Lately, I try not to think too much. I prefer to focus on one minor task- like picking a fragile hole in the frayed lace curtains beside my bed. I concentrate so hard that the flurry of thoughts that usually centre around you, ebb away into a delicious nothingness.
Otherwise I think so hard about certain points in the past that it blocks out everything else. My mind dead bolts the door to new intruding, thoughts and shines a solitary light onto a particular memory.
I do not keep these tricks up my sleeves. I keep them in the warm palm of my hand. They are frequently needed. I think of you far too much.
Today I pluck a particular memory from the corner of my mind. I like to picture my mind as a field, full of flowers and smelling sweet. Daisies are my favourite, my field is full of them.
My mind is actually nothing like this. But I have become adept at fooling myself.
I got rid of my virginity as soon as I could. The sooner lost, the better I figured. His name was Jason Bridges and what happened between us was as passionate and fullfilling as a half empty cup of water. I don't regret it happening the way it did, I just wish I had a better excuse for it. No one in their right mind wants to throw their virginty away like a half-arsed maths exam that didn't deserve to be marked.
Norah said it changed me, but I think she wanted me to be different.
I think about this Jason Bridges memory. I roll it across my tongue daring myself to say it out loud just to hear something. Jason Bridges with his adolescent hair that smelt of motor oil and school hallways. Jason Bridges with his hands that felt so out of place against my back. Not like yours.
And the wall comes down. I thought about you. Fuck.
I bury this memory in the soft dirt of my mind field. Mine field it seems.
You are the mine- I am the unsuspecting civilian.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
# 5. Uncertainties.
On the whole, I like to imagine you as happy. You do not wear the face - a foreboding mask of fury and hurt - that I turned my back to, on what has proven to be our final encounter. Instead, I picture the jovial expression that grins lop-sidedly out at me from a photo we once took of ourselves. It is deftly hidden in my underwear draw, beneath the lacy pastels of apple green and lavender that you were once so familiar with.
I picture the strong contours of your jaw, it's resolute cleft a home to the copious amounts of ash blonde stubble that you went to such lengths to maintain. I would admonish you for it, but secretly admired the animalistic ease with which the hair seemed to sprout. It was mature and suave, while we ourselves were not. I look at that picture of us and imagine myself running my hand over your cheek, the way I did so often in the old days, and for a moment - just a moment - everything is bearable. But then I think of someone who isn't me doing the same thing...I think of her nibbling on your chin...making you chuckle...having that same exclusivity to the characteristic fissure that I loved so much, and then I can't think about you anymore.
I save the photo for rainy days, but when the sky clouds over, menacingly grumbling like our old yellow tractor, and I find myself confined within walls that hum with the memory of you, I have a change of heart. It is on days like this that I do not wish you well. Instead, I imagine you into an extremity of all the things I am feeling myself. Some days, you crouch over your knees, hunched into a slovenly ball that rocks back and forth to the rhythmic whisper of my name. Other days, I am even less merciful in my mental renditions of your misery...you have no home to crouch in, and instead, cry out for me, your hardened hands tearing at greasy bedraggled hair, from every back-way and street corner. Sometimes I even scan the leaf-choked gutters as I walk through town, fancifully hoping to catch you pining for me so hopelessly.
I don't mean to be spiteful. Truth is, I miss you, some days with a need that takes precedence over the mundane eccentricities one must execute to keep oneself alive. I forget to eat. I don't sleep. I yearn for you, and it gives me comfort to envision you yearning for me with the same self-destructive desperation.
How did we let things get so out of hand? I recant. I already know.
But we couldn't have helped it happening, you know, and even if we could have, we didn't. You didn't know what you were asking...begging me to do. Or not to do.
I said things that I meant to mean, but didn't, and you said things that you meant but didn't mean to say. We both felt mortally wounded, and though it wasn't the doing of the blown glass paperweight I threw at you - the one my grandmother gave me at graduation - nor the wooden chair you overturned that I later tripped over and broke my arm on - in a way, we both were.
And nobody even knew about it.
