“I cannot love you.”
“Why?”
“I worry about you.”
“What?”
“If I think about you, I think about sad things.”
“That hurts.”
“You choose the hurt. You are defined by hurt. Hurt makes you feel important. Hurt makes you bigger than you are.”
“I’m not sure if I agree with that assessment.”
“Do you know why?”
“What do you think I’m going to say?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“I’m going to hit you if you make me say, ‘Yes.'”
“Hurt is who you are.”
My hair is long
My hair is longer than it usually is. It looks strange to me. I don’t really look like me. I ripped my wrist and my forehead. I look like Frankenstein from some angles. I have scars that would scare your mother. They scare mine.
And for all this. I used to think I was immortal. Clearly I’m breakable. I don’t know I’ve been broken, is that the same? Death seems to be in the air recently. Not my death. I’ve lived more than half my life.
I remember turning ten, and my best friend’s father told me, “Ten, then twenty, then thirty, then forty.” I thought he was crazy. Forty? And now I’m 50 now [when I wrote this].
I was talking to someone outside Starbucks two days ago. It seemed so normal to have coffee, and I remembered my life 10 years ago when it was scones and coffee.
This is going to sound depressing, but it’s kind of true. I have to consciously try not to cry so people don’t stare at me over my Christmas roast.
“I didn’t say you’re not smart, I said you’re not an intellectual.”
This is why you don’t talk when you’re even slightly annoyed. It’s never correct to say, “That’s because you are not an intellectual.”
English isn’t her first language, so that kind of nuance is misplaced. This is how it started: she said she looked fat in her new bikini. For the record, the correct reply to that assertion is, “No you don’t. You look like a wet seal if it had to wear a two-piece.” What you don’t say is, “I feel fat, too.”
Later, when she says, “You just called me stupid,” even though what you actually said was, “You’re not an intellectual,” don’t respond with, “What I meant was, you’re more corporeal than cerebral.” And when she says, “What?” you definitely don’t double down and try to explain.
That’s not when you remind her that she’s from Europe. You don’t say, “You grew up behind the Iron Curtain,” or, “Romania is a second-world country.” It’s really not the best idea. It’s not even a good idea.
I thought it was funny in real time. She didn’t think so.
A complicated mess
There’s a certain beauty to being alone. A comfort. I wake up with me. I went to bed with me. Whatever I was missing is the same at 4:30 am as it was at 1. It’s quieter now. The kids went to school a little earlier and were yelling. Kids are weird. They’re perfect or atrocious. I like the way life feels right now. I like the way kids sound. I like the motion of the moon across the sky. I like the birds that aren’t endemic. I like you.
Things change though. Love becomes hate. People don’t change, really. So what changed? Perception, most likely. If I could give anything, I would go back in time to the place that was gentle. The place where you found easiness. This fucking complicated mess is a complicated mess. I still love you. I still love everything, And it’s a complicated mess.
Steep, calamitous, and quick
I’m not sure if the correct term is meta, or post-modern, or post-whatever. But this is definitely aware of itself. I’m not sure why I torture myself. Thinking about you, about us, is like playing with a sore in your mouth or a loose tooth that hasn’t yet given way. I like to be aware that it’s there.
I know you think about our things. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t. I’m also pretty sure you have come to some very different conclusions than I have.
Yours and my fall was steep, calamitous, and quick.
I was your best friend on August 1. We slept together for the last time on September 5. But by October, we were arms-length robots. My knowing exact dates shouldn’t surprise you. I’m not obsessed anymore than I normally would be. I just have one of those memories that you loved me for, and then hated me just as strongly for.
Ewa Beach
My memory of here is that the place was hot and humid, and it is. Perhaps my ten-year-old sense of reality had not experienced enough data points to make a sound declaration. Ewa Beach was hot. Kailua was not.
It’s calm outside and the state of mind I find myself in is more tolerant of the heat; Hawaii is never really hot. Texas is much hotter. And unlike Phoenix or Las Vegas, it’s not a dry heat. And no year gives respite. There is no such thing as “the year without a summer” as there was in New England. Every summer in Texas is hot. Every Spring you have by then forgotten just how hot 21 days over 100 degrees is. And then you get weird anomalies, like pins pushing through the cardboard protection of seasons. I’ve sweat my days through three digits in January, and one digit in April. I watched incredulously as the National Weather Service in Fort Worth issued a winter storm warning when it was 86 degrees outside, then watched it drop to below twenty before the sun was fully gone.
I love watching the weather. I prefer inclement weather. Weather is a convenient and easy metaphor. But that’s not why I like it. Here’s a stretch. I love the weather for the same reason I love baseball. Everything can be measured, everything is measured, and every measurement is subject to immediate recall with the correct resources and effort; every measurement, even at the quantum level, matters.
I can tell you records in both, and you won’t care, but they exist independently of you or me. Esoteric and beautiful, they act as a beautiful gateway to codifying understanding.
Cocaine Buddha
Money. If that’s what it’s all about? It seems such a waste of time. What does money give you? One minute not worrying about needing more. It’s like happiness. The fleeting moment that leaves you, at best not happy, at worst? Unhappy. Happiness felt by money is fleeting. It is the emotional equivalent of cocaine. You always know how much you have left, then it’s gone. And that dopamine-fueled search for more. The Buddha was right. Don’t want it and you won’t need it. Absence causes suffering. And for the record, I’m not confirming or denying my first-hand knowledge of cocaine.
The secret
If it were possible would it matter? One of my favorite books is “Strange Life of Ivan Osokin.” In it, he begs a magician for another chance to live his life. And then proceeds to make every single mistake he made the first time until he finds himself with the magician again. He has an epiphany. He is on a wheel, that keeps spinning and returns him to the same place.
It’s by P.D. Ouspensky. If you haven’t heard of him, it’s not a big deal, hardly anyone has. But he writes about the secret. Not the bullshit prosperity gospel that brings you everything you think you want just because you believe it will. But the one that recognizes how people act. Realistically and metaphorically we live on a wheel. And it is the rare individual who even recognizes that. The few that can see the wheel and render its truths are defied, like Jesus or Siddhartha. It just doesn’t happen that often. And when it does, you know.
Against all odds
In terms of evolution, ants are very successful. So were dinosaurs. So are crocodiles. Bacteria are absolutely the apex. Humans are an anomaly. The fact that I care what you think? The cosmic or even geologic odds that this might happen are statistically zero. I’m feeling how Iʻm feeling against all odds, against the concept of odds. So there’s that. Short version: you can’t possibly empathize, but I’m not making up how I feel.
Paraffin
Put your hand 3/4 of an inch above the flame of a candle. Immediately, it hurts. Don’t move. Watch the burned wax turn black to paraffin. Its melting point is only 99 Fahrenheit. less than half a degree above your “normal.” More like urine than lava. Then, it stops burning. Black tendrils. It turns out what hurts is subjective. This is a metaphor.