i get caught up in thinking that things don't exist which i don't write about. they are only true if i remember them. and i will forget someday but maybe i will also read about it. it is about filling out my life. i see the years behind me and they are so formidable. i can't imagine them as true and lived because i don't remember. the more i write here, the more of my life is the truth. the more exists. even the things i don't particularly want to put into words.
a few weeks ago, a wednesday i believe, i was in the coffee shop i've come to frequent over the summer to read. it had been about a month since i left kelly for a while. four weeks, maybe a few days more. i thought it a good time to return but i didn't know what to say. thought it would be better to text, a more restrained conversational setting. we texted a little while i read and i was surprised, as i always am, at how she would tell me how much i mean to her. how she'd say i didn't fuck anything up. how she'd tell me our relationship was unconditional to her. i love that phrase, even if i don't quite understand it from her. i told her i didn't understand her, why she would continue to put up with me like she did. she wrote back that she liked me but she was "totally in love with dave."
as it happened, i saw the entire message without reading it. i looked away from my phone, quiet in my chair. held it in my hand, open. looked back to read it and looked away again. a shock, though it shouldn't have been. i hate that when i leave, especially when she's with him, that i know they will just get closer and closer. and it happened. i sat there.
i read a paragraph or two but closed my book. she texted again, saying "i'm sorry." i sat there. after a while, i discreetly packed up and moved to my car. i sat in the driver's seat facing the highway, the shop in my rearview mirror. sat with the keys in my hand and the sun setting somewhere behind an overpass. watched all the cars pass, the people arriving and leaving, milling around inside, ordering drinks. looked at my key, the little laser-cut pathway through the center. how it matched itself properly on the other side such that it didn't matter how you held it. i didn't say a word. an hour since she texted before i started the car to leave.
that happened. i didn't cry although i felt like it a lot. mostly just in shock. strange how such an abstraction of a girl. such an idea, less a warm body, could do this to me. i didn't speak to her for a week and a half. she would write me once or twice. another text. a message on aim. another a few days later. regrets she'd had. how she hated how she'd done this to us. i agree, it fucking sucks. i'm almost to blaming her instead of me. i know i'm not strong but i know the root of all evil in this post-eden is her and dave. maybe, just maybe, i deserve to be angry.
we spoke some the next weekend, just texting. i sent her a package because i didn't know how not to. she wrote me, asking me how i could send her this, which helps her through finals so much more than dave's "box of goodies" and how could i do this? and how did i know? i wrote her back simply that... you are me. it's not fair she said. hah, yeah. you think? she would vacillate it seemed. simultaneously of the idea that "i want your shoulder" and "we never had a chance." i never knew quite what to think. i hate that feeling.
that was a week and a half ago. she wrote me once asking if i thought we'd ever meet again. i didn't know i said. i thought we deserved it. i didn't mention that any meeting would likely be dictated by circumstances. that i can't see myself visiting her if she's with dave. i don't think i could handle that. she never was online anymore or writing me either. i figured for sure she's gone home. she's with dave and has forgotten all about me. i wrote her one morning. saying that remembering meeting her a few years ago was like trying semi-successfully to recall a dream and that she was so much less than a real living girl to me and that it made me sad. she wrote back simply that it was sad and maybe we'd meet someday. it made me angry. the insincerity was something awful. and maybe i shouldn't accuse her of something like that but i could feel it, immediate and painful. a response from the hip, barely considered and likely shrugged off. we haven't spoken since then.
i didn't mention but i had a dream featuring this pair a few nights ago. i was in a building in nyc. we were going to meet like we'd been dreaming of for a long time. i was nervous and she was in the next room. we were to meet very soon when i heard someone enter her room. it was dave, unexpected. he had people with him. they all retrieved instruments and began to play music. it was an easy guitar melody, like a rhythm to a song that never grew or diminished, in my dream it was simply dave's theme. i hated this and felt beaten again. i tried to escape, left the building and walked around the block but the sound followed me wherever i went. i returned to where i'd started and tried to mingle with people i knew, tried to surround myself in the friends i had, to drown myself in their conversations and attentions. around that time, i sensed people entering. it was kelly and dave, come to meet and mingle. i dropped my eyes, without a word gathered all my things and brushed past them to leave. i never once looked at them or looked back.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
one fast move or i'm gone
i've been in bed, mind racing. too many thoughts tonight. i need to mail danielle tomorrow, tell her i miss talking with her, fill her in on all the things we never were able to converse about on the phone. about kelly and our confusion. all the turbulence.
i need to write kelly. i compose letters, lying there. just when it's least convenient to write. i need to send a postcard. maybe not to her house... maybe to nyc. so it can be naked and hopefully without prying eyes. maybe she will just find it when she goes back to the city. lots could change between now and then. lots but likely little.
...
