I have only a handful of regular readers. Those of you who have checked these pages from time to time have probably noticed my published work is speculative fiction and poetry. Yet, very little fiction and poetry has been written in the past several years and any new information in my bibliography is from stuff that has been percolating through submission/acceptance/publication, which sometimes takes years.
Where did the fiction go? Where did the poetry go? I'm not sure. When I sit down to read, I don't often read fiction. I still read poetry now and again, but not the way I used to, like opening a brand new pint of ice cream and admiring the smooth expanse of potential before digging in to excavate the chunks. The last 40 books I've purchased have primarily been psychology and eastern philosophy. Recently, I had a conversation with a loved one, which boiled down to "put up or shut up" about this writing or going back to school thing. When I thought about writing fiction, I would just seize up and despair. What do you mean, write a story? How long has it been since I've even read a story? Can I even remember how to put words on a page that develop a character, plot, theme, on and on? Writing is a story is becoming as scary as the thought of composing a piece of music or producing a film, arts so esoteric to me as to seem magical. You wave a conductor's baton around, recite a few words, and the music just comes, right? You wake up one morning knowing what the bridge sounds like, your feet tapping out changes in tempo and key signature. For all I know, composing music has something to do with sacrificial lambs or burned bacon offerings.
You might also have noticed the long silence here on this blog. What to write about if I'm not writing? This blog is ostensibly about Stuff I've Written, and even more about Stuff I've Published That I Want Someone to Buy and Read. Therefore: silence. Silencio. After the "put up or shut up" conversation, I gave myself permission to write whatever I wanted. I could grab a random page from Wikipedia, think about whatever non-fiction book I'm devouring at the time, and just write. No one's going to buy this blog stuff, but that's not the point. The point is the juice that has all of a sudden started to flow. I write what feels like millions of words a year in text messages and e-mails. I talk all day, millions of words flowing out to mingle with the rest of the world. Maybe I can build a net for some of those words, and put them here.
Maybe I'll shred the paper journals again, and start over. Blank page. Clean slate.
I'm 38 years old, and I'm reading a book called, "How to Be an Adult."
Well, hell. Might as well start now.
Our life is what our thoughts make it.
~Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
In Fear of Intimacy, Robert Firestone describes the affect of neurotic inner voices on our ability to be intimate and compassionate with the people in our lives. When I first heard about self-esteem building methods such as externalizing the inner voice, I had my doubts. It seemed like self-rejection, denial, lack of acceptance of one's own inner landscape. Characterized as such, it seemed antithetical to Buddhist philosophy of acceptance and non-attachment. The intersection of psychoanalysis and Buddhist philosophy; talk about incredible potential for paradox and conflict! Woof! Luckily, I'm not the only person out there standing at those crossroads; others have been there for a while and mapped things out: Psychotherapy Without the Self, Thoughts Without a Thinker, Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart, Toward a Psychology of Awakening, etc. It's taking a while for all of this knowledge to coalesce into a coherent integral system, and in the meantime, my head is a messy, messy place.
All right, so let's say that psychotherapy is for the body/mind and Buddhist philosophy is for the spirit. Let's say there's a way to improve the health of the body while also nurturing the spirit. Let's say there's a way to nurture the self without obsessing on the self, a way to be self-reflective without turning inward and distancing ourselves from others. Great! On the subject of those neurotic inner voices, then. What the heck are they for? How can I reconcile a psychological process that simultaneously seeks to defend AND harm the self? My inner voices are already all over this one, stomping around in my head with spiky shoes. My brain thinks that life is so painful that it needs to dip the body in concrete to armor itself against pain. But once the body is coated in concrete, the armor starts to suffocate and kill you. Who came up with this stupid plan? Why is my brain so brainless? Remember a few posts back when I talked about my weird vertigo death-wish, standing in the balcony of the Boston Opera House, thinking about jumping? Where the voices said I may as well just give in to the pull and jump, so at least I'll have remained in control while falling to my doom?
Seriously. They need to shut up.
