he kept her like a secret

He kept her like a secret
And like a secret he didn't talk about her
If asked, she was well
But she was never particularly well
And like every living dying thing she got worse
As time went on
Time had taken her eyes already
Leaving her shut in
Though she left the TV on all day
And sometimes changed the channels
Mostly she sat still, except the hand
That drew her cigarette to her lips
And always ashed too late on the tray.
He kept her like a secret
Like a secret both dear and despised
And when asked, she was well
Except when age and accident made her worse
Threw her off her balance and
Hilariously and tragically
Into the recycling bin by the kitchen where
She groaned with broken hip until
He came home that night and found her
Weakened by age himself though not
Yet wholly diminished
He embraced her and pulled her out,
Carried her to her sofa and
Summoned the ambulance.
When she returned home, finally,
Sound of mind but not of body
Since healing is elusive with age
Rooted more firmly in her sofa than before
And more dependent still on her husband
Who kept her like a secret
Than when she only needed him to read for her
Aloud, she dropped more ash around her
And less often changed the TV channel.

oppression and humiliation

When I was young my fundamentally evangelical parents reminded me, time and time again, of the characteristics of that most problematic virtue, longsuffering. It’s not one people consider a virtue in mainstream Western society; if you’re suffering, it’s a sign something is wrong, and that trouble should be sought out and corrected. To my parents, one builds character by keeping patient in the fate of persecution or hatred, as well as providing a witness to the quality of one’s character. It’s the kind of “virtue” that can easily be coopted by the cynical and manipulative, I fear. In Malraux’s 1933 novel of the Chinese Revolution, Le Condition Humaine (Man’s Fate or The Human Condition), one reads an excerpt of a “lecture” remembered by a character in the grip of crisis (330):

“A civilization becomes transformed, you see, when its most oppressed element—the humiliation of the slave, the work of the modern worker—suddenly becomes a value, when the oppressed ceases to attempt to escape this humiliation, and seeks his salvation in it, when the worker ceases to attempt to escape this work, and seeks in it his reason for being.”

I thought this sounded true, and yet disturbing, as I gather it was meant to be. Still, I troubled over it. Why did it seem like a half-truth? I agreed with the idea that a people is indeed transformed when it succumbs to oppression, as this seemed to assert. The paragraph seemed like the objective, cold prose equivalent of the sorrowful truths a spiritual admits in subjective, feeling poetry. My pride revolted at the idea, however. What were the devil’s details? I didn’t like its characterization of work, carelessly equating it to involuntary slavery; this is a backwards-thinking proposition, I thought, but the entire statement seemed too tightly wound up for me to unknot alone.

Help arrived in the form of Taylor Branch’s masterful 1988 biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. In the first volume, Parting the Waters, readers are introduced to the hard-grinding, up-and-coming character of the Rev. Vernon Johns. Vernon Johns stirs up the comfortably cloistered and pretentiously bougie African American Montgomery church to which he is called to preach, and from almost the first instant. When his Jim Crow-era congregants reacted negatively to his labor and sales outside of the pulpit, Branch writes, Johns “accused them of persisting in the white man’s view of slavery—that labor was demeaning—when Negroes should know that it was oppression, not labor, that demeaned them. On the contrary, the desire to avoid labor had enticed whites into the corruption of slavery” (17). This pulpit criticism by the Rev. Johns seemed to answer pointedly, in part, Malraux’s damning assertion. It is not the “work of the modern worker” that settles him or her into humiliation as if it were a “reason for being,” but rather, as with the slave, the oppression that oppresses him. Any other explanation than this one of identity does the plantation master’s work of persuasion.

I needed a hopeful note, though. I needed more help. How does one interpret Malraux’s fictional lecturer? In contemporary terms the blue-collar worker in the United States and overseas has suffered under oppression as well as the confusion and insult perpetrated by those who conflate their labor with their oppression. Labor ought to be a source of pride, in my mind; bowing to oppression one of humiliation. When Martin Luther King spoke to the first rally in support of Rosa Parks, he spoke for the crowd when he told them, “there comes a time . . . when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression” (ibid, 139). The ring of familiarity was strengthened by King’s elaboration: “There comes a time, my friends, when people get tired of being thrown across the abyss of humiliation, where they experience the bleakness of nagging despair” and added “we are here because we are tired now” (140). The echo of those troubling words, “oppression,” “humiliation,” harmonized with my memory of Malraux’s proposition.

Why had Malraux expressed such a statement, and why in the manner he did? I know not yet, but I know better know how I feel about particular elements of his statement in terms of a context with which I have more familiarity. King put Malraux's oppression in the larger context of justice, and I felt the mental knot loosening.

