No One Else Has to Know

Fantasy keeps me warm, and the better I can imagine it the warmer I get. My imagination is fine, but I’m not feeding it enough reality; it has to fall back on old fodder, the bitter and the sweet. A spoonful of sugar gets it down: It’s all about serving a better attitude to the memories, which are all fantasies relative to many other relativities. Herself is the star of every show I’ve put on. The fantasies are private now, but I published them long ago. They are still good. Better. Nicer. More appreciative. (More humble?) I am redefining “living in the past”: It’s pushing me forward. She is on my mind because I want her to be. She is a product of it, or nearly so. She’s not yet a fiction, but she still works well in a fantasy. She said,“I don’t like you writing about me–like that.” Now I will respect it, if with a great deal of temptation to do otherwise. She can keep me warm in private. No one else has to know.

Walking in Circles and Never Laying Down

If I can’t tear myself out of this caul of hope when I leave the apartment for entertainment, then there really is nothing for me to do. Nothing’s changed within that equation since The Trainwreck. Desperation to replace her becomes the reason to crawl Carytown, so I stop going. It always comes to that. Then I go stir crazy waiting for something to happen, desperation building as much on the need to get away from the memories of her as on the need to find something positive to hang my heart on. Pursue, retire, repeat. If I didn’t pursue I wouldn’t tire. Inertia doesn’t sit well with me, as too much time with myself can be too much time spent licking old wounds. Then I try to get away from them into the city. The cycle travels around the stillpoint, and I can’t break from the centrifugal force to spiral into it, caught up in the wrong pursuit, or in pursuit of pursuit itself–the dog walking in circles and never laying down.

I Can’t Finish That

What is hope anymore? In my bitterest moments I curse its mocking, but what would life be worth without it? Cruel question. I could say I wear hope on my sleeve, as I sometimes do my heart, but it’s really on my back, and it looks curiously simian. I don’t know what it feeds on, but it seems to get enough of it. Am I on its back? Some days, it carries me to the next day and around each corner. I suppose it knows what it’s looking for. I haven’t a clue, and “hope” is losing its meaning. If I could shove hope behind the usual diversions of life…. Who am I kidding? I can’t finish that.

In My Pajamas

Getting to know myself has required a lot of time alone, but I have no intention of becoming hermetically sealed in my apartment. I bore myself sometimes. After the movies, books, music, and writing, there’s still no one there to talk to about them. I talk to myself, but I always know what I’m going to say. So I go to Carytown. It’s crowded, as a city street should be, with lots of shops from which I might actually buy something, but I’m just looking for conversation. I never know if I’m going to get it, but I know early on which it’s going to be. The first person I have opportunity to talk to is the bellwether. The sooner I get out after my morning coffee, the better chance I have to ignore my shyness. The conversation doesn’t start if I don’t initiate it. Some days I just can’t do that. It seems that on those days no one talks to me, either. Is it just that kind of world? or do I look like I don’t want to interact? Give me a couple more choices. On those days I want to think that if I stay out there a little while longer something will happen, but all that happens is I get home much later than I intended, feeling I’ve wasted the day, made no progress at all in my socialization, and dug myself a little deeper into my loneliness. Sounds like something I could have done at home in my pajamas.

Fear of Too Late

Caution is pregnant with danger. To fear is to validate menace. I’m afraid of much of myself. Among the many things of which I’m capable are plenty of which I wish I weren’t. Diligence is exhausting. In the big world these are not bad things that I’m trying not to do, but in the context of me I can’t afford to do them. I know where Herself lives, and it’s not far. Often, I conjure reasons to go there, but I have rules: I will do nothing that deliberately puts me in a position to encounter her. Her home is not “on the way” to anywhere else, and I cannot contrive it to be. Those are the laws and I’m the sheriff, but I’m also Ernest T. Bass. Once, and for a long time, there was no sheriff, and the laws were written in the sand. I’m grateful for the progress, just not the responsibility. I’m up to it but disappointed I have to do it. Still: progress. And it gets easier. I don’t forget that there is nothing to be gained, but I often choose not to believe it until it’s almost too late. I’m afraid of being too late.

