Old Love

Los Angeles

12/24 – 12/28

In my mother’s house on a Saturday night, the TV is blaring, two computers whir a slow drone and there at least three conversations going.  It’s hard to discern if anyone is listening to anyone.  We all compete to be heard. I am sitting at the dining table looking for quiet that will only be found if I zone out.

In my house on a Saturday night, it is usually dead silent but my home is 2000 miles away and I won’t miss it all that much until it’s time for sleep.

Two dining chairs away from me, my cousin Danny is watching a movie on his computer.  Danny is here with his daughter and his wife.  Four years ago, he gave up a very lucrative career at Johnson and Johnson in the Philippines for the promise of America. 

Now he rents a room (an illegally converted garage) in a bad neighborhood in Long Beach.  The room fits a double bed and he sleeps alone most nights.  When his wife and daughters are in town, the four of them sleep on that bed.  The room has no insulation and so small that they often go to my mom’s house just to find breathing room.

This must sound dire and pathetic.  But they are grateful for everything they have --   everything being jobs where they work too many hours for too little pay, substandard living conditions, a sort of condescending kindness from my know-everything mother.

Not that I blame my mom.  It is tiresome to hear about exploitation that is recognized but tolerated. If you plan to keep on living with something, then don’t complain.

When I look at my cousin, I wonder if he regrets giving up his life for this.  What pushed him to come here when what was in Manila was not bad at all?

The promise of America will never cease to amaze me. It is a testament to hope and ambition and folly. 

 The little girl cousin just peered into my computer screen and asked me what I was doing.  Nothing, I said.  “Are you writing a story?” she asked. Yes, I said.  Her father gave me an apologetic look as she skipped away yelling, “Whoa, author!”

It is always entertaining to be here.  I get a good dose of regular life and realize that I live in a kind of bubble in New York.  I keep singling out the city where I live, but really, it is a bubble all single people live in regardless of geography.

San Francisco

December 31

I went to Union and Laguna in San Francisco.  Modest and almost pretty was not the way I remembered this part of town but things have changed in nine years.

Now this city is like an old love – fondly remembered but not quite the thing that you want anymore.

It has been a wonderful sojourn to California.  I don’t think I’ve ever said that in all the years I’ve been coming and going.  Most visits are fraught with negotiation. This time is no different but somehow it is okay.

I am ending the year with family. My oldest friends will be coming around in a few hours to say hello and to have a few laughs.  It is a fitting way to end my very bad year and I will say, in spite of everything, that today I am not unhappy. I feel quite fortunate and loved. 

When I reread this post later, I will be dissatisfied with what I’ve written. But I wanted to get one last word in before we all bid this year a collective adieu.

The downside of all these reunions is that I also have zero privacy.  Last night when I was trying to write, my 16-year-old cousin sat next to me, peered at my screen and said, “do you mind if I sit next to you?” Then she slept next to me on the floor. If I go outside to smoke a cigarette, someone will follow me to “keep company” and now, other relatives have arrived and they are asking when I’m leaving.

How can it be that all this minding is so nice and so awful at the same time? Right now, my youngest brother and I are both in search of quiet but there are five people sitting with us at the dining table.

One more cousin and her boyfriend arrived.  My friends – one group of six and a solo will arrive later.  There will be about 26 people here. The youngest cousin just asked me (as she did in L.A.), “are you writing a story?”

That is my cue to post and be done with this—it isn’t getting any quieter in the house of family.

I will try to post a picture of everyone and write a little better. But that is for later. 

Here's to a happier next year.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/12/31/opinion/20091231_opart.html

We Are Made of Others

If this is true, then it explains much about goodbyes and hellos, doesn't it?

Christmas is a few days off and my family and friends wait for me in California. I look forward to going home as much as I dread it. I think I say this before every trip.

My father requested that I take three of my watches back to him (he will get each one cleaned and overhauled).  I got my first watch when I was about seven years old.  It was an Omega with a tiny face and a thin strap. He and my mother decided it was time for me to have it -- it was the first expensive gift he had ever given her.  One day at school, I washed my hands and water seeped into the watch. 

A year later, a Cartier.  Stainless steel and 14K gold for an eight-year-old. My mother, then with a gambling problem, took this watch from me and pawned it. When my father found out, he kicked me so hard I rolled off my parents' bed and onto the floor.  Later that night, he said he was sorry.  

When I first heard the Elizabeth Bishop poem The Art of Losing, I thought of all the watches I’ve owned.  There is but one line about losing a watch but for that I will never forget the poem.

Now, at 36, I own about six watches.  Limited edition Cartier, Bulgari, Gucci, a Panthere, others I don't remember the names of.  Last year, I found the balls to refuse my father’s extravagant gift. And this year,  I told him I wanted nothing. We will see what I find under the tree when I go home.

I like the gift that most people would not think much of – a pearl one of the Muslim relatives gave my dad, it is large and discolored and worthless.  My mother had it set with a diamond and a platinum chain.  I love that the imperfection cannot be disguised.  The diamond is lovely and clear, and it deepens the scratch on the pearl as if someone ran a jagged fingernail across the surface.

One evening a few years ago, at a black tie affair in Florida, a woman approached me and complimented that necklace.  When she was close enough to me, she noticed the scratch, and she understood that it was not ignorance of gemstones that made me wear that necklace.  She understood that it was a kind of sentiment. She invited me to her apartment and to one of her concerts in New York – she was a pianist and a crazy lady who doted over a potted azalea that lived on the window sill of the kitchen in her Central Park West apartment.

I have travelled in circles my parents never dreamed of. I’ve met actors and divas, pundits, the very rich, Elie Wiesel and Queen Noor.  After each brief encounter, I wanted nothing more than to return to my bed and put on the white shirts I buy from the hardware store. Sometimes, after long days of schmoozing with the rich, I would daydream about calling my very own old friends -- the strivers who would never feel comfortable standing where I happened to be in the moment I thought of them.

My parents gave me what they could to prepare me for the kind of life they didn’t quite understand. This is not to say that they wanted me to mingle with the famous (and really, it was an occupational thing – I was working at these events). This is not to say that they gave me much. 

Without rancor, I will say that my parents gave me everything half-assed. It was not what they intended, but it is how things turned out. I have often wondered if they wanted to give me too much and everything was bound to fall short.

I have always been a drop-out.  My elementary school education happened in three countries, and I did not complete the third, fourth, fifth or sixth grades.  My mother gambled away the tuition and sometimes we would have to stop going to school. Sometimes she gambled away the money to pay the electric bill too so we’d move to one of her sisters’ houses and stay there until my dad sent more money. 

Oddly, my father had no knowledge of all the financial problems.  It puzzles me to this day.  That is how I love my father – I don’t ask him why or how.

I skipped the eight grade, discovered the dictionary and fell behind in math. Because of all the missed school, I have never doubted my intelligence. I came back after each hiatus with a new lie to explain why I’d been gone. I researched countries I’d never been to so that I could say I’d been to Rome or Luxemburg.  The reality was that I was home, listening to bad pop songs and reading romance novels until four a.m. I was never the dumb kid.

What is the point of all this?

“We are made of others” is the point.

There are two new girl cousins who have moved to California from the Philippines. They will fare better than my family has because they have more realistic desires. They want, simply, to have a life in America. 

I want to give the 12 year old girl a copy of Anne of Green Gables but that is a gift that will disappoint.  I want to give the 18 year old a dictionary and The Elements of Style because her written English is not good. But these things are not important to them or their parents.

