The responsibility to appropriately represent (a) character(s)

What I am trying to tell you is this: in my own way, I love you. And you can trust me, mostly. I won't lead, wouldn't lead, haven't led you wrong. It would be bad form. But please know that if I do lead you wrong, I once thought it was right.

- Monson, Neck Deep, Appendix

I used to think that what I wanted was to be like you (or the many of you who are military wives). But really, I was an artist first and "they" say, "be true to yourself." I am a left-winged liberal. I don't believe in war. I would lend my crossed legs to a cause in need of silent protest. I try only to buy organic produce. There isn't much of me that fits the bill anyway. And there is the almost palpable barrier--a man in crisis. I don't think he reads this garbage anymore, so I am feeling a little less censored. That isn't even half of it. Maybe he thinks that The Lonely Sound was abandoned or he doesn't care anymore. In his own way, he loves me.

In my own way, I love you.

Lately I imagine the trajectory of a bullet. I imagine the spatter patterns it might cause on a wall or some other wayward surface. Brain matter, other parts. It doesn't matter. I play out the motions only in my head, and I'm only telling this because I'm tired of pussyfooting around the idea of self. I don't care if you like me. I should never have cared. And the truth, if there is such a thing, is that it may not be in the cards for me to "be" one of "you" army wives. Because life is a force to be reckoned with. It will happen according to or not at all resembling the outcome I reach for. We are born alone. We die alone. I write alone. I am beginning to believe that he wants to be alone, a man as Island.

(I am trying to disassociate myself.)

I am beginning to dream of the Anywhere I could move, the Anything I could do, all the dreams and ideals that dreamers and idealists conjure. I was, after all, an artist first, and then somehow his and somehow this.

I thought for the first time tonight that I could be okay married to creativity, the lonesome but not lonely eccentric. I thought that I could move in a couple of months for him, indulging the have-my-cake-and-eat-it-too element of whatever the fuck is going on here, but I won't. I need more satisfaction than that. I don't think I was ever meant to be the understudy, the shadow lurker. Some hours do belong solely to me.

And maybe I am the "married" type, and he is the one who isn't. Well, there isn't anything I can do to change him.

There isn't anything I can do to change him...but I was always honest. I always aimed for the LONG TERM.

Perhaps though, it's me? I always run. I'm kind of preparing to run now, peeling back the layers of happy-family-visions and the imagined faces of our unborn children, a fusion of more than individuals.

I feel like I am losing and because I don't care about winning per se (and he does), I think I am more privy to, or likely to examine the behavior of dissolution. We are fuzzy at the edges.

I am trying to read Brenda Miller's Season of the Body but it is proving difficult. Her focus is on the end of a relationship with Keith, who also makes an appearance in Blessing of the Animals in a beautiful essay called "A Different Person." It is so painful to imagine us parting ways. So unbelievably painful. I have harnessed so much in this Man, this ourness of life, a river fed by us as tributaries. And now what?

I am my own captain. (though not quoted, per request.)

I am not challenging the "who" manning the wheel. I am sure as shit my own captain.

Hold yourself together.

(punish someone else.)

I am not wishing to be an anchoress. I am not counting on anything. I am remembering learning to swim--no metaphor--at the Bambi Motel, Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan. If this is pride, then sometimes I too am amazed my soul stays in my body.

- Mary Ann Samyn, "From The Little Book of Female Mystics"

So much has happened, continues to happen, here. I had forgotten that a heart could hurt and love equally and at the same time, or maybe I just think I ever knew. And this is only proof of some personal evolution. I don't really care what it is or why it is or why it lingers here, or how much worse it might be without prayer flags and meditations. I just want it to leave, to do its work and leave us better off.

As for the things I haven't been able to say for myself, to myself, a blitz of second hand positivity may save me. Someone unexpected told me to envision the things that I want from this life, to be who I am, and also that I'm right to want this huge thing that now feels impossible--a light among darkness.

And in the meantime, I am working to loosen my grip just so the knuckles find their color again, just so my feet become mobile. I am trying not to count on anything.

17 of 31: (not) giving

I will always want more than I have.

2 of 31: giving (in)

What I really meant to say had nothing to do with weather, storms of any genre, except maybe this one back home that has yet to pass [figuratively]. But because I have some dignity, although unapparent to the naked eye, I asked about it there to keep from crying. The bare essence of pride, that that's left, kept me from demanding a verbal shrine, a garrulous flow of all the reasons and ways that you love me, something completely selfish and over-indulgent, concentrated like last season's apple butter or the jar of marshmallow cream for s'mores that arrived a few days ago.

It's more desperate than the boxes can conceive or deliver, right now but not always.

Despite claims of pride, or fraying threads of pride and strength and normalcy, I really meant to free the contents of myself this morning, not that unraveling on the phone would make any one of the circumstances change shape or even appear to. I would still like the luxury of not caring, the freedom of a child to wail full-force, head thrown back, the rest of me limp in surrender just because it is sometimes too much to house this sadness within my body.

