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amul(f)AD came over on a lark, on an invite, for a giggle. We chatted over leftovers about all things great and terrible and tiny and needful, and then plopped down in front of my raging torrent stream to watch the last episodes of the first season of Doctor Who.
When she first moved to Chicago, there was this strange disconnect between us, and over the next months of insanity I came to realize, slower than she I suspect, that this pain we suffered came from each trying to be what we thought the other wanted us to be, while staying true to ourselves. Such a strange irony, pale and lifeless on my tongue, to say that we -- or at least, I (forever trying to expand myself into the lives of others with the language of mutuality), I realized that first while watching television with that girl who was my (formerly) Achingly Defiant.
Television was never a language between us, never a form of space we shared until pain and confusion and other, less discussed forms of turmoil robbed us of our words. As with My Ex, the only thing we had left (I, dammit, the only thing I had left) was the company; the sharing of space. As with My Ex, I sat uncomfortably next to her, wanting to understand, wanting to express, but resigned to merely watching something I wanted her to see. Each shift of her body made me painfully aware of what we were and what we had become, and I would chide her (vainly attempting to perceive my discomfort in her, if only as proof that I perceived her at all), I would chide her So restless.
But time moved on, ever the river, while I began my dreadful assumption that there were other parallels than those, between my relationship with her who I spent my 20s with, and the girl who saw me through the last tranmutive year of them. Oh, but the crucial difference! For (f)AD still has hope in the world, still believes in possibilities. Which blended sweetly with my strange cynicism, my fierce insistence that if only we could talk, things would be fine. I've spent three years now searching for some hint of communication between Christine and I, and I begin to believe that we only ever learned to talk around things.
Tangent: I renewed my lease for my apartment again. Two years, I've lived in Chicago now.
Tangent: In a car, I joke to a new friend, A friend once told me that a case of beer was more commitment than she could handle right now, and I told her "To hell with a case of beer! A six-pack of toilet paper is more than I can handle right now. That's a promise to do an awful lot of my business in just one place." But the truth is, I think I could handle a six-pack of toilet paper. Maybe not a case of beer, not yet, but, as Prefers Sacrifice once said, "Amul, you've signed the lease, so shut up and sit on the can!"
A handful of months later now, not even the end of the second season she has been here, and (f)AD and I seem to have found our way through that dark tunnel into some green place, like Pooh's Garden (not exactly the image hanging above my desk, but by the same artist). We have come to a truce of sorts, and when one or the other strays into dangerous topics, the other will simply chide, "That way leads to dark places," and merrily we will change the topic.
Perhaps, it is true, that I have not yet learned to forgive, but I have learned to cast aside for the greater good. Fifteen years I still burned from at least one refusal, though in the end I put it aside as I do this thing with (f)AD. My old swami would always berate us, "You never learn to put things down, do you?" He'd hoist a chair in his hands and cling to it like something important, getting in the way of his own feet. "Oh, I'm sorry!" he'd tell us, "I would help pick you up but my hands are full! I've got to hold on to this chair." I would laugh and cackle, so precocious at age ten, and later would run crying from the room, telling my father Put down your chair!
I've put down another chair. I've watched the season finale. I have come by the highway home, and lo it is ended. Ah, here's another good quote from Robert Frost, the one stapled across my forever, emblazoned across my Ever Important Live Journal. In three words I can sum up everything I have learned about life: It goes on.
And speaking of Frost, and highways home, and given the nature of this post, and the Freezing-low expected tomorrow, given even (if I may be so bold) the dreadful space between right- and left- wing politics, that sad marriage with the middle as their undernourished children; it is perhaps time for me to pull out an old favorite, a tradition of mine, a lovely bauble that I keep wrapped in my Secrets Box, out in plain sight.
Reluctance by Robert Frost.
When she first moved to Chicago, there was this strange disconnect between us, and over the next months of insanity I came to realize, slower than she I suspect, that this pain we suffered came from each trying to be what we thought the other wanted us to be, while staying true to ourselves. Such a strange irony, pale and lifeless on my tongue, to say that we -- or at least, I (forever trying to expand myself into the lives of others with the language of mutuality), I realized that first while watching television with that girl who was my (formerly) Achingly Defiant.
Television was never a language between us, never a form of space we shared until pain and confusion and other, less discussed forms of turmoil robbed us of our words. As with My Ex, the only thing we had left (I, dammit, the only thing I had left) was the company; the sharing of space. As with My Ex, I sat uncomfortably next to her, wanting to understand, wanting to express, but resigned to merely watching something I wanted her to see. Each shift of her body made me painfully aware of what we were and what we had become, and I would chide her (vainly attempting to perceive my discomfort in her, if only as proof that I perceived her at all), I would chide her So restless.
But time moved on, ever the river, while I began my dreadful assumption that there were other parallels than those, between my relationship with her who I spent my 20s with, and the girl who saw me through the last tranmutive year of them. Oh, but the crucial difference! For (f)AD still has hope in the world, still believes in possibilities. Which blended sweetly with my strange cynicism, my fierce insistence that if only we could talk, things would be fine. I've spent three years now searching for some hint of communication between Christine and I, and I begin to believe that we only ever learned to talk around things.
Tangent: I renewed my lease for my apartment again. Two years, I've lived in Chicago now.
Tangent: In a car, I joke to a new friend, A friend once told me that a case of beer was more commitment than she could handle right now, and I told her "To hell with a case of beer! A six-pack of toilet paper is more than I can handle right now. That's a promise to do an awful lot of my business in just one place." But the truth is, I think I could handle a six-pack of toilet paper. Maybe not a case of beer, not yet, but, as Prefers Sacrifice once said, "Amul, you've signed the lease, so shut up and sit on the can!"
A handful of months later now, not even the end of the second season she has been here, and (f)AD and I seem to have found our way through that dark tunnel into some green place, like Pooh's Garden (not exactly the image hanging above my desk, but by the same artist). We have come to a truce of sorts, and when one or the other strays into dangerous topics, the other will simply chide, "That way leads to dark places," and merrily we will change the topic.
Perhaps, it is true, that I have not yet learned to forgive, but I have learned to cast aside for the greater good. Fifteen years I still burned from at least one refusal, though in the end I put it aside as I do this thing with (f)AD. My old swami would always berate us, "You never learn to put things down, do you?" He'd hoist a chair in his hands and cling to it like something important, getting in the way of his own feet. "Oh, I'm sorry!" he'd tell us, "I would help pick you up but my hands are full! I've got to hold on to this chair." I would laugh and cackle, so precocious at age ten, and later would run crying from the room, telling my father Put down your chair!
I've put down another chair. I've watched the season finale. I have come by the highway home, and lo it is ended. Ah, here's another good quote from Robert Frost, the one stapled across my forever, emblazoned across my Ever Important Live Journal. In three words I can sum up everything I have learned about life: It goes on.
And speaking of Frost, and highways home, and given the nature of this post, and the Freezing-low expected tomorrow, given even (if I may be so bold) the dreadful space between right- and left- wing politics, that sad marriage with the middle as their undernourished children; it is perhaps time for me to pull out an old favorite, a tradition of mine, a lovely bauble that I keep wrapped in my Secrets Box, out in plain sight.
Reluctance by Robert Frost.
Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.
The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.
And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last long aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'
Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?
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no subject
Date: 12 Oct 2006 08:52 (UTC)