Extrapolating the You Voice

You underestimate, perhaps, the significance of 1988, but that's probably because it's my history, not yours. Or is it? Is it yours? Or is it mine. Theoretically.
What if you were not mine. You. You. And you.
Second person is a voice that is jarring and dissodent. Nobody uses the "you" voice unless they are asking for attention, being ostracized, being obsolete. Passive "being." Academically, death. Postmodern. Are you the protagonist of this story or are you the metaphor for a vernacular threat to high culture? YOU decide.
I met with potential adoptive mothers in a restaurant on Dickson Street. You remember Fayetteville. You remember the fevers after immunization, you remember the first day of kindergarten, you remember you kicked your legs so hard when I came to pick you up at daycare. You remember I taught you to read: cat bat mat gnat fat sat... you. You remember? My mother said I wasn't feeding you well enough. At least that's what I was told. You and I studied words in a notebook, way at the top of the hill in Madison County. Too, two, to, zoo, you. You. I opened all these books for you. You opened all these books. You wrote words and all these words.

Sinking

If you've never said something so terrible. Wait- let me rephrase that. Have you practiced saying it, thought about it, dreaded it? You know, then, the shape it takes in your mind. The weight, the heaviness. Like a bag of terribleness. How the tendrils wrap themselves in the soft places of your mind. Saying it won't free you. If you think it will, I have to stop and laugh for a moment before resuming.

Say your something terrible, then. You will see it, in that moment, take form in the space between your lips and realize that, still attached to you, but released into the air, it will pull you down

down

down

I cannot be sorry. I can't take it back. I can't consume it again because it's become bigger than I am and now the fit is all wrong. I wait, suspended between my thoughts and those words and the bottom of everything (like Alice), I hang here, wishing you would - wishing something could- release me, so I can finally find out whether I'll fly or fall. I didn't think it would happen this way.

If these cathedrals could talk: inventory

This hour I tell things in confidence. I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you. 

Your Communist Manifesto copy, your Buddha now balanced on my laptop. Tambourine, Robert Lowell, Mao, pile of flannel shirts, a 2-lb calculator, Schonbrunn Tickets, "If These Stones Could Talk: A General Guide for Cathedral Explorers," ("who are you indeed who would talk or sing to America?") your parents' wedding pictures, an apologetic letter from Icelandair with the sweet preface: DEAR ICELANDAIR CUSTOMER. Leaves of Grass, a stash of Sharpies, your diplomas, a Hindu goddess incense holder ("I hear the Hindoo teaching his favorite pupil the loves, wars, adages, transmitted safely to this day from poets who wrote three thousand years ago"), piles of pictures of your cousins.

The voyage of those who sought a New England and found it.

The EYES have it

As of this month, my left eyelid has been spasming for six months. I have had eye exams, used eye drops, had Botox injected all around the socket. Until I can't close my eye all the way. Until I can't feel the eyelid. I would do almost anything. I would go so far as to have someone place hands over my eye, the way my mother once placed her hands over a tree stump in the backyard to pray it away. She said it worked.

Addendum 1: In which I realized you will never come with me. In which I realized that someday, my eye will fall out (possibly into my open palm) and at that point I will realize I should have cared more about animals, about carbon footprints, about marriage licenses.

Addendum 2: In which I realize, "It will only get worse before it gets better" is probably complete and total bullshit.

Addendum 3: In which I realize, "How is a raven like a writing desk" has no answer.

Addendum 4: In which I reiterate to myself that you will never come with me. In which I pore over my dissertation with a magnifying glass, searching for clues like one would comb the beach for seaglass, which is not a natural occurrence, but is in fact trash that has been washed clean.

Labor Day 2009

Maybe the last words you said to me were, "My Ami," or maybe they were an unintelligible string of consonants and vowels that meant so much to you but so little to me. In any case, there was the door opening in 2009, Labor Day weekend when I drove up to check on you, "My Ami," and I went upstairs and slept for an hour before trying to talk to you again, because I had been on the road since 5am. Second year of graduate school, I brought some books with me to read but instead you pantomimed college football to ask me -could I find a game for you on the television while your right arm hung helpless by your side? It took me 15 minutes before I gave up and you had to find a game yourself and then after that I couldn't read any books. I couldn't have imagined that ten days later, I would be measuring morphine in your syringe like my guilt. Maybe more mgs than my guilt.

