absence makes the heart grow (longer).

It's been a year since I've been in love. It's been a year since it left, and I think I've missed having someplace to put mine more than I've missed its recipient. That's not to say he hadn't earned it. Christmas went by blissfully enough, full of as much cheer as we could muster. It just didn't carry over.

I've had a lot to say about love as of late, perhaps because when you have it, it seems far less valuable than when you don't, and maybe I'm guilty of taking it for granted. So I'll refer to a post I made a year ago, a couple of weeks before Christmas.

"If I could change the way I remember things, like if I remembered more birthdays and fewer heartbreaks, something truly good could probably happen. It almost is, except that it's tricky and I'm stuck right now in the very middle of the deciding moment that makes or breaks the momentum that's been gaining on me, which has the potential to propel me far enough over the edge that I can't see anything behind me. I'd like that.

Fingers crossed, it's not broken. I'm still not broken. Fuck you memory."

That said, I'm going to lunch with my father today. It took months of therapy, but I'm going to take him as he is, and try to keep loving him even though he sometimes can't remember the next day that we even talked. I guess I still possess enough hope that a little bit of it will get through, which is to say I'm lucky at this moment to be brimming over because there's so much more to be wasted.

As for that other guy, he can keep what I gave him. After the initial rise and fall, I thought I'd like to take it back. Instead I've just found that love's the sort of thing that the more you prune and trim it, the faster it flowers and grows. Even now, when he comes around, I still have enough to keep me from forgetting the times that were better, even if we can't have them like that anymore. Even if we sometimes still consider having them again, but don't. Just now, I'm reminded of a time when not wanting love was more important than having it, and yes, even that has its place.

Even so, it's a sunny winter morning, and I'd like to be sitting on the receiving end of any such feeling. Better yet, I'd like to be sharing it. A little give and take would do a shit-ton of good these days.

whatever keeps you up at night.

 The only things worth doing are probably the things that set you so free that you feel trapped by them. As if you're going to pale and wither if you don't do them, and you lose sleep, and you forget to eat, and you start to feel as if you're at the bottom of well where the light comes down and shines on the ground right next to you, but never sheds its grace on your face. Like you can't quite put your hands on it.

Those are the things I want to do the most. I haven't been, you know. Not as much.

The holidays are never a good time to endeavor to do such things, but for me this year, they are. I played some music last night, or maybe I only butchered some songs. I'd like to think that I played them well, but I could always use practice, and they could always be better. People seemed happy. Some were dancing, some were smiling, but the truth of the matter is that I didn't care either way. I just wanted to be doing it, and talent be damned, I was enjoying the moment for what it made me feel. Like I'm not slowly dying (as we all are), but rather slowly living up to my life's potential, whether or not it stops short of great.

My posts have been sparse, I know. It might be best to keep it simple, because even though we're all slowly dying, I need to live a little more slowly so that the meaning doesn't lose its appeal. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm taking my time, letting the words come where they may and when they're warranted. The same as I practice a song before I go stand and sing it in front of anyone, I need to practice writing what I mean before I shove it under anyone's nose to be read.

It's been a while since I've felt good about anything I've written. It finally happened this week when after some friends took me out for breakfast, I wrote them a "thank you" card. Right now, I'm writing a letter to a friend, because it seems like a good way to keep it going. 



"One more tired thing/the gray moon on the rise/when your want from the day/makes you to curse in your sleep at night"

and if we fail to see the good...

"Love, it turns out, is as undemocratic as money, so it accumulates around people who have plenty of it already: the sane, the healthy, the lovable."  — Nick Hornby (How to Be Good)

I think I'll be just fine, regardless.

I only quote books I've read. Sometimes I fold the pages over like a triangle to keep track of the places where something's struck me in the gut. This book wasn't the best book I've ever read, but none of them probably are. But I noticed that there were good parts, and I kept going.  I'm glad that I do that, but still wonder now and then whether I've spent too much time on a book, and whether I'm really loving it enough. Sometimes I have to love the bad ones more so that I know I've given it my best or that I didn't give up for the wrong reasons.

I just finished Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger, and had I not made it through one or three so so stories, I wouldn't have read Teddy, the last and best story. That one earned a couple of paper triangles, and I'm even considering underlining some lines just in case I forget what I thought was important at the time.

The nice thing about reading is that you can learn without getting hurt or hurting anyone else. Even so, there's something to be said about living. I have a lot of practice, and with any luck all of these little paper triangles will amount to something I'll feel in the end was worthwhile. Underline.

damn.

