This Shape of Things We're In

sur·re·al (sə rē'əl, –rēl'), adj.

1. having the disorienting, hallucinatory quality of a dream; unreal; fantastic   2. the period spanning from July 2008 through January 2009, with particular focus on mid-October through early December; see also the days surrounding Christmas and the new year   3. being not-quite-sober and telling your not-quite-boyfriend that your best friend and his best friend's husband are having an affair, then watching the subsequent events unfold, not knowing what to do; finding yourself using phrases like "moral compass" in complete earnestness; finding yourself dealing with fall-out many months later and still being unsure what you should do and/or say    4. having repeated circular conversations about subjects including, but not limited to, red suitcases, the status of a relationship that has long since ended but that you are perpetuating in some ways because you are simply too raw about all of the other things going on in your life to enact the decisions you know that you need to and that would be healthier for both of you, and seats assigned at a kitchen table    5. hearing the phrase "8 to 12 months" and trying to picture what your life will be like at that point, hoping that it will be much the same. well, perhaps with more positive things thrown in for good measure    6. watching your job get parceled out before your eyes and being forced to attend meeting after meeting to weigh in    7. realizing that there's a lot more that you could add to this list, but that you don't have time because you need to work since your dead-end job hasn't been parceled out quite yet    8. realizing that you made this list in the first place   sur·re'al·ly, adv. —sur·re·al'i·ty (–al'i tē), n.

Insomnia

Easing myself to sleep, but you won't
let me. You, siren who keeps calling me back, holding my wrist.
And I obey, letting hours pass,
too much wine, thinking

beside me is too far. And, yet, you remain clever,
too close to dream of me.

I ache, you dream, but only of indian summers and nighttime
when it's at its most aggressive, pressing down, the air growing crisp.
You dream, grow wistful, woozy,
as if the alcohol's in you, instead. You wouldn't recognize me,

not in your sleep.

You sleep soundly, and we grow further and further apart.
I watch the shadows, formed moonlight. No courage.
The sound of your breathing bears down.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

It's been a long weekend. Far too long.

Perhaps it's the 30 or so hours of small talk that I've made over the past 3 days, the several panicked phone calls, misprints contended with and the countless boxes that I've unpacked/shuffled/repacked/maimed myself with. Call it over-dramatizing and/or exhaustion, if you like. Whatever it is, I'm not inclined to do much else but sit and decompress at the moment.

For me, this means revisiting old favorites. And, sharing them.

So, another quote below. It's a good one, I promise.

"Official histories, news stories surround us daily, but the events of art reach us too late, travel languorously like messages in a bottle.

Only the best art can order the chaotic tumble of events. Only the best can realign chaos to suggest both the chaos and order it will become.

Within two years of 1066, work began on the Bayeux Tapestry, Constantin the African brought Greek medicine to the western world. The chaos and tumble of events. The first sentence of every novel should be: 'Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human.' Meander if you want to get to town."

-Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion

Absolutely Alice

And the Gryphon added "Come, let's hear some of your adventures."

"I could tell you my adventures—beginning from this morning," said Alice a little timidly; "but it's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then."

-Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

[untitled]

I am not the kind of girl you'd take home
to your mother. Had she seen me last night,
she would not have approved. I wandered
glassy-eyed, voice as smoky as the bourbon I sipped,
cracking from laughing too loud,
trying to get you to notice me.

What would she say? And
would you listen? Or just tilt your head back, smile,
let light catch in your hair?

Did you even see? Or, were you too busy
talking film with the woman at the bar?
Too red lips forming a question mark on her glass,
fingerprints leaving it grease-streaked.
You probably thought she was beautiful, and

I'm sure she was.
Would you light her cigarette? Lecture
her about the dangers of carbon monoxide? The thinning
ozone, how it's causing the polar ice caps to melt? The
rising cost of living and flour and gas and, well, everything?
Is that what beauty is?

If you stare at the sun too long,
is all you see blinding whiteness?
I bet you could get some great pictures.
Not like the one on your first license that
you won't show to anyone.
Do you have your passport?
I want to travel the world and
see far-flung places so that

I have stories to tell.

and, one more for the road

lullaby

I was up tonight, you
on top of me
the steady in and out
of your breathing
pressing down.

The stars were out in full force.
I watched them, and
you. Watched as you tugged at
the blanket, leaving me with less
and less.

Only, you didn’t watch
back. And, you always tell me to
ease in, but
I don’t believe in moderation.

So I watched. I am not so arrogant
as to think that
you should think only of me,

but, you should

at least occasionally, maybe
while you
sleep.

Stay with me, wide eyed and
insomniac. I don’t smile much these days.
Maybe its just lack of sleep, but
I’m taking that as a sign
of something.

From the vault

I'm hoping to get inspired to really, really start writing again.

In the mean, here is one more recent discovery:


Summer of Sam

It's an old photo, the beginnings of their
collective history.

Can you tell what I'm holding, he asks.
I think a law book, think this is when he passed the Bar,
think it's the Summer of Sam
when he would ask her to pick him up— Main Street, Flushing—
despite her long brown hair and mounting fears.
So does she.

Of course, I remember it wrong, having
never been there. Having not even been a thought
to them.

It is my fault—their child—for refreshing her incorrect memory.

I see that now;
See how I've stepped in, disrputing the chronology.

It's a checkbook, he says. I was buying
your mother her engagement ring.

He cracks a joke
about his generosity. And,
he is generous.

I am not, with my false memories
of events I
have not witnessed.

They are so young, and
they are smiling
so broadly.

He, with his checkbook,
his first major purchase.
Later, more will follow:
mortgages, children, college educations;
the buying of a life.

And, she, gazing forward
with eyes burning, fierce. As dark
as her long chestnut hair.

Later, she will cut it, shorter
and shorter,
dying it, lighter
and lighter. Trading
cosmetics for youth. Seeking
the protection she lacked
so many years prior.