The irreplaceable.

I have not written in what has surely been weeks and I wonder, now, of all things, about the irreplaceable. The irreplaceable has occupied my mind for weeks. Perhaps this is the reason why I have not attempted to write my thoughts or describe them, (even if only to myself) that is, I have de-scribed on account of feeling rather incompetent in describing.

I have yet to write about New York. I wonder if I ever can or will. I also wonder if such paramount experiences will eventually overrule my ability to write about them. Maybe this is how we lose ourselves. We succumb to the every day or doubt what we can do with the every day. So you saw something beautiful today. So you felt something that anchored your heart deep inside of you. So you heard something you didn’t understand.  So you forget. And, if you’re anything like me, that is, you do not receive amnesia well, you spend minutes at a time blankly staring out a window or sitting on the edge of your bed staring at a wall with no pictures, just shadows.  Minutes at a time. And quite simply, it’s just the exhaust of the everyday, the overwhelmed exhaust.  Trying to remember it all after having set it free.

Have you ever watched something slip through your hands, despite the way you reassuringly cupped them? Like sand or water? It doesn’t matter just how much you want to hold it all, the sand finds a way to grind itself through the cracks between your fingers, and the water, seeps through like water on a weak tin roof. There’s nothing you can do about it.  I do not want my life to drip away or form pyramids at my feet. And it is, perhaps in writing, that such happiness can pool and form castles. You must never let it go, and you must never trust that you will not. It can happen. Do not trust that you will always remember. What you remember is engraved on account of its significance. You may remember the details of significance, sure, but I doubt you always will. You could fall ill, and like every other life form on this earth, you will pass and that significance that you once cherished, even for a moment, however fleeting, will pass just as well unless you struggle to write it down or perhaps capture it in a photograph.  That significance is irreplaceable. Life is irreplaceable.

I believe I truly felt that “life is irreplaceable” while walking through a marble hall in a church in New York.  That day, while walking the marble corridor, tears fell. I never felt more overwhelmed yet sure of what I was to behold or was beholding. The marble corridor was made of marble boxes (like bricks) that held the ashes of the deceased. And on each marble brick was a name, birth date, and day of expiration. A corridor of names. I couldn’t fathom how long the hall of the universal deceased would be.  Still, a corridor of names.

I felt as though I should have read each one out loud. I had a difficult time simply walking a marble hall without regard for the names that lingered in it.  I came across one marble brick that had a woman’s name on it. I can’t recall her name now. She had died in her late twenties and someone had taped a pressed flower to it. And beside the pressed flower was a note that said “ no one could ever substitute you”. It was written in black ink in a curly fashion. It was beautifully written, so beautiful, that one could neglect the words. The words- I don’t think I had ever written, read, or heard someone say them before; “no one could ever substitute you”.  I didn’t know what to do with those words. They weren’t all too complicated, either. I just felt heavy and I couldn’t help but stare at my white sneakers against the rose-colored marble floor.

It was my own awkward moment with myself. I struggled with that moment as I remember having my arms folded, staring at my feet and trying to shuffle side to side. I struggled and immensely so. It was just a name, one among billions, and it was just a few words, strung together. It was just a pressed flower. It was just a corridor. I could have walked right through without having made a sound. And I could have pushed through the exit doors to meet the sun, all the same.

No, it was more than that. I felt my tears and released them on account of knowing and feeling that no one could substitute certain individuals in my own life.  Someone, like you and I, missed someone so terribly that they wrote to someone that is gone. Gone.  Irretrievable, irreplaceable. They had written those words down and had carried them so that they could give them to someone who couldn’t receive them. And I wondered about this person, this woman who had died. What had she done and who was she? Did she have brothers and sisters? Did she have a fiancé?  Did they live together? Did she make pancakes in the morning and serve them in bed to him? Did she have a favorite dress? Were the corners of her mirror occupied by photographs? Did these photographs distract her when she was putting on her make-up or pearls while getting ready in the morning or for a dinner date? If she had a fiancé, did she adjust his tie when they would accompany one another to a social gathering? What were her ambitions? Had she been to Africa? Did she ever want to go? Did she collect odd things? Sea shells? Mosaics? Colored glass? Was she the kind of woman that would always spill on herself? Did she drink wine? Had she ever been a bridesmaid? Was her father still alive?  I wondered about such things and I was overwhelmed by never knowing the answers, or perhaps whatever the answer to my contemplations could be. I realized that whatever the answer was to my contemplations, they were unique to her and thus, no one could ever substitute her. Maybe she could make pancakes. Maybe she couldn’t.  Whether she could or could not was apart of her and her life story, one, like every other, that is incomparable and irreplaceable. I thought, then, of those closest to me and how lonely I’d feel without them in my life. Without their details. 

I thought of my grandmother and how no one could brush bread crumbs off of the kitchen table as gently as she does. I thought of my father and how he washes dishes and folds the dish cloth when he’s finished. It’s very neat. I thought of my mother and how she draws stars or 3-D cubes when she’s talking on the phone with someone. I thought about my brother’s printing. How funny looking it is and how much I like it. I thought about my sister’s inability to make her bed symmetrically.  I thought about my best friend Sarah and how she’d organize the papers on her desk in math class in high school- so organized. I thought about my friend Allan and how he used to walk down the hallway at school, his football figure deep in every stride. I even thought about my former English teacher who had taught me for the last three years. How he’d glance at me through his glasses in a melancholy way. And how he had a little gold Oscar statue on his desk.  I thought about these people in my life and began to cry. Nothing and no one could ever compete with them or their memory.  I’d carry a pressed flower in my pocket and walk blocks between Hudson River and Amsterdam Avenue in a heartbeat.  There is no substitute.  I saw each and every face on a Polaroid. Each smiling at me. And I clipped them on the line in my mind and could walk the corridor.  The irreplaceable.  

I truly believe walking that hall had changed my life. It didn’t have to. It could have been another corridor. My friend Sarah who was with me understood as well. I don’t know if anyone else could have at that moment. I like to think, however, that destiny does exist, and more and more I do believe destiny is a reality.  Things are meant to catch our eye. Whether you behold it or not is entirely up to you. So I believe.  That is the beauty of belief, I suppose. It evolves and with every evolution, it becomes stronger. The debris and fragments of the past and present; the belief and validation you have earned in life thus far. It is yours and it is irreplaceable. It could only ever echo in eternity if you let it. Don’t let the poets cry themselves to sleep.  Perhaps this is a lecture directed towards… myself, and to you, of course.Write it. Sustain it, always.

