Something’s up. This has gone on for too long, this divine timing, if that’s what we are going to call it. Wait. Let’s not call it that, because that’s just too easy. What the hell is it when you’re lying on your couch, blood moving through your hopeless veins only because it has to, and then your son calls you on the phone? That is God getting up from his desk and reaching down to clock his universe a little. This…this is the same God who is putting me through all of this walking-the-edge bullshit so, how do I reconcile the meeting of his goodness and his fuckery here in my own miserable self? Shouldn’t I explode, or dissolve into a singularity. Give me one good sentence, just one you motherfucker. I am in line at the grocery store and instead of letting my brain leak into my phone, I pull out a recipe card with a Cormac McCarthy bit from "The Road," that I know by heart but sometimes need a reboot:
“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could…” Is this a waste of time? I love his writing so much. Could I write one line as good as his? “…You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculite patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”
“…tell me about despair, yours and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile, the world goes on…” Mary Oliver, " Wild Geese." Please tell me you know this.
I am so filled with anger.
I voted this morning, because I still live in this world.
“The eye turned to the fire gave no light and he closed it with his thumb and sat by her and put his hand upon her bloodied forehead and closed his own eyes that he could see her running in the mountains, running in the starlight where the grass was wet and the sun’s coming as yet had not undone the rich matrix of creatures passed in the night before her. Deer and hare and dove and groundvole all richly empaneled on the air for her delight, all nations of the possible world ordained by God of which she was one among and not separate from. Where she ran the cries of the coyotes clapped shut as if a door had closed upon them and all was fear and marvel.” Cormac McCarthy, "The Crossing." P. 127 Oh, this beauty goes on. There is more, and it moves me every time.
There is no quiet here. Road noise sidles in through open windows like someone unappealing cutting in at a dance. I figured that I wouldn’t eat today. Why bother? I am hating this existence, but my son called–and isn’t my duty, my heartfelt duty to stop this crazy train?
Pull yourself up.
Pull yourself up.
Pull yourself up.
It’s all you. Every. Single. Therapist has eluded to the “Me” that has to do this. Stop looking for another, a pal, a shoulder. Balance on your own, out of reach of the barre...
Who are you going to send this to on a Friday afternoon? “Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. “ Well aren’t you precious, citing Mary Oliver! ...Some words are my scripture. Some authors, my angels. Thank God for my angels here in this surreal space, but...
Fine. And you’re right. And fine, I won’t add more quotes, but McCarthy, Oliver, and Salinger are excellent pens.
You haven’t quoted Salinger yet.
Time. Give me time. I think it’s part of my New York heritage that I am so drawn to him. “God, if you want to speak through me, now would be a good time.”
How do you know I’m not ALWAYS speaking through you?
How can you...when things are so... “The works of God made manifest? Do we really need more victims to remind us that we’re all victims? Is this some sort of parade for which a conquering army shines up its terrible guns and rolls then down the streets for people to see? Do we need blind men stumbling about, and little flamefaced children, to remind us what God can–and will–do?” Annie Dillard, "Holy the Firm."
My heart is fully open, and I am a child, that child, the one I knew from the inside. Stop reminding me to “load my fucking offers.” I have made it to 4:36 and I deserve an award instead of your disdain. That’s not the right word, “disdain.” “Dismissiveness,” is better. I’m not even worth judgement. I am not Buddha. I am a paradox, because part of me is fury, and the other part is love.
Why the fury?
Oh, because of all of the trusting. We don’t have to go over that now. I’m embarrassed at how much of a sucker I was, but you know that already. I think sometimes cells need more time to expunge the garbage authentically, you know, versus the face on my head saying the words; there’s a deep clean necessary. God, I’m such a freak. I feel like a freak when I go out into public. I barely hang on. If you knew how hard it's been to not collapse and wail. Pisses me off because I tend to rush. If I could get a good hold…er, if this field of love would settle in–it has the power, I feel that I could walk differently in the world.
“It loved to happen.” Marcus Aurelius, but I saw it in "Franny & Zooey."
Where does the fury go? What happens to it when you’re in the field?
Oh, it sublimates into the better energy. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with fury. I didn’t say I was violent. Fury, for me, is a pure welling up of , jeeze, ‘anger’ isn’t the right word. Fury…is the energetic expression of full realization of the blocking of potential. It's the super hero version of grief, complete with fancy boots. There’s a connection with nature in there, powerful, grounded energy like it was rooting for you…me, but things went awry, for no fault of my own, except…except for my blind trusting. Here is a world where cynicism is a right skill, apparently. When your divorce notice shows up in your email like it had no meaning, weight to it at all; could have been spam. Screw that.
To be a creature–a creation with this outlook, this perspective on things–the insanity of it all, is a mark against the maker, don’t you think?
You’re having a hard time right now.
When am I not having a hard time? Days are absurd; I am stuck. Life shouldn’t be this hard, should it? SHOULD IT?