Would any of my family give any credence to my belief that it is language that sets a person apart? What do I have? I have no education, no money, no whiteness—I’m not throwing a pity party for myself, I am stating facts. But more than any of my family, more than any of the people I went to school with, I am the one who fits in and the one who can fake it.

I want to teach those girl cousins something that has brought me a kind of intangible success, but it was strongly suggested that for Christmas I should buy them perfume.

This is how I count the days

A suggested that we have coffee before I leave for California. We have not seen each other in almost three months. If I see him now, I would have to start another tally.  And counting days, much like counting sheep, is not the most fun a person could have.  So I said no.

One day, I will stop keeping track of how long it has been between meetings, and that is the day I get to tick off “not pathetic anymore” in my mental list of things to strive for.

My ex secret friend and I spent the evening in my little apartment.  We drank beers and had mediocre Mexican food.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say that is seemed as if no time had passed but it was a relief to know that our present lives fit into our conversations so that we didn’t spend our time together with nothing but nostalgia to keep things moving.

We used to call each other secret friends because we met though CC and her ex husband.  We used to sneak around, uncomfortable to let the people who introduced know that we’d formed our own sort of team.

I am hoping to pay a visit to Vermont one of these days. I would like to see how she lives now with a daughter and a husband in a town that seems so quiet. I can’t even imagine that sort of life simply because I’ve only ever lived in cities.

Secret friend told me that she wanted my life.  I laughed and she retracted her statement – part of my life, she corrected herself.  That made better sense and I told her that I wanted part of hers.  The good parts of both our lives meshed together would make for the ideal existence.  Drunken talk of course.

But it did make me realize that everyone is always looking left and right, that we spend our lives figuratively crossing the street. Forward, even though to the right and to the left might be where we’d prefer to go. Or where we like to dream of being.

I think I just fucked up the road less traveled cliché and I don’t even know what the point of that was.

Today I worked toward the front of the bookstore. I saw everyone who walked in, I saw the snowfall starting in the afternoon.  First it was nothing at all, as if someone had upended a boxful of packing popcorn.  I don’t think I’ll ever get used to snow.  It always delights me. 

Delight is not a word I would use easily but that is the only way to describe how it feels when I feel ice touch the tip of my nose. No matter where I go, always an FOB.

After the bookstore gig, I tried to go Christmas shopping but I walked out of every store empty-handed.  It’s pretty simple -- I don’t want to give anyone anything.  I mean that in every way that it can be interpreted even though just the other day, I baked cookies that I gave away and last night I shared my apartment with someone who was almost a stranger (isn’t that true when you don’t see or talk to someone for many years?) and now I will spend a good part of this snowy evening in a bar talking to a friend about everything with much affection. But I don’t want to give anyone anything or take anything. 

I want only to tend to myself.

‘Tis the season.

The Girl Who Said No

Perhaps because I just had a birthday or because the holidays are a time when people are most lonely or because certain people I didn’t think I’d ever see again have reappeared in my life, I am thinking of two Yeats poems about love and time passing and death and memory.

A few days ago, it was decided that an ex friend of mine and CC’s would come and stay with me for one night.  I am somewhat sorry that I invited this woman to my house – we had one of those strange friendships that began and ended quickly. Still I want to see her even if all we might have to say to one another is hello and goodbye. I like to think if that is what will happen, at least we will be able to say it properly.

And then A made a reappearance though I don’t suppose that is a surprise to anyone.

My old trainer, stupid and perfect-bodied, started contacting me again.  We were never involved even though he once told me he loved me and called me boo. I laughed and never went back for another exercise session.

A few hours ago, a man I slept with a few times over the summer called me. This man, my dreamboat who turned out to be a footnote, as Elvis Costello once sang, wants to see me again.

Someday, if there are ever any grandchildren, would I share any of these stories with them? That is probably a strange thing to contemplate, especially for a girl who has turned down pretty much every sexual/romantic opportunity that has come her way in the last three months.

Not that any of the options listed above would lead to any kind of meaningful relationship but I am starting to worry that this self-imposed exile will turn me into the girl who said no and ended up with nothing.

One Perfect Day

5:00 a.m.

My stomach hurts from hunger.  It is five a.m. on a Sunday. I slept for three hours tonight but woke up at four a.m.

For my birthday, I received a DVD of Saraband and a bar of lettuce scented soap (I wonder what lettuce would smell like as a fragrance since I still can't smell anything) and went to tea at The Peninsula. The best scones in New York City, no arguments. I spent the morning in SoHo in the nice bookstore wrapping gifts for charity. An interesting day -- begin with a "good deed" (I don't like to think of volunteering that way, it seems too self congratulatory) and then end with genteel overindulgence at one of the most expensive hotels in the city.

We were served Earl Grey tea first and then Dragon Jasmine.  I found the jasmine too bitter but loved the way each leaf, before steeping, curled in over itself like tiny fiddlehead ferns.  When the water was poured in, the leaves unfurled and darkened like sage and the heady scent of jasmine rose so strong I  wanted to turn my head away.

Today, for my birthday again, I am going to the Frick to look at paintings and the garden in this gray winter light. After the museum closes there will be a concert (violin). Then dinner in Chinatown which I could skip but will attend and most likely enjoy. I would prefer to go a few blocks uptown and have dinner at Cafe Sabarsky but I am going to dinner with my friend who is unemployed. I know she will insist on buying dinner because of my birthday thing and because I paid for the concert tickets. Normally, I wouldn't care who pays but I watch out for this friend.  She seems on the verge of breaking (financially and emotionally) and doesn't seem to realize it herself.

She thinks dancing is going to fix everything. Oy vey.

Noon

It's raining now--lazy annoying rain. Can weather be described as perfunctory?  Why not rain all the way?

I move slowly.  My little apartment requires a lot of maintenance, picking up clothes, washing cups, gathering tissue (I am sick!) that litter my floor like puffs of cotton.  This apartment is so small that any mess shrinks the place and makes it look unkempt than it actually is.

When I think of the amount of space I live my days in, I actually find myself contemplating moving. And sometimes in the subway, when I feel someone's elbow dig into the middle of my back at rush hour, I consider it again.

If I ever do leave this city, the decision will be made in an instant like all the other decision on flight.  I am somewhat surprised I'm still here after all the crap this year.  My younger self would have fled and gone for reinvention in a new zip code. But this woman I have become insists on staying put.

11 p.m.


If I were seriously considering leaving this city, I would have changed my mind after going to the concert at the Frick Museum earlier in the evening. The violinist was young and German and had scars all over his face and neck.  He played Beethoven and Prokofiev.  The best part came at the end, three encores and two standing ovations -- he played bits of Carmen and for a minute I had to laugh because after the intermission, I kept thinking "this boy would play Carmen beautifully" even though Bizet was not in the program.  But old Georges made an appearance after all. The last piece I didn't recognize at all but the nicest surprise of the evening -- Liebesleid.

The scars on the violinist's face reminded me of Louis Kahn the architect.  I saw his face clearly after the performance when I went backstage to say hello.  So tonight I was a kind of groupie. It is always a wonder when I find myself so moved and makes me think of some woman who long ago told me that art heals --maybe she was not such a crackpot.

The Contrarian

That's what the name of this blog should be. I tend to dislike things other people fawn over.  My dear friend and ex roommate once said that made me an iconoclast. Another person who did not have much of a vocabulary told me I was a person who got off on being different. 