I heard in a song  ‘Vienna waits for you’

And like a fool, I thought of you

I felt the green of Monet’s garden in Giverny

And the Alabaster Coast of North Normandy

I saw you by the fountains of the Louvre

And me, making my way to you by the stairs of Fountainebleau

Black and white photographs shot in Breman Market Place

Or the steps we took along Como’s Lake

I saw us overlooking the coast of The Giants Causeway

In Northern Ireland to the metro on way to Place de Vosages

You took my hand through The Blue Cave

On the islet of Bisevo, the memory forever engraved

These places real  and kept in mind

Snapshots of what we could have in time

But now I feel that you’re not there

And I await alone with distant stare

Please tell me is it fair

That you have nothing to convey

And I, a world to give away?

You tell me you do not know, what it is you wish to say

And in this moment I recognize you do not see it true

This Vienna that waits for you

New York City is my state of mind

Where city speaks and all is left behind

I will know it then, even in Manhattan

That Vienna waits, though not for you and I, my friend.

‘Two drifters off to see the world

There’s such a lot of world to see’

And though you share this world with me

We are but drifters near and far, loose and together

And I hope you find her, and I find him, our people of ‘forever’

That you need not find the words to say

‘I love you come what may’

For she will know in a world more than words away

Your Vienna waits for you

And mine does too

Waiting ’round the bend

I say good luck to you,  dear friend

Upon thumbing in the English dictionary while writing a paper, I thought I’d see what I could tease out of the word “life”.   Life, as of lately has been  about elasticity.   Much to my surprise, they got it right…though life could never be confined to one word or another. I am not ”right” nor are they, nonetheless,  alongside ‘elasticity’ I found ‘resilience’. Merely synonymous, I wondered what that meant for me and for those around me.  Am I living? Am I resilient? 

The Buddhists hold the belief that all life is suffering caused by desire, and this suffering can only ever end through enlightenment that allows one to  halt this incarnation one is otherwise subject to. I suppose in this context, one could only be resilient by enlightenment in overcoming these so-called desires. 

Some people believe that everyday we endure our heaven and our hell.  It is our ability to remain soulful and surrendered that allows us to  bathe in the luxury of our heaven, that is, heaven on earth.  If the afterlife is then described as being infinite, immortal, and eternal, we can then contrast the life we are given now as finite and thus “hell”.  Desire is then, inevitable. The desire to access life which dwells  in the most  secret of places.  This is perhaps why we all yearn to love and be loved in return and thus desire and dwell on the possibilities that puddle.

I suppose I felt an ever-increasing calm upon finding the word resilience. A word that has changed the most aggravating and emotionally chaotic morning into one of complete composure and quiet, merely to the point of stoicism; a repression of emotion  and indifference to pleasure and pain, but not quite as I am able to recognize my pangs and deal with them without indifference. 

It is this overwhelming yet tranquil realization that what is causing me pain relies heavily on a variable I cannot control entirely, and that is, quite simply, understanding.  It is being misunderstood that denies me the pleasures of my own life and that is not my fault, but rather a matter of faith… the faith people have in me. If they have none, then they perhaps don’t deserve to understand me, and can therefore misunderstand me to their content.

 Often times I hear people say, perhaps for self-reassurance, ” I don’t care what other people think of me” and I’ve said it before in the past, though, now, as I grow older, I truly do not spend time compensating who I am for gratitude or appreciation from others.  I spend time on those who do not want me to compensate any part of “me” but are still appreciative of the “me”.

 And perhaps this is yet another connotation of “life”, it is living the words you were destined to speak and being the person you challenged your destiny to be.  When I was much younger I would explicitly confirm who I was by saying “I don’t care what other people think of me” though secretly I always did.

It is perhaps inevitable to linger where the tidal is not as strong.  Naturally, for every ten people that appreciated me, there was one who did not and could not, and that one person would consume my every thought.  I always wanted to be liked and I always wanted to be well appreciated. I think this is something every being wants for themselves, that is, a little gratitude for just being, because as we all know, just being is a challenge, yet a gift on its own.

We all want to love and be loved in return. It is an inevitable desire rooted from within that could only ever flourish by the light and nurturing of others. From the moment we are born, we have changed a life without knowing it and by inverse, have been forever changed by the essential need to be loved. We are nurtured and we grow in love, and thus in moments where we feel it is absent, we cannot breathe. It was in fact, our very inspiration. We were inspired by love.

 Thus, being misunderstood can be virtually unbearable, un-breathable, and uninspiring.  Love is absent. And for a moment, we cannot breathe. You begin to interrogate absolutely everything that has happened, and for a moment, however brief, you question who you are and thus acknowledge your wrongs. Upon being misunderstood in terms of my intentions recently, I was so very offended and hurt that no amount of words could suffice. I just didn’t know where to begin, quite honestly. It consumed my entire morning until I received a call from an old friend. This completely altered by state of mind, as I realized that he and I had been given multiple opportunities to misunderstand one another. That is, in absence of trust and love, misunderstanding would have been relatively easy. Nonetheless, we were able to hold a conversation and make plans for next Friday evening as it will be his birthday.  I hung up the phone and I realized that it is the people that truly love you who are willing to work through these misunderstandings because they know that it is just that, a misunderstanding.  These people are irreplaceable and they bring you life, they allow you to be resilient. They help you to be resilient. They love you without compensation!

Sometimes in cities so vast, where every corner you turn there is something to entertain your mind, we can feel completely alone.  Someone in New York city is feeling alone at this very moment. Even in a city so vast, where the buildings so high scrape the sky and speak to us in beckoning tones, and drip from the sky in architectural resilience… we feel alone. The sky could never compensate for the resilience within. No sky-scraper could offer this ultimate release, rather the stars in our own Velvet sky. Those we love and are loved by. The irreplaceable. The shooting stars that color our sky.  And for these shooting stars, I am eternally grateful.