I had this story laid out in my head that I thought I'd give you before you died, but then I was so sure you wouldn't die so I didn't write it out. The story was about 4th grade and the way you trained me for the 50 yard dash. When you asked me what my dreams were in 1981, and I thought that other girls at school most likely dreamed of ponies and roller skates and pink skirts, but I wanted to beat all the boys at the 50 yard dash at Game Days at the end of the year. That was my dream. So you took a can of spray paint and you marked off 50 yards on Palm Street. When the streetlights clicked on we went out and I ran sprints from spray painted mark to spray painted mark under the yellow lights. You timed me and I improved. 

We trained for three months and you told me I should think about sprinting at the Olympics. I agreed. I wore a green tank top with rainbow stripes and matching shorts that looked like a sprinting uniform. (This is all the stuff I was going to remind you of, I was going to write out this story and give it to you asap, but I was fairly sure you weren't going to die so I told myself it could wait. I couldn't have imagined squirting mgs of morphine into your open mouth for five days until you finally agreed to die, is what I mean.)

I don't know if you understood the importance of Game Days, the most dreaded two days of the entire school year in my estimation. The "Days" were a series of competitive athletic events, at which I never excelled, and of which I was so apprehensive that most years (1978-1980) I faked stomachaches in order to avoid. But this year was different due to our trainings on Palm Street after the streetlights clicked on. Spray painted line to spray painted line when the black tar of the pavement looked soft under the yellow street lights. 50 yards on Palm Street, an unused side street that ran beside the snowball bushes along the perimeter of our yard.

Anyway, the culmination of this story I was going to give you (in printed form) related the starting line, the slow motion glances between the competitors, the sound of the whistle signifying GO!  The most important part of this story I was going to write out for you (but didn't because I thought it was pretty dramatic for me to believe anyone would die after a seizure) was the look on Kevin Platt's face when the whistle blew (because he was the fastest sprinter in the 4th grade and by the way I would have laid all this out in the beginning of the story I was going to write for you), because I frankly outran him. ME, a skinny, socially awkward, un-athletic, loser of a 10 year old. Frankly, I outran every 4th grade boy on the starting line of the 50 yard dash during the 1981 Game Days. Someone eventually beat me in the final heat of the 50 yard dash but for the life of me (and for the life of you, obviously), I don't remember who. The point of this whole story that I was going to give you, had you not died, was that, no matter what dream I had, you believed I would achieve it, no matter how ridiculous (because really, I'm no sprinter, and you had to have known). Because, let's face it, I don't have much athletic ability, but I thought this story might be a reminder of the way you helped me when the streetlights flicked on at night after we watched Buck Rogers, sprinting down Palm Street, the journey my little cheap tennis shoes took night after night between those spray-painted marks that measured 50 yards total.

Found objects Atalaya Mountain hike

I am finally trying to get my bearings after having been gone to conferences for 3 weeks. Here are some found objects on my hike one day through the Santa Fe National Forest. I think about what I found there, and the smells, and the color of the sky...

Labor Day Special: Regret in bulk $19.99 (supplies limited limit one per customer not valid in AK and HI and DE)

I tell you this, that regret comes in great gallon-sized industrial vats like mayonnaise for church camp. That people who say they have no regrets are the same people who say they never fart in public. REGRET comes in different flavors too, lemonberry zing and white tea ginger peach and roast beef. All those at once, sometimes. REGRET for sale and you buy it - I've seen you! It's on a high shelf, one of those Costco "please ask for assistance" shelves but somehow it winds up in your shopping cart every Thursday when you've stopped for only a variety pack of potato chips for your kid's school picnic. Last minute like- there it is- REGRET next to the little cheap Made in China sandals you had to have and the wheel of Brie that will probably go bad in the back of the refrigerator. Right next to the Ivory soap and the Lucky Charms. REGRET that makes a racket when you heft it out of the cart onto the conveyer belt. The cashier's raised eyebrow and no eye contact. It's on sale? Tell the people behind you you'll be right back as you skim over the cement floors for another jar.