I feel like the mess of the new house, completely un-unpacked with warped floors. Sometimes the harshly misaligned door frames and dips and crests of deep, blue carpet make that place feel disorienting, like living inside a fun house. I, too, appear normal from the curb and unaffected by shifting and compacting ground. But on the inside, my mind must be reshaping with these changes, buckling and bending like the old hard wood in the dining room.

Next week I'll get to the unlabeled boxes scattered among the cavities of my house, slice through the packing tape that was found only in time to seal some. And maybe I'll measure the windows, finally, to hang curtains instead of fitted sheets from finishing nails hammered into old plaster with the heel of a patten flat. I'll move furniture into sensible groupings where they aid in the fluid movement of my traffic patterns [only], and I will stack my books against each other, cozy in the arms of bookshelves, plates in kitschy strawberry cabinets. All the while, the floors will flex and sag still, like they have for years and years and years, and my heart will ache like the contoured bones of my house the first time the earth settled beneath its foundation.

The good news is that it still stands. While its doors have been shaved into angled forms and most of my furniture is poised on three legs, there is still a house that has seen the whole world evolve into something quite different than it was. I don't feel nearly as strong as the boards that built it or the hard plaster that encased it, though. I don't feel as strong as everyone tells me I have to be. I don't feel strong at all, really.

on to something new [ready or not]

I have so much to say and so little energy and liberty to etch it all across this screen.  Christmas left something to be desired, new year's eve, however was perfect -- more perfect than perfect.  This life has a way of letting one glaze every moment with high-gloss hyper-perfection, given the right timing and circumstance.  Each breath and smile is caught and archived, pinned like fragile specimens behind glassy walls, slow motion memories with over-pronounced dialogue and historical inaccuracy.  

I err most often on optimism -- foolish, really.  I imagine the still frames more richly colored, sugary and scripted.  For example, I omit certain attempts at death-by-Dorito-consumption and possible engagement rings (on my mother's finger), large life-engulfing trunks, drunken welcome-homes, all consuming guilt, the kind of "good bye" that truly has the power to grind one's heart to dust.  I have added brightly adorned Christmas trees, comfort and relaxation, smiles, security.  Next year will be just long enough for my mind to fully buy into all of those forged memories and I will probably be surprised when it plays out just the same.  

'round and 'round

I'm caught in a place where my mouth is so full of questions, and I wish that I wasn't always-inquisitive. I've started looking at myself and wondering why I continue to follow the deep, washed-out footprints I have already made and already retraced. I am sometimes so aware of the circles that I have the overwhelming urge to fall down and refuse to travel at all, which will not actually relieve me. I'll sit a while but again become anxious and restless until finding my way back to the bald, sole-pocked earth wandered over and over and over until really, I should just be drunk-dizzy.

general complaints regarding the institution of chaos

I don't know whether I should laugh or cry or shatter things weaker than I feel right now, for the pleasure of a power trip and the satisfaction of destruction. Don't ever wonder how it might be more difficult than it is; it could always be worse.

He's always full of new news and it almost always makes a mockery of the things I thought I could rely on, even when they aren't desirable. I've been bracing for some events since the beginning of us. They are bristles-raised threatening, guns-and-bombs scary; they creep into the dreams of even a sound sleeper to chip away at rest long before they are urgently upon us. Nevertheless, a person can condition oneself for anything given enough time to build up walls of sandbags. Even a war-flood becomes a tolerable idea when you have had time to prepare for it.

And so I think that's the worst of it. Nothing is bigger or more difficult than all we've been through already and all that is written into future date boxes. Life on the coat-tails of a soldier isn't billed to be an easy one - constantly jerked and bounced around in the shadow of his duty to country. No matter how jostled, the peak was in sight just above the crags and ridges. It always appeared to be reachable until new news birthed low clouds to make me question our direction.

I knew that you in the calamity of war would be fucking awful! And yes, it is simply unbearable to let my mind entertain the possibility of that phone-call - so I don't, I can't. If I did, every tomorrow would be "insurmountable". There are times when it feels like we are held together only by fraying scraps, but you come home and we stitch the wounds and mend the tears. What do we do if there is no home, and all the patched up ragged shreds wear faster and thinner? It isn't this over that, it's both circumstances stacked high and heavy one upon the other.

This is a life for the mad, the numb, the inhuman. The truth is, I don't want to be stronger. I want to crush thin, perfect glass between a swift downward blow and a solid surface. I want to scream and kick my feet against the floor in an epic tantrum. I want to tear out my love-drunk heart to wring it sober.

Come and stay with me.

There's a crackle in the distance. Something is moving, brewing, ready for birth. Love does things to you that you cannot anticipate and when they are in full force, arguing with their direction becomes futile. There is a pull westward then north, southbound and to the East. Each mile is a minute lived slower than others, each day lost together is simply lost. It is a challenge to recount moments passed as they have become mere shadows and echoes. Too many prequels have been archived and the threading of continuity has been removed. We are less and more. We are estranged but kindred, restless yet content. Footing is temporary, for the earth always shakes again.

Too long, too vacant, too far apart. It isn't only good things that eventually must end. Somewhere there is a white knight awaiting his damsel.