I wish on a day like today it would rain and ever so heavily. The sun is nowhere to be found, asleep behind some clouds and I watch the dry branches sway in laughter outside my window.  It’s that time of year where you’re suspended between what is and what you wish were so.  The pond is melting only to be covered once again by snow in a week or two. The grass is brown and the sidewalk cold. Everything today feels cold- except my thoughts.  I have no camera to capture how my books rest on my window sill nor the way my pearl earrings rest on my velvet journal.  It’s how I feel- like some pearl smug in velvet… just caught in overwhelment, suspended between what is and what I wish were so.  I wish on a day like today it would just rain so I could hide in my thoughts. I am reminded of a poem I once read in grade school. I can’t recall the title of the poem, but it was about a man- a fisherman, who, with hands and face chapped by the cold wind, finds refuge and warmth in his own soul, which finds its way to  a diner off the coast where he watches rain hit the window pane in his dimly lit boothe. If only I could recall the poem. I wish you knew it, because you would know, just like I do, how weathered he was and how irrelevant this weathering was to the comfort of soul- it was his thoughts and the refuge he found in them and in himself.

In any way, words are inadequate for such a moment, and though I feel often times there is no point in even trying to bother with using words to convey this moment as it is, it’s all I’ll ever have to show for it. We need language, however inadequate it proves to be. Quite honestly, how do you show someone a reality? You cannot, but only bother to try.

It feels like New Jersey today. I’ve never been but would love to some day. It feels like hiding out and in the comfort of jeans and a sweatshirt, making tea in bare-feet on the hardwood and watching the rain… thinking back on just about everything, really. From how tall the pea and bean plants would grow in my grandparents yard to the way the flowers rest in London to the sunflowers in Tuscany.

Somehow, on days such as this one, they always seem to take me back to the way it would rain in parts of Italy (Sorrento, Assisi, and the Tuscan area) 

It sounded like a very prolonged languid and legato “one and two, and three and four and one and two and three and four…” It was so precious in that it could take you just about anywhere. Against the window it sounded like the waves of the ocean, and they’d wash over and over throughout the night and you’d wake up to the smell  of lemons outside. You’d wake up to the real thing, that is, the ocean, which the rain had mimicked the night prior and  had cradled you to sleep.  It was sensational and sensual in that I never felt more alive, even asleep. I remember waking up and seeing my dark hair rest upon the white linen beside me and it just felt so… easy. And I fixed my eyes to look beyond at the window beside my bed and it was just a complete comfort, and for a moment I felt safe and secure, like I was insulated by this life around me.  There was no darkness nor shadows on the wall. 

And I couldn’t even comprehend what I was going to see that day or what was to come. We made our way from Sorrento to Rome, which was tedious and rainy and again, comfortable. I remember walking up the stairs with my luggage to place it on the transport, and, having time to spare, I walked around. It had rained and everything was still covered in it. It was so colorful… like everything was meant to be there, and to grow color on it, color that would never fade like a fresco.

And now I look out my window and the branches, strangely enough, are not moving or laughing any longer. I wonder why or how this is as I am far from the Mediterranean and rather, in what could very well be, the windiest place on Earth! I am inside surrounded by books that are meant to inspire me. Somehow, words just don’t seem inspiring, (as I write…) ironically. You just can’t get that kind of reality in a book, however tragic. You may get the periphery of it, and you may truly appreciate it and cherish what these books offer and lend to you, but quite honestly, you need to experience the reality of what these books preach. You need to relate, and perhaps this is what language is… it’s relating, its…leaving room to desire what language excludes to encompass… it’s evoking and it’s… communication. It uses words, words that are so inadequate and could never compete with the sacred realities of life… it’s like love, don’t you think? I say love and you think and feel all these different things. Perhaps you see lovers passionately kiss, like that beautiful photograph titled “Kissing The War Goodbye” (an image I personally think is one of the greatest).  Maybe you see the face of your first love, or your last one or the only one. Maybe you feel like crying. I just don’t know… but that’s how inadequate language can be.

It’s a word that, in reality, can change a life or make one. Say ‘beauty’ and I will know it. Say ‘love’ and I will feel it. Say ‘blessed’  and I will understand.

It’s these recherché moments that you never saw coming that soothe you and calm you when all you want to do is see the rain, when you’re muddled and suspended between what is and what you wish were so. When you just want to see that color once more, or hear words with curls in them like “bello” or  “oceano” or even  ” il spirito santo”.

It’s just that kind of day where you’re bewildered by everything and nobody can really make sense of this other than Norah Jones or Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in “You’ve Got Mail” or your piano.  It’s these conversations with yourself, starting from the moment you wake up with an  ” okay… here we go!” and a deep breath.  And I suppose this is the point, that you go… that you take as many breaths as you can, that you don’t measure this life by the number of breaths you take, but the number of moments that take your breath away… however cliche. Even if it is just a pearl earring on a velvet journal or the thought of rain along the Mediterranean… it is still taking your breath away.  You can afford to be bewildered in this life and maybe, just maybe, you were meant to miss certain things, like the rain, or a certain someone to show you how much you love the rain or that person. It’s what makes this life, life.  Surely, friend, you understand.  It’s where the clay is not that makes the pot… it’s the absence that makes the presence.

Like ‘ Georgia’, let it rest on your mind.

Can you imagine standing on the verge of a city, or perhaps the ruins of one, that you had only ever seen in a dream? And what if, for that brief moment of where you stood, you were convinced that it wasn’t just a dream all along, but the delicate dealings of destiny or what the Greeks had referred to as ‘fatum’?

 Perhaps this is why faith, inevitably, is hard to place, be it in a person or an actual place.  It is only after we think we have found what we were looking for, that we renegotiate how we came to find it.  We were led there…by the divine or the hand of another.  And so we spend our days searching and contemplating our Atlantis, in faith that we will stumble upon it, and in good time. Perhaps the problem is that you know what you are looking for, or rather, what you are looking for, has been decided- and not for you but by you. 

