it is apparently That Time of the Year. this happens to me periodically: i feel like i am daily confronted with such a number of things where rational behavior and logical decisions are so obvious to me and yet so obviously unemployed that i think, "either these people are crazy or i am."

for one month i will persist in thinking it’s them. next month, expect me to come to the realization that it is, in fact, me who is crazy. then i will go into agonies over what this means. then i’ll remember that i don’t care; it will involve no doubt a slight rearrangment of habit and friends until i get it back to where i am on a schedule where yes i am crazy but it doesn’t really matter, and we’ll all be back to normal.

it’s odd how you can see blinding glare, know that it is not the light at the end of the tunnel but an oncoming train of painful insight, and nevertheless find yourself totally powerless to move. you say to yourself, "self: remember how last time that train smacked you right in the head and you didn’t have the sense to get out of the way?" and the self answers, "yeah, that sucked!" and then: WHACK.

we watched "peter pan" (2003) the other night. i understand the
difficulty of adapting fiction into film but i am disappointed anyway.
why do people always want to take a story that is perfectly lovely and
simple and clear and add to it? that things must be subtracted i
understand ("princess bride") but that things get added, especially
things that change (what i perceive to be) the basic mores of the story
("charlie and the chocolate factory") is something i’ll never get.

every love song on the radio is about your love. every
biography is essentially your story. every experience speaks to your
experience and every horoscope describes you perfectly. you take the
specifics of a story and smudge them away until there are nothing
left but basic values, then you take the ones that you approve and
clasp
them to yourself, wanting to see how perfectly they fit. see how this
song uses the words "i love you"; that’s exactly how you feel. she
struggled against adversity and so did you; so you’re the same. if i’ve
traveled there then i know what it’s like and you don’t have to
try to explain, and you are generous and stubborn and today will be lucky.

the thing is that the more you push and pull and shove things around
until they look like something that you understand, the less they are
something you really understand. the less they are something you can
understand, i think.

i never really liked william carlos williams, i never understood the
beauty of a red wheelbarrow and though so sweet and so cold has moved
into my heart it’s a very small space compared to a tedious argument of
insidious intent. i like a little ambiguity. and i like cover versions, i like reinterpretations, i like personal footnotes in impersonal
essays. so i’m not saying i require the thing itself or nothing; i’m
not saying my feelings don’t come with a soundtrack and a slideshow,
because they totally do. but to work there has to be a response, not
just an edit and addition and then a flat presentation.

i’m straying; i’m sorry. where was i going? what i wanted to say is
that is that i see you taking pictures, songs, words, and adapting them
to the story you want to tell me, but in a way that takes away from the
original intent without actually adding anything to what you want to
say. robin hitchcock sang you’re projecting onto me/what you’d like
yourself to see but this is even worse, a step further: you’re
projecting onto me what somebody else saw somewhere else. i am
disturbed, i am increasingly disturbed, i am disturbed to the
point where i don’t know if we are even having the same conversation
anymore. i need you to talk to me in your words, not exclusively
quotation. i need you to look at me and see me, not a jumble of
presupposition. i need you to listen to me, not to the voices i remind
you of. and i need you to hear what i say, not what you thought my
words should be.

some things you want you have to absolutely give up on wanting before you can get them. it is not merely the stuff of hollywood, this "just when i thought i could never…" and then boom. if you want to get pregnant and you think you can’t, you must sell the children’s books you’ve been collecting since you were old enough to imagine wanting a child (you were nine) and those you can’t sell, you must give away, and you must adopt some very bad habits, and then, let me tell you, boom. just like in the movies. but you can’t say that you’re giving up on it, you have to really give up on it. this is true for all things that are controlled by magic.

