Our love is like a nuclear bomb 

“Our love is like a nuclear bomb”
Which is supposed to sound sexy
But really means charred flesh and melted eyes and then slow painful dying
While the other side holds a victory parade. 

Goldilocks and the Three Boys 

(This story appears in the spring 2013 issue of Grey Sparrow Journal.)

Philanderer's secret 

“When I say 'I love you,' I'm not lying to any of you.

The Kitchen 

My apartment is like other apartments: it has a bed; a table; a sofa; shelves for books; a few houseplants; one door in and out, seldom used; and a kitchen.

The kitchen is an odd limb, jutting out from the rest of the studio at an angle, not at all roomy and not quite cramped. It's a size to which I've grown accustomed, packed exactingly: this stack of pots fit here, this stack of plates here, this shelf for oils, this shelf for spices.

The kitchen rivals the bed as the most used part of the apartment, and most loved; and if, as they say, scent is the best conveyor of memory, then the kitchen is where the most memories are made.

People walking through the door turn immediately toward the kitchen. "Mmmm, what are you cooking?"

There's something on the stove right now, a cast iron pot with years of accumulated seasoning soaked into its skin that infuses every new food it touches. The pot gurgles and burbles with curry powder and coconut milk, so the neighbors get envious and confused: "What country am I in?"

Cooking for other people is better than cooking for yourself. When I eat something I've cooked, there are no surprises, only the possibility of disappointment. But when I pass a bowl to someone else, I get to watch their face flicker with delight as they turn the corner from one flavor to the next.

The joy of sharing food is at least equal to the joy of eating it.

My kitchen, like most of my apartment, doesn't have room for a second person: there's no way to make space for them and also move around in the ways to which I've grown accustomed: chopping this, blanching that, tossing in a dash of spice, flurry with garnish. So I ladle out my soup into small containers and put it in the freezer, where it will lose some high points of flavor but will sustain me, in a slightly better than the merest possible way, for weeks to come.

Poseidon's Net 

(This story appears in the Spring 2013 issue of Rose & Thorn Journal.)

Breadcrumb Trail 

I was out walking the dog. He's a shelter dog, a little skittish, doesn't like if we wander too far from home, I guess because he's scared I'll leave him out there. He likes to cover his fear with the illusion of sniffing, and he looks at me sometimes to say, "I want to run up ahead, I really do, but it's really important I do this sniffing first."

Walking with him is a slow leapfrog, driveway to driveway to driveway to driveway. We wander through corners of the neighborhood I've never seen, a different path every day, so he gets comfortable and so I don't get too bored.

That's how we found the path that ran between two houses, and back up into the woods, narrow but clearly marked, and littered with breadcrumbs. The dog, uncharacteristically brave, charged right up, chomping down the breadcrumbs as he went.

At the end of the trail, we found a quaint house with a picket fence, and a woman and her Pomeranian in the front yard. She laughed when she saw us: "I was leaving those breadcrumbs for the birds."

The dogs played in the front yard and the woman, named Marie, offered me a hot chocolate. We talked a while, smiling and admiring our dogs and our good luck running into each other.

The cottage became a regular stop for me and my dog: each day, Marie greeted us with hospitality and friendship—and before long, I fell in love with her. I and my puppy moved into the cottage, where she treated us with respect and love, holding us captive with it, like the witch that she is, never letting us escape, so we were never seen by our friends again.

Mixed-Media Autobiography 

or, Little Yellow Envelope, pt. 2

In the top left drawer of the things I keep, there's a little yellow envelope, and it moves with me from city to city to city. It's full of old photos and notes, relics of questionably overrated sentimental value.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

First, its contents1: maybe forty photos of maybe twenty people, and maybe ten of those photos are of me2. Maybe ten postcards, of which five or six are inscribed (sent to me) and the others unused (purchased by me). A few scraps of paper—scribbled notes, a page from a tear-off calendar, a Simpsons horoscope. A black feather. A gray rock.

Each of these objects is the surviving symbol of some story from my past, such that I've assumed that this envelope is my mixed-media autobiography.

I don't look in the envelope much: I've come to take its value for granted. But recently, I had reason to spill its contents out onto my bed and flip through it all, looking for something (a clue, probably—always a clue: some indication from the past as to why the present is the way it is, etc.). I was surprised by what I found inside.

This wasn't my autobiography.

("This is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful wife.")

("You are not your fucking khakis.")

This was a photo collection of people—of, let's face it, kids—from a long time ago, mostly playing at being grown-ups, testing it out; looking beautiful and fresh-skinned and so milk-fed on optimism that their own character—their own unique signs of hardness and how they would overcome their own unique difficulties—hadn't yet shown through the baby fat.

And by "they," mostly I mean "me."

Then, sorting through this splay of pictures—beautiful young women and the notes they'd written to me, notes which said or at least implied that they loved me, once—and I realize with terrible disappointment that maybe this is why I keep this envelope: hard evidence of having been loved—kept as proof of one thing that can't be proven by objects, can't be proven by them any more than it can be fixed in time—love, frozen like in a photo and then stuffed into a dingy envelope—love, which can't live inside an envelope any more than a plant or a child or my own self could live in there—love, which we might sometimes seek out there, or, after a moment of wisdom or wounding, in there, but almost never looking for it where it might actually be found, which is: right here.

And I see now: I don't need this little yellow envelope anymore. It's not even mine.

---

1. Also detailed, with different intent, here.

2. There are actually surprisingly few surviving photos of me, in no small part because, when I was a teenager, I exacted a purge on my parents' photo collections, destroying every unflattering- (and fat!-) looking photo of myself. It was an almost totalitarian act of image control, such that my mother actually stowed the surviving photos into hiding till a more temperate time.

Floating on the River 

You're in your house. It's not big or ostentatious, but it's comfortable and cozy and it feels like yours. You've lived there a little while: you have some agreeable furniture, some wall hangings, a few houseplants, a small collection of coffee mugs that make you a little happy each morning. It's a place where you've coalesced many of these sorts of things—objects that make you a little bit happy.

You like your house. You feel comfortable in it—so much so that you often forget that it sits in the middle of vast river, and it's slowly floating downstream.

You drift down this river, through rough patches and slow meandering bends. Sometimes you stare out the window at the trees on the muddy banks. Sometimes you look at an egret perched on a mooring.

You can't steer your house against the stream, but you do give it a push now and then, to avoid a rock or to pull closer to passing flotsam.

Or people.

Sometimes people drift by on the river. There was a man in a rowboat who wanted to talk to you about salvation. There was a swimmer you rescued from drowning, and took in briefly till he recovered and swam on his way. There's the family on the barge, who sometimes passes you on the river and sometimes you pass them. "Your boys are getting tall," you say. "We baked some muffins," they say. "Do you want some?"

Now and then, not too often, you come upon another house drifting downstream at the same pace. Its window is just across from yours, and you engage in conversation. "Would you like a cup of coffee?" "No, thank you. I'm more of a tea drinker." You start talking, sharing with each other while you drift side by side, and everything feels a little lighter, a little easier.

Eventually, you decide to lash your two houses together and float down the river as one, for a while.

Twining / Untwining 

This is a sad way of these things:

Two people—intertwined, enjoying each other's uniqueness, specialness, the warmth of their mutual fit, the way her head nestles into his shoulder, their mingling of hair on the pillow, the inevitableness of it, the inescapableness of it, the feeling of completeness, the melting—will, later, moving apart from each other, feeling again the cold and the loneliness, the hardening harshness, feel then a series of resentments:

"How could you leave?" "How can you live without me?" "How can you expect me to live without you?"

And then, realizing that life really does go on:

"How could you have tricked me into thinking I needed you in the first place?"

Lover. Beloved. Dupe. Alone.

Then again, and again, and again—and again, eager for the next intertwining.

(See also: Ravel / Unravel.)

Zeno's Other Paradox 

The more that the philosopher Zeno pondered how to get close to people, the farther he moved from his target.

Wispy, Slightly Musty 

Nostalgia is just pessimism in a vintage dress.