Well, nobody except for Norah. Darling Norah. At least you were here for that, when she...but I can't bear to think about that. I wrote her this afternoon...talking to her has always been the next best thing to talking to you.
I just wish that one of you would talk back.
But wishing isn't getting.
I picture the strong contours of your jaw, it's resolute cleft a home to the copious amounts of ash blonde stubble that you went to such lengths to maintain. I would admonish you for it, but secretly admired the animalistic ease with which the hair seemed to sprout. It was mature and suave, while we ourselves were not. I look at that picture of us and imagine myself running my hand over your cheek, the way I did so often in the old days, and for a moment - just a moment - everything is bearable. But then I think of someone who isn't me doing the same thing...I think of her nibbling on your chin...making you chuckle...having that same exclusivity to the characteristic fissure that I loved so much, and then I can't think about you anymore.
I save the photo for rainy days, but when the sky clouds over, menacingly grumbling like our old yellow tractor, and I find myself confined within walls that hum with the memory of you, I have a change of heart. It is on days like this that I do not wish you well. Instead, I imagine you into an extremity of all the things I am feeling myself. Some days, you crouch over your knees, hunched into a slovenly ball that rocks back and forth to the rhythmic whisper of my name. Other days, I am even less merciful in my mental renditions of your misery...you have no home to crouch in, and instead, cry out for me, your hardened hands tearing at greasy bedraggled hair, from every back-way and street corner. Sometimes I even scan the leaf-choked gutters as I walk through town, fancifully hoping to catch you pining for me so hopelessly.
I don't mean to be spiteful. Truth is, I miss you, some days with a need that takes precedence over the mundane eccentricities one must execute to keep oneself alive. I forget to eat. I don't sleep. I yearn for you, and it gives me comfort to envision you yearning for me with the same self-destructive desperation.
How did we let things get so out of hand? I recant. I already know.
But we couldn't have helped it happening, you know, and even if we could have, we didn't. You didn't know what you were asking...begging me to do. Or not to do.
I said things that I meant to mean, but didn't, and you said things that you meant but didn't mean to say. We both felt mortally wounded, and though it wasn't the doing of the blown glass paperweight I threw at you - the one my grandmother gave me at graduation - nor the wooden chair you overturned that I later tripped over and broke my arm on - in a way, we both were.
And nobody even knew about it.
Well, nobody except for Norah. Darling Norah. At least you were here for that, when she...but I can't bear to think about that. I wrote her this afternoon...talking to her has always been the next best thing to talking to you.
I just wish that one of you would talk back.
But wishing isn't getting.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
# 4 A Letter to Norah.
I had the dream again. I wish you were here to talk it over with. I need your calming voice of reason. Jack misses you like crazy too. He pretends he doesn't know who I'm talking about when I bring you up (forgive me if that breaks your heart.) but I hear him, awake in the middle of the night picking out the chords to that single song you taught him. God, I'm fucking sick of that song Norah! I wish you'd come back and teach him another one, he wishes that too, don't worry. When will you be back?? Evan says hi by the way- he never pretends to forget who you are!
So how is life in the 'new city'? (I daren't speak it's name!) Remember that book we read in year 9? I imagine you bashing around out there like that girl, completely lost but loving it at the same time. Discovering a whole new life. A life without us small town hicks.(Hah!)
Our tree came down yesterday. A big storm swept through (Yep, summer has settled in.) and tore it apart mostly. Somehow it made me need to write you. Is it a bad sign Norah?
I found your old blue scarf still tied to that branch. I'd send it to you, but I can't. I've propped the whole branch up in my room. I salvaged it as the boys dismantled the rest of the tree. Chopping it into nothingness. My room smells like eucalyptus now. I fall asleep thinking about the "good old days" (how tragic of me!) when we would sit up in the tree for hours, waiting for someone to walk beneath us so we could bombard them with perfectly aimed water balloons.
I wish I was away in the real world with you. I wish I was anywhere but the real world actually. My real world atleast. But enough about me, what do you think of me? (hah!) I hope you're okay out there Norah. Write soon- tell me everything. I need something, anything, everything to fill these mundane days.
yours til Niagra Falls, (Can you tell what I've been reading??)
B.