Because I have nothing else to write, here's a list of things I hate that most people like:

• hearts are stupid
• balloons are tacky, especially the mylar balloons
• greeting cards offend me somewhat. Why don't people take the time to write down how they feel?
• "Sweet" is an overused word, but when it is said sincerely and unexpectedly, it breaks my heart (in a good way). Actually I hate hearing it as a description for a person but otherwise, I sort of like that word.
• electronic greeting cards are even dumber than regular cards (unless you have Parkinson's and can't write -- I have a friend like this).
• Disneyland is a horrible place. If I ever have a child, I worry that I might have to take him or her there and think of ways to raise a child who won't care about such places. How can any adult like it there? What is wrong with them?
• black shoes -- this one is personal and impractical, I don't care if other people wear black shoes 
• crafts -- they're usually ugly but politeness dictates that we ooh and aah because someone made something by hand
• people who knit/felt/bake/cook -- oh god (disclosure -- I cook and bake but I am not a nazi about telling everyone)
• pictures of food that people post on Facebook 
• parades depress me 
• self-help New Age books -- I cringe whenever I find out people read self-help books.  To each his own and all, but I'd rather not know
• Godiva chocolate -- it is not very good and is of poor quality
• Georgia O'Keefe -- blue vaginas and pink desserts. No thanks.
• God and the people who can't stop talking about their faith -- way too many people in my extended family who are like this. 
• shopping with girlfriends -- this is another personal thing 
• group outings -- makes me feel like a lemming or a snail that has lost its shell
• parties -- I can fake my way through most of them it but it is never fun for me
• foodies -- why does everyone want to be part of some club?

Well, that was the least satisfying blog entry of all time! I was hoping I would have come up with funnier things but I just sound like a crotchety old bag.  And today, that is not the way to describe me. 

I am in quite a good mood.  I am reading Laurie Moore--she makes me laugh even as she annoys me with her overlong paragraphs (sometimes I don't even notice) and wows me with her skill.  My neighbor is playing his guitar and it is lovely.  It's too cold tonight and I like it.  

I am a bit of a loner. Most people would find that hard to believe but there you have it. 

Wood

By Sarah Arvio

The last thing I ever wanted was to

write again about grief did you think I

would your grief this time not mine oh good

grief enough is enough in my life that is

enough was enough I had all those

grievances all those griefs all engraved

into the wood of my soul but would you

believe it the wood healed I grew up and

grew out and would you believe it I found

your old woody heart sprouting I thought

good new growth good new luxuriant green

leaves leaves on their woody stalks and I said

I’ll stake my life on this old stick I’ll stick

and we talked into the morning and night

and laughed green leaves and sometimes a flower

oh bower of good new love I would have it

I would bow to the new and the green

and wouldn’t you know it you were a stick

yes I know a good stick so often and then

a stick in my ribs in my heart your old

dark wood your old dark gnarled stalk

sprouting havoc and now I have grief again

and now I’ve stood for what I never should

green leaves of morning dark leaves of night

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2009/11/30/091130po_poem_arvio#ixzz0ZGOVWMPv

What I Don't Want to Share

So if you know who I am and you happen to read this, mum’s the word.

I am alone on my birthday.  Up until 5 p.m., I had plans. But then I lied and said I had to work late. My phone is turned off and my friend Jonathan has called me three times wanting to talk. He has no idea it's my birthday and no idea that I don't answer the phone even on regular days.

This is the first time I’ve ever been alone on my birthday, and I hope never to repeat it again because I don’t ever want to be in the same place as I’m in right now.

This is what mourning feels like.

To badly quote something I read in the New York Times, there is no emoticon that could convey what life has been like this year. It has been one loss after another. But I always come back to this.

During my somewhat miserable childhood, after one or two of those incidents that involved my crazy family, I remember striking deals with God (that seems like the wrong thing to say – I don’t think I ever believed in God) – “okay, I’ll do it, but no more after this” or telling myself that whatever the bad thing was had to be the absolute last bad thing that could happen because life wouldn’t be fair otherwise.

What I have learned is that life, with all the moments of happy and wretchedness, is quite indifferent to us humans.

My shrink asked me why I wanted to do be alone and I didn’t have an answer at the time.  Now I do – it is because I want to look at myself. No liquor, no friends, no exes, no family.

I’ll never know why I didn’t keep my baby. All the rational thoughts that led to that decision could be written down, but right next to that column, would be just as many reasons for keeping it.

I wanted that baby.  It’s hard for me to admit that even now because it makes me wonder how I could have done it. I do know that I want any child of mine to have better childhood than I did, and at the time, I didn’t think I could provide. I wanted to be fair.

I don’t know if I will ever have enough guts to decide on whether I was a brave girl or a scared girl or if there will ever be a time when making a judgement on myself won't be so important.

On very bad days, I find myself saying “sorry, baby” again and again as if I’m talking to a person.  It is all I have to say and it’s not enough and it’s too much at the same time.

What kind of girl am I now?

Love After Love

Derek Walcott wrote that poem and I first read it years ago in a piece of shit book.  Someone else’s words were the best part of a 400-odd page novel. I ripped that poem out of the book and have had that page somewhere in my apartment for the last four years, something I read once in a while, sometimes out loud.

A called to wish me a Happy Birthday. Three days early.  I think he did it on purpose to show me he’s forgotten or maybe he did forget.  But never mind that.

Happy Abortion Anniversary, Lucy/Reticent Diarist/whatever I am today. And oh my body remembers.  I am sick again.  I almost didn’t cry today.  Maybe one of these months I won’t.

It is cold tonight, the wintery sort of cold that gets in under your skin.  Unmistakably the beginning of another season. I keep track of time in a different way now, as if I feel every change on my skin rather than by what the calendar reads.  I don’t know what all of this means, if anything at all. But I remember what it was like to take a walk in the summertime and in the fall and now when it hurts to breath because it’s so cold. With each season, I am more myself. I am less hurt.

It probably doesn’t sound true because tomorrow I will wake up with puffy eyes and a hoarse voice.  But these episodes pass. And it is less about a lost relationship and more about a baby.

With my shrink last week, I discussed how joy and grief can coexist. I think now that the good times were almost a kind of punishment, it underscored the grief.  The joys of the last few months were so fleeting; and at home at night, it is not what returned to me.

This is what comes to me at night now – sometimes nothing at all, sometimes words from the book I happen to be reading or the memory of someone else’s body. Always there is fear of remembering and forgetting. Both things can’t happen, can it?

I think of jewelry.  I pass by the windows on Madison Avenue and imagine myself plunking down one of my credit cards for something shiny. Not because I need another bauble but because I want a kind of memento for this year, to keep close to me.  That probably sounds morbid and a little bit shallow.  But I would like a little memory to remind myself of something I had but couldn’t keep. Hello, Lou Reed.

Ordinary Days

To set the scene: I am in my apartment in New York City and it is almost 9 pm.  Music I do not recognize is playing on the radio – a violin. Schubert maybe? My apartment smells like cigarette smoke, my dining table is clear of paper and pens and could actually function as a dining table rather than a desk.

I’m brooding.

This afternoon, I went to Brooklyn to meet a friend to see Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage. I wish I’d seen it alone—there was hardly anyone in the theater and it was the kind of movie where other’s people’s opinions are best unheard.  Devastating is not too harsh of a word.  And I mean that in every sense of good and bad.

Supposedly the original miniseries that was shown in Sweden includes an abortion.  If that had been included in the cut I saw today, I don’t know if I would have been able to stand it.

“I love you in my own imperfect and selfish way…and I know you love me in your own pestering way.” –Johan to Marianne

Tomorrow I am going to see Figaro – I’ve realized that I do like company at the opera. And so I’m going with a friend. A comedy will be good after today’s entertainment.