"you're far too ever-present in my life, still. i can refuse to think of you, ignore your name in print, choose to file away our situation until i don't care anymore. but there are too many reminders. i was looking at photography and it sent me dreaming, all plans and ideas. who else would i think of but you? kelly in a darkroom. it's those that hurt the most. the ones that are the most you.
i received in the mail today a record i'd ordered. i sat down when i was alone and opened the package. closed my eyes to crack the case, to smell the disc. it's what i do. there were a few things written on the face. the first, near the bottom, was "fstop music" with a little scribble of a camera. my heart sank.
i regret in a terrible way that i was so tangled up in danielle last spring that i didn't realize how dearly i depended on you. that i didn't understand how much you meant to me (and what you could mean to me) until i started losing you. that i never considered how badly i would miss you when you were gone. but why should i? you were one of the people i had an irrational belief in. no matter what, we would be ok. no matter what, we'd always be close. i don't feel that way anymore. i can hope and pray but i cannot be convinced. i know myself too well.
it scares me and hurts me but i don't know how to replace you. i'm not saying we're through but... we have barely spoken in over a month. i remember when we would talk every single day and i miss it. i know it's usually me but it's also you. you tell me how much i mean to you and you act confused about your relationships but i just don't believe it anymore. what i see is my soft decline in your life. what i know is that dave has slowly superseded me, forced me to the fringes. that when you can have him, there's no room for me.
it scares me because i don't know how to find someone so easy to trust and believe in as you."
i need to write kelly. i compose letters, lying there. just when it's least convenient to write. i need to send a postcard. maybe not to her house... maybe to nyc. so it can be naked and hopefully without prying eyes. maybe she will just find it when she goes back to the city. lots could change between now and then. lots but likely little.
...
"you're far too ever-present in my life, still. i can refuse to think of you, ignore your name in print, choose to file away our situation until i don't care anymore. but there are too many reminders. i was looking at photography and it sent me dreaming, all plans and ideas. who else would i think of but you? kelly in a darkroom. it's those that hurt the most. the ones that are the most you.
i received in the mail today a record i'd ordered. i sat down when i was alone and opened the package. closed my eyes to crack the case, to smell the disc. it's what i do. there were a few things written on the face. the first, near the bottom, was "fstop music" with a little scribble of a camera. my heart sank.
i regret in a terrible way that i was so tangled up in danielle last spring that i didn't realize how dearly i depended on you. that i didn't understand how much you meant to me (and what you could mean to me) until i started losing you. that i never considered how badly i would miss you when you were gone. but why should i? you were one of the people i had an irrational belief in. no matter what, we would be ok. no matter what, we'd always be close. i don't feel that way anymore. i can hope and pray but i cannot be convinced. i know myself too well.
it scares me and hurts me but i don't know how to replace you. i'm not saying we're through but... we have barely spoken in over a month. i remember when we would talk every single day and i miss it. i know it's usually me but it's also you. you tell me how much i mean to you and you act confused about your relationships but i just don't believe it anymore. what i see is my soft decline in your life. what i know is that dave has slowly superseded me, forced me to the fringes. that when you can have him, there's no room for me.
it scares me because i don't know how to find someone so easy to trust and believe in as you."
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
a recollection
i'm forcing myself not to look. i came back last night, to kelly. i just haven't heard from her since. expected a message when i woke this morning. thought of it first thing, heart skipped a beat. nice way to start one's day. played it cool to myself, didn't rush getting downstairs. stopped for chapstick like always. and opened the computer to... nothing. she was online even. what a world i live in, waiting for messages online. she was there and then she was gone. i waited all day and she never showed. saw she had returned tonight but still no dice. maybe i should write her? she's probably busy. maybe she is ignoring me as well. i wouldn't blame her. i'm an awful friend. i will write her tomorrow, a text maybe. i can't find any good words right now.
i'm writing by the light of the christmas tree. i love having a tree around. no ornaments on it yet, just strung with lights and sitting off my right hand shoulder like a missile prepped and ready to launch. or a japanese office building half filled, late into the night.
i cut on the fire earlier, pulled over the little red and white checkerboard fabric bench with the wood frame to sit on. it's a layout i use quite frequently, probably every day during the cooler months. i walked over and got some chapstick and noticed it as i was returning. how familiar it all is. checking all the time for a message on the computer. i would have guessed, if you'd asked me six years ago, that i would be better off somehow by now. that i would have grown or changed myself around enough such that i wouldn't still be entertaining such situations. six years ago i would be sitting in the same spot on the same bench. i'd have the door to the sunporch, over on the left, open just so - and held with a chair - such that it would reflect to my eye the computer screen on the porch. it was a beautiful and simple geometrical arrangement. i can't remember when i came up with it but it was brilliant. from the screen, off the glass of the door, to me. i could sit in front of the fire watching television and glance over without getting up to see if jessica had arrived and left me a message. moved on? not quite.
the only other way i would set it up was if she was away and i'd program a sound - always a cow's moo - to sound if she returned. that moo sound will still give me the chills if i hear it. funny how those things stick with you.