Happy Valentine's Day 

The woman at the store said, "Did you wish your mother a happy Valentine's Day?" I said, "Is that something I should do on Valentine's Day?" She said, "Don't you love your mother?" I said, "Yeah I love my mother."

Hemicrania simplex 

or, How's L.A.?

People keep asking me, "How are you?" and "How is Los Angeles?," so I figure I better start coming up with answers. (If only so they'll leave me alone.) I have a headache, is one answer. I've had a headache since Thanksgiving, so, about three weeks straight. It's severe and chronic and the kind of headache that makes people joke, "Brain tumor," and then wonder if maybe they shouldn't have said that, in case it's true. But it's not true: if I had a brain tumor, then wouldn't I begin doing things that were really uncharacteristic?, like I'd bark like a dog, or start beating my wife, or I'd sign a lease for an apartment in Los Angeles. You know: weird, unpredictable stuff.

Oh, that reminds me: on one of the days that the headache wasn't so bad, I went apartment-hunting in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles and I found a place I love, and I'm moving in. You should come and visit when you're in the neighborhood.

If this headache were from a brain tumor, then I'd begin doing things that are really uncharacteristic, like inviting people over for a visit.

After I applied for this apartment, I started to think a lot about an ex-girlfriend. I really wanted to get her opinion on this apartment. That's weird for several reasons, not least of which is, it's hands-down a great apartment, so everyone's opinion of this apartment would probably be more or less the same. What I wanted wasn't her opinion on the apartment, but her opinion on the move, in general—on the life choice. On the choice to live here, in this apartment in Los Feliz, rather than with her, in an apartment anywhere.

Not that living in an apartment with this ex-girlfriend is or was ever an option... That's just another reason that this whole line of thinking was somewhat weird. That's to say, considering how much of my life is given to second-guessing (it's the real, mostly-unstated, raison d'être for this blog, right?), this particular moment of second-guessing stood out as unusual, because I'm usually pretty disciplined about knowing which topics are worth second-guessing and which aren't. It's my own personal interpretation of that Irish blessing: God, grant me the cowardice to question the things I cannot change, the fear to ignore the things I can, and the vocabulary to obfuscate the difference." etc.

The cause of headaches is still largely a mystery to physicians, though common triggers include stress, allergens, and brain tumors—and I figure by moving into a new apartment, I'll change the balance on the first two, at least.

The place I'm staying now is the guest house of a beautiful home in Hancock Park. It's lovely in so many ways, and I wouldn't complain, except that complaining is the real, mostly-unstated raison d'être of any blog: the guest house is windowless and damp, and I call it the Mushroom Den; and spending too much time in it makes me wonder if my body is growing lichen, inside or out. Meanwhile, the entire neighborhood of Hancock Park is completely overrun with an alien species of cyborgic lifeforms known as "Leaf-Blowers," who crawl the lawns constantly, hunched under the weight of their loud gasoline-powered life-support systems: they troll around and ensure that no leaf or pollen ever comes to rest on the ground, but rather instead stays constantly airborne, till inhaled by the local residents—even the temporary residents who are living in the guest houses. I, with well-documented allergies to most natural things (and especially to leaves, pollen, grass and mold) have considered filing a restraining order against these Leaf Blower People; but I'm afraid that would make me an ungracious guest, and I'd rather suffer a three-plus-week headache than appear ungracious. So I martyr myself by staying in this beautiful guest house, with chronic hemicrania simplex, St. Christopher of the Lawn.

Allowing of course that this blog post is itself not quite gracious.

(St. Christopher, you'll remember, was un-canonized: the Church made him a saint, and then later, they changed their mind, and de-sainted him. We didn't even know that was possible till it happened to him. It's a tough quality in a namesake: the quality of having once been thought to have been important. I imagine that Disney character Pluto feels similarly. Graciousness is unreliable and so is everything else.)

"How are you?", "How's Los Angeles?", "What are you up to?," and all that. It's enough to give a guy a headache. On one of the days that the headache wasn't so bad, I wrote out a list of answers to these questions; but then, later, when it got worse again, I used that sheet of paper to blot out the blood that I was pretty sure was coming out of my ears. To be honest, I couldn't tell you how Los Angeles is. Who am I to say?

But what a dress! 

Love is just PTSD in a pretty dress.

If Romeo Had Stayed with Rosaline 

“Get me a beer, woman!

Rapunzel's Tangles 

This entry is not currently available.

Bermuda Triangles of the Home 

Two days ago, walking through my kitchen barefoot, I just barely missed stepping into a safety pin on the floor, needle open, aimed right at me (like a jungle booby trap) (like a hungry one-toothed shark). I saw it in time, picked it up, and thought, "Whew. That was a close one."

Yesterday, walking through my kitchen barefoot, I stepped on something hard and stopped down to look. It was a thick shard of glass, and if I'd come at it from a different angle, it would have cut me for sure. "Whew," I thought. "That was a close one."

The glass was in the same spot the safety pin had been.

You might think I should stop walking through my kitchen barefoot; but rather, I'm going to stop walking through my kitchen barefoot on that spot. It's a locus of danger and I need to be careful.

*     *     *

Last week I lost my keys. "Where were they when you lost them?" people always ask, even though those same people get upset if you ask them the exact same question when they lose their things. "If I knew the answer to that, then I'd know where they were!"

But this time, I knew where they were when I lost them, and they just weren't there. Weird. I couldn't go out without my keys, so I took a shower, made lunch, stayed at home, and later that afternoon, found the keys exactly where I thought they'd been, exactly where I'd been when I lost them.

*     *     *

There's a dent in my pillow where your head used to lay. I fluff the pillow so it's round and plump, a perfect egg shape. But I return later and the dent is there again.

Maybe I shouldn't have bought "memory foam."

*     *     *

I wonder now if time and space aren't exactly the way we imagine them to be. Sometimes causes seem to succeed effects. Sometimes time seems stuck in a loop, or I mean that I'm stuck in a loop and time seems to disappear altogether. Sometimes I wonder if I'll make the same mistakes over and over and over, and if that's what Purgatory is, and if so, then how is it different from anything else?

The rooms of my apartment have more than four corners, and in some of them, things disappear, reappear, behave unexpectedly, according to a set of rules I can't seem to and never will understand. But I see now, that's just the way the world is. It makes sense, just not in the ways we were led to believe.

The Thick of the Woods 

Two lovers in a meadow by a forest, and one says, "Let's go into the woods!", so they run off hand in hand. The forest grows thick—tangles of branches and leaves that block the sun, thickets of vines that snarl the paths—and before long, the two lovers become separated from one another, and can't find their way back.

"Where are you?" "Over here!" They reach their fingers through the vines toward the sound of that beloved voice. As long as they can hear each other, they never feel entirely lost; but they can't see one another, except in maybe-imagined flashes of colors glimpsed through the trees; and they can't find a path that will bring them back together.

"Where are you?" "Over here."

So they grow old in the forest, in love but unable to see or touch. Sometimes they call out more from habit than urgency; sometimes they mouth their answer without making a sound. Eventually, they stop speaking at all—so there's no longer any proof of the other's continued existence in the forest. But neither do they want any proof. They believe the other is over there, somewhere, in the thick of the woods; and undisturbed in the company of this hope, they live happily, quietly, ever after.

Longevity 

It was one of those silly online quizzes that suck up so much time and you're not even sure why you're taking it. This one claimed to be able to predict my exact lifespan, based solely on my answers to a few pages of multiple choice questions.

"Do you hold on to things?" was the question that disconcerted me. The prior questions had been about diet, exercise, and congenital predispositions. "Do you hold on to things?" I pretended momentarily to misunderstand, but of course I knew that the automated, multiple choice Internet quiz was asking me about her.

*     *     *

Earlier that morning, walking down the street, I passed by a little girl, a cute Asian-fusion child who hid behind the leg of her nanny. "Why are you hiding?," the woman asked. "I'm not hiding!" Petulant and adorable, and I almost started crying right there on the sidewalk, maybe because this child reminds me so much of her, or maybe because all children do, the idea of children, my idea of having them: this creature is the incarnation of a lost dream, the daughter I failed to have. It's my leg she should've been using for shelter, hiding her eyes in her own hair.

