One Art

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by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant 
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

–Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

facts cut a hole in us

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Here is a post where I talk about facts! How about that?

Squire was flunking 8th grade because a lot of reasons including but not limited to both of us got really involved in the fourth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He seems to be pulling out of that nosedive and there is much relieved wiping of foreheads. Distractions are only good in moderation, perhaps. He's awesome in general and the most fun person in the world most of the time and it's been kind of assy to have to go all parental on him with Worry and Concern and Some Yelling and With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility which is sort of funny because eighth grade isn't really a lot of power when you think about it but I guess ninth grade is like whoa. Anyway things seem better. I have a meeting with the teacher next week to discuss How Things Are Now and I don't know but I'm hopeful.

Friar moved out in November because of mostly one reason; I may have mentioned that? It's been a rough six months. Seven. I hope you all invested in tissues, because I drove that stock up like crazy. The list of places I have burst into tears is now only slightly shorter than the list of odd places I have fallen asleep (and there is some intriguing overlap) and I hope to keep it that way. It's getting better, and every month I say "Oh, now I'm ALL BETTER AND PERFECTLY FINE for real, not like last month when I merely thought I was all better and fine!" and now I have finally gotten around to realizing that I am going to get better and finer, but probably never all better or perfectly fine. Which is probably okay. We would have been married ten years this month, making it by far the longest partner-type relationship I've had, and honestly the best, too. And I think we're still friends, in the true way that you rarely get to be with an ex, so that's very good.

Work was patchy for rather too long for my comfort and I got kind of scared but now it is coming in as it should: enough to keep me busy, not so much to make me crazy. It is ridiculous how much happiness I can get from just doing a job, doing it well, getting the periodic pat on the head for a job well done. And I love editing so much, the more rigid assertion of rules, the delicate smoothing of a phrase, the focus and attention it requires. I'm expanding into different things, not just medical papers, and while I do like a good stereotactic needle in the foramen of Monro, I'm also really enjoying learning about Benedictine monks, and fracking, and how to calculate a fair tax on smoking. I know so many things, you guys! You totally want me at your next cocktail party. 

Last night I went to "night at the museums", which was apparently attended by the entire population of Brno. I met some old friends and made some new ones. There was dancing. Also I may have eaten some KFC around midnight, and found it both disgusting and delicious. Then there was foozball, at which I sucked 20 years ago and continue to suck today. I got home at 4, and woke up to breakfast in bed at 11, which was lovely. And Squire and I played "Can you answer this question about me?" which was ridiculously fun. It turns out we know each other pretty well.

Watching Doctor Who (FINALLY) and Community and season 6 of Buffy. Reading "1984" with Squire and "On Beauty" by myself. Sleeping in the middle of the bed. Generally doing well. And you?

p.s. that was kind of hard.

at leatht you don’t lithp

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And here we are at the foot of the hill, leaned against the boulder, having a cigarette break. The saddest thing about this is now, when you're at the bottom and know you have to go up, that huge distance ahead of you. All that work. Put out the cigarette and throw the filter away responsibly because you don't want to be careless anymore. You don't want to be careless again, ever. Shoulder to the rock and up we go, slowly. Pushing against the forces of gravity. On the plus side your calves have never looked better. Let's think about those things for a while, the things on the plus side. On the plus side there's time to think. On the plus side it beats having nothing to do. When you get to the middle you can take another break. The saddest thing about this is now, when you're in the middle and you can't help but start to feel optimistic and glass-half-fullish even though you know how this ends, how it always ends. Well best not to focus on how things end. Best to get back to work. The journey is the destination, they say, and the journey is up, and up is always good. Better air. Nice view. And the struggle itself towards the heights, etc. Push, pause, a handhold, footing. Push, pause. And now we're at the top, and for a moment there is birdsong and endless possibility. For a moment a deep breath of pure air, of how sweet things could be all the time if you could stay here. The saddest thing about this is now, for a moment, when you've let your chest fill with hope. And then it all comes down. Rolls over your toes, smashing, hurts. Suddenly the only view you can see is how everything you worked for has ended. The saddest thing about this is now, when you realize that nothing you've done so far counted, and your toes worse than stepped on. No time for that though; now it is time to begin again.