some things you want you have to absolutely give up on wanting before you realize you didn’t actually want them. this is what they were telling you but you weren’t listening because you really really wanted it. you want to be liked by him and you want to be liked by him and you want and you want and he doesn’t. your desperation burns a path in front of you, pleading and not merely wanting but needing. you have to let it go, all that desperation, the belief you can draw it to you with the force of your will alone. walk away and every step you take away you realize what hell your life would have been if you had stood there one more minute. stop wanting the praise of the people who you do not respect; stop wanting the affection of people who do not share your values; stop wanting people who do not care for you. this is true for all things that are other people.

some things you want you have to work hard for. mostly it is about deciding that you want it. mostly it is about deciding how much you want it and whether you can do the amount of work involved. people don’t mind if you say you want something for free, because everybody wants everything for free, but you have to know some things take work. you have wanted to go to greece since you were twelve. maybe earlier. why haven’t you been there yet? you have planned to do something about your brittle heart for three years now, why don’t you get on that? you can have these things if you work. this is true for all things that are you.

**the title of this post is an allusion to a line from the television show HOUSE, in which the good doctor makes an allusion to a line from the rock band THE ROLLING STONES ("You can’t always get what you want").

i’m not in my cleverest place. i have a dozen things on my mind and
every single one of them i start to talk gently to, ima lure you in and
figure you out, i say, and i hold it in my hands and then think this is
not the thing, this is not it, examining this will not make me
better or anything different and what is it with me and my need to
hold, to define, to describe. i start sentences that are full of
promise and then i feel like, i don’t know, haven’t i said this
sentence before. i know how i feel, you know how i feel, what possible
interest can there be in this for me. for you. anybody. even the things
themselves skulk away from me in a combination of fear and slithery
boredom that makes me wonder. what am i up to? i can’t say.

here’s one thing that i’m thinking about: why is it hard to do things
for myself physically? i don’t mean the way i look, like "why can’t i figure out the trick to mascara?" or "why does cutting my hair sound like so much bother?" about 10 years ago
i went through a thing where i couldn’t leave the house for a variety
of reasons, one of which was that i had this feeling that i shouldn’t
be in public without a bag over my head and i didn’t have a bag in the
house that would fit. it was a very complex feeling; i was not what you
would call at my most sane at the time. anyway, i’ve come to terms with
the fact that i have never been pretty but nor have i ever needed a
paper bag
over my head. when you get to know me you will say i am "actually kind
of attractive, in an unusual way". i know that now. but i had this
nasty thinking
about my appearance for years, alternating between self-loathing and a
sort of vaguely tolerant acceptance, and although now i like to think
of my attitude towards my appearance as "reasonable affection" the effects of the negativity are still
apparent, and it’s spread to areas
that aren’t about appearance but health. exercising is easy but
remembering to do it is hard. eating vegetables is easy but remembering
to buy them is hard. drinking water instead of coffee is easy but
somehow there’s the coffee in my hand again. why is that. none of these
things are even about long term results, it’s like immediate
gratification for me the minute i get my heart rate up over 120, and
the
next day when my stomach doesn’t feel all clotted and hateful, and the
night when i can fall asleep instead of lying in bed doing inventory of
all the bad things i’ve done in my life. and yet here i am.

i know people who don’t do things for themselves because
there’s this fear of failure, and i suspect it’s the same ridiculous logic. like, if
i don’t study and i get a C, i can say it’s because i didn’t study. but
if i study and get a C, then it’s because i’m stupid. i think at some
point i hitched my health to the idea of my looks, and although i know
that exercise, vegetables, and caffeine free won’t turn me out of a
pumpkin, i somehow have the lingering feeling that striving is somehow
setting myself up. not like setting myself up on a nice date with the
new improved me, but like, setting myself up to drop a bucket on my
head. so i’m fighting with this bitty leftover person in my head who doesn’t want us
to try to be good and fail to look good, and it’s a thumb war of
horrific proportions. today i had spinach and turkey for lunch, and
tvaroh with possibly the last tomato-flavored tomatoes of the year. it
was good.

but you see how this is not the thing, isn’t it; how i almost pinned it
but it got out from under me. it’s not like i can’t get where i’m
going, it’s that i get halfway there and think: hasn’t this been
covered? get a spine and think about something that really takes your
whole brain instead of another mirthless dive at how old habits die
hard. glar.