So how is life in the 'new city'? (I daren't speak it's name!) Remember that book we read in year 9? I imagine you bashing around out there like that girl, completely lost but loving it at the same time. Discovering a whole new life. A life without us small town hicks.(Hah!)
Our tree came down yesterday. A big storm swept through (Yep, summer has settled in.) and tore it apart mostly. Somehow it made me need to write you. Is it a bad sign Norah?
I found your old blue scarf still tied to that branch. I'd send it to you, but I can't. I've propped the whole branch up in my room. I salvaged it as the boys dismantled the rest of the tree. Chopping it into nothingness. My room smells like eucalyptus now. I fall asleep thinking about the "good old days" (how tragic of me!) when we would sit up in the tree for hours, waiting for someone to walk beneath us so we could bombard them with perfectly aimed water balloons.
I wish I was away in the real world with you. I wish I was anywhere but the real world actually. My real world atleast. But enough about me, what do you think of me? (hah!) I hope you're okay out there Norah. Write soon- tell me everything. I need something, anything, everything to fill these mundane days.
yours til Niagra Falls, (Can you tell what I've been reading??)
B.
Friday, December 12, 2008
# 3.
I once ran away from here.
It would flow to narrate that I fled into the darkness after a fusillade of bitter words on automatic fire, silver-tipped with truth for effect. After the parachuting of loaded syllables upon deaf ears, or perhaps, after the slamming of doors that rattled the lopsided taper upon the mantle, clumsily crafted by Evan's own knobbly hands.
However, such a flow would soon be stilted by subtle inconsistencies, and laced with a considerable undercurrent of dishonesty.
When I faded into the tall grass surrounding our sprawling property, the homestead golden in the half-light, it was because I was intent on preserving things exactly as they had been that day. I was convinced that if I left things on a high note, the soprano would just have to hold true until I came back.
The idea came free with a stunning pair of rose-coloured glasses.
It was not a noteworthy day, or at least, not then, anyway. Nothing very particular had interrupted the relay of each hour, one to the next, and the next to another, marking the longevity of those of us who have a fondness for existing. Breakfast was quiet, midday even moreso. I scrubbed the same front landing, with the same pine detergent, my calloused hands unchanged.
But in the afternoon, Evan had crossed our shabby green threshold with a smile on his face that, for once, extended to his eyes. Better yet, the adorable dimples either side of his stubbled cheeks had lasted the evening through - a definite anomaly. I drank in the sight of his good cheer greedily, noting with ill-concealed glee that for the first time in an age, he had paint on his hands.
This made me happy. It was a day of contentedness...we see so few of them here.
With this thought in mind, I stole away into the fields, the lush foliage consuming quickly the pock-marked earth left behind by so many years of thirst.
I took nothing with me. My worldly possessions, though few in number, belonged to the life I was running away from. The satisfaction I beheld them with was picturesque only within the four walls that housed me so generously in the years following my birth.
I only lasted the one night.
I rested with my back to the grass, staring up at a blanket of nothingness that I wanted to curl beneath and run from at the same time. The infinity of silver-specked sky frightened me. I think it was the freedom.
Sleep evaded me. I am in the habit of running my hands along the oaken headboard of my gnarled wooden bed. Without the feel on the knots beneath my fingertips, so comfortably familiar; without enacting the memory of your hand upon mine, guiding it over the carving in the lathed post as we dozed cheek to cheek in the twilight, I felt desperately lost in the world.
It was then that I realised I could never leave my recollections to deliquesce within the confines of that house.
Not without seeing you again.
It would flow to narrate that I fled into the darkness after a fusillade of bitter words on automatic fire, silver-tipped with truth for effect. After the parachuting of loaded syllables upon deaf ears, or perhaps, after the slamming of doors that rattled the lopsided taper upon the mantle, clumsily crafted by Evan's own knobbly hands.
However, such a flow would soon be stilted by subtle inconsistencies, and laced with a considerable undercurrent of dishonesty.
When I faded into the tall grass surrounding our sprawling property, the homestead golden in the half-light, it was because I was intent on preserving things exactly as they had been that day. I was convinced that if I left things on a high note, the soprano would just have to hold true until I came back.