I recall reading about the man who is said to have found Troy, or what once was the city of Troy.  It was said that he was obsessed with Homer’s Iliad and The Odyssey, to the degree of being completely convinced that these places and these people were once a reality.  He was so taken by the notion that the fabric of his dreams, only ever in words, were more than just words woven, at one time or another. He travelled endlessly until he felt that he was where he needed to be, and until his soul agreed with him, that he was no longer lost but found. As he travelled through Turkey, he met a man who posessed land that he felt, reserved the promise of his dreams. On intuition, he paid this man for his land, and began to excavate.  He knew nothing of excavation, in fact, he was rather horrible with the dealings of it, and had paid for crews of people to dig in search of this ‘once upon a time’ city.

And so they dug, thoughtless in the process,  eventually piling away the remnants of the lost city.  They dug until they reached “the bottom” and it was made clear, time later, that the bottom was apart of the top, and they had foolishly disregarded it as dirt.

This was, however, the lost city of Troy, and though it held no evidence or promise that the city had indeed endured an infamous war, the city itself, had been found.

The man who had found it, Heinrich Schliemann,  was said to have been a driven man, a daring man who, legend has it, once dressed or disguised himself as a Bedouin tribesman to gain access to Mecca, in his ventures of discovery. 

To me, this is remarkable, in that someone had faith in something. Something that they could not prove entirely in its intangible elements. And I believe, entirely, that this is what faith is. It’s having nothing to show for what makes your existence viable…  I recall  a passage from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (yet, another one)

“You don’t understand the humiliation of it- to be tricked out of the single assumption which makes our existence viable- that somebody is watching…”

 And so I say, it is only after we have found what our lost hearts had desired so, that we renegotiate, with ourselves, in how we came to find what was to be found.  It is hoping that this “finding” is a moment of complete reassurance that something or someone is watching, that is, belief confirmed.  And I suppose this is why, when we cannot find love or moments of bliss to depend upon when its all a lot of oysters and no pearls,  that we are humiliated in the digression of our souls, as our belief runs thin like the sand in an hour glass… the belief in our existence, love being its largest tangent, and the lost cities it awakens in us all.

The city lights come up in us all, fused by faith and love; the two that make our existence completely viable. Perhaps you need to search a while, dig a while, and find a while, to prove, maybe to yourself, that this reserve of faith and love of which your dreams rest, is what could only ever make this dream, to you, awake. This life a dream, and this dream, your life.

And so, you are always alive, running on faith and what will always sustain it. Always alive.

When was the last your heart gave out on you?

It would be foolish to assume your heart has never been overwhelmed. Surely, it has.

This very day, mine gave out on me. I went to the movie theater today. The movie was ‘P.S- I Love You’, adapted from the novel by Cecelia Ahern. Yes, the theater was full of women, but that is beside the point. I was there to understand a story, one, I might add, that was not stereotypical nor cliche.  The story revolves around Holly, a young Irish woman, who loses her husband only after a few years of marriage. Married at the age of 19, the two shared a life that was perfect by imperfection. Sounds cliche, right? Well, I promise you it wasn’t. Prior to his death, Gerry, Holly’s husband, writes his wife letters that she receives after his death. Enclosed in each letter, Gerry challenges Holly to do something lively. In one, he dares her to sing karaoke, in another he encourages her to go clubbing “with the girls”, and a few months after his passing, she receives a letter directing her to a travel agency where he had planned an entire trip for her in Ireland. By the last letter, a year after his death, Holly is still living in anticipation for these letters, and for him. However unlikely the story was, or hyper-real, Holly’s inability to fall out of love with her husband, now dead, was not superficial. In words, the film sounds very bland and surreal in itself, however the charm and thought in every scene was overwhelming in presence. I found the most difficult scene was the one in which Holly goes for a walk with her mother, a year after Gerry’s death. Before this walk, in which Holly’s mom gives her Gerry’s last letter to her, Holly says she “can’t breathe”. However expected or unexpected, it stuck with me.

To be in love, truly, would be an honor. I don’t think people realize that or respect that. That is to say, people don’t give love a chance and they really don’t appreciate it. I can say this, because I’ve witnessed such a  circumstance where love has been neglected, underestimated, deemed foolish, and unappreciated.  Do people not realize it is an honor? Do they not see? Is that what it is, is that why people refrain from letting love happen? So often I hear of “plans” and I hear people speak of love as if it were an inconvenience. That is to say, love is an inconvenience to their so called “plans”.

To me, plans can ve bery irrelevant to life as we know it. Let me ask you why it was given to you, that is life, in the first place? It was given to you, as every honor is given, so that you may come to appreciate and respect its everyday earnings. Life, is an honor, and to pursue an element of it that is very one dimensional and unemotional is a waste.

I don’t understand why love is so undesired. As if you have the rest of your life, when you are young, to fall in love.  Apparently there are other things. True, however, love seems to fall second best in competing in the minds of others for substance in life. Other than those that I know that are married, and a select few, I don’t know anyone who can outright say “I want to fall in love”. Most of the time it’s ” if it happens, it happens” which I agree with (completely) as you find love or you do not. Though, I know few who would let love consume them, and I wonder about this. Why? I suppose it comes down to priority, and as said before, it’s not a top one, for most, especially in youth.

I think love should be a priority. And I think you are a fool for thinking you can find “something” some other time, or that “something” will come back around when the time is right. Now is the time, there is no other time. You don’t know how much time you have, in fact, I can tell you that you’re not promised tomorrow. So why are you so smug? I’d like to know.

I had a visit with my grandmother today. As we drank espresso she didn’t recall stories or moments of achievement in terms of intellect or moments where she felt superior or “won” something… rather, she told me what she missed, and that was love. This love epitomized in one being, one no longer alive, that is, my grandfather. He has been gone for nearly nineteen years, as long as I have been alive. She said she misses the jingle of the back door, the one he’d always walk through after work. She said he’d whistle, and she knew he was home. I asked her what else she missed and she took a deep breath and said “everything”.  She told me every night before she goes to bed, she kisses his photograph by her bedside, and every morning, that photograph is the first thing she sees. To think of love- one that grows old, to me, is spectacular and at times,  beyond my scope. That is an honor. You are honored to have someone love you and to feel that they need you, they must have you. They just must. It is an honor.

To think that people brush it off as a phase, one to be pursued when the years of youth have been exhausted, is frustrating for me. How do you not want to share youth? Love is not constraining. It is the complete opposite, and thus I don’t understand why it is perceived as this inconvenience. Foolish.