My childhood questions about how long one must really remain patient in the face of suffering remain unanswered. Today I believe no God will reveal the meaning behind longsuffering’s valorization. I find myself more sympathetic with the mainstream on this question, but the necessity or otherwise of longsuffering is still unaddressed by any of those mentioned in the quotations I’ve found. What is addressed is a particular component of character: courage or bravery, perhaps.

surmising narrative and meaning

Currently, my significant other and I are reading Brian Boyd's On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction. I feel that I, personally, have two reasons for reading it, one being empirical interest in the subject of narrative theory--in which the book's title effectively conveys a focus and argument--and the other being putatively irrational and evaluatively, emotionally ethical interest--which, arguably, is nevertheless closer to the point of such a work. To put it more clearly, this latter interest is one of finding a coherent ethical statement with which I can agree and which stems from my felt need for a moral worldview that is persuasive and socially meaningful, yet divorced from what I think is a parochial and unfair Christian ethics.

The problem I believe inheres in Christianity is its creation of a worldview that manages to be coherent in part by being exclusive, and ordered by being archaically hierarchical. By its exclusivity, I mean Christianity adheres to a notion of abhorrent modes of sexual behavior, including homosexuality and extramarital or premarital sex, as being undermining of its socio-sexual hierarchy of community. By its being archaically hierarchical, I mean authority, and thence appropriate behavior, are arbitrarily masculinist and patriarchal--not to mention jealously theistic, although this last is another argument altogether. My basic moral sense finds any group that maintains coherence by means of an unfounded repugnance for some vilified other is not only unforgivably primitive but also itself morally repugnant.

Of course, the problem with abandoning the loving embrace of my childhood faith is a moral one that runs deeper than the problem of pain; namely, that I, like every I assume every other honest, non-sociopath human being would agree, am possessed of inherent notions of good and evil, help and harm, that on many points do agree entirely with the tenets of Christianity. I, like Maugham's protagonist Philip Carey in Of Human Bondage, find myself facing the explicit problem of rejecting a concept of deity I cannot believe in, and a worldview and system of ethics ostensibly based on that concept, with I know not what, exactly. As Maugham's book puts it, a fear of the law and punishment (Bentham, Foucault, et al.) is neither sufficient motivation nor an authority per se. Yet the reason that fear is itself insufficient brings one to Philip Carey's implicit problem: if not from God's authority, whence can a reasonable system of ethics and meaning derive?

As often happens with agnosticism and atheism, one confronted with the painful problem of seeking itself may find only one or two options for illuminating meaningfulness--no, three. First, one may attempt to install another, new authority; this, however, can lead to the paradox of infinite regress when one applies the same inquiry into that authority's source; an attempt to remain in this stage must end with either rationality's vicissitudinous and unsatisfiable hunger, or else intentional application of nepenthe. Second, one may attempt to install one's own authority in creating meaning in the world--this is Existentialism, basically--which may also succumb to inquiry's undermining desire for a foundation of authority, but offers at least the solace of autonomy. Third--and, I hope, most promising--is an attempt to find meaning and satisfaction in the natural order of the material universe.

I have said that I feel the call of emotion or irrationality is perhaps the truest or most apt reason for my perusal of Boyd's work on narrative. What I mean by this stems from my reading of Jung, as well as contemporary psychological writing; these authorities seem to have come to the conclusion that, as Jung hinted, seemingly rational, evaluative decision-making is actually an emotional process. I must reiterate a standard caution, echoing Jung and other psychological writers up until now: "emotion" in the human mind is not only those sweeping passions like joy or love or anger or hate, but also the organizing system of color-coding, so to speak, with which the brain assumptively labels each distinct impression. The import, nevertheless, is that our self-rationalizedly logical decisions are made not even necessarily by a process of heuristics but by the emotional brain itself--that unconscious source of "feelings" is also the source of decisive feeling.

It is this same unconscious or subconscious that is the source of dreams (often markedly recognizable in form and function across seeming chasms of time and culture) and of stories. As Tolstoy answered his own rhetorical question in What Is Art?, stories and other forms of narrative are at base a means for communicating, sharing, and broadcasting emotion. Our contemporary, Jungian view of decision-making tells us that these emotions are also, consciously or not, methods for persuasively bringing the artwork's audience to agreement with the artist's unconscious critical evaluation of what is and what ought to be; that is, of meaning and order, thus morality, based on an interaction with humanity's evolved sense of the world.

surrealism in a jar

My life has been too interesting lately in useful ways. I'm approaching normalcy. This situation cannot stand; I'm retreating into my box until--okay, actually, this feeling, this flavor of mundane surreality is absolutely useful. I just have to figure out how to channel it.

For example: "Dude--an ashtray. Look: I'm carrying an ashtray. C'mon! I know this is your brother's house, but seriously!" because my friend ashes on the effing floor. The effing floor! I can channel this "dudeness," as I'd call it: dudeness bubbling on the surface of a sea of mundane surreality is just the effect I think I'm looking for. It's a perfectly unexpected combination, like a dish with an unexpected pairing of salty and sweet.

