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.

What it's like is that sometimes I don't think I can say anything
directly, that I feel like all conversations have to make a stop at
metaphor and line before we can get to where we're going. We get in the car with a dream I had. You start
the trip when you say it's your fault, and it's not, but when I say
it's not you start crying and you say "I wish you never brought it up"
which I never meant to make you cry but if I could take one thing from
you this burden would be first: I have to bring it up so I can lift it
away from you.

I am not accustomed to handing other people
tissues. What I mainly do is take charge and fix stuff and later on I
cry alone. I mean that's why I have tissues in the first place: for me.
I am not supposed to hand them to you and definitely I did not mean to
make you cry and anyway why are you crying when I tell you it's not
your fault, because this is not a sad thing but a statement of fact
like how the beer garden is going to close soon is a fact. I
mean it's just a thing.

It is hard to have nothing to
invoke. For the love of poetry, I try. Oh, for Prufrock. Please don't
cry. Please let me take this sadness from you and please for both of us
let's throw it away far, down the field, far out. Let's throw it past
the boy counting dandelions in the outfield, past anybody in the
stands; let's make it something that nobody finds because nobody wants
it. Let's steal home. It's not your fault. It's full of damage but we
can't trace fault lines. Instead let's look towards construction that
can weather the whether. Let's get past sports and geology and blame.
Let's stop crying. We're running out of tissue.

If we had been told to plant victory gardens 7 years ago, instead of to go shopping, we’d have good asparagus by now.

Sometimes I feel so bitter I imagine other people can smell it on me.

thirteen minutes to get it out, go. either you walk through the world and hand out knives because nothing can hurt you anymore because you’ve moved into the perfect white between, or you walk through the world shielded and afraid, or you stay inside and hide behind the glass because it’s too scary on the other side. your choices are fierce or cowering or hidden. you cannot go out and only deal with people who do not frighten you so the choice is go out and be strong or go out and be hurt or stay in. you cannot selectively hold your heart in your hand on your sleeve please look at it pulsing and pretty and then somebody gives it a poke and you say they had no right. you cannot claim the privilege of offering it without claiming the responsibility for the damage and what do you care what they say about your heart, your bloody sleeve, your pitiful open hands, what you got that’s so precious anyway, precious sweet it ain’t like it’s a ring somebody’s gonna steal from you am i right. you cannot continue to alternately hand the knives to the people who stab you and then send morse code to the people across the street with your window blinds: see me. it seems to me like you have to make a choice. it seems to me like you’re in or out. it seems to me like the stakes being high is what makes the game worth playing but it seems to me you could choose how high and give yourself a little room to twist free. don’t start with me with your invisible options. don’t ask if you could maybe go out and leave your heart at home. don’t talk about going to the casino if you don’t want to gamble. stop gambling what you’re afraid of losing is all. take your heart with you and don’t put it on the baize, somehow. or stay home. what do i know.

If you’re really mad at the person you sleep with, like so mad that you
think you can’t even bear to sleep with that person or maybe just so
mad that you want to Send Them A Message by not sleeping with them,
it’s probably a good idea to alert that person to the level of your
anger sometime before you go to sleep on the couch.

Otherwise the next day you find yourself with a crick in your neck,
explaining to the person who totally missed the whole thing that they
slept alone because you were an angry angry little red hen, finding
your grain of anger and growing it up and baking a loaf of resentment
and ruffled feathers while the other person slept peacefully away, and
at some point in your angry narrative you will realize which one of you
was ridiculous.

Then one of you will have a good cry and both of you will have a good
laugh and you will be very glad that the couch is as comfortable as it
is because otherwise you would be up more than a crick without a paddle
of reason, and that night you will sleep together like sensible people;
I mean all things considered it’s not a bad way to spend a fight, but
wouldn’t it have been better if… no, actually, this is a happy story
all around. Another anecdote, an annecdote, the antidote to the sadness
you would carry around if you didn’t have the sense to shake it out,
hold it away from you, realize that it’s a color that has never suited
you anyway, no matter how flattering the cut.

Anger breathes on me until sometimes all I feel is the heat of it on me; all of me not just my neck. All day today I have eaten spoonfuls of vinegar and salt on rice, on bread, on anything that would hold them until finally I was just pouring it into tablespoons and swallowing it whole. It is better than tears and pours easily. Still the breath of resentment is powerful and all my natural bitterness and dirt can hardly hold it back. I can only produce so much on my own. Hence the reinforcement tablespoons of today's premium aceto di vino it says. I am not well-equipped to do battle with this form of suffocation and know these tools are lacking but know no others. Certainly my sugar resolves were never up to snuff, I cannot fight this ill-will with anything heartwarming. For example let me tell you a story about a girl who went for a walk in a pretty summer dress inevitably winds up with her grubby at the well with her dress torn and hair arrack because she wanted to look at spiders and found a pile of dirty magazines instead; that and more than that. Arrack is sweet Indian booze; you learn a lot playing Scrabble is one thing I learned playing Scrabble. Surprisingly it is not the summer heat this time and in fact on the second tablespoon which I did or did not feel burn in my stomach I thought maybe I don't so much feel bad as I make myself feel bad but you know: what's bad, anyway. Coming down from a mountain however lovely the view however snowcapped the peaks however pure your intentions, however all that height does not lower the sea level of the actual ground and in time you learn that you could never have handled that lovely high thin pure etcetera air for very long as you well know, deep breather. Drinker of vinegar and salt. You were meant to live at sea level always.