Hair. The word "hair." In itself, it shouldn't evoke any particular association of color or texture or smell. Everyone has hair. But I notice now, to me, "hair," simply "hair," implies the strands of it on my pillow, implies my hands running through it, implies the scent that I want lingering in the air. I've lost the word to her. I wonder how many such words I've lost: how many otherwise-neutral territories of vocabulary I've surrendered to her occupation. Like the strands of hair themselves, I may never stop finding traces of her, hidden in forgotten corners, left behind.

*     *     *

"No," I answer the questionnaire. "I don't hold on to things," and in its spite for the lie I told, it tells me that I'll live forever.

The Manuscript 

“Working on a poetry manuscript is like masturbating to a picture of a woman you've loved for years.

Perfect Love 

Or, Romantic Idealism, pt. 5

I could love a photo of you, but never the real person. I could pass an hour every day looking at images of your perfection, but couldn't abide to spend an hour next to you.

No. No, I've said that wrong, because when I look at your picture, I'm imagining myself at your side—so it's not a problem of proximity. It's that, in my imagination, we're advanced so far into the future that it's painless: you're leaning on my shoulder with infinite calm; our questions are answered, and the hours of awkwardness spent to earn this comfort are half-forgotten (and half-deified). There's no more worry of being misunderstood, no more wondering what not to say. Glass half-full or -empty, it's no matter. It's brimming over now.

But now, the reality of you is too powerful and painful and real. I can't look at you, in all your realness. Why can't you love me (enough)? We love and hate each other for the same reasons, for our particularness. So much better to look at photos, perfect and framed; to retouch them, transpose them onto a better future. Everything is always better in the future. (In that, it is so much like the past.)

Better still to dream on photos of strangers, rich with the unknown, and then to transpose you upon them, till they are perfect. In my mind, so much is perfect. In my mind (and only there) I can make perfect love.

Down the Little Red Lane 

Me and the cherry-red redhead
Out to paint the town red.
She's red-hot and I'm red-blooded and
She to me is like a red rag to a bull.
I spend every red cent to roll out the red carpet.
"Hey, babe, let's cut through the red tape
and go back to my place."
It's a real red letter day.

Demonology 

My friends tell me I should get rid of my demon lover. The scars and blisters she leaves on me are unsightly. Her brazier is sure to burn my house to the ground. "She won't even tell you her real name!"

They don't understand anything.

I don't mind the bite marks or the scalding iron. I don't mind her sharp teeth or dirty claws. I don't mind when she curses my family in Aramaic.

It's endearing.

My demon lover understands me like no other. "Forever is how long I will understand you." When I wander alone forty days in the desert, she speaks to me—she and she alone—and everything she tells me is true.

"I understand you," she says, her head fitting perfectly on my shoulder. "We're both fallen angels."

In absence of my reflection 

In absence of my reflection,
I remember myself incorrectly.

News clip from a seaside town 

A local man, caught in a riptide, was carried out to sea.

An unidentified stranger swam to his rescue.

Both drowned.

Stella of the Angels  

MP3 audio track

(This story appears in the November 2012 issue of Bartleby Snopes, where it was "Story of the Month.")

 

Forced Entry  

Kato Kaelin's been here again today. He broke a window to let himself in, ate some food from my fridge, made a mess of the living room, and was gone before I ever got home.

I think he might have napped in my bed.

I don't know what to do.

We used to be friends and now we're not. But he keeps coming over when I'm gone and it's driving me crazy.

I want to tell him he's got it all wrong: he doesn't have to be so furtive. I want to tell him to help himself to my things. I don't mind if he tries on my clothes; it's nice that we're the same size. I like that he listens to my music and that he watches my movies; I like that we have the same taste.

He'd be a welcome guest.

I'd like to see him, actually.

But he doesn't want that. He prefers this other way, this occasional, unpredictable forced entry. He prefers coming and going, leaving trails of crumbs and greasy fingerprints everywhere. Leaving traces and clues. He prefers leaving. Touching everything, and never being touched.

A Problem Involving Phrasal Verbs 

Going out.
Getting on.
Making out.
Turning on.
Hooking up.
Staying out.
Putting out.
Staying in.
Doing over.
Giving over.
Settling in.
Getting by.
Thinking through.
Leaving out.
Putting over.
Putting down.
Pointing out.
Shutting out.
Blowing up.
Shutting down.
Calling off.
Making up.
Doing over.
Giving up.
Breaking up.
Walking away.
Throwing away.
Turning down.
Turning off.
Putting behind.
Getting over.
Going out.
Doing over.^*

---

* Look at us: always going places but never specifying where, exactly. No wonder we get lost: we can't keep our particles straight.

Exhuming Melissa 

Exhuming Melissa, who buried me first, years ago. Hers were the last eyes I let see through me, before I covered myself in cold soil and packed it hard. When blood still flowed through my veins, gave me color, gave me life, when I was young: the blood belonged to her.

She walks back to me wearing pointed black boots, circa 1890—older than people. "Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?" But from the knees up, she's all color and life, carpet bags and hair like the changing leaves on the cedar by my bedroom window. She looks young and lost, without spells, and I'm safe, and she's powerless. She finds my arm and we kiss. I try to remember: does she taste the way she tasted before I learned to kiss lips I didn't love? It's Wednesday.

The next afternoon she's sick and sleeping like a chestnut, warm and brown and dimpled, protected by a shell and by the absence of guilt. She wakes and we talk, about words and toes and pomegranates and the ocean, about three chords and lonely clouds, and the light of the sun on the leaves of the trees. We talk about loves lost and about tomorrow, and today, and we think of yesterday without speaking. She's beautiful and I'm proud to be near her. I have some inkling already that I'm done for. I've learned nothing.

"I can be hurt by you." I gave her that, years ago, never asked for it back, and have never given it to anyone again. She used it, never wanted to. The hand she lays on my chest is quivering. Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?

I show her my favorite places, my secrets. I'm afraid they might be irreplaceable, I might be running out, I might be offering them too freely. I realize no one else wants them. I realize the attic is empty and strewn with webs. I give her my secrets and my places. We sneak up stairways to ring old copper bells and announce, "We are here."

Find solace somewhere else. She runs down the beach without looking back, splashing salt water cold onto her legs, and she gets smaller, and smaller. I look the other way, toward the setting sun. The ocean says, over and over, "Triste. Triste."

At night, in bed, wrapped in the sweat of the sheets, breathing, I tell her she is still the true love of my life. She says she's sorry, she never thought of me that way—suddenly, like a knife, but a sharp one: it cuts without hurting. I bleed, but I don't so much mind.

I sleep dreaming of people I've hurt. I'm truly sorry but it doesn't seem to do any good. I am not enough—not strong enough to hold anything together, not fast enough to run away. Good, if it happens, happens over too much time.My failure weighs heavy; I sleep poorly.

"I hate you, I wish you were gone already, I wish you'd never come," kissing her and holding her by the hair, not knowing if our lives move in lines or in circles, or in inches, or in years.

And no end, no end, just a strand of hair on the pillow and a pair of orphaned sandals, left like broken swans, or like footprints, saying "This is where I've been. This is what I leave behind."

(Originally published 1998.)

How to Get Along With Others, pt. 1 

"Just because you can use 'erudite' in a sentence doesn't mean you should!"

Eskimo Kiss 

I spent a few years in a relationship with a woman who, when she would call on the phone, I would address as "Lover." "Hello, lover," we'd say to each other. Now that we're no longer lovers, we don't quite know what to call each other. It's amazing how rarely people who are close actually refer to one another by name. It sounds unnatural.

Whether it's true or not, we all know that the Inuit have many words for snow: when a thing is important to one's culture, we find words to express its varieties of nuance.^*

Yet, we have only one word for "love."

I remember a couple years ago, I was out with a friend, and ran into the mother of an ex-girlfriend. We talked for a while, and when she left, my friend asked, "Who was that?" I remember struggling for the right phrase. "My ex-girlfriend's mom" would have been adequate, but it was so clinical, so geometric. What I really wanted to say was, "That was my former future mother-in-law."

In the end, I described her simply as "a friend."