And here we are at the foot of the hill, leaned against the the rock of our particular ages, having a cigarette break. What has been done to deserve this? No: what have you done to deserve this? You don't remember? You told a secret that wasn't yours to tell. You thought too highly of yourself. You didn't want to die; you didn't want anybody to die. Well who's a naughty naughty then, eh. Put the cigarette out and throw the filter away responsibly and take a second to think about this: You don't actually have to do this. You could stop investing muscle and bone and thought and tears into this. You could give up. You could walk away. And this is the saddest part, really, this part here. When you have to decide between thankless labor and possible boredom. When you have to choose whether to risk yourself in hope or in the unknown. Listen, don't look at me; I've got my own rocks to push. Busy busy busy.

sexual perversity in Brno

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Did that happen or did I dream it? Did I in fact run my hand across the top of your head, the scritchy softness of your short hair like a cat or some other soft creature. Did I talk to you for hours and hours while spilled beer dripped into my lap, noticed and ignored. Was there something sweet at the end. Did we share water like Michael Smith and Jubal Harshaw, but better because in this story women are not objects, or not always. Did I have the same conversation with someone over and over, where he was white and trying to talk like a gangster and I was white and offended but trying not to be because I also was young, once, a long time ago. Did somebody hand me my cell phone when I dropped it. One can make such a good first impression but then somebody not you or me fell down the stairs, laughing. I have not lost so many ideas since 1995 I think. Flying out of the brain cave of my mouth like bats, they were, and some were voiced and some flew under the sonar. How I wanted to say you were beautiful. Someone kissed my neck and I thought: Now I know what to remember; I will remember this, this is when I was last kissed. Then he fell down the stairs, laughing, and a man from a seventies poster of a movie about pimps carried him back upstairs, a cotton scarf that looked like animal skin. The last time I fell in love was twenty years ago and the last time someone fell in love with me was never but love itself is not hard to feel. How things can sparkle: the stars; the window reflecting the moon; our eyes.

Splish, Splash, Splush

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It is spring now and the trees are in blossom; also the young girls wearing their gossamer dresses and running everywhere. On Wednesday we waited for thirty minutes for a bus that did not come and watched at least a hundred people walking almost jauntily to where they needed to go instead. Then we went back home and cancelled the appointment because we were too late to make it anyway. The conversations that take place while waiting for a bus are less awesome than the ones that take place on a long train trip or in a car, but they are better than many others. I of course primarily favor the drink in one hand and the cigarette in the other, the plume blown upwards exposing the neck and the stories stories stories exposing the soul, but I'll take a bus stop if that's what's on offer. 

It occurs to me that I do not remember the last time someone wanted to kiss me. Did you read the David Foster Wallace story in the New Yorker about the boy who was kissing himself? I can kiss the inside of my elbow still. The freckles on my knees. Also my fingers though more often I bite them, gnawing off pieces of skin. There is so much I don't need. I may die before my clavicle is ever kissed again; I can't reach it. How to feel about that? I sometimes think if nobody touches me I will collapse into dust. I sometimes think that if someone touched me I would collapse into dust, too. And shock. The truth is we're all going to dust anyway, right, so it's just math and probability at this point. 

Speaking of the New Yorker there was a Stephen Dunn poem that sort of killed me about imaginary people and what they give and take away from real people. Imaginary people are so important, not just the fully imaginary ones but the ones we imagine people we know to be. Way to project, yo. How you thought somebody was that way and then they weren't… because they never were, and because you didn't THINK, you IMAGINED. Dreamed. And how I thought myself so awesome because I stopped stretching the skin of my wishes over the faces of my loves but still. There was a film in my eyes and maybe I didn't see well. Though it is nice that moment when your eyes fill with tears and it's like you have a tiny microscope in there, everything so sharp and bright and pretty. But still not quite true, is it. 

Some days I can't leave the house; other days I flit from one thing to the next and it's a good day that ends with someone holding their sides and laughing and there have thus been many good days. Some days I hold my keys so hard they cut into my palms; other days I stomp around mud puddles with the frank pleasure of a child, splashing. Some days I think I'll never write anything I'll ever want to read and other days it comes out faster than I can transcribe. Some days I miss you, but then some days I don't, or not much.

pretty ring time

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Ah, spring. Reevaluating the wardrobe and the self. I cleaned out the drawers, and got all ready to go through the closet and finally burn some skeletons but then it rained and snowed at the same time and I went back to bed. The time of Dramatic Sleeping seems to have passed but I still need a nap every day or I'm facedesk by 8 pm. The body and I had a long talk about the kind of old lady I want to be, which is the old lady who goes to bed after everybody and gets up before everybody. This is actually pretty much who I was until the Great Narcolepsy took over. What's better, Dramatic Sleeping or Great Narcolepsy? In either case you must picture me helpless on my back, arms flung over my head, like in Fuseli's Nightmare, only let's put a garden gnome or something on my chest, just to keep things funny. A very heavy garden gnome, nevertheless.

I've had a cold for two weeks, can you imagine? I have managed it very sensibly by alternately cancelling social engagements and then sitting in a bar next to an open door until 1 a.m. So clever. 