A few minutes ago, I came across this blog: http://limagequotidienne.blogspot.com/

One portrait of one person every day for one year. Pretty awesome.

I need to some lightheartedness in my life.  But the thing is, I don’t enjoy light as much as I enjoy the kind of shit that keeps me awake at night. Call it masochism. I’ve always been drawn to a kind of sadness.  Not the poverty-stricken, hopeless, drug-addicted, hungry kind of sadness (I think that is unbearable); it is the emotional struggle of people that sucks me in.  The trouble we get ourselves into knowingly, as if we do not have a choice.  And really, do we?

I remember a conversation I had with CC about A.  I was aware of the flaws of character, his as well my own, but I said to CC, “what am I not going to do it?”  And I think I said the same thing to her about some other event in her life. 

Do you turn down newness out of fear?  Does that make you a smarter person when a year or two later, you are unscathed? Or does that make you a coward who has shut herself/himself into your world, which needed a little shake up anyway?

Four years ago, I was well on my way to being a permanent supporting actor in my own life.  It seemed to me that everything was happening to everyone except me.  I was the listener and the supporter, the one to provide the snarky one-liners—the Rosie O’Donnell/Carrie Fisher to the Meg Ryans of the world.

I hope I am not on my way there again – it might seem like a strange thing to say because when I think of my life, I realize it’s someone’s idea of interesting. I have a friend who would even go so far as to say it’s a sophisticated life, vaguely intellectual, something to be desired. I could go out every night of the week if I wanted and I would have the appropriate clothes to wear for each occasion. I even have a stalker.  (Well, HAD.  I sent the email asking him to go away.  More on that later.) And I feel myself getting smarter and better.  Is that a crazy thing to say about oneself?

But I’m locked inside myself, I have chosen to be quite visible but no one is really allowed to see me. I don’t talk on the phone, I don’t talk to A. I’m on retreat even as I move forward.  My life feels a bit like a game of pretend – I enjoy it, but I realize its limitations, its artificiality and I know that it can’t go on forever.

Am I going to have to make a conscious decision to end this way that I’m living at the moment or will I find my way out without my even knowing?

I’m reading Lark and Termite. But tonight I don’t know if I’ll get anywhere with it.

This has been quite an ordinary day and while I’m not in crisis mode or anything quite so dramatic, I am restless.

Book Love

One of the first books I ever stole was The Heather Blazing by Colm Toibin.  I still own that book (my old flame AL called it my trophy, this before I told him that I used to be a book thief which I think amused and then put him off). I still haven't read it. But just now I finished Toibin's newest novel Brooklyn and was fairly wowed.  I wonder if I will pick up the other book(s) now? I mean to buy since I don't steal anything anymore.

Towards the end of Brooklyn, there is a passage that is simply gorgeous.  I say this fully admitting that I am somewhat biased because it was a scene that could have been lifted from MY life, circa 2009 versus 1950s Brooklyn/Ireland.

The mother in Ireland avoids talking about the daughters life in Brooklyn.  The daughter wonders why her mother doesn't seem to have any interest in her new life.

The reading A.D.D. has passed I think.  Now I am on to compulsive book-buying and book-reading.  Purchases in the last month:

• The Museum of Innocence
• Lark and Termite
• Brooklyn*
• Love Begins in Winter*
• Generosity
• Gourmet Rhaphsody
• Prelude
• The opera reference book
  

*read so far

I'm missing a few more but this is what I can think off the top of my head.  This happens to me in the fall -- all the good books come out and I go a little nuts.

When I was insane, jobless, newly single and newly un-mothered, I started volunteering at a bookstore downtown to keep myself occupied. It was a bit of a pain in the ass, customer service is not my forte.  But now I realize that I love the time I spend at the store. I've found my niche -- I don't have to talk to anyone, the people who work there seem amused that I say very little but work faster than any volunteer needs to. I listen to old opera records in the sub-basement while I clean the old books. Sometimes some of the clients are there and we listen to the old music together. We don't talk to each other. The four hours go by quicker than I'd like and I'm always sorry I have to leave.

Beginning of this year when I was pregnant and A was in Upstate New York shooting a movie, I holed up in his apartment surrounded by his books.  I imagined myself reading to my baby or a child at a later age reading next to me. Then I would freak out and smoke to banish the image.

Then after the abortion, I would sit around and cry and stare at my books, wishing I could find any one of them compelling enough to read and lose myself in.  But those first few months were rough.  I did everything half asleep.  I read a lot of books and remember none of them.

It occurs to me that I expect my books to give me comfort.  Or maybe it's not books so much as words.  When I was 14, I wrote endless letters and I read shitty romance novels borrowed from the Los Angeles Public Library.  All those words made me less miserable. And when I was happy, the words keep me from being too happy.

Good deal for a few bucks.

Sleeping with Mahler

I lie awake late into the night and fall asleep only after I find Mahler on my iPod.  Sleep is getting closer, I know, when suddenly I notice that the music is too loud. So I turn the volume down gradually, lower and lower still until finally, the iPod is powered off. This is  not a bad way to be an insomniac.

There is nothing to report about Thanksgiving.  It was not a joyous occasion or a disaster--I had feared both.

I am reading Brooklyn by Colm Toibin, trying to read slowly because I hate for these things to end. It's actually quite a lovely book.

Christmas promises to be a big soiree this year.  My mother tells me that my Aunt Lydia's youngest daughter and her family will be there.  So will Aunt Lydia's son but he and my mom have always had a freakishly close relationship (and I do not mean of the incestuous sort).

So these cousins are actually also aunts and uncle.  I have been thinking about that a lot since I had that conversation with my sister.

I sent Professor Dick the go away email today and he responded quite graciously. I hope this means he will not contact me anymore.

JV called this afternoon to discuss her love life.  She slept with her ex and her current in the same day. Two women and she loves them both, she said.  I don't know what she's talking about -- I think loving one person is hard enough. 

JV and I did not communicate with each other for at least 8 years and now it is as if no time at all has passed. She has always been my one Filipino friend even though I think there were times when we've hated each other for reasons neither of us will remember now.  

Her brother killed himself in January.   Last week, I thought about that again and again and I could not sleep.  If JV were to read this, she might be angry with me but it should be clear that no one knows this address.   I wanted to say that maybe this desire for sex has something to do with death.  

That happened to me after the abortion.  I wanted to have sex even though I couldn't feel much of anything. Will yourself back to life, little girl is what I seemed to be begging of myself. Life will keep on going. Maybe that is what JV is doing. 

This weekend, I'm going to Brooklyn to see Scenes from a Marriage.  Hopefully this Bergman flick does not cause my mental health to deteriorate. Tonight, I hope to sleep long and to sleep well.  I think I'm a little sad.

Thanksgiving, Part I

The streets of Morningside Heights are deserted, and I hear the sound of a ball bouncing from somewhere. I imagine it is some kid banished from some mother's kitchen, ordered to find something to do so the mother can bake and saute and braise all afternoon. 

My Ghanaian Thanksgiving didn't pan out and so I am off to CC's house in the suburbs. It will be a happy holiday.  I am not saying that to convince myself.  I feel it in my bones.  

I miss my mother but I am glad I am not with her today. Or with any family.  I dread Christmas. But today will be fine.

Professor Dick called again. JESUS. I will send the go-away email tomorrow.

Back in a few hours with updates. I'm going to wear my Bollywood scarf and have a picture taken. I don't know why I want to do this.

Happy Turkey Day.