---

* Whether it's true or not apparently comes down to some Bill Clintonesque logic: "In reality, the number of words depends on the definitions of Eskimo (there are a number of languages) and snow, and on the method of counting numbers of words in languages that have quite different grammatical structures from English."

Dreaming on the Tooth Fairy 

I haven't seen C. since I don't know when. Months—enough months that counting them seems beside the point. Someone I thought I'd see every day forever.

I keep expecting that I'll "get over her," and then I keep winding up disappointed that I haven't already "gotten over her." Finally it begins to come to me that I'm not going to "get over her," and I suppose I don't really want to, which is why it's been so hard, all these months....

Instead, immeasurable bit by immeasurable bit, the future I dreamt with her will fade away. Rather than thinking of her twenty-four hours a day and sadly, it lessens to twenty, and some of those thoughts are happy memories; and gradually, fewer hours, and a better ratio, till some day, the idea of "us" will seem faraway, wistful, a little ridiculous; and it will be replaced by some other idea of who I am and what my future holds.

For now, though, the idea has been loosened, only, not fully dislodged, and certainly not replaced—and like a loose tooth, it dangles awkwardly, annoyingly, sometimes painfully. Once it's pushed out, I'll admire it as such a surprisingly small thing; I'll tuck it under my pillow, and it'll be replaced while I sleep, one dream for another, like a baby tooth for a few small coins.

Double-Entry Accounting 

He, getting dressed,
flips through his wallet
and shakes his head.
"Why am I always broke?"

She, under covers,
rolls to face him
and shakes her head.
"Because you like buying ladies drinks."

Sunset 

All that's left now is whatever comes next.

Vanishing Point 

or, Going Through Old Things

If I speak for the dead, I must
leave this animal of my body,
I must write the same poem over and over
for the empty page is a white flag of their surrender.
- Ilya Kaminsky, "Author's Prayer"

It's ridiculous, after a point, to mourn the loss of a love affair gone bad. The point at which it becomes ridiculous is usually obvious—that is, obvious to everyone except the one in mourning, who persists: "fool for love." This point of ridiculousness also usually occurs much sooner than the fool (clinging to love's fraying threads) likes to imagine—sooner by a factor of years, maybe. Years of misplaced trust and hope; and any stranger on the street could have seen it and said so; but still we cling....

Why is that?

Maybe it's because there is no short path through grief. But somewhere on that path, memories return with altered clarity—new accent marks and emphases that change original meanings. For example, I remember one night, sitting at a bar (a bar like Hopper's "Nighthawks," a bar I pointedly avoid to this day, because it's that depressing), telling her for the first time what she meant to me—telling her that "This is the most significant relationship of my adult life"—and I'd forgotten, but remember now, her answer: "That's so sad." (Sad, presumably, to love someone so strongly who doesn't reciprocate.)

[Amazing, then, the creative power of our minds, to be able to take such a malformed beginning, and still—wanting so badly for it to be so good—reshape it till we can imagine that it suits us, till we can imagine that it fits us beautifully, till we can convincingly call it "love"—convincing ourselves, though everyone else seems to see otherwise.]

It is ridiculous to mourn the loss of this. How upset should one be, really, to lose someone who never really cared all that much to begin with? "That's so sad," and maybe we never got any further than that. Maybe everything after was my own delusion. Maybe we broke up that night, before we even started. Maybe never spoke again. Maybe that night we died.

There is scant evidence to prove otherwise: two lone relics she's left behind, two valueless things (valueless except for the fact that they are the last two): an old Post-It note scrawled with a single word ("Chill"), never meant to be significant, never meant to be kept, but still I saved it and carried it for years; and an old camisole, stowed during a brief golden age, years ago, when she had "a drawer" at my apartment.

Time has lifted some of the sentiment from these two objects: the Post-It, long construed (by me) as a monosyllabic love poem, seems now devoid of any indication of love: it is, in the end, a demand ("Chill"), aimed at increasing her comfort as much as mine. "You're too tense," is the paraphrase. "You're too intense." "That's so sad."

The camisole turns up later, unexpectedly, while I'm looking through my fall clothes. Small and lacy, it is dwarfed among the pile of wool sweaters that have kept it company through these summer months—it is so small, it would seem to have no mass whatsoever (but I know better, and I'm reluctant even to try picking it up...).

"Do you want it back?" I finally ask her. It'd be easy enough to mail. No, she answers in a note as passionate as the Post-It, "it was itchy"—which (time having lifted some of the sentiment) is my sentiment exactly: lovely for what it was, but it itched. Pronoun without antecedent.

Empress's new clothes: a few ounces of uncomfortable threadbare lace—and everything else (all the added weight) only as real as memory, only as real as want. Forgetfulness lightens everything:

A vanishing point.

Never Egret 

The bastard behemoth Google never forgets. It is cold, digital, and cruel, to have stored so many emails. A simple, innocent search of old messages¹ pulls up a forgotten love letter², and the next thing I know, I'm unwittingly hurled down memory lane, bouncing off its cobblestones—so many long-lost affectionate promises, meant sincerely at the time, and now just false prophesies, like old torn-up lottery tickets. If I close my eyes, I can pretend the email arrived only yesterday: closing my eyes brings a spot of light; and opening them to today, it's a little darker.

Google lumbers on like an old elephant, never forgetting, while my own memory (and the life it constructs for me) flits about, here and there, with less pattern, a hungry egret flying among the plodding beasts, and never touching down, for fear of getting trammeled...

---

1. "Goose" was the search term, because I've started emailing myself recipes. How domestic...

2. From an unforgotten lover—because the message used the phrase, "goose bumps."

Parable of the Salve 

Let's say, you have a condition.

You have a rare, debilitating medical condition that causes you chronic, widespread pain, and you have had it as long as you can remember. Your condition is hard to describe: sometimes the pain is in your stomach, sometimes in your liver, sometimes in your heart, sometimes in your neck. Sometimes you feel it acutely over all your skin. Doctors have examined you up and down, and they can find no cause for your pain, no symptoms, no clues that might lead to relief. They prescribe pain killers which have fleeting, incidental effect. The doctors want very much to help you. But they can't.

You go on like this for some time. You begin to lose hope that anyone will ever be able to understand your condition, or to help. Then, one day, you are visiting a new doctor, explaining your condition (as you've done fifty times before)—only this time, the doctor nods and says, "I understand. I know exactly what you need." She reaches into her medicine cabinet and fetches a small jar. "This salve will make you feel better," she says.

It is miraculous. You have lived with your condition for so long, you'd given up hope that you might ever feel good again. The salve changes everything. With the salve, you forget your pain. You live happy and free, and every few days, you return to the doctor for another application.

Years go by—so long that you forget what life was like before the salve. So long that you begin to doubt there ever was a "condition."

But you begin to notice a change: the doctor is applying the medicine in smaller doses. Your weekly appointments become monthly, and the pain begins to creep back into your belly, your skin, your bones. You return to the doctor, desperate and demanding. She looks at you sadly. She tells you that she is sorry, but she has no more salve to give you.

The pain comes back now. It is familiar, like an old friend. It is hard to describe: it is sometimes in your stomach, sometimes in your liver, sometimes in your heart. The pain comes back, worse than before, because now it is augmented by your memory of the salve—by your dreams of relief. Through your pain, you work to remind yourself that it is not the doctor who gave you the pain, by withholding the salve; she is not the cause of the pain; but rather, it is the doctor who relieved the pain, if only for a while....

The Lion and the Thorn 

One day, a lion roaming through the jungle got a thorn in his paw. A shepherd saw the lion, and, his pity overcoming his fear, approached it, and offered to remove the thorn. "You cannot heal while the thorn is still in your paw."

"I am king of the jungle," the lion roared. "This tiny thorn cannot hurt me!"

Some time afterward, the shepherd again came upon the lion. He lay on his side; his paw was enormously swollen; he could no longer walk, and he was starving. Again, the shepherd offered to remove the thorn from the lion's paw, and again, the lion refused: "I am king of the jungle," he growled, scaring the shepherd off.

