"We are always getting ready to live, but never living." -Emerson
i am feeling it so acutely these past hours, the hours alone without joel.
i feel it when i drive in the forested darkness, tice's music loud enough for the heavens to participate...chills and visions head-lighting the asphalt.
i feel it when i finally make myself go to bed after struggling with all the chores i seriously cannot muster up the desire to do. when no one else is there, it's so hard for me to care about the house. and this makes me wonder, how much of who i am and what i do is because of my role in my marriage. so i plant my succulents instead of doing the four-day old pile of dishes. i leave my clothes on the bathroom floor and don't put away my shoes...but all the while wondering why i don't feel this way when i am being a wife...and then floods of questions and gratitude and then, the most acute missing of my husband hushes me towards bed.
i watch an episode of My So-Called Life in bed, and weep through the whole thing.
i fall asleep, surrounded by pillows and the cold, empty sheets. release the grief pressing upon me...in the form of salt and water...wondering how i have allowed myself to be so consumed with stupid things.
i wonder at the miracle of music, art, books. glory in how art, and often only art, can bring me back to myself again. tice's album, a show, a photograph, a word....the only things that stab this thick shell (which i love about myself - but which is also often hard to penetrate) and remind me that indeed, i must be living. look, soul, look at how deeply i feel it!
i sometimes feel it in spring and fall - like plath says - when nature convinces us we are as young as we ever were (not exact quote). but when does it all start?
i want to grab my life like a snow-globe and point to the parts where i lived.
i want to shake it and demand that its snowflakes are the moments when i finally grasped it...the direction,
the divine curse'd destiny that
eats
my
worn out
soul
like leaves gnawed into gaping, cavernous holes by mr. caterpillar.
only unlike him, i never seem to fully emerge from the metamorphosis.
"when does it start?" i scream.
"when do i get to LIVE?!!!!!!"
i wept for me last night, this morning, today. if i don't, no one will - not because they don't want to, but because they simply cannot. i am the only human who knows me so well - and i have a responsibility to attend its dramatic performance.
i wept because i have no art.
i wept because i have no silver.
i wept because i have no more music.
i wept because i have no eye or hands.
i wept because i have no remarkable worldly beauty.
i wept because without these arts, i cannot possibly have lived or enriched other's lives as they enrich mine.
i wept because i have only me to work with.
i wept because i think that's remarkable.
because of all of this weeping and pondering, i was up until 2am.
when i walked to work again today two hours after my normal start time, i saw my building as i descended into downtown. that one stationary structure in which i have spent 4,160 hours of my god-given breath, and for what? do i live now? is it okay to not live for a while so you can live more fully later?
i pray for the days to end, the weeks to fly by in a flash towards the weekends - but all of a sudden, weeks and months have passed, and i am 30. have i lived? have i really grabbed it and looked at it for all the beauty, for all the nonsense, for all the damn'ed pain?!
and if i have, tell me,
how
do
i
KNOW?
and then i want to slow the weeks and days - but if i do, THEN will i live? only if i feel every moment profoundly? even the moments of boredom and drudgery? fie.
my heart pounds, my palms sweat.
i want to grab it.
i feel it so acutely.
i just weep.
i see something simple and funny.
i must capture.
i mean it...today, i really have to.
it's what i randomly grabbed for breakfast, lunch, and afternoon snack.
comment amusant, non?
"Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
~Shakespeare (from MacBeth)
very acutely yours,
crm
9 comments:
you would think no one in the world could relate to these deep, singular feelings you express. in a way, perhaps i do not and cannot, because "you are the only human who knows [you] so well" as you so truthfully state.
i will say then, that in my own way i do relate...if anything, to the "release [of] the grief pressing upon me in the form of salt and water" and the great, unbearable, yet also beautiful pressure from within that comes from the ache of distance.
it's meager comfort i offer, if any comfort at all. simply know: you are NOT alone enough not to be seen and loved; but you ARE alone enough to have shot off into the night sky of my mind like a zephyr, like only you could ever do.
(the balance of alone-ness...the perpetual quest of the introvert.)
kjk - i am comforted by a a great many things...and nothing is "wrong" today or lately - but yes...these thoughts, this life, i just want some sort of check to see if i am really doing it.
and i guess i am tired of it being pain.
i don't feel alone...
the night sky of your mind must surely be shining some bright nebulla into mine.
Some woman today asked me if I were wearing a wig? That's one for the books. So, is that my great art? My hair looked so damn good, it had to be fake. What a shit-sack of a day.
TREE.
GOD YOU ARE FUNNY. I died. I smiled...so not so shitty anymore.
TE ADORO MI HERMANA.
Can we drink together? coffee, tea, tequila?
your life is one I have aspired to. If you're not living, I'm fucked.
And I think maybe it must be pain that tells us we live. Because without it I always forget joy. Sort of like how skunk cabbage tells us to pick roses instead. I am more than willing to be wrong.
B-yes. i prefer alchohol or tea.
my life is not one to aspire to - it's YOUR life to uncover that you aspire to, but it's easier to see mine objectively.
also, i kick lots of ass. that's why.
"i'm more than willing to be wrong."
and that's why the YOU is much more worthy to aspire to...b/c I am the most UNTEACHABLE creature god created.
besides the sloth.
As someone who has been missing her husband for 35 years (ha), I can understand the not-bothering-to-do-household-chores-for-oneself thing. I made some decisions to live better because I'm worth it (thanks L'Oreal) like not eating ramen noodles for dinner. Like being fairly tidy. Like using a teapot even when it's only me. Other things I can't muster up the will to do, because it feels like giving up and jinxing my future: like buying a proper set of dishes for example.
But often I think it's much easier to be on your own when it's your life because, fancy dishes or not, you do learn to make do and develop strategies - it's harder when there's an Other Person Shaped space in your life that is supposed to be filled with a Particular Person.
Oh, my dear Candace. How I feel the weight of your thoughts and emotions today.
I wept because you wept.
I think you (of anyone I know) have experienced life and tasted it to the most. I don't think that you would be so worried that you have not done so unless you are doing it b/c it's something your soul will not let you ignore. And sometimes you want so much to have what is at the end of the tunnel: the beautiful refined diamond (to use a gross analogy). But you are still in the tunnel, still being refined.
And I also don't think that you will ever feel you have "arrived" at life. For if you do, that is the moment you stop living.
And I too can SO relate to the not doing my "daily duty" when husband is out of town. But e.louise is right: I should continue to do it because I'm worth it. My sanity, the cleanliness of my mind is worth it. And sometimes the most or the best thing we can do for ourselves is the dishes.
I wish you restful sleep tonight and a light chest.
d-
what wise words...you make a good point that is very true of me. that i crave to be cognizant of my living is proof enough of life indeed.
and the arrival of it would really be the end of living.
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