A Tux and a Coma

The stillpoint has always eluded me. If I’ve ever been in a moment it was too brief for me to notice. There is never a time when the thoughts aren’t layered over the here and now like a clear contact paper and moving the reality to a blurry background. It’s exhausting and more than annoying, with my mind inexpertly creating the reality before me. It’s a life without peace of mind or soul. In my twenties, when my responsibilities included nothing more than work and my daily bread, I studied zen, but came only to understand it, not to live it (the perfect embodiment of any book about zen): I could only talk the talk–a shabby pretense of serenity. I could no more then than now talk myself out of my loneliness or convince myself that all I had to do was let “it” happen. How can I believe in any of that? If it’s true, put me in a tux and a coma and wake me when the love of my life shows up.

It All Comes Out the Color of Her Hair

Closer to the truth is that I’m not trying to get over Herself at all. I’m trying to savor the experience, distill it into a good thing. I’m trying to appreciate the meaning of her to me. I don’t like not feeling something when I think about her, so I conjure up a little tension. That’s what I miss. Which came first? the tension or the inspiration? Too close to call. Of the many moments and encounters with her, the fond ones are the far fewer than the tense ones. Sometimes they were the same. But I had only a few months to compile those before I drove the train off the track with, “You fascinate me.” I have spent much more time with the tension since then. Reminiscing on the fond moments–when the playfulness dancing in her eyes was an invitation to my grandest hopes–warms and softens my bitterness, but the proximity and quantity of the tension chills and hardens again. And here I am now, with a weary, uneasy truce, trying to reconcile and understand, trying to keep both the good and bad at bay, to keep passion’s colors from tinting the black-and-white of my comprehension. Then it all comes out the color of her hair.

In There Somewhere Is Self-Forgiveness

Herself wasn’t what I had hoped, whatever that was. Hope jumped into the confusion and marshalled the minions to subdue reality while my mind replaced it. I wanted someone to care about me. She was not that someone, though I would not let myself believe it, as if she were my last hope, the last woman in the kingdom on whose foot to try the glass slipper. But I was a beastly prince. I had never invested so much of myself in another and never been returned a bigger fool. I couldn’t imagine a greater unfairness. I determined to exact justice from her and made myself the bigger fool and the most beastly prince until she left me with no one to hang my delusions upon. Sifting through them as through Charles Foster Kane’s treasures is a penance but moreso a responsibility–to myself if not to her. In there somewhere is self-forgiveness.

Where Is It to Start With?

What I want and what I can give don’t balance out. That’s what stops me making any moves toward trying to date. I want so much that I would begrudge the giving-back. It’s always been, “Where’s mine? What’s in it for me?” So desperate to find what’s mine that I couldn’t be bothered with anyone else’s. How I can know what I need and not care if anyone else gets it, I don’t understand. I do care. But how can I give what I feel I don’t have? I wanted a lot from Herself, and I offered her nothing. Do I have any more for anyone else? Do I have it for myself? It’s the asking for it I shouldn’t bother about, isn’t it? Except, how do I both give it to and take it from myself? Where is it to start with?

Tomorrow’s Not Good for Me

Thinking about Herself doesn’t elicit what it used to. Sometimes it elicits nothing at all. I don’t like it. I could always count on feeling something and having something to say about it. Frustration was the inspiration of my reluctant muse. Now…I have difficulty conjuring her face. She’s gone but I still look for her. I need nothing from her. I don’t even ask the questions anymore. She was the face of what I wanted, though it was only a mask I had put on her. I wonder what she looks like without it, but it will only be when I stop wondering–when I stop caring–that I will know. It will be the time I look at her without wishing things had been different between us, the time I’m not even looking for her. As clinically cautious as I can be with these words, were I to see her tomorrow I would have no control over what I might say. Tomorrow’s not good for me. I’m just not inspired.