid principle, made with sluggish but steadfast dispatch for the coffee shop. A strange thing happened when I emerged from the house; I became conscious of it some moments after. It is a strange thing that has been happening consistently since I returned to America.

I keep thinking of Paris. No, that isn’t right. I keep thinking as if I were in Paris.

It would be easier, you would all know what I meant, if I said things about this town remind me of Paris. But that is not what I mean. Nothing about this town really reminds me of Paris. The streets are much too wide, the flowers too diverse, the women too blocky, the men too sheepish, the dogs too animal. There are no wrought iron balconies, and no kiosks selling cigarettes and smut magazines with an air of dismissive elegance. There are people awake and moving at eight in the morning who are neither street-sweepers nor bakers—what needs more?

Quand-mème, as I walk my two knee-high escorts around town, any time of day, I find the furniture of my mind unexpectedly rearranged. You know what I mean when I borrow the phrase “unbearable lightness of being”? There is some spiritual medium that suddenly envelops me as I walk up Martin and then East Street, between King George Street and Maryland Avenue, that I remember from the air in Paris. I remember it walking downhill from the Pantheon on the rue Lhomond, when my hair was tied up in knots because it was too long or short to do anything about, smiling at the salutes of a couple of delivery men in a van—here in America we call them catcalls until we get to Paris and realize they are much too chivalrous, much too appreciative, for such a name.

It is a feeling too earthy for a halo and too clarifying for a fog, and too visceral to be only a state of mind. But for me it is distinctly Parisian. I knew I would see no blue windowboxes of geraniums, nor no slick-haired businessmen with glowing skin and Hermes accessories, and if I got a catcall it would be a catcall (only this and nothing more). Nonetheless, though I expected to see none of these things, if I had seen them it would not have surprised me. It would not have surprised me to see the Eiffel Tower instead of the cupola of the State House in the middle of the roundabout.

Maybe it is the weather—that is one thing that this part of America shares with that part of France—a langourous damp in the air on the clearest of mornings, that can turn into a heavy drug for days and days, and then suddenly rains itself out into childish freshness.

But I am more persuaded that this strange syndrome is a result of my current place in life, one so unusual for an American of my age that the only phrases for its description are in European languages. “Laissez-faire” is what I mean, or “que sera, sera.” A state of working hard without being quite sure of the goal, of commitment without certainty of the outcome.

I think most Americans do not experience regularly this state of being, except on holidays. There is nobody who is going to mow their lawn or fix their deck today; if it was going to get done in time for the Fourth of July, it would have got done yesterday. If not, laissez-faire. C’est pas grave. Qu’est-ce qu’il y a de faire? No one’s really going to notice, anyway. Holidays are the greater equalizers—everyone is in an equal state of committed lethargy. Kind of like the greater European population is from two until five, every day of the work week. They spread out their siestas over the year, while we save them up for bank holidays.

Nota Bene: As I was walking back from the coffee shop, my matinal lethargy was broken by a musically rapid flow of French language, spoken in the most impeccably nasal intonation. There were three people sitting in a car parked at the curb, discussing place or custom, something that required immediate assessment. They were speaking French, in the most impeccably nasal intonation, and all of them were black. Truly, this is a great country.

(first published 7.4.07, 9.15am)

magic words, vol.1

"i wonder what she's like sober."

debt

You and I hate to owe anybody. It gives somebody the right to be nasty to us. Favors are the purchase of our tolerance.

Isn’t it funny that the people we owe are called “creditors?” Maybe you don’t think it’s funny until you overthink it, like this: as often as “credit” refers to finance, it also refers to trust or belief.

To figure this out, I could consult a dictionary, but so could you. Instead, let’s play.

To give someone credit could mean that you’re allowing him to take stuff from you without paying for it just now. It could also mean that you are recounting his act, one accomplished or yet to be. In both these instances, you are treating this someone with a lot of honor. You don’t give credit of any kind to a bum.

A creditor is someone who treats us real nice, giving us a privilege reserved for someone honorable. Sometimes they are doing it because they are hoping or expecting us to prove otherwise—companies are built on interloping bums. Other creditors are doing us a favor, helping us rise to confirm their faith in us. Other creditors love us.

The benign ones at the middle level are the ones I don’t mind. Credit at the company store, or from a casual acquaintance, I can take as easily as leave, because it costs them little when I disappoint them.

But I despise the sharks, and I loathe the lovers. Both types threaten to eat me alive.

Can you survive without credit? Probably. I’m not sure, though, if you can live without it. The problem with spending your life taking no favors, is that you die with no glee, having got away with nothing and having received no gifts. Life that has only what it earned has no amazement, does it? I haven’t lived that long…maybe I’m wrong about that.

I’m twenty-five now. I owe a bank in Wisconsin a hundred thousand dollars today. My mother thinks I’m a failure. But there are a few friends and a few people who don’t know me very well who think I’m amazing and have a wonderful life ahead of me. I think I had better keep well away from them. I’d hate to have them invest too much, and feel the pinch when they lose it.

the bear and the bird

the bones of birds are filled with air. consequently, their bodies weigh less than is suggested by their volume, and can be buoyed by air currents.

when i learned this in fifth grade, i was envious.

human bones have similar structure to that of birds--it is called cancellate. unfortunately for flying endeavors, human cancellate bone mass is mixed with concrete bone mass, which is solid through and through.

my family's home is all harmonious, like lights shining from a house in winter, and my sisters are like music moving through it. in contrast, i feel like a bear in summer, drunken and fat, lumbering in with obtuse, destructive goodwill. my voice is too loud, my laughter as jarring as a sneeze in a symphony hall.

i am ambitious to be unrecognized. i want to hide, but i know that hiding will make me more conspicuous. i feel most gratified when i am out running, and the cars hiss past me. if i could, i would run from early morning until twilight, when the chaparral breathes out an evening peace. as yet, i can't run far enough for my own satisfaction.

lately i cannot quit crying. it happens suddenly and irretrievably, like someone pulled a rock out of a dam. it comes in jags are like an animal pelt, thick, flush, comforting, a soporific relief. i have to take them alone, unwilling that anyone should see how good they feel.

as i catch my breath, from one jag to the next, i try to find a pressure point that set it off. even if i can find one, it weighs hardly anything when i examine it. i cry at exhaustion, at failure, at stupidity, but these all seem to be scratches on the thick sheeny surface of some grief that is draining, warm and heavy, from incomprehensible recesses, leaving me light-headed and exhausted, hearing only inchoate questions:

how does it all slip away so fast, and where does it go?

it must be my fault--who else could i blame?

everyone accepts that i am the way this way, and they are quick to point out my good qualities. God bless them. why should i get so angry at their kindly acceptance?

why won't the reality come out of hiding?

tonight i heard the "kyrie eleison" we used to sing in college chorus. i shut my eyes and retreated from the heaviness of my breathing body, following its archaic vaults of tones intertwining. like college, it is ethereal, short-lived, nothing more than an exquisite beginning.

i keep running, wishing i could leave the ground, that i could disappear like a vapor when the sun comes out.

all i've ever wanted was to be a bird.