"I mean they don't seem able to love us just the way we are. They don't seem able to love us unless they can keep changing us a little bit. They love their reasons for loving us almost as much as they love us, and most of the time more. It's not so good that way." -- J.D. Salinger, Nine Stories

I hardly ever say I love you to anyone anymore. My step-mother. Once in a while a cat. I said it to my father the other day, but he didn't remember the next day that I had even been there. That would almost be sad, except I don't think it was a waste.

I've been looking forward to November. It's like a convergence of sorts, where the past meets the present and the future all at once. Today marks the future I'd been thinking about all year, and really I'm not all that far away from where I was. At least less far than I thought I needed to be to be happy with the present. Mostly. I thought for a while I needed to be doing something different than I was last year to get o.k.

That was stupid. I had to be o.k. before I could go anywhere.

Yesterday someone said they're not leaving, because I haven't given them a reason. This didn't really make me feel better, even if the intent was there. I mean, my mom left and I was five. I can't remember whether I gave her a reason to leave, nevermind stay. This isn't a sob story (though it's real). It's just an example, and a poor one at that. I don't need a therapist to tell me it couldn't have been my fault. I'm just saying it's really difficult to love people selflessly. I'm not sure it's even possible. Maybe that makes it hard for me to say it. I'm going to try, though, and when I succeed I'm really going to mean it. Otherwise, what's the point?

Still, I wonder if we're all looking for reasons not to love each other, or if we're clinging to the reasons we do love each other, and whether either one is right.

oh my.

I've been dreaming a lot lately about animals. I had a dream the night before last that I saw a crocodile in the lake where I was swimming for the better part of the summer. It didn't attack. It sort of looked like a blob at first, then it swam away. About a week before that, I dreamt that a spider bit me, and my foot truly hurt when I woke up. A couple of weeks before that I dreamed that a hummingbird landed on my hand. I was a little fearful that it would cut me with its beak, or maybe attack, but it just zoomed in, landed on my hand, hopped off and hovered, then flew away. It was green, if I remember correctly.

There was another week that I dreamt my cat Lucky was in two pieces. He wasn't bleeding or anything, and besides the obvious separation of front and rear, he was acting pretty normal. I told my roommate about it in the dream and asked her if I should call the vet, but she rolled her eyes like I was making a big deal out of nothing.

I did check on the dream meanings for the other animals, but I decided to skip the one about Lucky. If it means anything, I don't think I want to know what it is. Plus I don't think they'll have an entry for "cat in two pieces".

putting her together.

My feet are the shape of my father's feet. I don't think they're pretty, but they prefer summer, and I prefer to go without socks or shoes. My father never goes without shoes. It took him 55 years to put on a pair of sneakers rather than men's loafers. Even to mow the lawn. I've inherited the bite and jaw of my grandmother on my mother's side, but my father's lips and brow line. My nose is a mix of my mother's and my father's.

I went to a family funeral for my dad's step-father a few weeks ago, and I noticed that I have the same gap between my two front teeth as my grandmother and both of her daughters. My youngest aunt had hers closed, but you can still tell it was there. None of the women or their daughters on that side of the family wear their hair its natural color. I like reds and browns. Some of them like browns and blonds. It's a mixed bag, but never gray. They're a pretty bunch, too. My grandmother always accepted the gray, for as long as I've known her, anyway. There was a luncheon after the service. She looked pleased with the turnout, her three sons and two daughters turned mothers and fathers all gathered in the church basement. I don't know if she saw what I saw, and I know she could never feel what I feel, as one of the daughters of a legacy that she began when she married the man who carried the torch for the women and the wine. Her first husband.

There's a story of a man who lived in a two-room house. It was told to me when I was barely 16, by a friend's father. My friend's father was a shop kid turned husband, father and handyman. He went to trade school and learned auto body, wore leather jackets and boots and drank beer with his friends after school. He met his wife, and she liked bad boys, and they started a family. I met his daughter in the ninth grade, and she had the kind of parents you could talk to. Her mother told me she had been on a date with my father's brother in high school. Her father told me the story of the man in the two-room house. The man in the two room house went to church every Sunday. He lived alone, and on each Seventh day, as he walked home from Mass he stopped at the package store and bought a case of beer.

When you walked through the door of the two-room house, he told me, there was a pile of empty beer cans on the floor. A path from the door to the couch was the only part of the carpet you could see, according to Herb.

Years later, my great-grandmother died; I never knew her. My father called me to tell me, should I have seen the obituary and made the connection, though she lived just across the Fifth Street bridge, not far from where I had been living for six or so years. He didn't go to the funeral. And he told me about her husband.

