'the more you know who you are, and what you want to be, the less you let things excite you'
“Do you even want to be married to me?” It's a fair question.
I tell him the truth, which is not surprising, but probably part of the problem. “I don't really care.” I hesitate, before explaining. “I think everyone makes a bigger deal out of it than they should. All I want is, in the end, to have made more lives better than I've fucked up. I just don't think it probably matters that much if I'm married to you or not.”
I have been thinking lately about 'M.A.S.H.', that inane game all children play, and about the absurdity of the choices we construct for ourselves. Who teaches us that game? Mansion, apartment, shack or house. Movie star, doctor, homeless or teacher. Two kids, twenty kids, no kids or three. Dog, cat, flying squirrel or hamster. Good god, you can settle the whole story of your life on a piece of notebook paper!
“So is this it? We're done? You want our marriage to be over?” he asks, the space between the words dripping with the stagnant sweat of utter frustration.
“I didn't say that.” I say calmly. “I use words very precisely. You shouldn't quote me if you don't remember what I said. Your premises are wrong.” I know the calm is disturbing, but I can't help it. I think of a perfectly still pond, where you can throw stones, and occasionally one skips in kind of a cute and interesting way, but eventually, like all the others, it just sinks.
“Fine. What did you say? You never wanted to be married?”
He is wrong again. I wouldn't have said that, because it's not true.
“You're a fucking idiot.” I tell him, placid as ever.
It is silent. The eye of the storm, or the swallowing of the stone.
One breath, two, three. A fourth.
“You're mean. You're a cruel person, and a terrible human being.” He says it, even though he doesn't believe it. I have been working for an hour to deserve it, and now that I have finally earned the condemnation, it hurts. It's the first thing that I have really felt for days, and as I roll as far as I can to the edge of the bed without falling out, a warm tear slides out of my eye. Gravity draws it slowly down my cheek, then off the edge of my chin and onto my collarbone, where it splashes and then dissipates, all traces of what it was melted back into me via invisible pores. I enjoy the sensation.
Five minutes later, I wonder if it is cruel to touch him. I'm not wearing a shirt, and I feel like that gives me an unfair advantage of sorts. It emphasizes his inability to be unfeeling. Instead, I ask. “Do you really think that?”
Medium size pause.
“I think you're cruel.”
My pause.
“Do you think I'm a terrible human being?”
I draw in a breath as I wait for his reply, and I laugh inside because the audibility of that breath is so melodramatic.
“No. I think you're an amazing human being.”
I don't pause. “Do you think I'm good?”
One moment, two, three.
“I think you want to be. I think you really, really try.”
A tear rolls out of my right eye. I always cry four or five tears our of my left eye before the duct on the right side kicks in. “I do,” I tell him, and I mean it, and then I roll over and touch my forehead to his shoulder.
Five minutes later, I ask him if the fact that my foremost thought is a wish that I'd recorded the past thirty minutes in order to accurately write them down makes me a terrible person.
“No.” he laughs back, and I can't tell if he's kind of sad or not. “No, it doesn't.”
“I should just get up and write it now, but I'm really tired,” I think out loud. “I guess that's how I know I'm human.”
“You're human.” he says. And we go to sleep.
Sunday night I saw a great bassist play as approximately one third of a jazz trio and I found myself thinking a lot about why such a big goofy instrument speaks to me so. First I thought of Ganesh, the elephant- headed Hindu god, and then Eyeore, the hooved Milne god. Then the poetry in my head started up. The bass, and Eyeore: perfect parodies of ennui, I thought. It's Geothe's Young Werther and Sofia Coppola's Scarlett/Charlotte in Japan and reality's Christopher McCandlesses and Elliot Smiths and aching beauty and beautiful aching and the vast nothing where the two meet; it is me, and the way I have been laughing through my tears for as long as I can remember. But then: to permit myself to drown in it, like I sometimes feel I might, would be such a self-indulgent waste. And lest I abandon my undying commitment to truth and pretend to be completely selfless for even a moment, I must also note, I fear that drowning in ennui would also probably hurt a lot, and accomplish very little.
If the only thing that matters is doing more good than damage, it looks like drowning is not an option. Werther killed himself, Christopher might as well have were it not for Jon Krakauer, and Elliot's story is the saddest I know. Bill Murray saved Scarlett. God send me a Bill Murray.
I wonder: Who doesn't need a Bill Murray?
Or what if [could it be?], it just occurred to me, maybe some people sometimes need a Scarlett?
What if we need each other, and we just don't know where or when. Wouldn't that be a neat little world.
