When I was young we crowded around the pictures and we kissed them and
he wasn't my favorite but I knew he was everybody else's and I
pretended because I was good at that. He was objectively good-looking,
pretty in a girly way, and maybe that was my introduction to androgyny
and the appreciation of things that looked like other things or maybe I
was just trying to fit in, but anyway: it was a physical evaluation,
and oh, he passed.

And then in college laughing scoffingly at those people, because
then I loved a clever boy/man. I liked a person who set aside privilege
and if he did so from a bedroom that cost a fortune to make it look
stripped of grandeur I did not care about the hypocrisy because I cared
about a turn of phrase, an insight, a way of setting words to music
that made the words themselves music. And of course it was full of
principle and searching and striving, something better coming up,
glimpsed but not reached, hope. But mainly it was about loving what was
clever, and how that love is both complicated and pure.

Later, much, when I was even saying I didn't care, I would have
said that if I cared I would have gone for -not spirituality, but
spiritual searching. And ultimately, kindness. Thoughtfulness and
consideration and yearning, which is different from striving, because
it involves acknowledging that some things are out of your hands.
Understanding that it didn't have to be complicated in order to get the
job done, and understanding that getting the job done was important,
but at the same time devoting myself to what I cared about. It was
about showing up for the team but not necessarily being a team player.

And now, and now I really don't care, but if you asked me I might
say that my admiration is turning to the one that showed up every day.
Not the prettiest, not the cleverest, not the kindest, but the one who
chose to be on a team where he would, by virtue of the company of
diamonds, never himself shine. What would it feel like to be fully
confident that you were always good, but to understand that in the
context you chose you would never be seen as the best. I'd choose goofy, I'd choose an
utter disregard for appearance, a lack of interest in proving myself
every single second. I'd choose a silly affectation to give people who didn't really know me
something to work with in place of my real identity. I'd keep my true identity for people who mattered. I'd choose to get along with
everyone even when they're fighting with each other. I'm not saying I'm
there. I'm saying I'm realizing that it's worth my admiration.

Top five, top of my head:
Judith Martin
Mr. Rogers
David Byrne
Laurie Anderson
Kurt Vonnegut

yours?

Is it harder to explain the place where you came from to the people where you are now, or the place where you are now to the people in the place where you came from?

This one sits in the living room and coughs politely to get my
attention. Five a.m. and the polite cough is quite Jeeves so I decide
he's probably wearing a bowler hat or something. "You've been
cleaning," he observes. My people call this understatement. Fall
cleaning is thorough and involves windows. I tell him that I've got a
whole system now: start at the lamps. I wrote it out. The enthusiasm is
leaking out of my balloon already and it's not even daybreak. "You
didn't rearrange the furniture, though," and this tone is gentle
reprimand. I want it to be gentle humor but I'm not there yet. Listen:
I moved through three countries, more apartments. If I can't get away
from you then what's moving the couch going to do really. I moved the
dust because that's what bothers me, and in return I get a butler in
the finest rebuttal style. Yay. I want to go back to bed and get a
little sleep before the day really starts and that's so not going to
happen now. I bet he has a cane somewhere. Gloves. "It's no good," he
says, "No matter how much you move. No matter how much you clean.
Getting away from me is not the same as making what I observe go away."
Like I don't know, like I don't hear the echoes all the time of every
outwit I've pulled, like it's not louder in my head than anywhere in
the first place, and I was never in first place. I do wish he would go
but I feel like mainly what I have to work on is acknowledging and even
accepting that he's going to stay, that this is of more value than
spending the rest of my days putting chairs in the middle of the room
for him to trip over. Hoping he's as annoyed by me as I am by him;
until the next one. "I'm going back to bed now. The bed is a nest of clean blankets and that's where I want to be." He nods in the darkness.
"You won't sleep any more tonight, though. And you were never any
good," raising his voice so that it carries through the door I'm
closing on him.

It reminds me of the story about the man who falls into a hole and his friend jumps in after him and the fallen man berates the jumper and the jumper says no it's okay I've been here I know the way out. It reminds me also of an awkward conversation I had more than once in which somebody tried to spare me and I put my hands in the fire anyway, thinking the only way to overcome pain was to feel it.

The conflict creates a war in my head where both sides suffer including the victors; ABBA does a bouncy dance soundtrack for Napoleon but nobody sings about Rouen which anyway the lack of an adequate soundtrack is the least of my worries.

I know what has to happen and so we march off, my troops of moderately convinced selves and the fanatical devotion that comes with not knowing the whole story. We are determined and proud and along the way we compliment ourselves on our armor and we say my don't we look strong and determined. That shaved head is as free of nonsense as they come and we shush the voice at the back that mutters that people who need to look free of nonsense are full of it. We are warriors. We lay out the story with facts and supporting players and nothing to lose, then later we have insights and the fact that we won some battles before and aren't we ever victorious modestly advancing only where wanted to win and conceding the battles we couldn't win see how we are practical we say.

And so we won the hardest battles and emerged victorious with not so much lost really except a review of the troops has some of them longing for the home they never had and there were some hot tears in among the celebratory libations but I'm sure that's from the fire, from the smoke of what had to be burned. There were bridges. And a week after the campaign the allies say that in fact you did what you promised, the vision that only you saw, what your voices promised you, that in fact you have given back what was stolen, the missing piece restored where nobody saw what was missing but you, the righteous king returned to his throne.

The counterattact surprisingly comes not in the heat of battle but later. The current challengers, who are not what we are not ready to call the enemy though we admit a certain fathoming in that depth, would like to mention that defeat makes you stronger that iron is tempered with fire that after all you were not so happy at twelve, were you. I don't mean midnight or noon. Yes that's all very interesting but I am right and you must concede that it is the king alone for whom I have battled and battle still. I am not fighting to control this territory I am in fact no conqueror. Truly I am fighting for another's righteous place I swear it.

Then why are you telling the story again, clapping your hands for another retelling. Why do you point to the voices when you are unsure, and then point at yourself when it's time to be blamed. Not every story has to have you at the center. Let's tell it again from the dauphin's point of view. Or shall we stick with you as if we were in battle still, when you know perfectly well that when you say you are willing to die for a cause that is exactly what you will have to do. Well which story do you want to tell now.