My heart just gave out as I watched my grandmother weep for herself, the part of her that cannot be found- him. And I began to cry, too. And I continued to on my way home ’til I reached Bragg Creek and decided to turn back and head for home. I couldn’t help but feel that love was an honor, one I wasn’t sure I’d ever bow graciously to in acceptance.  I felt as though something or someone were missing, and I knew exactly who it was, and there was not one thing I could do about it. I cried because she missed him so. Holly and my grandmother. This pain actually happens. It’s there and it doesn’t leave ’til you’re allieved from pain altogether. Pain isn’t just a thought in the movies, it’s real and my heart just broke. For her love, lost, and for the one I cannot seem to find.

My writing is just rubbish right about now. I’ll give you a song, though not my own:

“Apologies” by Grace Potter & The Nocturnals.

“Oh he said it’s crazy
How love stays with me
You know it hurts me
Cause I don’t wanna fight this war
It’s amazing to see me reading through this scene
Of love and fear and apologies

My love is like a blanket
That gets a little bit too warm sometimes
I wanna wrap somebody in it
Who can hold me in his arms
Cause when it got a little too hot in there
He was always stepping out for air and he froze
Oh he froze”
 

I think now and then we all just want something to believe in, moreover someone to give us something to believe in. Belief, safe to say, is no trivial matter. After all, it’s what makes our existence viable. Lately, despite it being Christmas, I feel, more than ever, that so much is built upon assumption, masked by the refuge sought in the term ”belief”. What I thought was, and what is, have evolved and emerged to reveal that what I had always thought, assumed, and believed, is in fact, false. I am having to rearrange my mind and my ways, and for me, I am finding it so very hard to redesign. Though I want to pursue the truth, however bitter-sweet it may be. I recall a passage from Christopher Fry…

“all your life you live your life so close to the truth it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye. And when something nudges it into outline, it’s like being ambushed by a grotesque”

It is often said that we may “never know”, and it is suggested that the “truth” is blinding in its sublime essence, perhaps like love. (Thus true love… is simply disastrous.)

Though, love is not blind, as it has a very specific face. Being in love with this face, however, is blinding. For one, you perceive this love to be true, and you rationalize time later that it never was when forever has come and gone rather quickly and the butterflies, with their wings exhausted, no longer fly. Something is merely as true as you perceive it to be. The truth is what you are willing to believe. And that’s why Hollywood is dangerous. It fools around with what is and what should be and you draw expectations from what is, in allusion to what should be.

I didn’t expect my eyes to go misty upon seeing a homeless-man picking bottles out of a dumpster, cold and alone, days before Christmas. In Hollywood, there is no man crawling from a dumpster… or if there is, he’s on his way to sweep chimney’s, where he’s likely to chirp about it, while bathing in the essence of being hard done by, with a smile. There’s just no such thing.

I didn’t expect to feel completely forgotten by the one I couldn’t let escape me if I possibly tried (though I should really give it a try).  I figured he was my Tom Hanks, my NY52, the one who can’t wait 24 hours, after arriving in the same town, to say how about some coffee, or some drinks, or dinner, or a movie. Nothing. And I never assumed “nothing” would emerge. I never expected to be forgotten or a weak effort with a “catch up soon”. Soon? Who can afford to say things like that? And who can afford to accept that?

Cherish this: don’t make someone a priority if you’re only an option.

It’s just Hollywood in my mind, and the reality, however, harsh, is so very obvious. It is reality after all, it ought to be obvious.

I didn’t expect to feel out of place “at home”, either. In the black and white films, home is definite. It has a color. It’s this place where everything is sentimental and unchanging- this stead of comfort, a place where you can come undone. Though, for myself, I feel that this home as it is now, only contrasts what has changed  and what hasn’t. And what has changed, is me. The people in this home have changed, too, though my love for them has not, and never will. Strange, the passing time, and written all over my face and theirs. This feeling of slight displacement, is strange, consuming and uncomfortable. It is knowing I am irrelevant to time, that I am temporary, and I am meant to be detached and displaced time and time again. The world is black and white- there are no shades of grey, and thus this feeling, however inevitable, is grey and that much more antagonizing- I need to decide if it’s black or white, for surely it can’t be both. Though, everything in cinema is black and white- even feelings. You’re in love or you’re not. You’re happy or you’re not. 

Quite frankly, I’ve come to believe, that there will be moments, more significant than others, where you may be lost and found all at the same time, happy but knowingly forgotten, independent and childish, composed and spontaneous…and there are no cameras ever rolling to catch the blend. Sometimes it stings and you’re more of one than the other but I suppose this is life…the way… the “stuff” that occupies our every day. And I suppose that’s all you can really count on. Change.

He’s sifting through garbage, you walk the avenue alone, and boxes occupy the spare room for moving day. It happens. Change happens- even at Christmas time. What is there to say?

 The same black line that was drawn on you
Was drawn on me
And now its drawn me in
6th avenue heartache

The sky had rained that entire night and by morning had broken into clear blue. It was a Sunday morning in Assisi and the air never smelled so sweet. While the room was a velvet jewel box, the sun stained curtains gave way to a lighter view of the main road that led to the mountain of St.Francis. It was refreshing to be some place I had never been and to wake up in its splendor, however simplistic. That morning Kayla and I left before anyone else was awake and we made our way down the street we had wandered the night of our arrival.

I was craving strawberries and thus decided to buy some at a market I was told to venture to. Finding this market was an endeavor on its own, though we walked back that morning with a brown paper bag full of strawberries and ate them along the way. It was a beautiful day and I couldn’t quite grasp the concept that I was miles and miles away from the familiar, though I felt it in the shame of wearing my blue jeans on Sunday. The people of Assisi made their way faithfully to mass, dressed quite beautifully, while I simply passed them in jeans and a bag full of strawberries. I was so humiliated, though Kayla didn’t seem to mind. We walked a few extra blocks to find a telephone boothe so we could place our first call home. Kayla went first and I waited across the street while she talked. Through the glass I could see that she was smiling and I heard her say “it’s amazing”. And I thought it was, too. I think I was just stunned more than anything, to the point of feeling completely and utterly ridiculous. My hair undone and blowing into my face as I ate strawberries on some foreign road- I couldn’t feel anymore displaced.