I have the Wild Bunch in my head. The Wild Bunch tells me to do stupid, self-defeating stuff. If my inner voices were allowed to run rampant, they'd shoot up Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma without a doubt. They'd rob banks, hold up trains, slaughter lawmen, and stomp innocent bystanders into jelly for fun. They'd shoot into buildings randomly just to hear the screaming, so they could feel safe and alive and omnipotent on the galloping getaway horses. In real life, the Wild Bunch tells me it's Just Not Safe Out There. Those other desperadoes can't be trusted, and there's no such thing as altruism. Altruism is another way to make yourself look good. Kindness is a sham; even the kindest person is just trying to get what they want from you, while you still have some juice left. Even the most loving person is corroded. It's hopeless. Just give up looking for that helping hand, that willing shoulder. It's safer not to hope, look for, or want anything. It's safer to cocoon up with Ben & Jerry's and some TV with Good Guys versus Bad Guys, where everything's nice and clean and clear.
In a way, I let the Wild Bunch ride vicariously through the work of postmodern filmmakers and writers. Mickey and Mallory ride across the country shooting up the town in Natural Born Killers, but maybe (like this other person says) the story is about the relationship between TV and violence. This kind of analysis, where the storyline is one thing, but it means something else, helps me see that although the Wild Bunch is running wild in my brain, they're actually helping draw my attention to something that needs tending. I turn their babble and gunshots into an arrow that points to an opportunity for deeper self understanding. I look to where the explosions are, and I figure out what they're trying to tell me. For a long time, in this manner, I've been hunting the Oklahoma Long Riders down one at a time:
"If Only I Did Everything Perfectly, Everything Would Be Okay" - Killed 1993, Goundhog Day
"Nobody's Ever Going To Love Such a Screwed Up Kid" - Killed 1993, What's Eating Gilbert Grape
"If They Could See What I Was Thinking, They'd Hate Me" - Killed 2004, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
"I'll Never Kick This Obsession, and I'll Die Unloved and Alone" - Killed 2000, Requiem for a Dream
"Everyone I Know Goes Away in the End," - Killed 2006, The Fountain
"I'm Lost in a Dream World, and I Will Never Grow Up," - Killed 2006, El labarinto del fauno
"I'm Too Weird to Find Love," - Killed 2001, Amelie
There's a theme. My inner voices want to drive me toward security and the fantasy of eternal perfect love. My inner voices want everything to be comfortable, soothing, entertaining, easy, and for all of these good things to be eternal. They want to negate the givens of life. They yearn for life to be free of suffering, for things to be "fair," for people to be loving and loyal all the time, for everything to be just so, forever and always, amen. Something in my life taught me to be afraid of abandonment, of being unloved and alone. Fortunately, someone also taught me that life just is, and what happens, happens. That I'm not a bad seed. That I'm worthy of love, even if it's wickedly hard to find. My father did this, imperfectly, but consistently. One of the inner voices is his, and it's straightforward and full of good humor. It says, "Want in one hand and spit in the other, and see which one gets full faster." It says, "Who said life was fair?" It says, "That's just the way it goes." It says, "You're worth my time. You're worth my money. You're worth my love and attention." It says, "It's okay to have boundaries, and to say no sometimes." It says, "The world is a really interesting place, and you should try it sometime." It says, "You make good decisions, and I'm behind you, even when I don't agree with them all the time." It says, "I forgive you when you judge me." It says, "Even if you don't want to be married to somebody any more, it doesn't mean you have to be a jerk to that person." It says, "Even if other people think you're a problem kid, I think you're worth loving." It tells me I'm smart without being too intrusive. It tells me I'm worthy without building up my narcissism.
The inner voice that helps me the most is the one that sounds like my dad. It's not a perfect voice. It's not an idealized voice by any means. But it's a pretty good voice. If it were a perfect voice, it wouldn't help at all. In fact, this voice also says, quite often, "Nobody's perfect." It's a paradox, and it's helpful.
Thanks, Pops, for helping me cope with the Wild Bunch.
I found this incomplete reading list lingering in draft, and have decided to post it. So far, I've read a ton of books in 2010, and I'm not sure I'll be able to reproduce an accurate list, as I neglected to keep track as I was reading. I will go back to my bookshelf soon and see if I can get a capture of 2010 so far. I think I actually met my reading goal for 2009, although it's not reflected here (one book a week) and I think I've already exceeded my goal for 2010.
1. Henry and June - Anais Nin
2. Housekeeping vs. The Dirt - Nick Hornby
3. Slam - Nick Hornby
4. Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf.