That night, the hyenas and jackals circled the lion, afraid to get too close, but waiting, as the lion weakened. He remembered the kindness and the wisdom of the shepherd, who was nowhere to be seen. "I am king of the jungle," he whispered proudly, and at that point, he used his powerful fangs to bite painfully into his own foot, till he himself had removed the thorn.

Scratching at the Door 

There's a sad, forgotten dog scratching at the door, waiting to be let back into a house that barely remembers him.

Doesn't he realize that right now he's outside, untethered, and free?

"Run, Doggie, run Doggie, run, run, run."

Another Friday Night 

Another Friday night,
sailing through the archipelago of barstools,
looking for home.

Romantic Idealism, pt. 4 

I've been considering Schopenhauer's somewhat despairing ideas about love—namely, that the "love" we feel is a pre-conscious, uncontrollable urge whose goal is to find us a partner who is biologically the most complementary—the partner who will best assure the genetic strength of our offspring. We intuitively understand our own weaknesses, and therefore we fall in love with the person most likely to correct these weaknesses in future generations.

So attraction, according to Schopenhauer, isn't based on any criteria we might rationally apply—smart, charming, kind, etc.—but rather based on incompatibilities. The ideal partner does not necessary complete us. The ideal partner might not even enjoy our company. The ideal partner is ideal because he or she completes our children.

Opposites attract.

It is, ironically, comforting to cede all of one's romantic decision making back to Nature, because it excuses behaviors that would otherwise be hard to explain—not least of which: why would we devote five years of our life to someone who is most of the time neglectful and isn't even particularly nice? For example.

Romantic Idealism, pt. 3 

Though he predates mobile telephony by a few decades, Barthes also writes something that accounts for the phantom ringing of the cellphone in my pocket: I want her to call so badly that my thigh periodically spasms in the exact spot where the phone sits, to mimic the feeling of its vibrating.

"Waiting is a delirium...." Barthes suggests. "I am an amputee who still feels pain in his missing leg."

"Am I in love?," he asks himself. "Yes, since I am waiting."

The other never waits. Sometimes I want to play the part of the one who doesn't wait; I try to busy myself elsewhere, to arrive late; but I always lose at this game: whatever I do, I find myself there, with nothing to do, punctual, even ahead of time. The lover's fatal identity is precisely: I am the one who waits.

So much waiting.¹ I begin to wonder if I am in a relationship with the absence of her, rather than her presence. It is her absence with whom I have shared so much of my time. Maybe, then, it is her absence that I love...? And, so accustomed am I to this imaginary-her, this phantom limb, that the actual one becomes a kind of interloper, intruding upon our terrible privacy....

---

1. "A mandarin fell in love with a courtesan. 'I shall be yours,' she told him, 'when you have spent a hundred nights waiting for me, sitting on a stool, in my garden, beneath my window.' But on the ninety-ninth night, the mandarin stood up, put his stool under his arm, and went away."

Romantic Idealism, pt. 2 

There's an idea I remember (or, more likely, mis-remember) from Barthes, regarding the anxiety that comes at the end of a relationship: by the time you feel a fear of loss, you have already lost the thing that you are scared to lose.

(The thing that you are scared to lose—love—is sanctuary from fear.)

Anxiety is the panicky fear of an impending breakdown—but if you suffer from anxiety, then the breakdown has already occurred: your mind, scrambling for ways to avert the disaster (in this case, the loss of love), is already scrambled. Your joy and your peace of mind are already shattered.

So, in a way, there is no longer anything to fear.

Romantic Idealism, pt. 1 

Do I miss you, or just memories of you?

Philosophy teaches us that nothing is real: all sight and sound and smell and everything we experience is apprehended through the mind, and therefore, they are ideas. All our sensations must become ideas in order for us to feel them.

If that's the case, then what I miss right now is the idea of the sweet smell of your breath, and not the smell itself...

Hanging by a Thread 

or, The Parable of the Pants

A few years ago, toward the end of a troubled love affair, I went clothes shopping, and bought a pair of pants I still have to this day. I bought them because she would like them, though I wasn't aware of this motivation at the time. I wasn't trying to impress her with the pants, exactly. Rather, the pants were a manifestation of a taste that she and I shared: I liked the pants, I knew she would probably like the pants, and therefore the pants would confirm the reasons she and I were close: they were emblematic of the like-minded judgment that brought us together in the first place.

I knew all of this at the time without actually knowing it—I couldn't have articulated why I bought the pants; I only knew that I was shopping with an anxious desperation, fueled by my fear that my love affair was over, and at a not-quite conscious level, I hoped the pants would save me.

I was hanging by a proverbial thread.

She never saw the pants—she broke up with me over voicemail—and the pants became emblematic of something else: lost opportunity, failure, dashed hope. From that day on, the pants never did fit quite right: I tried to get used to them, tried wearing them with different clothes, tried to alter myself to better fit into them, and only occasionally considered the appropriateness of trying to alter myself to fit the pants, instead of the other way around.

Time Lapse, pt. 3 

Waking from Sleep

You know that feeling, waking from a nap?—the sun has gone down, and you wake in a haze of confusion: you've been pulled from a dream, and it takes a few seconds longer than you expect even to be able to answer, "Am I awake, or still sleeping?"

Is this real?

Where am I?

Your lover is lying next to you. She is s also asleep, or half-asleep, and maybe she is dreaming, too, of warm summer days, trips on boats and airplanes, games played with friends or children or pets, childhood, picnics, dreams of napping. Happy times. Pulled suddenly from fantasies of happy times, we don't know immediately whether this time—now—is also a happy one; so, this first moment of waking is one of taking inventory; then judging:

What is now?

And how does it compare?

It's not accurate, the way we commonly describe this moment. We say we don't know where we are. But also, we don't know when. In this moment, we're confused: we think that the person beside us is the one we loved all those years ago, innocent, unadulterated; and only a few moments later, wake to remember that he or she is the one we love now, in that more complicated, careful way...

Time Lapse, pt. 2 

Negative Space

She pulls on her clothes, refreshes her lipstick, kisses me goodbye, and closes the door, and I notice it right away—the presence of this new feeling. It has been lingering all afternoon, this feeling, like an unwanted guest, but I chose not to acknowledge it, and that in itself is a new kind of duplicity, I suppose—this lie of omission: pretending to share an intimate afternoon, she and I, while also including this other, this third, this feeling, this feeling who sits there, watching us.

Maybe she feels it, too, the presence in the room with us.

Maybe she does.

But her version of the history is different than mine. Her version is steadier and more continuous than mine. In my version, we have had a very jarring year, she and I; and the result of it is that when I am with her, I reserve a part of myself. I bifurcate. Part of me is with her, and part of me is with myself. We stroll the streets, we wander in and out of shops, we lounge at restaurants, we loll in the park, we loll in bed, same as before—except now, part of me is not there. Part of me instead stands in reserve, out of body, stands guard, to protect me from the intrusion of another jarring year.

Maybe she feels it, too.

Maybe this is what happens between people.

Maybe this is an evolution of love.

The result of it is that a distance has opened between what I am feeling and what I am saying. The result is this new negative space, the vacuum of evacuated promise, and it occupies the room like an unwanted guest, intruding on the intimate afternoons.

Sex in the City 

As if finding a loved one in this town weren't hard enough—today the Associated Press ran a story that claims, "One in four adults living in New York City has the virus that causes genital herpes."

The scariest part of this story (and there are many scary parts to this story) is imagining all of the New Yorkers who, fearing for their own sexual safety, start seeking partners in ... New Jersey? Which I'm sure is much safer...

Eww, all around.

---

Time Lapse 

"And if you can, at nineteen, count the people you love on one hand, you will not, at forty, have run out of fingers on the other. There are so few people given us to love and they all stick."
- Anne Enright, The Gathering

The trip put me in the mood of a birthday, or a New Year: something about transiting from one place to another offered me just enough pause, and distance, to reflect on what has been: there is the version of the story of our lives that we tell ourselves we're living, and then there is the version we're actually living; and sometimes it's not clear or obvious when those two diverge. Suddenly a year has passed and we're altogether someone different than we thought we were. There are lines on our face we never knew were there, and that small hole in our heart, the one that's been leaking the slow trickle of joy, at some point during the year that hole got larger, and the leak turned into a flow, and now has maybe caused structural damage, which, owing to the slow passage of time, we have till now failed to notice. This pause, this one flicker of quiet amidst the inexorable crawl-forward of time, this snapshot of the status quo, motion-blurry but clear enough, certainly, to discern this: the status quo not working. Then the pause is over: time has stretched its legs and now marches onward, and our momentary glimpse at clarity is insufficient to change the momentum of anything.