The idea came free with a stunning pair of rose-coloured glasses.
It was not a noteworthy day, or at least, not then, anyway. Nothing very particular had interrupted the relay of each hour, one to the next, and the next to another, marking the longevity of those of us who have a fondness for existing. Breakfast was quiet, midday even moreso. I scrubbed the same front landing, with the same pine detergent, my calloused hands unchanged.
But in the afternoon, Evan had crossed our shabby green threshold with a smile on his face that, for once, extended to his eyes. Better yet, the adorable dimples either side of his stubbled cheeks had lasted the evening through - a definite anomaly. I drank in the sight of his good cheer greedily, noting with ill-concealed glee that for the first time in an age, he had paint on his hands.
This made me happy. It was a day of contentedness...we see so few of them here.
With this thought in mind, I stole away into the fields, the lush foliage consuming quickly the pock-marked earth left behind by so many years of thirst.
I took nothing with me. My worldly possessions, though few in number, belonged to the life I was running away from. The satisfaction I beheld them with was picturesque only within the four walls that housed me so generously in the years following my birth.
I only lasted the one night.
I rested with my back to the grass, staring up at a blanket of nothingness that I wanted to curl beneath and run from at the same time. The infinity of silver-specked sky frightened me. I think it was the freedom.
Sleep evaded me. I am in the habit of running my hands along the oaken headboard of my gnarled wooden bed. Without the feel on the knots beneath my fingertips, so comfortably familiar; without enacting the memory of your hand upon mine, guiding it over the carving in the lathed post as we dozed cheek to cheek in the twilight, I felt desperately lost in the world.
It was then that I realised I could never leave my recollections to deliquesce within the confines of that house.
Not without seeing you again.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
# 2.
Summer does offer me one timid reprieve. The beach.
It's gloriously cool water and golden warm sand. Nothing feels so good as rolling down that last stretch of road, watching the water get closer with the salty air sliding in through the open windows and the loud music rolling out of the tinny car speakers.
If only I could hold my breath and live submerged beneath that inky blue water, what a simple way to fill those daunting 7 months.
I'm kidding myself when I try to tell myself things will be all better then. But how else do we get by?
I remember once, early morning on the beach standing in the salty spray that glittered my lips and watching a tiny butterfly dancing through the air around me. I felt something that day, but I can't remember what it was. A feeling or a fleeting thought. It escaped me all too soon though and oh, how I wish I could get it back. It seems profound...or it would if I had held onto it. All I have now is the image, burned into my winter-craving mind.
The mountains and the ocean. Both so different and yet my complex heart yearns for them both.And then there is our ramshackle house, 2 hours from the sea and 2 hours from the hills- perfectly placed to make getting out a hard task. This house seems to tie me down lately. I want so desperately to escape it, but it has me by the jugular. Family tends to do that.
I hate dependency, it makes being independent so difficult.
And yet I can't just uproot and fly away. The boys need me now more than ever. Evan especially. His facade is so transparent- a not-so-tough guy playing with the big boys.
I hate Them for what happened. For what They left me with. I am in no way capable of running things here. And since when is it okay for parents to spread their own wings? Once the family is in place, the parentals have to stick with it until the children fly the coop. It's the rules and rules, despite what is oft' said, are not made to be broken. That's why I am still here in this house, even though I'd rather be anywhere else.
It's gloriously cool water and golden warm sand. Nothing feels so good as rolling down that last stretch of road, watching the water get closer with the salty air sliding in through the open windows and the loud music rolling out of the tinny car speakers.
If only I could hold my breath and live submerged beneath that inky blue water, what a simple way to fill those daunting 7 months.
I'm kidding myself when I try to tell myself things will be all better then. But how else do we get by?
I remember once, early morning on the beach standing in the salty spray that glittered my lips and watching a tiny butterfly dancing through the air around me. I felt something that day, but I can't remember what it was. A feeling or a fleeting thought. It escaped me all too soon though and oh, how I wish I could get it back. It seems profound...or it would if I had held onto it. All I have now is the image, burned into my winter-craving mind.