5. The Polysyllabic Spree - Nick Hornby
6. Brokeback Mountain - Annie Proulx
7. Moral Disorder - Margaret Atwood
8. Big Fish - Daniel Wallace
9. Maps and Legends - Michael Chabon
10. Shards of Honor - Lois McMaster Bujold
11. Falling Free - Lois McMaster Bujold
12. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
13. The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde
14. Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys
15. The Essence of Tantric Sexuality - Michaels and Johnson
16. Blue Tea - Harvey Albert
17. A Guide to Rational Living - Ellis and Harper
18. Crucial Conversations - Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, and Switzler
19. Crucial Confrontations - Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, and Switzler
20. The Road Less Traveled - M. Scott Peck, MD
21. Fray - Joss Whedon
22. Eat, Pray, Love - Elizabeth Gilbert
23. Unholy Ghost - Nell Casey, ed.
24. The Path to Love - Deepak Chopra
25. Blink - Malcolm Gladwell
26. Uncommon Arrangements - Katie Roiphe
27. Bad Mother - Ayelet Waldman
28. My Horizontal Life - Chelsea Handler
29. The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell
30. The Art of War - Sun Tsu
31. The Vagina Monologues - Eve Ensler
32. Nurtureshock - Po Bronson
33. Teach Like Your Hair's On Fire - Rafe Esquith
34. The Art of Happiness at Work - Dalai Lama & Howard Cutler
35. How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk - Faber and Mazlish
36. The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell
37. He's Just Not That Into You - Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo
38. The Good Body - Eve Ensler
39. The Pat Conroy Cookbook: Recipes and Stories of my Life - Pat Conroy
40. Shopgirl - Steve Martin
41. Candyfreak - Steve Almond
42. The 7 Habit of Highly Effective Families - Stephen Covey
43. A Chosen Faith - John Burhrens
44. Juliet Naked - Nick Hornby
45. With or Without Candlelight - Victoria Safford
I recently had the opportunity to watch The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen), which has understandably won a large number of awards. Although I love foreign films, I have to admit that it takes me a while for even the most well reviewed to rise in the "to be watched" list, because (although it's a little embarrassing to admit) the idea of sitting and reading the subtitles for an entire film often sounds like more work than I'm willing to do on an evening off, when I'm trying to relax.
That said, some of my favorite films are in a foreign language and must be read in subtitles (voiceovers being as much a blasphemy in my book as using A1 sauce on a really good steak): Pan's Labyrinth, Sex and Lucia, Amelie, Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring, Fellini's 8 1/2, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Like Water for Chocolate, and now, The Lives of Others. (There are also a number of films that are, ostensibly, produced in the English language, but also require subtitles on for the first viewing, because of thick accents (Cornish, Welsh, Yorkshire, etc). And so, in order to watch a foreign film at all, I need to whip up a great deal of energy and interest in order to get the DVD into the player.
So, imagine my chagrin when I realized that the best film I'd seen all year ... wait, not only the best film I'd seen all year, but one of the top 10 or 20 films I've seen in my life had been sitting on the kitchen counter for nearly a month. I had to laugh. I had to wonder what else I was missing out on because of my reluctance to exert effort for my entertainment. Lesson learned: I'm usually in desperate need of rest in the evenings, and yet nothing energizes me more than putting my mind to work to absorb something beautiful. Eating fine food takes mindfulness. Enjoying a good book takes analysis, intuition, and (if I'm reading something really challenging like Foucault) a massive vocabulary. To me, something intellectually rich and chewy lights up the pleasure centers like a 4th of July fireworks display.
At another time, I'll make a post describing my enjoyment of fast food, and what I consider to be enjoyable fast food, but this post isn't about that. This post is about futzy gourmet food, where the wait person needs to stand over you and describe what it is, exactly, that you have on your plate before you hurl it into your gob, so you can experience the layers of enjoyment that have nothing to do with what's going over your palette. Paraphrased from a friend, you get to have the enjoyment of the pure vanilla ice cream by hearing that it's made from the dried seed pod of an orchid grown in far-flung, exotic places, such as Madagascar.
