It has been one year since the truck drove away- one half of our life piled in the back, and me left standing in the apartment with the rest. One year since that beautiful, sunny, cherry blossoms-in-the-park day, obscene to me in its shining pink aliveness. It was a day not unlike today, a day to start shiva, and the only time I thought I might literally never get up again.
One year later and I’ve walked continents of the earth and mind alike. Yet today the thought is oddly similar. An echo that says simply and firmly, I cannot do this. I cannot. In the last year I learned to traverse the loneliness, like the stoic bare forest in winter, loneliness like the middle of the sea. I hopped the knife-edge of this thing and balanced, learned to walk without cutting my feet. I know now that I will fall to neither side- not insanity on the left, not self-immolation on the right.
And yet, this next thing comes like a wall, like Check Point Charlie without any papers, and I don’t know how to slip through.
You see, I do not know how this is done. How one reaches across the ravine and picks up the hand of another. Again. It is a combination of forgetting, and having never really known how. I have forgotten how to get it out there, put it on, and pile it high. Forgotten how to catch a glimpse, to wink, to look slyly and smile. I have forgotten how to banter, to exchange wit, to touch an arm and laugh. And more so, I have forgotten what it feels like to want these things, not in the abstract of a late-night insomniac musing, but in the instant that it actually occurs. To want them with the carefree spontaneity that comes when it’s all reciprocal, and right there, in the moment of happening.
At the same time, I have never really known how, at least not as it must be now, when it has to be about wanting, more than needing. When it must be, for me, as much about being the chooser as the chosen. I don’t know the steps one takes as a woman, rather than as a girl, or how one plays while lacking tolerance or taste for games- when the whole thing is cast everywhere, from the online sites to the bars, as a giant game of catch-as-catch-can.
I don’t know how to do this.
I don’t know how to do this when the truth is, I am afraid that I may be permanently broken. I have a fissure now, like a hairline crack or the faded imprint of a letter across my chest. I will never be new again. On the good days my failure gives me clarity, depth, and an air of worldly knowing. On the bad days, it puts me at the back of the shelf, dusty with all the other chipped bits of crockery.
I don’t know how to do this when the truth is, my internal compass, my gut, my instinct for these things seems to always fail me. Since junior high it seems sometimes, too much time wasted on false dopamine-high-crushes that turned out to be no more than patterns in the wind. And now, at either extreme, the needle fails still, reading kindness as bewitchery, and interest as lechery. I need a GPS but have been given a sun-dial instead.
No, I cannot do this.
Oh, winter! Won’t you just rain some more? Let me stay wrapped inside a little longer, content with my books, my cups of tea, and the dog snoring next to me.
Ahh, but the truth is, the daffodils are nodding and insistent, and the tulips are rioting in their beds. Jacket-less arms swing on Broadway, the playgrounds overflow, and today I saw the chairs out, stacked and ready, at the outdoor bar in Riverside Park.
It is Spring and I must learn to step outside, into the warm evening air.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Sunday, January 18, 2009
On New Year and Old Year
As a fairly lapsed Jew, what I know about Judaism could maybe fit on the head of a pin. But one thing that has always stuck in my head from a high holiday service I once attended is learning the origin of the term “scapegoat”. On the Jewish calendar the end of the year comes in Autumn, and is followed nine days later by Yum Kippur. This day of atonement is supposed to be a time to reflect and cleanse oneself of all the misdeeds of the previous year, before going forth into the new one. The term scapegoat comes from an old Yum Kipper story in which villagers tied a red scarf around the neck of a goat before throwing it off a cliff. As the goat fell to its death, the scarf turned white, meaning that all the bad from the previous year had been washed clean, and the new one could be embraced fully, and without regret.
Although I always hated the solemnity of Yum Kipper, this year, at what is still the beginning of our New Year, I see the wisdom of looking back and taking stock of what I learned in the last 12 months before stepping firmly forward. 2008 was a tumultuous year for me personally, as well as for the nation, and although I am looking forward to what will hopefully be a more even year, I am mindful that the peace I seek is a road walked, and one I can only see clearly if I remember to mark the milestones along the way. So to that end, I find myself with an impossible year finally behind me, able to say that although I lost much, I also learned a few hard, hard truths about myself, the world, and the human heart. By listing a few of them here, I tie my own proverbial red scarf, release it away on the wind, and hope that when it lands it will be a bright white spot on the valley floor.
Winter:
Grief is like sitting under water and breathing through the nose. And the only way to get through is to sit and wait for the waters to recede. At times it is a test of will- you, the water, and can I find a reason to stand up today, and today, and today? Now I understand all human frailties- addiction, compulsion, prayer, and plain old denial - in the face of grief. I would not wish it on my worst enemy, and I will never again presume to know another’s lonely road walked in its wake.