Glance Backwards

Instead of working, I have been reading myself all morning. If M were to read that, he would laugh and give me that odd little look. Read is now a code word for something altogether different.  We get each other's stupid jokes.

It is almost the end of the month with a major holiday approaching. I have quite a bit of work. But I started thinking about the A word as soon as I woke up -- the medical procedure, not the man.

I read through most of my posts from the summer and I am looking back at myself with more sympathy than before. It is a strange feeling to revisit your sad self when the sad is so palpable that even the biggest bullshitter would not have the wherewithal to find another interpretation for what has been said.

Professor Dick called again today and I am now on Draft 2 of my go away email. Go away, please.

Candles are stupid but I'll write more about that later.

That's all for tonight.

From the Looks of Things

One of these nights I will sleep well again. Until then, I will write to you.

If someone stumbles upon this blog looking for more abortion posts, they will be disappointed since the last few entries make little mention of that. I think I will be writing more about aborted fetuses though. I can feel it coming and I am hoping this time it won't be so bad.

It is a possibility that I will be spending Thanksgiving alone after all.  I should be working on wangling another invitation or taking up one of the ones that came my way. But if this first plan doesn't work out, I have decided to brave it.  So maybe Thursday will be weepy, feel-sorry-for-myself day. Or maybe not.

The Book and My Inferiority Complex About Writing

Mai and Ricardo -- these two don't always make themselves available to my blogging or novelistic wiles. I don't know how to structure the novel. How do you go about writing 30 years of a person's life? Beginnings are nice though. Easy enough.

My novel is a fucking great idea for a book. But how do I do it?  Who cares if it's a good idea if it doesn't get written?

I was thinking this morning that the Ricardo character is turning into my alter ego. Not the woman, the man. Will this be true a few months from now?

I also wonder what will happen to the my blogging when and if the more maudlin events that have preoccupied me all year fade a bit more. Will even care to read about the crap that goes on in my mind?

Work and My Beautiful Shoes

At work I am making friends with a huge man named Doug. He makes fun of my smallness because he is 6'5. I make fun of how he is always cold and wrapped in down. I can tell he is half surprised by everything I say. A few of the women seem to like me well enough but they all just want to talk about shoes. They notice what I am wearing and want to know where things came from -- I do not like to discuss where I shop.

Clothing and shoes are my secret vice. Very few people know how much money has been spent on my shoes or the scarves. I will drop $500 on a pair of boots without a second thought. This embarrasses me because it turns me into a stereotype of your basic New York single woman. Or the Imelda Marcos Filipino thing (everyone mentions this as if they thought it up themselves). I choose my clothes for their plainness so it always surprises me when people notice.

Kindness

People are generally nice to me. I've mentioned this before. But lately it is quite obvious and it is to the point where I am a little freaked out. People are nicer to me than they are to other people.  I bring something out in people.

What is it?

At work, there is an Asian lady who slips me packets of green tea and leaves me mints and chocolates on my desk. She wants to know about my family and where I've been.

There is Professor Dick who I am about to ask to leave me alone.  HOW do I do this? I feel so ungrateful but I want him to leave me alone.

I think about kindness and this IT thing often because people often suffocate me.  But probably the bigger issue is that I am afraid that whatever this thing is that makes people nice to me will desert me one day and I will be lost. It's much like the beauty of some people.  What happens when the lines come in, when breasts begin to sag, when the woman loses that sexy thing?

What do *I* have to fear losing? Will I someday act or say the inappropriate things that I say now, fully expecting to get away with it only to realize that I have lost that thing that made my borderline behavior acceptable?

Is it because I refuse most things people offer me?

My Parents

It just occurred to me that I could be describing both of my parents.  They haven't lost their charm yet.  My father is as charismatic as ever. When we lived in Kuwait, my mother used to hate walking with my dad because all the Filipinos knew him.  It was like being with a celebrity.

And my father, I think, has always been proud of being the one to have married my beautiful mother.

In case you doubt me, reader, here is photographic evidence:

That's it for tonight.  This blogger has a date to keep with Colm Toibin.

First Star of the Night

On West 23rd Street in Chelsea, there is a strange little house/performance space called The Cell Theater.  I went there early this evening to listen to my friend W read.  Simon Van Booy and another writer whose name escapes me at the moment were also there to read.

A few weeks ago, I wrote that I thought Van Booy's book, Love Begins in Winter, was too sentimental.  It is.  But it is good.  What is it about certain stories and certain words that make me, the rather jaded and overcritical reader, eat my words? And he is an excellent reader.  He was sitting on an old loveseat, legs crossed.  His voice was mesmerizing, his Irish accent not bad.  He signed my book: "To Z----, the first star of the night." He'd asked me what my name meant and so I told him.

After the reading, W and I, along with a few other people, ogled the arrival of movie stars for the premiere of the movie Brothers.  A man in a black suit approached us and handed us tickets to the screening.  So off we went.

The movie was good though not one I would choose if I had to pay.  

On Friday night (and this afternoon), I saw the Maelstrom sculpture and the Vermeers at the Met.  Then M called and he picked me up on the bike. We rode in the cold down to the Lower East Side.  M and I are friends again, I guess.  I am probably too nice by tolerating his weirdness. But he is what he is and sometimes what he is is stupid.  

Here is Maelstrom in the late afternoon:

I expected to spend the whole weekend alone, save for the Sunday dinner with W.  But it turned out that the last couple of days have been all about finding people. I may never see any of them again, but there is something good in knowing that there is still a whole world out there and that I am not incapable of seeing it and taking from it and hopefully, in my way, giving to it. 

Anhedonia is not one of my problems. Whatever weeping I do and wherever I may choose to give in to it, I am still present.

My friend JV is back in my life.  I don't know how long she will stay. But no matter.  More on her later. Professor Dick is back.  Maybe he never left. One of these days, I hope he will just leave me or not write me notes about missing me. Whatever his intentions, he creeps me out.

The Problem with Ricardo

I have been avoiding working on the novel. Ricardo is a character in it.

There are quite a bit of things to add, writing I've done over the last week that should be added to the first two chapters.  For some reason, I can't get myself to sit still long enough.

Writers block is no excuse because the writing is coming.  I'm afraid of progress. And I'm annoyed that I can feeling this way.

Why not find out what this writing is made of and finish something of significant length and give it an honest chance for success or failure? I've been writing short stories for the last few years even though I don't think I'm that good at it.  I'm really too long-winded. An old writing friend of mine used to tell me, "it wants to be a novel, not a short story."

The other reader of this blog, besides myself, wrote me to say that I should keep blogging.  That I am hitting upon something here.  Could he have been referring to my family?

When I was 23, I started a novel about this crazy family.  Florid prose, plotless descriptions of all things ethnic.  I shudder when I think of it now.  Somewhere in my files, there are copies of this work in progress.  I was too young to tackle it at 23.  And then I convinced myself that we weren't that interesting.  And the truth is, I think the story of my family is more pathetic than interesting.

That family is also an interesting psychological study. Maybe someday I will get back to them.

Writing-wise, for now, I am involved in my very own Vietnamese/Filipino/Texas quagmire.

Tomorrow I'm going back to work.  All I've done today is sneeze and eat scones and porridge. I am well enough to work.

Digging around the family tree

Feels like a mighty long time since I last wrote anything.  But two days is not long.

Again, I feel my interest in blogging wane. This means I am doing fine mental health-wise.

My body, on the other hand, not so great.  I am sick sick sick.  Well, actually I am not that sick.  But I am not a good patient.  I get cranky, self-pitying and gluttonous.