Back to The Lives of Others. I liked this one for its illustration of one of the most painful of human experiences: the profound pain that comes with disillusionment, especially in a person of great integrity who believes deeply in a certain ideology and conducts his life according to a well-defined ethical system. The lesson that no one (and certainly no government) is loving and loyal all the time is breathtakingly difficult. Let's say I believe in something so strongly that I spend my life in a dark room, sacrificing most of my life experience to provide what I consider to be a priceless service. Let's say I believe that by sitting in a dark room listening to the lives of others, I'm building a cathedral to the greater glory of God. And then suppose I find evidence that it's not a cathedral; it's a meat processing factory that makes sausages out of infants (it's a metaphor, not the actual premise of the film). And then suppose I'm told that God wants me to pretend that it's really a cathedral after all, and that if I don't pretend it's a cathedral, what I'm saying is that I don't love God, that I never loved God, and that what I have given of my life thus far (everything) has been worthless?
Thus a man loses his faith, and yet in doing so, is able to find God after all. Not in the cathedral. It turns out that God has been less obtrusive, but alive all along in the space between one human hand and another, in a letter put in the post, in the appreciation of fresh air on a grimy street. If the mind is not irreparably broken in the loss of one faith, he can make another, probably less glamorous faith, based on often grim reality rather than romantic illusion. He can take the red pill, and free himself from the pretty, comfortable, superficial illusion-cocoon that prevents him from becoming a fully realized human adult.
So, if I made a metaphor of my life using the crossing of the Rhine, then what's Gaul? Who (or what) are the howling barbarian tribes of Vandals, Alans, and Suebi, and who or what is the Roman empire, the destruction of which followed the crossing? I thrive on metaphors and love nothing better than to really wring a good one dry, so let's try.
They say that the Rhine was the Empire's last great boundary, and once that boundary was violated, Rome fell, and the Empire was lost. I'm a classical scholar, educated on civilizations a bit more ancient, and so I don't know a whole lot about the late Roman Empire. So I use this metaphor tentatively, without historical nuance. If the Empire was a horrible, unjust, corrupt, filthy place, and I'm going to use it to represent the metaphorical me, this does not indicate a deep, Freudian self-loathing. It's just a really loose metaphor using several handy elements, some static, some moving (well, howling).
So, if I'm the Roman Empire, and the Rhine is my last boundary, I can't imagine I'm in very good shape. It means I've suffered all kinds of damage to my lands, and I've lost most of my cohesion. I've been invaded on one front, and voluntarily sacrificed another, with my eye on the prize the whole time, thinking each move is preserving the main body of me. Each move is preserving my safety, and thus, is constructive and good. Who needs healthy boundaries all the way around, after all, when maybe I could just ditch those old wooden palisades and concentrate all of my forces where the "real" threat is; those rampaging hoards lusting to enter Gaul and violate the vineyards (and the sheep bleating in proto-French). It's fairly standard battle tactics to make calculated sacrifices, to fortify positions, to give ground here and take up ground there. Right?
Hm. So I've given up all my boundaries, have all of my protective forces sitting at the Rhine drinking wine and sharpening swords, when I look up and see that these damn barbarian hoards didn't get the memo. They heard through the grapevine that despite all rumors, and despite all the shield walls lined up on the banks, and whatnot, that the loss of the other Imperial boundaries was sort of like cowardice leaking through a legion of centurions. The troops are demoralized, and it doesn't matter how many swords they have, how sharp they are, how many scalps are swinging from belts, and on an on; when they look up from the wine flasks to see the barbarian hoards swimming across the water with their scimitars in their teeth, they get that vertigo feeling instead of gearing up. You know the vertigo feeling? I don't know about you, but when I get high up, I have a pulling urge to nudge close to the drop. I get this really strange feeling that the drop is yanking at me, and that I might as well just jump and get it over with, because at least then I would be in control of my own destiny, and fall of my own choice. Maybe I'm just nuts. I've heard other people have experienced this, and maybe they're just nuts too, but I think this tendency points to a psychological slippery slope that can either be good or bad.