When I switch over the closet for the season, I find there are clothes that don't fit anymore, or things I didn't even wear last year so they might as well go. I found some hair clips in the back of a drawer, which is pretty funny. There's nothing wrong with them, but what would I keep those for? And I also find things that I'd forgotten about during the winter – a pretty shirt, a light sweater. What I wish for this year is the continued easy dismissal of things that do not work, the ability to forgive myself for letting these things go simply because I do not want them, and hoping that another person will find them useful but not caring if nobody does. And I also want to always have the same happy gratitude to realize that there is still so much that does fit, that is right. I'm not so much talking about clothes, or not only. 

hm.

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A kiss can be a bite,
or a touch a scratch,
from caress to crush.
How some pain is good,
is more real. How it says,
Be here now.

The endless ride is quieted for a moment,
the loud rush turns
to sudden flush
blood beads to the surface
and everything else is trivial

Nails dragged across soft skin,
teeth to the jugular,
muscles stretched to snap.
How we can be animals,
instinct-driven. How we listen
to ourselves finally.

And then after, curled around ourselves
like cats, fully self-content,
licking away the memory,
purring, soft.

sail to that perfect edge

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Rubber cement is maybe not the best medium but I like the way it strands, small gossamer spiderwebs to sweep up in the morning. And I like feeling like something is secure when it is fixed in place with these spiderwebs. Last night I woke up at 3 a.m. with the sentence "In the European Union, old money is useless" and I thought about nouveau riche and and oyster forks and it was words but also images. Oh, brain, you are so full of surprises.

Lately my primary word thoughts have come in the form of a quiz, mostly multiple choice with one answer a blank for the thing I didn't think of, and discussion questions for extra credit. I feel like I'm generating no new thoughts, just questions about how other people think about what I think. Or what they think about what I haven't thought of yet.

I have lost my voice as of this morning and it is funny how this is so unimportant. "What could they speak of — anyway?" Though I have suffered no cruelty. It is crazy how much I need to insist on perspective. Like you wanted nothing, and then you got something, and then that something was gone. Is it not stupid to mourn that absence, rather than celebrate its brief presence? Is it not wiser, better for everybody especially you, to say: what a wonderful gift that was. And yet I find myself, the one who has pushed away in "do it myself" independence forever, surrounded by tea, cough drops, a pyramid of mandarin oranges, tissues, all beautifully arranged by myself because I do it best, crying not a little bit because I was once cared for, and now I am not again. Never mind, never never mind.

It's international women's day, apparently. I have never felt so entirely hated by the United States as I have lately. Okay, I have, but I've felt hated on the basis of my beliefs, not on the basis of how I was born. It is strange to feel so … not hated so much as vaguely distasteful, entirely disposable. I feel like I'm one chapter away from having my bank accounts frozen, straight to the colonies with the other unwomen. Well maybe it will be safer there.

My quest to be more like Mister Rogers continues with varying success. Maybe I should get some goldfish to go with my picture picture. Won't you be my neighbor? 

 

and then and then

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So I am drinking a glass of beet juice and vinegar because it is delicious. Remind me later when I'm doubled over in pain that I did this to myself and that I'm perfectly fine.

Being back from Costa Rica is still difficult. It is so, so cold here. Why are there countries that are so cold, and why do people continue to live in them? And why do we make them so pretty? I bet if there was less beautiful architecture we'd come to our senses and run to the equator, en masse. Well, I'd still live here March through October I expect. They put on a good summer here. On the plus side, there is work to do and so a reason to stay in, most days. Though I've been out most days, as I am very popular, as I'm sure you know. Well not really but I did go out every night last week, and several nights this week. So: demented and sad, but social.

What's to say. There's not much. We get up, we eat breakfast, then Squire goes to school and I work in friendly bursts and try to catch up with my reading, though I am so behind. I think about art, which I have not done since… well, maybe never. I dated a guy in college who helpfully pointed out that I can't even doodle. This was very good for my self-confidence as an artist. Well whatever: I gave paid poetry readings so I wasn't really destroyed or anything, just much less inclined to the visual arts. But anyway that seems to be changing, which is a fun thing to watch myself in. So working and reading and thinking. And then school is over and sometimes he studies or we bury ourselves in our online social lives and have something good for dinner and then sometimes I go out and he goes to bed, and sometimes someone comes over, and sometimes we watch a movie or glut ourselves on television. And sometimes other things. It is quiet and good, this life.

I am rethinking a quiz that I started to write a few years ago that started "Can you name all 12 Supreme Court Justices?" I abandoned it because I thought it was useless except for my own amusement, and now I think: Are there more important goals, really? It is not that I lack free time, or rather it is not as if I spend all my time wisely in the first place. 

Getting older is kind of weird. Middle aged. I like it. I feel like I am young enough to still learn stuff, and old enough to know what I'm learning it for. Young enough to have people older and wiser than I am, but old enough to feel justified in being bossy. It's kind of magical.