Charity, Chastity 

There's a man who came over to my table an hour ago to ask for money. He was well groomed; he had a nice watch and good teeth, and spoke gently. He claimed to have just been released from the hospital, and showed me his bracelet, though he didn't say what hospital or why he was there.

He touched me twice, softly, his fingertips brushing my arm while he spoke. And now, in retrospect, I'm furious. I hate him for touching me, because now, on account of those two touches, I won't be able to put him out of my mind1; and also because he'll probably be the only one to touch me today.2

---

1. I use the same trick myself, when I want to make an impression on a stranger. I do it consciously, manipulatively, and sincerely, too. But I hate having my own trick used against me.

2. I remind myself, like I might have reminded him if he were still around: we move to the city and surround ourselves with people, in order to be left alone.

Long Division 

or, The Remainder

In the sometimes difficult arithmetic that is used to calculate love, perhaps no problem is more difficult to solve than this: at the end of love, where does the love go?

[Conservation of mass and energy would dictate that it must go somewhere: love is nothing if not massive and energetic.]

Two people come together, and then they are made separate again, by a kind of long division. But the equation doesn't balance: the two are divided, but there is a remainder, an amount that belongs to neither the one nor the other. An amount of loss.

What happens to the remainder?

Measure Twice, Cut (at) Once 

Manhattan's a tough town, miserly with its second chances, and dating is no exception. With so many eligible singles (and by "eligible," I mean self-possessed, self-sufficient, and usually self-absorbed), there's no reason to settle for anything less than perfect.

Which is why I don't think it's unreasonable that I'm breaking up with you because you drink riesling. Riesling is a god-awful wine and I can't possibly be involved with anyone who thinks otherwise. It speaks badly of your judgment, more generally, and I won't risk having my future children inherit such terrible taste.

* * *

Hi! I just wanted to call, and say I had a great time last night, and I don't think we should ever do it again. Why? What do you mean, why? I'm sorry, I assumed you felt the same way. Remember when I was talking about that Terrence Malick film, and you thought I meant that movie with Meg Ryan? Sure, that Meg Ryan movie was an adaptation. No, it was an adaptation of Wim Wenders, not Terrence Malick. See? This proves my point exactly. Anyway, thanks for a fun night.

* * *

God, this is so graceless of me. I mean, I really wanted to wait till the entrées arrived, at least. But you were eating so slowly... I don't think we should see each other anymore. This isn't working out. I mean, we should have known, right?—I wanted a booth, you wanted a table. Ha ha. "Let's call the whole thing off."

I just wish you'd told me you had a double chin; it could have saved us both the trip. Can you please stop making that annoying sound when you cry? Here's some cash for the bill; I think if I leave now, I can make it home before Lost.

Are you going to eat that calamari? Mind if I get it wrapped up, to go?

Path to a Clear Conscience 

Repeat this phrase: "It's not you. It's me."

Practice often. Practice in front of a mirror, if that helps. Practice till you sound convincing. Practice till you nearly believe it yourself.

By accepting the blame for other's shortcomings, you not only protect yourself from difficult, possibly hurtful conversations, but also from losing faith in the prospect that there are still likable people out in the world. If you were to focus on the truth—it's not you, it's them—then you would surely lose hope.

---

The Bogeyman 

The bogeyman came over last night, and
he wasn't as scary as I'd remembered.
We made dinner. He said the wine went straight
to his head. At the end of the night,
We started kissing, and I fucked him
On the same bed where he used to lurk,
slovering and snarling, clawing at my ankles.
Now he's snoring while we spoon,
his sleeping face lit in moonlight, and
I know I haven't conquered fear, just
moved it somewhere else, still undiscovered.

---

File Under 'Pathos' 

"I would rather grieve over your absence than over you." - Antonio Porchia, Voces

They tell us that if you have arthritis, say, of the knees, you need to use the joint to alleviate the pain. The less you exercise, the more it will hurt. Practice makes perfect.

But if you have a tear in the knee, say, a medial meniscus, then use of the joint might worsen the tear, and cause permanent damage.

So in the case of undifferentiated pain—is it arthritis, or is it a tear?—what do you do? You risk injury by using it, and you risk injury by not using it.

And what about the heart? In the case of undifferentiated pain, what do you do? You risk injury by using it; you risk injury by not.

* * *

I always think today is the day. Today is the day that she's going to call. Even though she didn't call yesterday, or the day before that, or the week before that—today is the day. The phone will ring; I'll glance at the incoming call, and instead of reading the name with that now-familiar disappointment—"Oh, it's not her, it's just you"—you, someone who cares enough to actually call, yet still somehow is disappointing compared to her, the one I want to call, the one who doesn't care to. The one who, well, I wouldn't know what to say to her if she did call.

Here's a range of feelings no one had before cell phones: the pathos of having her number fall off of the "call log," replaced by more recent, less passionate activity. The pathos of having her last voicemail (more than thirty days old) "expire" and disappear into the ether. The pathos of deleting her from the phone's address book, mostly to protect myself from ill-advised late-night moments of weakness.

Nights and weekends are free.

* * *

I exercise my heart. Exercise and exorcise. I don't love but I consider its possibility. I find openness and optimism, slowly, in layers that peel off one by one. I remind myself that aloneness is the natural state; it's not unusual; it's how I felt every day, before. And will still, for a while yet.

Practice makes perfect.

Structure from motion at equiluminance 

"If I'd known we were gonna cast our feelings into words, I'd've memorized the Song of Solomon." - Miller's Crossing

Memories are painted on acidic paper and in fugitive colors: they fade over time, so that things we once found beautiful might later disappoint us; things we cherished might fail to seem remarkable, till we can't remember what, exactly, we ever liked about them. Or disliked.

[Ask someone who is lonely what they miss: they miss a memory.]

The remembered thing, and the feelings evoked by the thing—once inseparably intertwined (like lovers)—begin to come apart. This is forgetting—because the thing, without the attached feeling, becomes an event only, not a memory. It signifies nothing.

So when we cling to a memory, we're clinging to a feeling, a feeling which we've tethered to an otherwise-insignificant event.

Sometimes we become so attached to that feeling—to the memory of the thing—that the thing itself, in all its original colors, is unrecognizable to us. We have assembled a set of points, put it in motion—and imagined a structure where there is none. We've created an optical illusion. And cling to it like a lover.

(Happy Valentine's Day.)

---

One Way Ticket 

A woman this morning on the train—we kept looking at each other, and I got that feeling one sometimes gets, looking at strangers on the train, that silly feeling: that I shouldn't let this person just walk away. That I could love this person. Based on what, I don't know—the curls in her hair, the stripes of her stockings, the pout of her lips, an elusive, effusive ... I don't know.

I resolved that if she got off at my stop, I would talk to her, ask her to coffee, ask her something, something I hadn't worked out yet. But one stop before mine, she stood, bundled her things, and with a furtive look back at me, got off the train. When the door closed and the train pulled away, I felt momentarily like a tiny piece of me had been lost forever. (Perhaps.)

---

Want-Induced Psychosis (pt. 3) 

"What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story, And the greatest good is little enough: for all life is a dream." - Calderon de la Barca

Last night, miles from home, trying to fall asleep in an overheated unfamiliar bedroom, tossing and turning, listening to the rain hit the window, thinking, thinking, thinking—mulling mostly my own anxious sadness, and the phrase (the fact) that keeps coming back to me: "No matter what is next, the Golden Age is over."

That would be the "Golden Age" that I've had with C., the woman I love.¹

I've written lately about "want-induced psychosis"—how, if you want to love someone badly enough, then a little contrary reality won't be enough to stop you: it's easy enough to construct a cozy fantasy world in your mind, and then move in.