If it's about protective walls, I think the slippery slope is beneficial. You have walls keeping out people you love? Strangely, the first wall is the hardest to tear down, and then they get progressively easier until they're falling down on their own while you sleep. You wake up one day, and the last one's lying on the floor under a wad of facial tissue. If it's about boundaries, I think the slippery slope is awful. You have these boundaries that are meant to keep you sane. They're meant to protect you from the howling hordes. They keep gravity from pulling you off the balcony of the Boston Opera House. But then things get confusing. Is it a boundary, or is it a wall? Well, if I tear it down, this person likes me better, so it must have been a wall, and it needed to go, right? And, strangely, each time I pull one down, and the beloved one likes me better, the easier it is to pull down the next one too. Easy as putting a hot knife into butter. Only, if they're actually walls you're pulling down, and they're falling down themselves, after a while, other things start looking up. Other wonderful stuff starts to happen; you can see more clearly, and farther to boot. You see rainbows, and gamboling baby fawns and all those nice things, along with some not so nice things that at least you can see coming, where before you couldn't. But if they're boundaries you're pulling down, it doesn't matter that you can more clearly see the face of your beloved; it's nice to see that thrilling smile, but now you grind your teeth in your sleep; you forget you had any hobbies and stay silently at home, growing moss between the couch and your ass; you numb yourself with food, with wine, with pills, with television, with the internet, with sex. Your body starts to hurt. Your hair goes gray. Those things happen anyway with old age, but you're not old yet. Old age doesn't mean your capacity for joy is lost. That's old age where your boundaries are for crap, and you've done it all to fill some kind of gaping hole where your soul used to be.
So, what if I didn't have to worry about whether the Roman Empire was worth saving, and I imagine Gaul as my spirit, with all the wine and French-bleating sheep. And when the barbarians jumped into the Rhine and started paddling toward the last of the healthy boundaries, the clouds opened up, and it started to rain, and the Rhine got all fat and rapid, and swept the barbarians down to the ocean, where they eventually washed up and opened a "cantina" where you could rent surfboards and buy hash? And the tired, embittered legions got off their wine-fed rumps, planted their swords in the ground, and tramped off into opposite directions to rebuild the rock walls around the Empire? Rock walls full of holes, not even high enough to keep out a determined climber, but good enough to delineate an Empire. The Empress could send out a map to the rest of the world and invite people up to the rock wall for tea sometimes, and say she's sorry to her colonies, and maybe even emancipate those who never wanted to be part of the Empire. So, maybe the walls are just a metaphor inside a metaphor, a snaking line of psychology protecting a fragile inner self.
I don't know who the barbarians are. Three flavors of fear, maybe. The metaphor is starting to lose it's cohesion, and it doesn't matter much anyway. I'll call the rain "enlightenment" or something fancy sounding, and move on.
I've been walking the defensive lines lately, kicking the rock wall here and there, assessing it for its nature. Are you a wall, or are you boundary? Sometimes it's a boundary, and I sleep sweetly at night; sometimes it's a wall, and I can't sleep at all. On nights where the rock lines are boundaries, and I put my foot through one voluntarily, knocking the whole thing down, I have nightmares and wake weeping. I know I made such-and-such a choice, and it seemed right on the surface, but I can hear the barbarians swimming the Rhine. They're lobbing rocks in my path on which I can turn my ankle. They're destroying my skin and tearing out my hair with slings and arrows. When rock lines are boundaries, I sleep like a well-worked hound dog, and awake in a spicy-sweet sleep-smell with a sense that all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.
For me, owning a house is about stewardship. A house isn't so much a thing as an opportunity to have a somewhat controllable environment. Some see houses as a reflection of the self, the same way cars, boats, and other objects are used to display and stroke the ego. For me, a car is a method of transportation. I have a new car, and it's a nice car. It's a well designed car that's aesthetically pleasing, but it only goes as fast as it needs to in order to get me from one place to another. It has good gas mileage and is comparatively gentle on the environment when I choose to drive it, which is not often. It comes with a good warranty, and will last a long time if it's well maintained. It has some unnecessary features that make being in it somewhat more pleasing than a car with fewer bells and whistles, but those features did not come at great cost, and I find myself benefiting from having dessert sometimes. If I bought a boat, I'd only do so if I had the time and inclination to sail it. It would be a big floating living room with a huge, open window to nature, where I could sit and relate with my family. I have no plans to have a boat, but if I did, I would steward it, as I would steward my car, or my house, and appreciate the ways it allows me to move in the world, and relate with people.