For the last seven years or so, my friend W and I have had a standing date on Sundays.  We take walks, we sit in the park, we eat dinner, we do whatever.  But we always see each other on Sunday. There was a period of two years where we met at five in the afternoon and ate at the same restaurant and each ordered the same dish. We joke that we are two old women trapped in our youngish bodies.

Yesterday we went to a crappy Chinese restaurant in the Upper West Side and laughed so hard I felt like my eyes were going to fall out of my head. If I were to retell what made us both lose it, it wouldn't be funny so I won't even try. I just wanted to say that I laughed so hard that it felt like my eyeballs were going to fall out.

My big week:  my funny friend Larry and his friend, the guy Larry described as the one with a radioactive pellet up his ass (prostate cancer). Another A man, only this one is young and gay who sometimes surprises me with his mature insight and then flattens me with his youthful arrogance. I think that's all that's happening.

A link about abortion: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2009/11/23/091123taco_talk_toobin

There is a lot of talk about abortion lately.  I sometimes want to join in, just among my acquaintances. But I stop myself. I steer the conversations toward other things. Not that my view has changed on the matter but now I understand the ramifications.  I see it as something more than a political issue and lately I have become a firm believer that emotions should be left out of these debates. Tears somehow lighten the gravity of a situation.  Is that the wrong thing to say?

Turn on Oprah, Barbara Walters (is she even on the air anymore?), watch chicks cry. No one takes that seriously.  I don't take it all that seriously because it seems exploitive and calculated. Even though when I'm doing the crying, I take myself pretty fucking seriously.

A and I paid for my abortion. I don't know why I felt the need to say that. But we did.  We split it down the middle. Maybe the one time in our relationship we went dutch.

Ironic, no?

I believe that is the right way to use the word.  But if anyone is reading this and recognizes that I made an error, speak up and correct me.

My sister and I talked over the weekend.  She told me more family stories, some new and some just confirmed:

• our mother's father is the husband of Aunt Lydia (this means granny had an affair with her son-in-law)
• the big old house my mother grew up in was lost to a gambling debt -- an uncle used the house as collateral
• someone molested my mom, that is why she seems to think it's okay when it happens to anyone else
• Aunt Lydia's companion Ellie told my sister that their relationship was platonic -- this makes me doubt everything Ellie has said, but maybe she doesn't want anyone to think Lydia was a lesbo
• gay people should have spousal rights everywhere -- poor Ellie deserves some acknowledgement as a widow
• Granny arranged the marriage between son-in-law and Aunt Lydia while already having an affair with him (my mother had already been born)
• there is one living relative named Milagros who knows most of these stories and I will never meet her

I used to think my family was so dysfunctional that those of us of child-bearing age should all be sterilized. But who am I to judge?  Seriously though, what is wrong with us? Was my grandmother evil? How did she meet the Muslim (my father's father, who she eventually "married")? 

How can so much fucked up-ness exist in one family, generation after generation?  I still want to have a baby someday. Someday. But I don't want to do it alone, I don't want to do it with someone who doesn't really want to be there.

This family history is one of the reasons I couldn't have the baby with A -- he didn't want it. The way I saw it, my forcing a baby on him would increase the chances that we would be raising a child in strife, be it emotional or financial.  A's reluctance to be a father also increased the chances that our relationship would not last when the baby arrived. And while there are no guarantees in life, I want/wanted to bring a life into the world with as much in the right place as possible, where everything is not so fraught with compromise and angst.

Well, that's all I have energy for now. 

I will say, even though my love life is not exactly filled with promise of romance at the moment, I am pretty certain that if I were to have a child, I would be a good mother. 

Where the Wind Blows

If I were to write the story of my life so far, what would be the thing that drives the action?

This is what comes to mind:

1973 - Manila, Philippines
1974 - Kotakinabalu, Malaysia
1975 - Tehran, Iran
1980 - Manila, Philippines
1985 - Salwa, Kuwait
1988 - San Francisco, CA
1989 - Carson, CA
1990 - San Pedro/Santa Monica/Torrance, CA
1995 - Berkeley, CA
2001 - New York, NY

When you've lived in this many places, which do you miss the most?

Foreign Films and Dead Composers

Last Saturday I was at Film Forum for a screening of La Danse and while waiting to get into the theater, L and I were talking. Well, I was talking about my old roommate, the gay German lawyer with Poland Syndrome who also happens to be one of the funniest, smartest, most maddening, most self destructive people I know. And for whom I also happen to have a deep strange love. He has a way of getting what he wants, fucking it up, and then starting over.

T and I met in 2004, I think.  Love at first sight in a fringe neighborhood Brooklyn brownstone. He drove me insane when we lived together.

Anyway, the short of this story is that I was describing this crazy man in detail and a woman behind us was listening to me the entire time. At first she was embarrassed and tried to conceal her amusement. And then she abandoned all pretense and laughed gaily at my stories.  And I performed for her.

As we were getting seated, this woman told me that I should write a book. I think people meet me and expect me to be funny all the time when the truth is that I'm not very funny when I write.

Nice compliment anyway.  I'm not knocking it.

And also got me thinking about being a fame whore.  There is something of the performer in me.

So far -- no A and no M. I miss them both but not nearly as much as I would thought.  I'm mostly talking about A.  I don't miss him that much.

I have to admit that earlier today, I wrote something about how when one insists to vehemently on something, it means they are lying.  So maybe I'm lying.  But right now it doesn't feel that way.

Last night I got a bought a book about the opera. Just a reference guide to the more popular ones.  I'm pretty obsessed with music lately -- I wake up in the middle of the night and fall asleep listening to Mahler.

This morning, my last memory was of listening to a piece called Blue by Michael Galasso from In the Mood for Love (by Wong Kar Wai). I hate his movies -- there is something flat about them, too stylized, interminable. But they are always the most beautiful things to look at and listen to.

My favorite WKW movie is Comrades. I liked everything about it. God, that was a long time ago.  What a strange memory.

The writing is going well lately.  I write for work, I write for this, I write for the novel. If I were to do a word count, the number might be pretty impressive. But I'm writing for three discrete areas so it doesn't add up to much.  Still I'm rather proud of myself.

I worry about money a lot lately. When I was not working, I hardly thought of money at all. But now,  I do mental calculations (poorly) all the time.

The Monthly Nervous Breakdown

November 4
The crazy is back. To be fair, I may as well have summoned her back into my life this morning. At about 10 a.m., I started flipping back the calendar the way I do this time every month.  If I manage to skip this ritual, would I also be able to dodge my monthly nervous breakdown?

A critical event in this monthly occurrence is the crisis moment about A. The event would not be complete otherwise. I didn't call him as I had promised the day before. But then I remembered about the abortion anniversary and got it into my head that I should see A this week. So I insisted that we see each other.  Then I changed my mind. And then he flirted with me and I felt awful.

A would flirt with anything that breathes.

I called him that night and insisted that we stop talking for a little while. A lot of tears leaked out of my eyes. And I don't know when we might talk again.

But nervous breakdown or not, aborted fetus, broken heart, lost boyfriend, you're going to be alone forever or whatever the fuck it is that kills me at the beginning of every month -- I have to get myself out of this.

A and I are getting ugly and a bit sadomasochistic. I can't even make a joke of it anymore. We are nice to each other all the time, but boy do we like to hurt each other with kind words. He would never admit that.  I told him that the other night, that he hurts me and means to hurt me.  He said if he does, he doesn't mean to.

I wish I could blame only him, but I do it too. Only I am more naked in my meanness.