Spring:
I want, therefore I am. Desire. Vision. The snapshots that live in the mind’s eye. Or the thing that awakens with a start, unexplained but right, when we meet a person we recognize for the first time. It is in these moments and deeply personal hungers where our wants become ourselves. The actual achievement or possession of these things does not matter. The fact that we saw- a glimpse of a life, an idea, or even a person that we want- and knew- this is solipsism. It is these aches that tell us who we are. We may never achieve the ability to grasp, and hold close, but the fact of wanting, sometimes that is enough.
Summer:
I have always had a love affair with language. Words chosen with care, a phrase imbued with just the right twist of irony and double entendre- and, oh! Swoon! So it was with gravity that I conceded the caveat to Spring is Do or Do Not. There are limits to language- actions, movements, effort- these simply weigh more. You. Me. What do we do? The things we devote our attention to, these are the things we are made of. Like a key in a lock, it really is that simple.
Fall:
In the first semester of my PhD, what I learned was that knowledge is not a pinnacle, but a cliff’s edge, and once I got here, I realized that I will never really know. Each question begets an answer begets another question. True knowledge is a letting go, and an embrace of uncertainty. To be an intellectual is not to have access to an elite store of information, rather it is knowing enough to be humbled by all that is not known. And its opposite is not lack of education or lack of learning, but lack of curiosity, lack of willingness to learn, to think, to change. It is intractable. It is dogma.
The lesson I have only begun to discover. The bridge or the resolution for 2009:
The trick to finding happiness and contentment is to hold faith, but to not expect. Like an optical illusion- eyes open, don’t focus, and eventually the vision, the thing to find will be revealed. Release entitlement, release fairness, release what ought to be. Live only for what is, and know that all of life’s gift and all of life’s disappointments are the circumstances, but not the definition of a life. All I get is to put one foot in front of the other, to be mindful, and trust that all security, all tethers and all compass points are rooted in my own toes. The rest is beyond my grasp.
Although I always hated the solemnity of Yum Kipper, this year, at what is still the beginning of our New Year, I see the wisdom of looking back and taking stock of what I learned in the last 12 months before stepping firmly forward. 2008 was a tumultuous year for me personally, as well as for the nation, and although I am looking forward to what will hopefully be a more even year, I am mindful that the peace I seek is a road walked, and one I can only see clearly if I remember to mark the milestones along the way. So to that end, I find myself with an impossible year finally behind me, able to say that although I lost much, I also learned a few hard, hard truths about myself, the world, and the human heart. By listing a few of them here, I tie my own proverbial red scarf, release it away on the wind, and hope that when it lands it will be a bright white spot on the valley floor.
Winter:
Grief is like sitting under water and breathing through the nose. And the only way to get through is to sit and wait for the waters to recede. At times it is a test of will- you, the water, and can I find a reason to stand up today, and today, and today? Now I understand all human frailties- addiction, compulsion, prayer, and plain old denial - in the face of grief. I would not wish it on my worst enemy, and I will never again presume to know another’s lonely road walked in its wake.
Spring:
I want, therefore I am. Desire. Vision. The snapshots that live in the mind’s eye. Or the thing that awakens with a start, unexplained but right, when we meet a person we recognize for the first time. It is in these moments and deeply personal hungers where our wants become ourselves. The actual achievement or possession of these things does not matter. The fact that we saw- a glimpse of a life, an idea, or even a person that we want- and knew- this is solipsism. It is these aches that tell us who we are. We may never achieve the ability to grasp, and hold close, but the fact of wanting, sometimes that is enough.
Summer:
I have always had a love affair with language. Words chosen with care, a phrase imbued with just the right twist of irony and double entendre- and, oh! Swoon! So it was with gravity that I conceded the caveat to Spring is Do or Do Not. There are limits to language- actions, movements, effort- these simply weigh more. You. Me. What do we do? The things we devote our attention to, these are the things we are made of. Like a key in a lock, it really is that simple.
Fall:
In the first semester of my PhD, what I learned was that knowledge is not a pinnacle, but a cliff’s edge, and once I got here, I realized that I will never really know. Each question begets an answer begets another question. True knowledge is a letting go, and an embrace of uncertainty. To be an intellectual is not to have access to an elite store of information, rather it is knowing enough to be humbled by all that is not known. And its opposite is not lack of education or lack of learning, but lack of curiosity, lack of willingness to learn, to think, to change. It is intractable. It is dogma.
The lesson I have only begun to discover. The bridge or the resolution for 2009:
The trick to finding happiness and contentment is to hold faith, but to not expect. Like an optical illusion- eyes open, don’t focus, and eventually the vision, the thing to find will be revealed. Release entitlement, release fairness, release what ought to be. Live only for what is, and know that all of life’s gift and all of life’s disappointments are the circumstances, but not the definition of a life. All I get is to put one foot in front of the other, to be mindful, and trust that all security, all tethers and all compass points are rooted in my own toes. The rest is beyond my grasp.
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