Last night, though, trying to break out of my own mental loop of anxiety², I play the reverse game: I construct, in my mind, a new fantasy, in which C. doesn't exist, never existed, was always a figment of my imagination. I imagine that I've spent the last few years of my life in a state of psychosis, happily building memories with someone who, it turns out, was a vivid hallucination. I imagine that I am only now coming out of this hallucination, and wrestling with the idea that many of my happiest memories never really happened.

In effect, I'm trying to negate one fantasy (my Happily Ever After life with C.) by employing another, new fantasy: the love that I thought I felt was an illusion.³

It is shocking—cold and empty—to sit in bed, in the middle of the night, and realize how much this strips out of my life. It feels as though a whole dimension has been flattened out of my world, or like color has faded into grayscale. At the same time, my life is suddenly, starkly simplified—the sudden absence of so much imagined future joy leaves me, for a rare moment, in the elusive "present": there is nothing more to me in this moment than me, in this moment. The thought is somehow quieting though not comforting.⁴

Now, many hours later: my self-induced psychosis has faded, and been replaced by the original (habitual) psychoses of missing her, imagining the life I might have had, imagining other possible future golden ages. But these familiar imaginings are finally tempered a bit by my experience sitting in bed in the middle of the night (a dreamer examining his pillow), feeling cold, empty, alone, and present. Quieted, if not comforted.⁵

The Golden Age is over. I wonder what's next?

1. Who will, in all likelihood, read this—read this, and be, if not upset, then certainly affected by it—thus altering the course of our future together: Schrödinger's Lover?

2. I'm losing her, so I want her more, so I'm more afraid of losing her. Etc.

3. Maybe, to most people, this seems backwards: why not simply live in reality? But I'm a dreamer, and I know this about myself, and I'm trying to live in reality—but first I have to make a course correction, and I'm hoping to use the fact that I am a dreamer to my advantage, for a change, instead of the liability it tends to be.

4. Sobs are tension leaving the body. Etc.

5. "Better never to have met you in my dream than to wake and reach for hands that are not there." (Otomo No Yakamochi)

5,999,999 to Go 

One reason to go on dates: it narrows the field.

There are six million people in New York City, and now, based on the past two hours, I feel comfortable ruling one out.

Want-Induced Psychosis (pt. 2) 

There's a woman I loved for a few years after college, despite the fact that she never loved me back.¹ She may have said she loved me once or twice, but mainly because the persistence of my devotion must have exhausted her, and finally it was easier for her to say it than not say it. She loved another (and then another, and then another), and I knew it. But we don't get to choose who we love—especially when we're young—and I loved her (sometimes intensely and sometimes almost subliminally) for many years, despite the fact that she never loved me back.¹

I loved her because I was young and romantic and at the beginning of a great adventure, and I knew it, and she was too, and she knew it. I loved her because I wanted so badly to be in love (it was a part of the great adventure), and also because loving her offered me an anchor of consistency while I drifted from city to city, from occupation to occupation, from lover to lover, from belief to belief.

Along the way, as I discovered things, I jotted them onto postcards and dropped them to her in the mail.² She'd write back periodically, long missives written in Renaissance-looking, almost Heloisian handwriting; I'd flip through page after page looking for some extra totem—a scent, a strand of fallen hair—to account for and maybe even sate all my feeling. But never found one.

I tried for years to understand the magic of her powerful spell over me, but the simple truth of it was that I wanted very badly to be in love, and she was as good a vessel as I could find—until she wasn't.

I was young and romantic and at the beginning of a great adventure, and I didn't want to be in love: I didn't want to be tethered to another or to anything. I wanted a muse, and a tragedy, to carry from city to city and from occupation to occupation; but I didn't want to be in love; and I knew it; and so did she...

(Love, then, is a kind of psychosis.)

1. Or perhaps because of this fact.

2. Most of these postcards were Georgia O'Keeffe flowers I'd pick up at art museums around the country. They were paintings I loved at the time, much the way I loved the woman: that is, I saw in them an evocative ideal of beauty—something I still see to this day, though now this means something quite different to me: like the love I felt for her, these paintings are devoid of anything actual, any real guts. They are all swirls and color, not sexy, just the idea of sexy. I like them very much; but I don't love them, because I understand love to mean something different than I did then.

Want-Induced Psychosis (pt. 1) 

By the time we end a relationship, usually the person we loved is already gone.

Or, maybe it's more accurate to say that person no longer exists, or never existed: that person with whom we'd built a home, raised our children, celebrated so much happiness and hope—in our imagined future—that person never existed. We've been in love with a phantom, an objet d'art of our own creation, inspired by a real-life counterpart who, it turns out, doesn't want those things at all.

We wake up to find that our bed, our house, our future, is empty, and that it has been for some time. It's the simulacra that's been keeping us warm. A beautiful ghost.

Love, then, is a kind of psychosis. ¹

The sun comes up on a day as cold and empty as it ever was, but brighter and colder, for want of a new illusion to keep us warm.

1. The gravitational pull of our desire, strong enough to warp space-time.

Blunt Trauma to the Head 

Hi there. I saw you from across the room. I couldn't help but notice you looking at me. And winking. What's that you're reading? Oh, I love Murakami! Yeah, I'm reading some of his short stories right now. No, I can't remember what they're called. No, I don't remember what any of them are about.

You have a Masters degree? So do I! Wow, we have so much—. Yes, so much in common. Look, we're already finishing each other's sentences.

Is that your dog? I love dogs. No, I'm not much of a cat person, either. They make me choke, actually.

Well, let me cut to the chase: you're looking for a smart, funny, sensitive guy, right? And I am a smart, funny sensitive guy. (To prove it, here's a picture of me in a bunny suit. Yes, it's me, playing the Easter Bunny at a charity breakfast for children. Yes, of course I do that sort of thing all the time.)

If you're looking for a smart, funny, sensitive guy, and I am one, then maybe we should meet? No, I mean meet. In real life. Yeah, offline—not email. Would you like to meet? No? OK. Well, I just thought—.

OK. See you around.

Rejected Transplant / Phantom Limb 

When I try and introduce someone or something new into my life, it's as if my body (or psyche) rejects them like the artificial graft of a transplanted organ. Something in me, something deep down, rejects the concept of this new body as alien.

When I try and remove someone or something old from my life, it's as if my body (or psyche) refuses to let go, continues to acknowledge their presence despite their absence, a phantom limb.

Astrological Ashram 

I spend the morning reading blogs much better than mine—a consequence of reconnecting with some old writer-friends (all presumably out of work at the moment, with nothing to do, then, but blog...)—and a mixed consequence, because, well, yes, my morning reading is much improved, but also, Why can't I write like that?

Then I retreat into astrology sites for another two hours. Sure they're silly, but I find them comforting because they answer my prior question: I can't write like that because I'm cosmologically predisposed to be exactly what I am (which is, and I quote: "Escapist and idealistic. Secretive and vague. Weak-willed and easily led.") Thanks for that. What a relief.

I hide in these sites and take comfort from their pre-canned answers: They get me. And when's the last time anybody got me?

(Careful, it's a trick question—because the elephant in the astrological house is why I've been hiding, and what I'm retreating from—a subject I've avoided with aplomb these last few weeks, despite recently posting so. many. words. )

* * *

"As the last sign of the zodiac, you are in conflict with yourself, as your symbol suggests--two fish locked in tension, forever pulling each other in opposite directions. This can represent the personality tied to the soul, and indeed one seems to be swallowing the other. Your motto is either serve, or suffer. And if you lean more toward the spiritual side, your rewards are huge, for you are the most sensitive and psychic sign in the horoscope."

* * *

[Her hair is everywhere. I keep finding it. I'm a clean person—I sweep, I mop, I do laundry. But the hair persists. I can't get rid of it. The other night I woke up and found myself literally tangled up in it, like it's some living creature from an over-sentimental B-horror movie, a metaphor brought to life. The irony being she hasn't been here in weeks; she was barely here at all.

Her hair, on the other hand, won't leave. It has a will of its own.