Jesusfuckingchrist, somewhere out there in the world, there must be something for me. Or maybe there's nothing. But nothing might be better than this strange mean clingy going nowhere thing that A and I have together.

So here's to hoping I can stick to this no talk rule. It doesn't have to be forever, just long enough so that the next time we talk, I don't feel dirty and guilty and sad.

November 6
It's Friday night. Other people are out having a grand old time, aren't they? Me, not so much. I'm on the tail end of my nervous breakdown.  I had a nice day, a horrible afternoon, a teary early evening and now I'm more or less okay.

I'm reading a book called Love Begins in Winter.  It's a bit sentimental but it is fitting -- it's cold and I'm sad. The love that happens to the people in this book seem like minor miracles because the characters are so closed in on themselves.  I am annoyed by this book even though I like it. It's a bit too sentimental. If I ever fall in love again, I hope it doesn't require a minor miracle.   I hope that I am not a hopeless case.

I may be wallowing in bitterness these last few days (actually, MAY is a wimpy word -- I am wallowing in bitterness) but it doesn't mean I have lost all hope about love.  In fact, even at my angriest, there is always some part of me that is thinking, CHOOSE ME! I never know who I am secretly saying that to or maybe I want love to choose me (the good, mutual, has-a-future, fun kind of love, not the unrequited stalk-y sort).

M ignored me on Tuesday night. I was expecting it, but I was shocked when he didn't even say goodbye. We saw each other at a work event. My shrink thinks he likes me and there's part of me that agrees, but the other night, he looked at me with what I read to be disgust.  Ouch.  I don't get it. Maybe I screwed up more than I thought that night of the conversation.  I wish someone had heard that exchange and would tell me what wrong.

My big plan tonight was to go to the MET to look at the Vermeers. But then I pictured myself freaking out in front of those paintings and I decided to wait it out. Maybe next week.

There was a cocktail party option. And again, I said no.

So here I am.

The Opposite of IT

This morning I was frantically trying to find the right necklace to wear with my black dress. I gave up, grabbed the thing that was closest to me.  It turned out to be the perfect thing.  

Why am I writing about this?

So A is back. He managed to keep out for a week. First a random email late in the afternoon about some lecture he thought I would want to listen to.  Then an email an hour later. Then a phone call soon after that.  I admit that I am amused.  And unsurprised. I understand this all very clearly in some ways and then I don't understand it at all.  I don't feel like talking at all.

It makes me wonder what he's thinking. I don't think he's thinking. And I am tired.

My evening with M went well and then not well.  He and I are like a bad romantic comedy -- the same peccadilloes, the same likes, the same brittleness, the same awkwardness, the same it's-never-going-to-happen-between-usness.  And that may not be a bad thing.  There is something that repels us from one another.  What is it?  It is the opposite of IT.

Aida was wonderful. More and more I love the opera.  In the midst of my misery last spring, I found the energy to get myself to Lincoln Center. I would be happy just to be able to watch the chandelier cables retracting.  I would be happy to listen to that Aida song over and over again.  

In my rush to leave this morning, I left my book at home.  All day, I had to fight the urge to go to a bookstore and find something.  I missed the weight of a book in my hand.  

Going to see my shrink in a few days.  It's a been a long time.  I keep thinking I can quit her now. But really, that is just hubris. She is my insurance policy. One of these days, I will be fighting tears in the subway again.  I need to have someone on retainer when those days come because really, I realize that I am incapable of full disclosure with anyone.  Even with my shrink I do not say everything.  But it's close enough.

On Writing (or not writing)

I reread bits of the novel that I work on sporadically.  It is not bad. Not the novel itself -- that remains to be seen and I have to write a lot more in order for me or anyone to make an assessment.  Just the writing.  I am liking the way I write lately.

So why don't I do more of it?

Halloween and I am home.  I was out all day, first at the bookstore where I volunteer and then at an Indian restaurant and then at another restaurant.

I've been meeting quite a few black women lately.  And I am always curious at the way they react to me.  First the reaction is guarded. And then I seem to find the right thing to say and I am somehow allowed into a club I am happy to visit but have no intention of ever staying in.

One of the women I met was Caroline. She was lovely in her sequined turquoise shawl. She is a med student at Ann Arbor and originally from Nigeria. She wouldn't look at me at first and whenever I said anything, she seemed to tense up.  Then I shared the story from high school -- how three African American girls threatened to beat me up and how I unwittingly made things worse by acting, well, like myself.  She couldn't stop laughing.  But apparently she went through the same thing when she moved to the States.  She went to the high school close to where I went to school.  By the end of the evening, she was leaning towards me and engaging me in conversation.

Is that the secret to being liked? Find the right anecdote that will resonate with someone and suddenly they deem you worthy of their company?

I'm not complaining.  I completely accept that there are certain things that draw people to each other, rules we must all follow even though we might not understand them.

But what is the thing that wins people over?  It's more than an anecdote.  It is an "IT," like sex appeal. Similar but only to certain point.

That is something my parents used to say.  They called sexiness IT. Someone had strong IT.  It doesn't translate well to English.

I have IT in the friendship department.  I discuss this with my shrink endlessly. People are drawn to me -- men women children. Even if at first they don't like me, something will happen and they will inevitably fall in (friend) love with me. This doesn't apply to romantic relationships. There I need help.

I worry when I discuss this that I sound conceited.  Maybe that is so.  But really, I'm puzzled.  What the fuck is IT? Why do I have it?  Why doesn't my sister?

And in all honesty, it is sometimes suffocating and lonely.  I don't like too many people.  I can tolerate just about anyone, but after an hour, I want to go home.

Well, I've annoyed myself now.  But hopefully you are not annoyed with me, reader (me?).

Cleave

All these months and only now do I realize that whenever I go crazy, I am never thinking about the abortion.  There are no images or fantasies—all that comes later when I recall my bout with that kind of madness. In the moment, there is only the feeling of absence and it never changes – always overwhelming, interminable and the thought of being alone with it is unbearable.

Right now it feels as if I am imagining this for a story, not that I am writing about myself.

The last time A and I talked, he told me that it hurts him less.  I felt like I’d been slapped. But why shouldn’t he feel better?  Why shouldn’t I?

In What I Loved, the couple whose child dies end up separating. She moves to Berkeley, he remains in New York.  They never divorce, never have too much rancor toward the other, never came back together and never really parted.

This makes me think of the word CLEAVE. It means to come together and to come apart.  It is the opposite of itself.

But that’s just a word and the couple in the novel are not real. It’s too soon to know what kind of relationship, if any, A and I will have in the future.

I have nothing to do for Thanksgiving. I worry being alone that day will make me sink. And I worry that not being alone will have the same effect, only with other people watching. For someone who claims not to care, I have too many hang-ups about this holiday.

AL had a funny post on Facebook last night that made me miss him. Why I am “friends” with someone I will never see again is a little silly, isn’t it? Without reproach, I will say that AL doesn’t care enough to delete me.  And I keep him on because he reminds me of something I want. Which isn’t him per se.

It is the idea of someone new, someone good who would love me. That AL and I spent so little time together and did not love each other is not the point. AL isn’t even relevant is he? He could have been anyone.  I could have been anyone.  Maybe we were feeling the same thing.

I once knew a man named Cleave. We both live in New York but met in West Virginia at The Greenbrier.  He is a musician we hired to entertain our rich guests. He liked me as soon as he saw me. I was momentarily infatuated – something about a musician.  But after talking for a few minutes, I realized he was an idiot. He kept on mentioning God and being blessed. When he found out I like to drink scotch, he informed me that the best scotch came from Scotland.