i wrote danielle the other night, a long letter going on about my whole situation. about the loneliness and depression and self-loathing that i've become so cozy with. i forgot to mention the martyrdom... how i felt better being away from kelly for such imaginative reasons. like that i couldn't possibly be but a burden to her, one that i'd so graciously relieved her of in my absence. that i could feel - without even talking to her - how i was slipping out of her life. this is the last thing i want, really, but i could tell, somehow, that she was happier without me around. that i knew this without knowing it and it was keeping me away. i forgot to mention all that.
i remember writing a long time ago - freshman year probably - a retrospective about my time with jessica in high school. all my memories of her in one long post. i haven't and am not about to do the same thing with kelly but it reminded me... the first time i spoke to her was on the floor in the lounge of luter dorm at wake while she was talking to ka. i kept stealing the computer or something or telling her what to write and finally she left to run back to her room and told me to talk to kelly for a bit. so i did. she told me that we were like the same person, her and i. she might have even said we'd be perfect for each other, i can't remember. i do remember talking about belle & sebastian. i think i thought it would impress her. i knew she was into music. i still have two files ka forwarded to me, from ben folds' songs for silverman lp. ones she'd played on a record player and recorded for me. i can hear all the crackles and blips. i treated them with reverence back then and still have probably only listened to them once. i remember looking up her picture when i got back to my room and thinking how interesting it was. how i wasn't immediately attracted to her above all others but that she was someone i should get to know. today it's one of my favorite pictures of anyone. ever. things change without telling me.
i think sometimes now about songs she sent me, mixes we make for each other. i stop to consider like i never did before about what if anything they mean. when did she send this? was it during the time she felt so strongly over me? did she choose this song with me in mind? i don't know that i've ever come to any real conclusion over this but i do wonder. i do choose my songs more carefully now.
good luck and goodbye
i'm writing by the light of the christmas tree. i love having a tree around. no ornaments on it yet, just strung with lights and sitting off my right hand shoulder like a missile prepped and ready to launch. or a japanese office building half filled, late into the night.
i cut on the fire earlier, pulled over the little red and white checkerboard fabric bench with the wood frame to sit on. it's a layout i use quite frequently, probably every day during the cooler months. i walked over and got some chapstick and noticed it as i was returning. how familiar it all is. checking all the time for a message on the computer. i would have guessed, if you'd asked me six years ago, that i would be better off somehow by now. that i would have grown or changed myself around enough such that i wouldn't still be entertaining such situations. six years ago i would be sitting in the same spot on the same bench. i'd have the door to the sunporch, over on the left, open just so - and held with a chair - such that it would reflect to my eye the computer screen on the porch. it was a beautiful and simple geometrical arrangement. i can't remember when i came up with it but it was brilliant. from the screen, off the glass of the door, to me. i could sit in front of the fire watching television and glance over without getting up to see if jessica had arrived and left me a message. moved on? not quite.
the only other way i would set it up was if she was away and i'd program a sound - always a cow's moo - to sound if she returned. that moo sound will still give me the chills if i hear it. funny how those things stick with you.
i wrote danielle the other night, a long letter going on about my whole situation. about the loneliness and depression and self-loathing that i've become so cozy with. i forgot to mention the martyrdom... how i felt better being away from kelly for such imaginative reasons. like that i couldn't possibly be but a burden to her, one that i'd so graciously relieved her of in my absence. that i could feel - without even talking to her - how i was slipping out of her life. this is the last thing i want, really, but i could tell, somehow, that she was happier without me around. that i knew this without knowing it and it was keeping me away. i forgot to mention all that.
i remember writing a long time ago - freshman year probably - a retrospective about my time with jessica in high school. all my memories of her in one long post. i haven't and am not about to do the same thing with kelly but it reminded me... the first time i spoke to her was on the floor in the lounge of luter dorm at wake while she was talking to ka. i kept stealing the computer or something or telling her what to write and finally she left to run back to her room and told me to talk to kelly for a bit. so i did. she told me that we were like the same person, her and i. she might have even said we'd be perfect for each other, i can't remember. i do remember talking about belle & sebastian. i think i thought it would impress her. i knew she was into music. i still have two files ka forwarded to me, from ben folds' songs for silverman lp. ones she'd played on a record player and recorded for me. i can hear all the crackles and blips. i treated them with reverence back then and still have probably only listened to them once. i remember looking up her picture when i got back to my room and thinking how interesting it was. how i wasn't immediately attracted to her above all others but that she was someone i should get to know. today it's one of my favorite pictures of anyone. ever. things change without telling me.
i think sometimes now about songs she sent me, mixes we make for each other. i stop to consider like i never did before about what if anything they mean. when did she send this? was it during the time she felt so strongly over me? did she choose this song with me in mind? i don't know that i've ever come to any real conclusion over this but i do wonder. i do choose my songs more carefully now.
good luck and goodbye
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