I have to give serious consideration to whether I'm hallucinating. I don't think I am. But you never do....]

* * *

Last evasion for the morning: I disappear an hour into a book of poetry. (Oh so Piscean!) I'm amazed every time how, while reading, I can feel my spirit soar—but, to where? I put the book down only to find I've simply smacked against the ceiling. I'm right back where I started, or maybe worse, since it's already afternoon. "If a man understands a poem, he shall have troubles."

It's time to get on with my day. Consolation, if it's anywhere, is somewhere outside of this astrological ashram. The psychics take one last parting shot, as I eat lunch, via a fortune cookie: "Your dearest wish will come true."

Sure. Sure it will. If only I can figure out what it is.

Fish in the Sea 

"When from our better selves we have too long Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop, Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired, How gracious, how benign, is Solitude."
- William Wordsworth, "The Prelude"

"You have 64 new messages," says the mechanical voice of Hope Davis' answering machine in the 1998 Brad Anderson movie Next Stop Wonderland. Her mother, dismayed at her daughter's stagnant love life, has done her the favor of placing a personal ad on her behalf. "I'm not lonely," she argues, "when I sit at a bar by myself. I'm not even lonely when I'm home alone. I get lonely in a crowded room, or a subway that's packed with people."

If her final destination is Wonderland, as the title would have us believe, then first, she's got to go through the aquarium...

* * *

"There are plenty of fish in the sea" (or at least that's what Grandma always said), and this weekend at the New England Aquarium I saw a good many, including a rare, entrancing and almost unnaturally complex one.

This is a fish you might be afraid to touch.

* * *

Pisces (The Fish): You're feeling a new surge of personal power. It's like suddenly others become aware of your real potential. Perhaps they've underestimated how clever and determined you can be. Your words and actions will be extra powerful, so it's best to "start things slowly" and gradually increase the tempo and intensity. New people enter your life who can play significant roles in your future development. Get ready for some bizarre things to happen.

---

Reflexive 

"The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is memory."
- Henri Bergson

In the moment that I realize I've fallen out of love, it's like having a tooth pulled. The feeling comes so strong and fast I actually make a sound—a strange, short sound, like the first syllable of a sob. And then it's quiet, quieter than I can remember for a long time; and in the quiet, I wonder if I ever was in love, if the feeling was real at all. How could something real disappear without any tangible trace?

There is a property in geometry called the "reflexive property," which states simply that a = a. I've never understood it. Sometimes the simple things are hardest.

But tonight, in the dark, I feel something drop like fruit off a tree; and in that moment, for the first time in months or maybe ever, the past is in the past, and things are as they are. They are reflexive...

---

Love in the Time of Bird Flu 

"Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who's in love gets sad when they think of their lover."
- Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

There are people I love in the world, but none within two-hundred miles. I spend Valentine's at home, surfing the web. You might say I'm getting an early start at what the New York Times calls social distancing—the "politically correct term for quarantine." In the event that the H5N1 virus goes pandemic, one way to stay relatively safe, they say, is stay at home. Stay home, eat canned food, and surf the web.

Welcome to my life.

* * *

That damn Internet—one more excuse to stay at home and avoid human contact while also having more immediate access to more people than we ever could have imagined. A friend goes on and on to me about online personal ads. "It's just like Amazon," he says. "You comparison shop, you refine what you want, you find the best possible deal." But I've never been able to bring myself to do it—something inherently disturbing about browsing for people, and adding them to your Shopping Cart...

* * *

I stay in touch with loved ones by email, by phone, by chat. I think sometimes that what I appreciate about my relationships with these people is intimacy—and that email, phone, chat are the opposite of intimacy. What I appreciate about these relationships is that they're not virtual; they're actual. Except that now they're not.

So what are they?

A beloved is a vessel into which we can pour the best parts of ourselves. Can we do it through a fiber-optic cable?

Did you know you can order flowers and chocolate on the Internet and have them delivered anywhere in the country, without speaking to a single person? Did you know you can schedule it a year in advance?

* * *

Sometimes I wonder if the global village is just too big—if people evolved to be suited for small towns, maybe, and anything bigger than that is against our nature, brings out anger, violence, anonymity, alienation.

Sometimes I wonder if pandemic bird flu might be exactly what the human race needs...

Happy Valentine's Day.

---

Beyond Reproach 

Why is it so hard to step back and take a good critical look at the ones we love? The best thing in my life right now, hands down, is a girlfriend who, after more than two years, doesn't want me call her "girlfriend", doesn't want me to meet her friends, and tells me not to make any life plans around her. She's got the temperament of a cat, unpredictably affectionate or standoffish. She tells me she's "depressed" because her hairdresser cut her bangs too short.

And I really do love her.

How do I get myself into these situations?

I wonder sometimes if what I want from "love," if what I mean when I use the word, is actually just a waiving of my judgment—a rare relationship where I can be relaxed and comfortable, because I've chosen to exempt it from my critical eye. When I say, "I love you unconditionally," I don't say it because of my generous, open heart. I say it because I need a fucking break.

On the one hand: the hordes, the masses, put on this world for no other reason than to be the subject of my critique and discourse; on the other hand, the beloved, with whom the discourse can be shared. So when I call you a kindred spirit, it's not because of all of the ideas we share, but rather, because, like me, you are beyond my reproach...

Winona Forever 

"I was thrilled when he got the tattoo. What woman wouldn't be?" - Winona Ryder, on the tattoo of then-fiance Johnny Depp, which read "Winona Forever"

"The split in 1993 was during the filming of Ed Wood, and there were days he would come crying, I felt so bad. I asked him why it happened but all he said was 'It wasn't her fault, it was mine.' And when he met Kate in January of 1994, it wasn't the same as Winona. I felt weird to be around him, like he wasn't acting like Johnny anymore. It's almost like Winona took Johnny's soul, Johnny's love." - Tim Burton, on the breakup between Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder

 

To celebrate their engagement and eternal love, in 1992 Johnny Depp had the words "Winona Forever" tattooed onto his arm. But nothing lasts forever. The couple split within a year, and even the tattoo didn't last long after that. (Through the miracles of laser surgery, it now reads "Wino Forever".)

There are lessons to be learned from tattooing, but permanence isn't one of them. Maybe a tattoo is just a simple reminder that a lot of things get under our skin, and that those things can hurt a bit. Maybe tattoos just help us remember times we don't want to forget. Or maybe they serve a reminder that nothing lasts forever, even when we want it to. Maybe especially then. Even the things we think are permanent or long-lasting, like tattoos themselves...

Nobody Likes Tarragon 

She's been really nice to me this month, a regular Florence Nightingale, which is why I decided, when I was feeling a little better, to cook her dinner. I had it ready when she came over, and of course it was full of all the foods she hates to eat.

That's when I decided to make the list. It's a list of all the things she doesn't like. The list says "milk," it says "cottage cheese," it says "beets" and "peas.""Doughnuts." "Lamb and other gamey meat." "Tarragon."

I suppose I could have been more positive, made a list of things she likes: Mussels. Pad thai and pizza. Eighties music. Baths. Toast, which is what she ate instead of the dinner I cooked. And me. I think she likes me...

Sad Strangers, Photographed Beautifully 

Dan: What do you want?
Alice: To be loved.
Dan: Is that all?
Alice: It's a big want.

- from Patrick Marber's Closer

Last week, I was photographed by a girl who explained, "Photography is easy. Just look, then figure out what made you want to take the picture in the first place." I didn't ask her what made her want to take my picture. But later, I thought of those (apocryphal?) tribes who believe that the camera captures a piece of the soul. I wondered, in this case, which piece I'd just given up; I wondered if it was too late to ask for the picture back.

A few days later, I was watching the Mike Nichols / Patrick Marber movie, Closer, that oh-so-grown-up homage to desire, deceit, and betrayal. The four characters are ostensibly in search of love, but pursue it with more meanness than kindness. In the end, their time together is a tattered scrapbook of snapshot-memories, and contained in each one is a fragment of someone's soul. "The people in the photos are sad and alone, but the pictures make the world seem beautiful."

A lot of responsibility, then, in the collection of these "snapshots"...