he said he was sorry and i think he was. i think that what happens between us is something i can tell you about and i can try to explain but i don’t know if it’s something you’ll understand. you’ve just never been here, you’ve never been in my shoes.

he’s here for me when i need him: he not only has my back but he warms it, it’s focused and intense. he’s here enough that i feel like i can trust him, rely on him. he brings light into my life and without the person he is when he’s wonderful– i don’t know much, but i know that i have never been as happy as i have been then. sitting outside, a cold beer and the sun on my face and Squire Tuck frolicking and this is what i want and it’s who i want to be. this year was probably even better than most, despite the stormy unpleasantness in august.

and it was good for so long. september and october were like long apologies, like a daily dose of flowers and warmth to compensate for august. everything could be done: plant a late garden and it bursts forth. i walked home at twilight and felt safe, like i didn’t need layers and layers of subterfuge, like i could be–not naked, i never feel that safe, but like i could show myself and it would be okay. like i could flirt a little, something low-necked, a bit of ankle showing. you know.

the window replacement? that was hard times. what if he hadn’t been here for me during that? what would i have done. and my parents? only a week, but the whole time, everything was perfect, i danced alongside my mother kicking leaves and saying "see how he’s good? see how he’s good to me? see why i stay? all this beauty!"

but then today i woke up and it was as if all that happiness never happened. he says, "i held back as long as i could but you knew my nature when you came to me." and i did, but still, it was like ice that wanted to rip through me, take out my heart, make me question everything. it was a cold slap in the face; it was siberia. and there will be no relief.

it will go on like this for months. there’s no point in fighting it. i know how to handle what’s gone and what’s past help. i will hunker down and take it because i know in the end it makes me stronger. or actually i don’t know that but it’s what i say and it’s how i get through.

i know some people who think i should leave. who think that four months of bliss doesn’t make up for six months of crying every day, tears frozen to my eyelashes and knowing that every day etches more wrinkles into my face than a month of cigarettes. the fear of being knocked down, sliding, the constant ringing in my ears and the feeling that maybe i chose wrong. i don’t know what to say to those people. i usually say, "come in the spring. come in the summer."

first snowfall today, y’all.
please to remember that i speak the metaphor fluently, hm.

i am sorry that i’ve been doing this to you lately, this "let me tell you about our friendship" nonsense, this "let me tell you why you are important" because i know how tiresome that is. it was 20 years ago i read the sentence "when can we stop talking about this relationship and have it" and i knew it was as true as anything i’d ever read. friendships are not made by constant definiton; they are made by the perfect mobius of being there and needing someone to be there. need is too strong a word, but you know. friendships, real friendships, are shared interest and shared value and over time the shared space that is the two of you standing back to back against the world and the shared space of knowing that when you really fuck up, that friend is there to face you, tell you you fucked up and then brush your hair from your eyes so you can see your way out.

given that we know that, and that part of our friendship is that we know that, my recent apparent need to TELL you that is surely a rub. i don’t mean it how it spills from my eyes. you hand me a tissue and i take it and this is what’s important, not that i tell you "you always have tissue when i need it" but that you had it and i took it. surely that’s enough. i know that’s enough.

but i also feel wrapped in uncertainty and meanness and i am afraid that this leaks from me like my tears and when i tell you you always have tissue what i mean to say is i am sorry that lately my tears are as full of bile as they are of salt. rag water and bitters and blue ruin; i am afraid of spilling out over the sides to anyone who will listen. i am afraid of being engulfed, i am afraid of dragging you down when i grab your lifeline. i hope that by explaining how what you do means something to me, that this will somehow protect you. i mean to admire your buoyancy, not to pull you under when there’s no need.

i realize that in a way stating my high estimation of you is a way of underestimating you. back to back we face each other. i meant to thank you and leave it at that. thank you. i mean that.