 Kayla hung up the phone some time later and I made my way across the street to dial home. I calculated the time difference and figured I wouldn’t get a hold of anyone on the phone, and thus waited on the dial for the answering machine. I’d tell them that the flight went well, that we landed in Rome and made our way to Assisi no problem, that it was beautiful here, and that I wished they could see what I could at that moment. I would attempt to describe to them where I was and what I saw before me. I imagined they would keep the message on the machine ’til my arrival back home.  After a few pauses the ring-tone stopped and I heard my brother’s voice tell me the number I had reached, followed by “…we’ll get back to you- thanks, and have a good day”. My heart just sank. It just fell. I don’t know what it was. It was like the sensation of being on an elevator or when you’re climbing the stairs in the dark and miss one - I just fell. I watched a ladybug make its way along the glass of the telephone boothe as I tried to immediately recall what I was going to say after the beep. I couldn’t remember. I just felt so intensely sad, and all at once. ” Hey, it’s Sandy…”- and I was done for. I wiped away the tears before Kayla could see and I managed to say that it was beautiful and that I loved them. 

 I rationalized that this feeling was temporary and that I was simply overwhelmed by the situation of being in a foreign country without those closest to me- with the exception of Kayla. Even at that, it didn’t make too much sense, but I was beyond it by the time we had wandered through a park. Though that night, I wondered,  my heart estranged as Kayla braided my hair on my bed by the balcony.

This feeling emerged once again while in Florence, days later, though the tears were much more fluent.  The day had been exhausting and the air had been thick.  At five o’clock the streets were unfamiliar, and it was as though I was walking through a station of the metro. There was color everywhere and it was far too much for me to appreciate, and all at once.  It was hard to walk at my usual tempo as bodies just pressed and passed.  We had all vowed that we would not travel alone but always with two others, at least. I thought this was a fair promise to make, one I wouldn’t be tempted to break, though I was and I had.  The girls  wanted to walk  every store that night, thrilled by all the pretty things they could purchase. I told them I was going to head back to the hotel, that I could find my way back no problem, and that I’d see them later that evening.  Our hotel was far from this metro, and somewhat deceiving in its place, as locals didn’t even know where it was when they would ask me who/ where I was staying.  I wandered from street to street, as they quietly cleared by seven o’clock.  The sun’s yolk spilled upon the town of Montacatini, and dripped out of sight, leaving  the night a purple hue.  Lightly it showered and I walked through it, deciding to finally make my way back to the hotel- which I couldn’t find.  I don’t know what I did, but the gods weren’t pleased with me, as the rain came down with such velocity.  Time had elapsed. It was getting dark and it was raining hard, to the point where I couldn’t feel the rain anymore.  I began to panic as I was drenched in rain, lost, and had that eerie feeling of being followed.  I walked down the center of the streets, so that I could visually grasp anything and anyone that could approach me. I remember turning to my side and looking back at the road I had walked. It was desolate, pink from the streetlight, narrow and confining. I was so completely lost. I stood there for a good minute or two and thought of all the worry I was bringing Kayla. I had been gone for hours. I wondered if she thought I was lost.  “Have you seen Cass?”

I thought about it and I felt guilty. I was on my way. I walked another block down that same road and turned right. There I found  a boy I was travelling with, and he was waiting by the doors of our hotel. He opened the doors for me and didn’t say two words. He never did exchange words with me that entire trip, though he spoke of me with his girlfriend,  while I was in ear-shot. He opened the doors and I thanked him as though I meant to walk through them at that time. I jogged up the two flights of cobbled stairs and up to my hotel room, which I found to be empty. They were probably in somebody else’s room down the hall or still at dinner, though evidently unconcerned with my absence. Without peeling off my wet clothes or drying my hair with a towel, I dialed Michael, my boyfriend of a year at that time. I had a calling card and I knew that he’d accept my call regardless of the hour. I remember pacing the room as I waited for him to pick up. I just needed to hear that voice.  His mum picked up and she told me she was happy to hear my voice. I was happy to hear her’s too. Truly. Michael grabbed the extension and that feeling crept back. I just fell.  I told him of where I had been, and even in the act of being lost, there was this aesthetic to it, one that I appreciated and wished he had shared with me. Through this aesthetic of losteness, I was scared, likely terrified, and having him on the other line, while I watched the rain from the open shutters, made my forehead crinkle and my eyebrows fold in fury. I couldn’t swallow and the hot tears burned down my cold cheek.  Both the call home and the call I placed that night, evoked this burning sensation that confused me, completely.  I don’t know how to describe it, really. I had seen beautiful things, walked in the rain, and alone, and I was okay. I took my photographs and cherished them upon clicking “review”. I had gotten lost. And I was okay. Terrified, but okay.  I can’t describe the sensation of refuge in the familiarity of love. It’s like when you were little and you had this epic day at school… you painted a picture, your teacher said it was lovely, you played bingo, you won, you shared your lunch and read a book in the cubby corner… you did all the things you anticipated, though when your dad came to pick you up at the end of the day, you ran into his arms, carelessly crumpling the picture you had painted and carried, ’cause it was your dad and those were his arms. And that’s what made your day… not so much the blackout on bingo or what you did with that brush that day. It was like that, I suppose.

It had been a good day, despite being lost, but I needed the refuge and the reassurance, and in those two moments as described, I felt it in its finest. I don’t believe I’ll ever forget it. Pieces of me. Occupants of my own desert places.

From the postcards I collected that hang on my wall to the letters I wrote that I hope have been stowed, I reflect upon that time and I wonder about times to come. Even now, at 1:30 am, a day before I leave to make my way home for Christmas, nearly two years after my temporary departure from this home, that feeling is setting in. Though I am older now, and as it were, “single”as I have been for some time, I wonder what and where I will seek refuge. Home, surely, though that too is evolving, but if I were, at this very moment, drenched and shaken from being lost in the rain, I wonder who I would call. Would I have anyone? Of course I’d have my family and my best friends, no doubt, though would I be able to seek refuge in a particular other? Could this ever be offered? I wonder and this increasingly becomes a question. My mid-November, I wonder. I am so unbelievably unconvinced and again I wonder…perché…

Sometimes I just miss the way things used to be. I can accept that things change, that people change, and that places change. But letting these things, these people and these places go, is just something I don’t want to do. I dont think I can. The tide’s eternal tune

I packed my bags and grabbed my keys Friday morning  to drive the miles in between so that I could pick up my brother and sister from school.  They didn’t know I was to pick them up. I decided to pick up my sister first at the junior high I used to attend.  I parked by the front doors and waited for the Friday bell to ring.