He lived in a two-room house, on Eighth Street. He died of a heart-attack on the shitter among a pile of beer cans, through which a path was cut from the door to the couch. My grandmother had married his son. She had five children with him, and left him while the youngest girl was just 14. It took her so long, I think sometimes, and I wish she'd have had the foresight to save the other four kids from the beatings, the yelling; the sight of their father with other women. Just a few weeks ago, I learned that my father was always at the neighbors' house, the Fosters. Incidentally, their son's kid taught me how to play guitar.

According to my father's most recent account of the grandfather I never knew - except on some occasions when I was small that he showed up on our doorstep with a blond bombshell to ask my father for money - he was a philanderer. A philanderer because he could be. He was the best-looking man in town, my dad claims. And a raging alcoholic. Once in a while he would call my father and ask him to meet him at K-mart restaurant for a coffee. My step-mother was in college at the time, so she was never home. He'd pile my sister and I in the car, and we would stay in the toy aisle while they talked. I still don't know what about.

He died of liver disease several years ago. Some of his kids went to the funeral, some didn't. They fought a lot about it, I remember.

And now there's my father. He asked me to drive him to my grandmother's house last year. He quit drinking for the occasion, which could be viewed as a step in the right direction. He couldn't drink in front of me - he rarely does unless the vodka's concealed in a Coke can or a glass of lemonade. Instead, about an hour into the trip he started shaking. He said he was cold. He got in the backseat and covered himself with his jacket and laid down, shivering. We made it to the house about two hours later, and he could barely stand.

My grandmother and her husband - my father's step-father - were elated to have company. They made lunch. We sat while my father barely picked at the sandwiches, and ate about three spoonfuls of corn chowder, which she made especially for me. Good thing, because he got up from the table, went into the bathroom and threw it up. He came back and said he wasn't hungry, he was feeling sick and slouched down on the couch, still shaking, but worse. My grandmother paid no notice, and made no comment. She just kept smiling, and asked me whether I'd had enough to eat. I looked at my father across the room, and one of his eyes was drifting to the side, the other straight ahead. He went outside on the porch with my grandfather after lunch.

I talked to my grandmother a little about her divorce. She said she never wanted it. That my grandfather left. She said she picked up the pieces the best she could, met a wonderful second husband, and got on with hers and my aunt's life. She said she was just happy that her family turned out so well, and that everything worked out for the best. I felt like retching myself at that moment. And I realized how poorly loved my father was and is. That no one's going to take the leap and help him get out of this horrible Thomas family saga, and that he's probably going to continue on the same path as his father, and his father, and who knows before that. They don't leave much of a mark on this earth, except for maybe the legend of the man in the two-room house. A legend because that's how it was first told to me.

It's so real now, as my father stumbles into the bathroom some nights and falls down, cracking his skull on the side of the sink, or sometimes the toilet. It may very well turn out to be his story, and they won't print it in the obituary, but we'll know. And maybe one of the neighbors kids will know it, since they've been letting him walk their Basset Hound around the park out of pity, and maybe they'll tell it to someone who'll know my someday daughter. That part remains to be seen, since I'm committed to the idea that I'll have no someday daughter. Because of all of this. Because I love my father, and I've only ever been with anyone who acts like him, except for the parts where they tell me all of the things he should be telling me now. That I'm beautiful and smart, and they're proud of me, and they'll be there for me. But they're still like him.

I'm leaving that behind. I'm leaving a lot of things behind me, because if I keep them in front of me, it's only to punish myself for not being loveable enough to make him take exception to the family rule.

Even considering the history, I think maybe if I had a brother, he would remind me of my father. Maybe he would act more like a father than my own and I wouldn't have to do things this way anymore. If that means that I haven't lost hope, then I'm satisfied for now. With so far to go, and me without my waders. I do like the feel of the ground beneath my bare feet.

My father always wears shoes.

are magnets, all my friends are words

I haven't been writing much, here or anywhere. I've been reading a lot, playing some music, but only stuff I like, and I've been on the road a bit. It feels good, like I'm doing things and standing still at the same time.

I have to stay still for just a while. I'm jotting down ideas here and there, but I'll get back to them when I'm ready to move. That's not to say I'm frozen. I'm just standing in one place long enough to finally appreciate what's all around me, good and bad. It's been a lot to take in, and I'm holding my ground. Metaphors aside, I just need some time during which nothing happens.

So to answer the question, "Where have you been?" I've been right here, back to where I started, over to where it's going to end for all of us one day, and back here again. I do feel a big purge coming, and not of the vomitous sort. Just hold tight. 

"As quiet as it was on the outside, it was very loud on the inside." -This Book Will Save Your Life, A.M. Homes.