9:09
I pulled these sentences out of my drafts folder, from a couple of days ago.
“I miss not writing. I have nothing more to say than that, really. I miss the absence of committing story to space (and time, too).
So of course instead of writing I will link. To this”
And I stopped there. I cannot recall what I meant to link to.
I have lost the fluidity that I thought I had found again in writing. Lost the rhythm, the play. It’s get-backable (wordpress changed that to “get-packable” which makes no more sense), it’s just arduous to get it back. That is age. To work fantastically hard to stay in place, and to lose ground with just a moment’s inattention or desisting. There are gains, yeah yeah. I’m so much steadier than I was in my 30s (oh… tough tough 30s. Tough tough tough and sad 30s. Many beautiful things happened but I can’t see them for the pain, which is a scrim over all the rest), I have a greater capacity for gratitude, appreciation, joy. I don’t have much patience, but more than I ever have before. Such a pity one can’t have all the good things at once.
Waiting for a story that won’t come… hell, waiting for a sentence, a syllable that won’t come. That’s how drained I am, how deep into a February funk… I so want to write but can’t generate what to say. All the rest I’m giving myself — and I think I’m giving myself quite a lot — is insufficient. My attention to work is insufficient. I have a bad case of the insufficiencies. And not even the 80s music in the bodega can pull me out.
So here’s something that’s just popped up to the surface: I’m crushed by the dissociation of perfection and love. It should be liberating, and I can see that it will be eventually. But now it just looks like my biggest psycho-emotional investment has tanked in value. I was wrong all along. I don’t want love to be mysterious, magic, ineffable (we used to joke about that word in college. “It’s ineffable because you can’t eff it.” We made ourselves laugh. Sweet girls in Dr. K’s philosophy class sophomore year), all the stuff of story and song. I want to it to be predictable, a good bet, a solid if-then loop. I can trust myself to love someone through, for, around, in, beyond, imperfections, but don’t trust that it will be reciprocated, and I’m excellent, extraordinary, hyper-sufficient at finding evidence to support my case. I come back to this over and over, it’s my recurring infection of the spirit, and it’s flaring up again. This is my Big Sad. Not that I am imperfect and therefore unlovable, but that being perfect is irrelevant to the whole project. So what do I do when I feel like there’s not enough love, when the ambient love is insufficient? Wait. Read. Rest. Cook. Go to the bodega and dance a little in the aisle to make myself laugh. Write. Cry.
9:33
Another Door 