  As I waited I looked at what I used to know. I forgot how the mountains looked from the playground, how the fields extended towards the highway… the long grass full of snow, and the sky painted colors of the cowboy cliché. How I’d watch all the pretty horses from my classroom window. The warm feeling of being inside while a storm was raging or the wind blew tumble weeds across the pavement and basketball courts. I recall how the raindrops on the bus windows would race one another as we drove through canopies, past farms, fields, and wire fences.   Dark sky and grey highway lined with yellows and greens. If you drove fast enough you’d see a pallet of colors that made you feel like you were spinning ‘round in the fall leaves. It was like somethin’ sacred, you know?   We live “in the country”. From the lines on the highway to the ripples in the fields, the pebbles we’d kick up on our way home to the wild flowers that lined dirt roads. You just wanted to breathe it all in. You knew the sun was still shining when you closed your eyes.I loved everything about where I lived and where I was. I had friends I could sit on fences with and talk to for hours. I had friends I’d walk dirt roads with and pick wild flowers with. Rivers we could sit by. Highways we could photograph. Trails we could walk.   We could part the long grass and stain our jeans and white t-shirts with dirt. Or walk home with sand on the cuff of our jeans and sandals from the lake.

 I always slept with the windows open in my bedroom during the summertime when it would be too cold to sleep on the patio. In the morning I could see the curtains blowing. I could smell the lilacs and the thick perfume of pink on the flowers. Blue Rodeo or The Wallflowers would usually be playing downstairs in the kitchen or I’d tune in for the top 40 on the Kix Brooks show while waiting for the water to run warm in the shower.  Just to be there, in a place I called home muddled me, like wine or a breath of freedom. And this was my reality.  I never knew how long it would last. How many more mornings I’d wake up with no worries.  When I would wake up those mornings (and even now) there’d always be a wonderful face that would ask me what I was going to do for the day and I’d always give my usual “ I dunno”. This never bothered me. There was comfort in what I did know, the same things that I probably took for granted at times.

  It all came back to me Friday as I waited for my sister. Where had the time gone? I asked myself that and again it was a “ I dunno”. I watched the front doors of the school. I remember I felt as though I had so much to prove when I first walked through them. It was a new beginning. A new school. I was scared to death but it was a choice that I had made and entirely on my own.  In retrospect, I don’t know how I picked up the nerve to move schools. I did it without having any intention of looking back. And I never did. I met beautiful people and shared beautiful things with them. It changed my everything. It was a very good year. I recall algebra being a challenge, and one I overcame. It was another obstacle, one that terrified me. I remember being sneered at upon showing my concern for my math mark at my previous junior high- the one I chose to depart from. “You’re never going to get it”. And my math teacher just laughed at me. I remember a close friend marked one of my math quizzes and told everyone what mark I had earned after I had asked her not to. “ How do you fail that?”. And it became a joke. One of many. I became a joke. I just didn’t find it funny and I felt as though there wasn’t one person who got me or someone who would at least ease the “humor” and make me laugh for a change. So I moved. And algebra didn’t change… but the people and my feelings, because of these people, did. That year I was offered a spot in the advanced mathematics program in the high school I was to attend in the fall. Highest mark in algebra. It meant a lot to me. I’m sure you’ve had an experience similar. One of those experiences that you look back on and you’re completely satisfied. You’d go through it all again if you could, even the jokes. In a heartbeat. 

 My new friends-  they were like me. They didn’t care what I had or what I didn’t. They didn’t know why I was new and I didn’t know what was old.  And that was okay, too. It was a matter of time, a short time, I might add, when people started asking me if I remember what happened  in grade five during “that field trip…”or  “this one pep rally…” and of course, I was never there to say “I remember”.    Graduation came last June and we toasted to the end. And “I remember.”

“Here’s to the nights we felt alive.”

It was bitter sweet, like just about everythin’.

 It’s just kinda hard to be logical about life… rumor has it that there’s a sequence to it. I can understand this sequence but it can be generic. Not all of us find the love of our lives in high school or leave home at eighteen or marry at twenty five and vacation to the gulf of Mexico in the summertime.    There can be a sequence but for me I’d rather not pursue one consciously. Let it happen. I think of what has happened and it’s  like I’m on this train, or I’m driving my car, but it won’t decelerate even when I’m pressin’ on the brake. I’m driving through these moments. They’re all there in their moving clips, and still frames. I just want to unroll my window, or stop the car, walk out and just admire one of them by stepping back into it. But I can’t. My window’s stuck. The brakes don’t work. I’d even jump out but my door’s busted, too. My train’s just moving way too damn fast. And it hurts ‘cause I love it all so much. All the photographs and all the faces and places. I love them all with all my heart and it hurts to just wave it goodbye. It’s like loving someone and having them say “well, it’s been nice meeting you”. That’s it? Wait. Why?  Was it something I said?It’s like that lover that left you. Change can be like that.

You stand like a fool in the middle of the road, tumble weeds around you, your hair’s  blowin, too, the mountains by your side. And they see you in their rearview mirror. It starts to rain on you, and you’re soaked to the bone. You’re “praying for the glow of a break light.” So you can run. So you can catch up. Fleeting hope. They see you in their rearview. But they don’t stop, they just keep on driving and you’re still standin’ there. Classic fool. The wheels just turn and there’s no sign that they’re goin’ back for you. Like a lover that drove off without you… you can run after that car down that dirt road but you’ll run out of breath and you’ll fade like the tail lights of a cottage you’d pass in the middle of the night. So you kick up the dust and it gets in your eyes. Nobody’s lookin’ so you don’t have to lie. It’s not jus the dust in your eyes. It’s time and dust in a bottle. The sand just keeps runnin’ on you, and though you’d like to try, you can’t flip the hour glass over.  It’s not asking much. Just more time in the fields with the sun in your hair, more times to enjoy the love you share.  The thrill of living.