Soon and very soon

Sucking low and full into empty lungs, a breath is held. The first seconds are uneventful, novel even, before the warm burning in your core begins. The fire spreads, igniting concern that soon sets ablaze panic and desperation. Skin flushes then glows, and theoretically turns a plummy shade of purple. Following the climactic peak - air, a theatrical and exaggerated inhale preceding a return to natural rhythm.

Hurry up! [and wait]

Pensive, waiting, timing the captive lungful. Days never pass fast enough. Twenty-four hours double and triple themselves into grueling painstaking barriers. And I tell myself his jokes once more. And imagine the reunion, play my scripted Hollywood versions over and over and over. Even my mental cast is tired of running through the scenes.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Eyes shut tight to relive hungry, deliberate kisses. Reread the letters, each word artfully plucked from fathoms too deep to measure. Over and over and over... Try on the first-time-we-meet-again wide-leg jeans and floral halter. Try on the buttercup wedges for full effect. It doesn't matter that we're eons away from reunion. Try them on just one more time. 1200 calories, it's crunch time. Perfection. Shoot for the moon. Be stunning.

Holy blue-in-the-face!

Maybe he will...[not a chance, dreamer]. Walk five miles to imagine how he could but won't. Knowing that reality is the first to go before fantasy takes the driver's seat doesn't stop the imagination. What if he remembers me in some inflated form? What if that last letter said too much? What about meeting his mother? What about heart palpitations from self-induced anxiety? What about irrational fears? Fitful is the new Restful sleep.

Why, is not this better now than groaning for love?

Practice
kindness,
mercy and
forgiveness.

I fear what is coming from the sour sinking in my heart. An unexplainable pang, or dare I claim an intuition? It caught me today with a sudden grieving, I pray too soon and unnecessarily. And what to make of me, a brave young fatalist, trusting signs sent not by tea leaf but worse, tea bag?

Only Shakespeare would pose such comic tragedy, such foolery of Fortune, and foretelling. Perhaps the Universe wants only for me to act with kindness at all times and to practice forgiveness more wholly and consciously. A blanket statement, if you will.

A coincidence. It must be that simple, that all of my discourse happened to align with the random selection of that pomegranate package tonight. Oh, but if I am wrong and it is that ill news is to be ladled from the scalding pot...will I have the composure to practice kindness? To be merciful? Will I be humble and forgiving, as advised?

[let's just cross that bridge when/if we get there.]

only in dreams

Now is not a good time for writing, but here I sit in my ready position, damning the tears that dare to well and the institution...and the war...and the whole fucking thing. I lack the capacity to hold it all in - IT'S NOT WHO I AM! My walls are just not that thick. They just aren't.

[for better or worse]

I talk a lot. I don't like following the grain. I share myself - the joys and fears of this life that I lead. I am not...[a number of things]. I write a lot. I drain the feelings that would otherwise sink me, an emotional pneumonia that would snuff out the fire. I know her, the body trapped beneath water, eyes fixed on its surface, watching the shimmer of sun fade. I cannot, will not ever be her again if I can help it.

Desperate is the search for a true outlet, for a reason to back away from the ledge - someone wearing the same shoes, an empathetic warrior, a place to call Home [where unconditional is a silver key and trusting me and not being so bloody scared]. A chance opportunity presents itself - remarkable and lustrous - and I am rendered to childlike wonder. Eyes wide, pounding heart, a giddiness conquering the synaptic response. And then come the rains [again] that call off the parade.

My heart breaks and he'd never know it if I didn't say so. The event isn't sharp and precise. There are no telling tracers, obvious and burning in the night in a language he would understand. Funny is the obligation I feel suddenly to keep it that way because the culture says to hold it close, circle up the wagons, girls. Be stronger than the predators' threat.

[I'd sooner leave the camp of false rigidness. I am no column, no tower of tenacity.]

From this proverbial leaping point, I gaze into the valley's greener grass then turn back, looking again behind me to survey the people of the mountain. I wonder [for the thousandth time since August] if I will ever belong.

...then I plan to rehearse a "gracious" stance of refusal to said Chance Offer, and enough maturity to quietly release the ache of a dashed dream.

metaphorically speaking

His boots are the color of sand.  worn in the creases from nimble movement made in places I'll never know and never really want to know.  the laces are long to snake around his ankles. ends tucked out of sight.  tightly wound.  old and familiar.  

I could so easily slip in my tiny feet, losing them in all of the dark space leftover.  I could rest my soles in the low grooves made by his.  soak up the stale desert sweat.  march around not to mock but to know.  to feel the rhythm in his step as though it were mine.  

He bought for me small lounging shoes, sporty and gray.  slight and suede.  holding one in the expanse of his hand, I recall the way he questioned its feasibility.  It lay perched, fragile in his palm.  a perfect size seven.

I would guess not but a fragment of his toe would settle inside. awkward terry walls tightening at the ball of foot.  he'd never try to fit them on. nor would he mimic my bohemian parade.  no reason for him to match my gait.  brief and strolling.  quick and deliberate.  running to halt to run again.    

He would huff, "they are your shoes.  walk."  and I would wear them both.  white laces bow tied, hidden within his jump boots.