So this theoretical boat is not my ego. My car is not my ego. My house is not my ego. A boat is a family adventure. A car is a possibly pleasant mode of transport. A house is a shelter. A place to return after a day's work. A place for cooking, resting, sleeping. A place for sitting with loved ones near convenient amenities, such as clean water, places to sit, tables for books and games. It's possible to sit in a cafe and commune with friends and family, and that's nice, sometimes. And sometimes it's nice to have privacy and more influence over the environment. It's possible to steward that interior environment, and arrange it especially to suit my family's life. A big living room, the better to have space to move around, whether alone or with friends. Bedrooms large enough to have private space to move around, again, whether alone or with friends. Tiers of togetherness. Tiers of privacy. Room for growth, reflection, community. There are lessons to be learned from the home environment. Perhaps you don't have a lot of money; then you'll learn something particular about yourself, and grow in certain ways, from having a certain amount of space, and a certain amount of privacy (less space, less privacy). You have the chance to develop resilience and work on compassion and acceptance of other people when you live cheek-to-jowl. You have the chance to develop healthy boundaries in an extremely challenging way: to learn how to ask for privacy and actually feel a sense of privacy in the close company of others. Perhaps you have enough money to invest in a larger house; then you'll learn something else. You have the chance to be alone if you want to be alone, and if you are an introvert, you will be challenged to keep reaching out even though it's easier to isolate yourself. If you are an extrovert, you will be challenged to give others their privacy, and honor their requests to be out of your immediate presence for as long as they need. You will be challenged to meet your own needs some other way than relying on the closeness of quarters to provide company and emotional feedback. A bigger house means different choices, different lessons.
In my life, a birthday is not a birthday, but an opportunity. A dinner is not a dinner, but an opportunity. A house is not a house, but an opportunity. Not to steward your environment carefully, to allow entropy to wreak havoc upon it, is to make a choice, whether conscious or unconscious, not to care for yourself or those who share that environment with you. There are many ways in which a house is affected by the entropy of non-stewardship. A roof deteriorates, letting in the rain and welcoming water damage. Windows left in disrepair welcome the outside temperatures and humidity. Floors, furniture, and counter tops left soiled with old food and other biologicals welcome creatures in search of a place to live, eat, and reproduce. A yard and driveway poorly maintained welcomes the loss of comfortable exterior spaces, somewhere healthy to sit and appreciate fresh air and natural beauty. A house can fall apart around you: a house suffering from entropy has loose plaster, peeling paint, leaky windows and roofs, full of holes where warmth and safety can leach away while you watch, or don't watch. Accepting stewardship is not only about seeing what needs stewarding, but caring about yourself and your family enough to keep a tight ship, to accept what you can't change, to change for the better those things that can be changed, and to continuously develop the wisdom to know the difference.
A house is a thing, but stewardship of a home is a commitment to love.
There is no footprint next to the confidential shred bin at work. There is no indication that I stood there for a long moment, contemplating my choices: throw seven years of black-and-white-speckled composition books in the shred bin, or take them back home and hoard them in the basement. My words. My pain. My death grip on the illusion of self-ness, of permanence. I journal, therefore I am. Throw the journals in the bin, and who am I then? What captures the passage of time, and shows the world I was, when I am no longer? What will I do with them if I keep them? Open a box while repacking for the umpteenth time and find the notebooks swollen with humidity from thirty years of New England freeze/thaw cycles, and find this seven-year stretch of anguished introspection? All that self pity. All that smeary clinging to shadows and reflected egotism. Finding the books, excavating them, would be good for what, exactly? The pages tell a story of sorts, but do not define me. Standing at the shred bin, I'm already not the person who held the pen and marked out mistakes carefully with correction tape. I'm much more battered, heartbroken, footsore. I'm more obsessive about some things, and less obsessive about other things. I've repainted and plastered an old house I will live in without the person who bought it for me, no, for us, to grow old in beside the sea. I wept and sang sad songs while I painted and plastered, knowing I was building something impermanent on the ashes of something else that had turned out to be, unexpectedly, impermanent.
There is no mark on the carpet where I turned on my heel and stepped away from the bin. No signpost pointing to the first footprint of the rest of my life. There is no trail of footprints leading back to my desk, and then to the office supply store, and to home and to the fresh new journal, with all of its empty pale blue lines, and beckoning, empty pages promising new beginnings. When I throw the next seven years in the bin, there will be no footprints to mark that moment either.
Once, I saw an artist set a sculpture made of leaves and thorns afloat in a briskly moving stream.
It was beautiful for five minutes, and then it was gone.