I tell him the truth, which is not surprising, but probably part of the problem. “I don't really care.” I hesitate, before explaining. “I think everyone makes a bigger deal out of it than they should. All I want is, in the end, to have made more lives better than I've fucked up. I just don't think it probably matters that much if I'm married to you or not.”
I have been thinking lately about 'M.A.S.H.', that inane game all children play, and about the absurdity of the choices we construct for ourselves. Who teaches us that game? Mansion, apartment, shack or house. Movie star, doctor, homeless or teacher. Two kids, twenty kids, no kids or three. Dog, cat, flying squirrel or hamster. Good god, you can settle the whole story of your life on a piece of notebook paper!
“So is this it? We're done? You want our marriage to be over?” he asks, the space between the words dripping with the stagnant sweat of utter frustration.
“I didn't say that.” I say calmly. “I use words very precisely. You shouldn't quote me if you don't remember what I said. Your premises are wrong.” I know the calm is disturbing, but I can't help it. I think of a perfectly still pond, where you can throw stones, and occasionally one skips in kind of a cute and interesting way, but eventually, like all the others, it just sinks.
“Fine. What did you say? You never wanted to be married?”
He is wrong again. I wouldn't have said that, because it's not true.
“You're a fucking idiot.” I tell him, placid as ever.
It is silent. The eye of the storm, or the swallowing of the stone.
One breath, two, three. A fourth.
“You're mean. You're a cruel person, and a terrible human being.” He says it, even though he doesn't believe it. I have been working for an hour to deserve it, and now that I have finally earned the condemnation, it hurts. It's the first thing that I have really felt for days, and as I roll as far as I can to the edge of the bed without falling out, a warm tear slides out of my eye. Gravity draws it slowly down my cheek, then off the edge of my chin and onto my collarbone, where it splashes and then dissipates, all traces of what it was melted back into me via invisible pores. I enjoy the sensation.
Five minutes later, I wonder if it is cruel to touch him. I'm not wearing a shirt, and I feel like that gives me an unfair advantage of sorts. It emphasizes his inability to be unfeeling. Instead, I ask. “Do you really think that?”
Medium size pause.
“I think you're cruel.”
My pause.
“Do you think I'm a terrible human being?”
I draw in a breath as I wait for his reply, and I laugh inside because the audibility of that breath is so melodramatic.
“No. I think you're an amazing human being.”
I don't pause. “Do you think I'm good?”
One moment, two, three.
“I think you want to be. I think you really, really try.”
A tear rolls out of my right eye. I always cry four or five tears our of my left eye before the duct on the right side kicks in. “I do,” I tell him, and I mean it, and then I roll over and touch my forehead to his shoulder.
Five minutes later, I ask him if the fact that my foremost thought is a wish that I'd recorded the past thirty minutes in order to accurately write them down makes me a terrible person.
“No.” he laughs back, and I can't tell if he's kind of sad or not. “No, it doesn't.”
“I should just get up and write it now, but I'm really tired,” I think out loud. “I guess that's how I know I'm human.”
“You're human.” he says. And we go to sleep.
Sunday night I saw a great bassist play as approximately one third of a jazz trio and I found myself thinking a lot about why such a big goofy instrument speaks to me so. First I thought of Ganesh, the elephant- headed Hindu god, and then Eyeore, the hooved Milne god. Then the poetry in my head started up. The bass, and Eyeore: perfect parodies of ennui, I thought. It's Geothe's Young Werther and Sofia Coppola's Scarlett/Charlotte in Japan and reality's Christopher McCandlesses and Elliot Smiths and aching beauty and beautiful aching and the vast nothing where the two meet; it is me, and the way I have been laughing through my tears for as long as I can remember. But then: to permit myself to drown in it, like I sometimes feel I might, would be such a self-indulgent waste. And lest I abandon my undying commitment to truth and pretend to be completely selfless for even a moment, I must also note, I fear that drowning in ennui would also probably hurt a lot, and accomplish very little.
If the only thing that matters is doing more good than damage, it looks like drowning is not an option. Werther killed himself, Christopher might as well have were it not for Jon Krakauer, and Elliot's story is the saddest I know. Bill Murray saved Scarlett. God send me a Bill Murray.
I wonder: Who doesn't need a Bill Murray?
Or what if [could it be?], it just occurred to me, maybe some people sometimes need a Scarlett?
What if we need each other, and we just don't know where or when. Wouldn't that be a neat little world.
posted by bella.calamitas at 7:46 PM