 When we got back to New York, he called me and I made myself disappear.  We never went out but saw each other at work functions in other states. He’d always start our conversation by asking me if I’d gotten married.  

I’ve run into him twice in New York. Neither of us acknowledges the other.

Sometimes life seems like one long game of chance.

Ahead

Where's He Gone?

Have I finally gotten rid of Professor Dick? He hasn't responded to my email from a few days ago when I told him I wouldn't be spending Thanksgiving with him and his family. I feel bad for all my little lies in avoiding him, but I don't know what else to do.

I wish there was someone I could ask (and who would tell me honestly) if I have turned in turned into such a wreck that the most random people want to take me under their wing and fix me.  The flipside of this of course is that if no one paid any attention to me, I'd be just as disturbed.

Silent Choices

My friend Faith invited me to a screening of her documentary about abortion and black women.  The screening is next week, right around the 8th month anniversary of MY abortion.  Faith doesn't know about that at all. Is saying that these two events happening around the same time is ironic the right way to use the word ironic?  Or does it just suck?  Sometimes I confuse suckage and irony even though they are not synonymous all the time.

Aida and Carmen and Figaro

I've gone a little opera crazy.  On Monday, I'm going to Aida with M and at the end of November it will be Figaro. In February, Carmen.  I'm excited about Monday and seeing M and putting on a new dress. We haven't seen each other since we had that weird conversation.  So it'll be a little awkward probably.  But it's an awkwardness I kind of like.  The awkwardness of possibility rather than the kind that comes from knowing there is nothing left.

What I Loved

I am reading What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt. The book came out a few years ago but I have resisted all this time for reasons I can't recall.  I had a feeling a child would end up dying in the novel.  And I was right. But there is also art and love and friendship. It's about people who occupy a rarified kind of world, the kind of novel that I like but irritates me at the same time. I like these sorts of books even though I never feel as if I ever get inside the characters--they are the kind of people never seem to have to do dishes, where being poor is a mere stepping stone toward intellectual and fiscal prosperity.  I want to say this is the kind of book that only the well to do or the educated would appreciate, but I obviously contradict that statement.  Very gauche thing to say, isn't it?

Therapizing Myself

Sometimes I am ashamed of the thoughts in my head.  My progressive, insanely liberal friends would disown me  if they knew that I believe there are things -- stereotype-y, classist, racist, anachronistic things -- that hold a certain truth.

My New Job

I actually like it. This makes me a true nerd, I think.  I sit there for hours writing about the dullest matters. I like how the document grows, how I start off with bullshit and then come to understand what needs to be said.

CC

CC's tumor has shrunk to the point of being "undetectable."  I wonder if this means that she doesn't need the mastectomy anymore. I hope so.


A.

We are on another round of "let's not talk too much."  The frequency of our conversations and the intensity of our arguments was starting to really make me hate us.  Inappropriate intimacy can make a person crazy.  At least this one.

So we'll see what happens now. I showed Lyna an email A sent me and she said, "It's getting tiresome for you, isn't it?"

It is. But that's just this week.  Who knows what happens in November? Sometimes I feel this burst of happy when I am by myself, on my way to somewhere.  It never lasts long but it last long enough for me to believe that I will not always feel broken by this whole fucking year.

So maybe I will end up getting a life.  Soon-ish and for real.  I want that more than I can say.

Next week is going to be a little rough for me.  I expect I'll be back here often.

--Lucy

Summertime and the Living is Easy

I'm thinking of that old song -- from Porgy and Bess maybe?

Family

In every family with more than one child, does it automatically happen that each child is assigned a role that they are to play throughout their lives?  I want to say that this is particularly the case for Asian families but I know that would be wrong.  Families are not all that different across ethnic lines, it just so happens I have the most intimate knowledge about Asians.

So what’s my point?  That we eldest children are expected to be provide a kind of reassurance that other siblings are not.  Even Lyna, who is kind of a wreck, is expected to hold her sister’s hand through childbirth.  No one seems to know or want to acknowledge that Lyna is drowning.  Never mind that – the other daughter is having a baby!

CC

My friend CC and I have not been in touch much lately.  This is what happens when you (well, CC) tell someone too much about your life.  She has revealed too much to me about her boyfriend. I decided he’s an asshole.  Now she feels bad/resentful that she told me all this because she knows that no matter what nice thing she tells me he did for her, I will keep remembering that he said to her “You do you and I do me,” meaning that he didn’t want to hear about her cancer problems.

This isn’t the first time this has happened with me and CC.  It’s funny that we keep getting back together.  I have had a lot of friends in my life and kept a good majority of them.  I find her to be the most trying.

I am a bit more careful with sharing than she is.  I tell 2/3 thirds of most stories.  I leave out the ugliest parts (or what I deem to be the ugliest).  I’m too concerned with what happens when the emotions calm. Damage control should be kept to a minimum.

Professor Dick

I am more and more uncomfortable with his “caring.” Today I wrote an email telling him that I’m going to San Francisco for Thanksgiving.  The truth is that I have nothing to do for that dreaded holiday. I am going to risk insanity rather than be around him and his wife.

Professor Dick’s kindness to me reminds me too much of the way A hovers over me. Not that these gestures go unappreciated or unreciprocated by me, but I do wonder what the point of it is.

Politically Incorrect Self Labeling

Before I left for California, A and I were talking and he said something weird.  I called him on it and he called himself an “emotional wetback” when it came to me. I have no idea what that even means, if anything at all. But I found it quite funny and felt bad that I couldn’t tell anyone I know that anyone I know said that to me.  My friends are all screaming crazy liberals.  Sometimes, they are oppressive in their embrace of political correctness and sympathy. 

Summertime

At Columbus Circle about a week ago, on Broadway and West 61^st Street, I had the clearest memory of an evening in August with A. I was wearing a blue dress and the wind started to pick up and the rain came pouring down.  A and I ran north in search of some kind of shelter.  It was a lovely time to be had by two broken up people.

Another night – M and I on his motorcycle roaring up Riverside Drive, across Manhattan to the FDR and onto the Brooklyn Bridge and then back across to the Westside Highway.

And another day – Heather and I napping on a blanket at Riverside Park at twilight.  A boy asked to take my picture.  Later the fireflies lit up the evening and we sat there to watch their show even though the bugs were attacking us.

And then that first night with AL on LaFayette Street – a first kiss at the entrance of the F Subway line and that was all. 

In between all these days and nights I mentioned, there were desperate days and nights. What is my point?  That I had a lovely awful summer.

I don’t know how it’s possible for me to say that, let alone mean it.  I’m having trouble accepting that despair coexisted with a kind of happiness.

Snooping

This I have told only my shrink and CC.  I told most of the story.  I have access to A’s personal and corporate email accounts. For a few weeks, I checked both sites, hands shaking (from shame, maybe?).  I don’t know if he’s changed any of the passwords.  I don’t go snooping anymore. Not that I’m not tempted.  But I am less interested for whatever reason. It’s too pathetic.

Baby

For the four or five days I was in L.A., I didn’t think that much about the abortion/fetus/baby.  My mother didn’t say a word about it. But last night after everyone had gone to bed, I found myself thinking about it.  Nothing specific, nothing I can name.  But it was there.  I suppose some part of me was fantasizing how it would be if I had a baby to share with my family.  I couldn’t give in to the fantasy.  Will there ever be a time when I can allow that?

Is there ever going to be a baby for me?  That's the real question, isn't it? Funny that's the first time I've ever actually said that out loud. I wish someone would say for sure.