But our thrills change, change happens, moments escape you and you see them leave you down the road. What do you do? Chase them down? Try to keep up? Follow the tracks? Or just keep walking in the opposite direction, occasionally looking behind your shoulder- not for that car- but to admire the road?I think the latter would be best. I think you’d get farther. And you wouldn’t end up where you started. What do you think? You’d be somewhere else altogether. 

We can ask ourselves why things have to change and we can ask ourselves where the time has gone, all on the behalf of this change and time we speak of- and it’s not a bad thing. It’s a soul thing.  I think these so called emotions that I’ve recently tried to put into words is my way of  soothing my fears of what is to come. I never knew then and I don’t know now. I never will.  But I do know that I’d do it all over again.  I can miss the way it used to be and I can cherish the past, and I can let it move me, and I can strum about it, but I can also use it to push me forward- and it does, inevitably. I’m just not sure if I want to be swept up at such a pace.  I don’t mind moving at all, it’s just the pace.  The seasons roll by and youth slips away. It’s the pace. 

—-

  “Had a talk with my old man, said ‘help me understand’. He said ‘turn sixty-eight, you’ll renegotiate. Don’t stop this train, don’t for a minute change the place you’re in and don’t think I couldn’t ever understand. I tried my hand, John, honestly, we’ll never stop this train’”“Once, in a while, when it’s good, it’ll feel like it should. And they’re all still around, and you’re still safe and sound. And you don’t miss a thing ‘til you cry when you’re driving away in the dark singing ‘stop this train, I want to get off, And go home again, I can’t take the speed its moving in, I know I can’t. ‘Cause now I see I’ll never stop this train’”.

Do you ever have those moments where you think to yourself that things couldn’t get any worse? Or maybe you’ll be completely enjoying yourself and then you’ll remember why you needed to enjoy yourself in the first place… and then the guilt of enjoying yourself is just far too much so you pick up the guitar and don’t put it down for five hours? More guilt.

 You have a paper to write,  six final exams, you lost your apartment keys (and now have to pay for an entire new lock…), the air pressure in your tires are off and need to be looked at before you drive for two hours next Friday, you have a Christmas list full of people to buy for, you haven’t looked into flight tickets for New York… essays to edit, clothes to fold, peppers to fry… ah, bliss.

    And you’re thinking about all this while you try to figure out your next move. You don’t exactly know how to deal so you write about ridiculous things or play a song ’til your fingers are worn right out or run ’til you can’t breathe. It saves your sanity. And then of course, you’re still dealing with the horrible aftertaste of having to chew on your own words- words that were spoken and completely misunderstood.  Another social casualty. Score one more for me. B-E-A-U-TIFUL.

It’s become so unreal.  You pick locks with a bobby pin to get into your own living space, you steal someones signal so you can check your grades on-line, you look out a dirty bus window ’cause it’s a window.You’ve started to drink coffee. An extra-large French Vanilla coffee from Tim Horton’s. You can’t function without it at 9:42 am before every history class.  You never even drank coffee before! Hot showers have become a source of enjoyment.  Watching Jerry Maguire on a Friday night and quoting “you complete me” with a generous tub of ice-cream by your side, spoon in hand, is what your Friday nights have evolved to.  Grocery shopping gives you an excuse to leave the library or the apartment. Climb 17 stairs and pick two locks to get to your apartment door. Dont drop the eggs. Don’t poke your eye out with the French bread. Just don’t drop the bags. 

You make it through the door and it’s no Dido moment. He’s not there to take your coat and you can’t say “… I want to thank you for giving me the best day of my life. Just to be with you is having the best day of my life…”. Yeah. There’s no Dido, mkay?

Instead, you trip over your own feet and into the shoe rack. The phone rings and you’ve apparently won a trip to the Caribbean. Press 9.  I’m ready to tell the overly enthusiastic Caribbean lady voice that she’s gonna need to press that one and two other digits if she calls me one more flippin’ time.

Put on the kettle. Do the laundry. Put on CNN. More bad news. They always give it to you first. Why do they do this?

No, really, thank you, Bob- I’m not sure how I could have managed my day without your overly sincere delivery of “more breaking news”. You might want to bleach your teeth one more time, give that good ‘ol toupee a nice swipe over the forehead. No, thank you, Bob, for tuning in this evening.

So I think ‘forget it’. I need Aretha. “Since You’ve Been Gone” and “Rescue Me”. It works every time.  I’m sure if I had a bottle of wine at my disposal, I’d  be singing into an empty one. With a blouse and shades. It’s risky business.

And just when I think I need the shades, I get a call. ” I just called to say I love you”. And no, it’s not Stevie Wonder calling for his shades back or to say ‘I love you’.  It’s someone who sends me.  And then it somehow all disappears…all of it. I can lay in my bed that I never made this morning and it doesnt’ bother me. How this happens is somethin’ else. 

It’s the “P.S- I love you” and you know you’re gonna be alright. It may not be the kind of ‘I love you’ that is said at paramount moments in movies and in Broadway when the music swells and lovers collapse in eachothers “undying” arms but it’s even better… it’s my paramount and it’s real and it’s true. It’s…

“I was listening to “one by one” by Wilco and Billy Bragg and then I saw in the snow someone had written in giant snow letters the word
LOVE with a heart next to it and it was insane because all evening we had been with stressed out delayed people cause flights got eaten by snow and then I saw that and it was so beautiful
one of those moments where you wish that your best friends could see through your eyes all at once hey?”- Noah

Or the polka-dotted bag your roommates bought for you ’cause “It had Cass all over it” or dad’s “hey kid, we’ll have a couple before the concert Friday”.

Makes a difference, you know?  You’re not just barely surviving a night in your mind… you can accept that talk is cheap, not everything is going to be “deep”, and that not everything has rhyme or reason or both… or that things could be better…because you will pull through. The “I called to say I love you’s” are your rhyme and reason, and they give you somethin’ deep. More than. You make it through ’cause ”P.S- I love you”