The mountains and the ocean. Both so different and yet my complex heart yearns for them both.And then there is our ramshackle house, 2 hours from the sea and 2 hours from the hills- perfectly placed to make getting out a hard task. This house seems to tie me down lately. I want so desperately to escape it, but it has me by the jugular. Family tends to do that.
I hate dependency, it makes being independent so difficult.
And yet I can't just uproot and fly away. The boys need me now more than ever. Evan especially. His facade is so transparent- a not-so-tough guy playing with the big boys.
I hate Them for what happened. For what They left me with. I am in no way capable of running things here. And since when is it okay for parents to spread their own wings? Once the family is in place, the parentals have to stick with it until the children fly the coop. It's the rules and rules, despite what is oft' said, are not made to be broken. That's why I am still here in this house, even though I'd rather be anywhere else.
# 1 Beginnings.
I have never been one to want for things that are in any way possible. I am told that this makes me a difficult person. An interesting concept.
Difficult. By all accounts, this penchant for impossibility paints me with the same brush - a vibrant red in colour so as to prevent camoflage, of course - as a purple-faced child in the depths of a tantrum.
I am the screw that has seized to the iron...the adulterous marriage...the breech pregnancy...the left hand writing awkwardly.
This is implied with an insincere jocularity that I uncomfortably despise. One can never comfortably hate something that insinuates inferiority.
Today I long for snow. The element of ludicrity in this is that it is summer.
The others think me strange. They enjoy the weather...the air that breathes like molasses and curdles at the touch. They don't seem to mind the stench; the sweat that seeps from every slackened pore to butter them up for a mid-morning frying. The heat is always unbearable by ten.
Anything can be braved for weather that permits swimming and barbeques, they tell me.
I hate it.
Right now, I am thinking about the large, weathered thermometer hanging up on the side of the garage. Sometimes the boys use it to test the temperature of the pool, or when they're a little drunker, of their beers or their mephitic armpits. But me, I'm just thinking about how much I'd like the fickle, red taper to collapse upon itself.
Snow. The mere thought of the word makes me ripple with satisfaction.
There is something positively heavenly about mountains. The very idea of ascending a monolith so obviously susceptible to a humanly transmogrified nature is thrilling to me. But more than that, I think the element of ice and I are far more suited to one another...huddling in an open chairlift at the centre of a tunnel of snow-capped trees seems to please the perpetual ache I am yet to cure myelf of.
It is tantalizing. And alas, it lies out of my reach...is still 7 months away.
And 7 months is such a long, long time.
Difficult. By all accounts, this penchant for impossibility paints me with the same brush - a vibrant red in colour so as to prevent camoflage, of course - as a purple-faced child in the depths of a tantrum.
I am the screw that has seized to the iron...the adulterous marriage...the breech pregnancy...the left hand writing awkwardly.
This is implied with an insincere jocularity that I uncomfortably despise. One can never comfortably hate something that insinuates inferiority.
Today I long for snow. The element of ludicrity in this is that it is summer.
The others think me strange. They enjoy the weather...the air that breathes like molasses and curdles at the touch. They don't seem to mind the stench; the sweat that seeps from every slackened pore to butter them up for a mid-morning frying. The heat is always unbearable by ten.
Anything can be braved for weather that permits swimming and barbeques, they tell me.
I hate it.
Right now, I am thinking about the large, weathered thermometer hanging up on the side of the garage. Sometimes the boys use it to test the temperature of the pool, or when they're a little drunker, of their beers or their mephitic armpits. But me, I'm just thinking about how much I'd like the fickle, red taper to collapse upon itself.
Snow. The mere thought of the word makes me ripple with satisfaction.
There is something positively heavenly about mountains. The very idea of ascending a monolith so obviously susceptible to a humanly transmogrified nature is thrilling to me. But more than that, I think the element of ice and I are far more suited to one another...huddling in an open chairlift at the centre of a tunnel of snow-capped trees seems to please the perpetual ache I am yet to cure myelf of.
It is tantalizing. And alas, it lies out of my reach...is still 7 months away.
And 7 months is such a long, long time.
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