Bitter Winter Day

This morning, on the Downtown 2 train, it was very crowded.  There was a bike at rush hour.  Woman 1 got on at 72nd Street.  She shoved me, Woman 2 and everyone else around her.

Woman 2 snarled: "Excuse me."

Woman 1: "Wouldn't you just love it if I got my leg got cut off?"

Woman 2 shakes head. "Jesus."

Woman 1: "You would wouldn't you? You'd be happy."

Woman 2: "Oh give it a rest. 'Wouldn't you just love it if my leg were cut off?' Jesus."

Woman 1: "Shut the fuck up."

Woman 2: "Okay, since you asked me so politely."

Woman 1: "Fuck you."

Woman 2: "Fuck you...." (repeat several more times)

Random little girl I couldn't see: "Mommy, why is everyone so mad?"

Mommy: "When you're older you'll get it."

Random little girl: "Like pubic hair?"

Mommy: "For the love of God, that is inside conversation. Shut up."

Everyone started laughing, even Women 1 and 2. 

Random biker dude: "If anyone touches my motherfucking bike one more time, I'm gonna kill ya'll." 

And the doors opened at 42nd Street.

I never saw the kid or Woman 1's face.  I just saw the back of her head.

Someone left a comment on this blog with a link.  Well, it wasn't a comment, it was an invitation to view Japanese porn or something like that.  Can't that jerk see that this blogger is making an earnest attempt to get a life? 

I saw my shrink yesterday, and (surprise!) I told her things I didn't think I could share. As I was walking to the  bus, I felt resentful of her. 

Reading Anagrams and don't think I will finish it. I'm on page 30-something and there's already been an abortion. Of course, there can't possibly be two abortions in one novel could there?   When I got to the abortion / pregnancy plot line, my heart sank.  I can't even think of another way to say it.  I'm not against it, I don't think it's bad, but I simply do not want to read about it.  Even if it's fiction.  The odd thing is that I keep seeing it.  If I hear about someone who had an abortion and didn't feel that bad, I start to think I'm a freak and that I made the wrong decision. I drive myself crazy trying to quantify the loss of something that was never there. 

It turns out my friend Tom was right -- this whole mess nearing its one year anniversary is going to tear me apart a little. He didn't say it in so many words, but there you have it.

It's time for another good cry. I've been trying for days now but it doesn't seem to be in me anymore. 

I do not want to turn into that woman in the subway. 

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.

You Belong to Me

The weather here is magic and it gets on my nerves. But when I get back to New York, I won’t be able to sleep and I will be sad for a few weeks missing my brothers and my mother and my two cousins.  Family is strange and maddening and lovely.  

Being with my folks makes me think of A, who has no folks except for his sad mother. 

Is that the biggest difference between us? That I have this strange bunch of people waiting for me to return from wherever in the world I happen to end up and all A has is his unhappy mother who is just waiting to die?  That can’t be true.  My family isn’t that great, not even functional really. But there is a home for me to come back to and none for him. That must do something to a person’s head. And no matter what I said or did, I couldn’t change the facts of his life and the person its made him into. He will not see that belonging to something as crazy as a big family has any benefits.  Well, at least not a real family.  

Now he is part of something --  a group of friends he acquired through the new girlfriend.  It was something he wanted from me – he wanted my friends too.  But I am not the group type.  My friends are not my family.

Four days in L.A., I’ve left my mother’s house once to shop for upholstery fabric for my mom’s occasional and dining chairs and to see my friend June who lives in a little apartment in Koreatown.

June and I drove a bit around Hancock Park where the houses are old and big and set back from the street. It reminded me of drives taken long ago when my old love B and I would roam the streets of Los Angeles because we had nowhere to be alone.

It made me like this city a little more to remember that.  And to remember how I used to hate it here.  It’s not so bad.  It’s not so hateable. Someday I will live here again. 

I’m starting to think I will be living here again sooner than I think. 

My mother is aging fast.  She is starting to show signs of panicking on the freeway.  I love my family but I don’t know what will happen to me if I were geographically closer to them. One thing that hasn’t changed is that I still want my own life and that seems impossible with family close by.

M and I are going to see Aida next Monday.  It will be the first time we’ve seen each other since that weird conversation that went nowhere. If we have enough of these conversations, will that push us toward each other or will the talks eventually peter out? It's gonna be weird.