About a week and a half, two weeks ago I was struck with a fleeting, beautifully whole and perfectly complete sense of the entirety of my story. It was majestic; there's no better way to describe that feeling. It took my breath away, left me paralyzed.

Now, returning to that memory, that moment, I can feel the tantalizing edges of it in my mind. It's absolutely a tactile, gut-level thing, a wafting scent, a memory of a taste I can't place in time or space because the food or drink it belongs to hasn't yet been presented to me. I feel I'll have to go into meditation, long, silent, and slow, to bring it back and flesh it out. It's a seance for a gnat--a life so brief that bringing it back is like striking in the dark in hopes of bringing back one's hand clasped around some invisible treasure, bit of intricately crafted jewelry. I feel like a blind man trying to smell his way back to a Monet in an art museum, except I still have to figure out how to break in at night despite daunting security.

Meanwhile, I've been writing so many "dudes" into my little "effed up-ness"-evoking project that when I went to visit my family the other day, to watch my middle brother graduate from high school, that I think I called just about every relative I interacted with "dude" at some point.

jobs I've never had

I've had a pretty varied working career so far, I think. I've worked at a library, as a janitor, as a furniture mover, as a teacher, as an office assistant, and as a salesman, among other things. But for some reason I like to lie about what I've done for a living, especially when I don't know the people I'm talking to. I enjoy seeing how people respond to the little stories or hints of stories I drop. I know it's BSing, but I just get a kick out of playing with people's heads now and then with things like these:

* Pasadena Water & Power.

I have a second-hand orange tee-shirt. It says "Pasadena Water and Power" on it. Obviously, people sometimes ask if I actually worked there, since it's not like you get those shirts off BustedTees or something. I'll almost always respond with, "Yeah. I don't like to talk about it." Straight face. Usually I'll get a strange look back, but I'll keep mine blank and then change the subject: "So, dude, what did you think about the stuff about AIG that came out in the news lately?"

* Butcher

When I go to the bar to shoot pool, I'll occasionally tell people I used to work as a butcher. Usually I'll say something like, "I'm not that great at pool--better than a lot but, y'know--but I know how to cut," followed by the above. The first time I did it was pretty amazing; I told this guy right after I got a difficult shot in, and he stared at me a second. When I looked back up at him, he asked me, "Really?"

I struggled internally to keep a straight face, and just said, "Yeah, dude."

"Wow," he said. "So . . . didn't it kind of stink?"

"Well, yeah," I replied. "But you only notice it for the first week or so. After that, you're just going to work, y'know?"

"Huh. That's incredible. It wasn't gross?"

"Naw, dude. You get used to smells, and it's just--y'know, it's a job."

He left it alone after that, but when his friend came up he introduced me after a second, "Yeah, man, this is Jon. He used to be a butcher, man!"

"No shit, dude?" the guy said, looking at me. "Cool." And we shook hands.

* Idaho potato farmer

This sounds ridiculous, but I have my reasons. Some people actually have a hard time believing that I was born and raised in California; I guess I'm just not bro-some enough or something--too clean-cut and generally politely soft-spoken. I've had so many people ask me after a bit of conversation if I'm from out of state, from college on, that I just got into the habit of telling them what they apparently want to hear. At first I'd protested, leading--surprisingly, to me--to further disbelief ("No way, dude. You don't act like you're from California"), so I picked a state off the top of my head that, one, I figured most people wouldn't actually be from; two, sounded like a likely place for someone as awkward and un-Californian as I seemed to be; and three, wouldn't have a specific, attributable accent people might expect to hear. So I said, "Well, actually, I'm from Idaho."

"Idaho?" someone would respond.

"Yeah," I'd reply. "Up in the panhandle." I figured adding something specific like that, that people wouldn't be likely to care to ask about or think of, would make it sound more believable.

"Huh. So're you from, like, out in the country up there?"

I couldn't believe that just saying I was from Idaho wasn't good enough, so I threw out, "Uh, yeah. I actually grew up on a potato farm."

"Really? How was that?" they'd ask.

And, of course, I'd answer, with a kind of facial shrug, "Boring." At that point they seemed to see something in my face that inspired doubt--maybe they noticed I was kind of laughing at them inside--and recognizing that, I threw in something totally ridiculous as a red herring. "Well, except for this one time. All the potatoes went on strike--just the yellow ones, though, 'cause the red ones didn't care, 'cause they thought the white potatoes were getting way too much attention for how mealy they were."

Of course, I could always tell people the governor of Idaho is an Otter, and they'd never believe it.

culture and other kinds of shock

So I'm in the process of moving. I should have been moved out already, but it's so hard to find good help these days. I'm kidding. I've simply found myself repeatedly overcome by inertia or nostalgia, or some weird combination (nostartia? inergia? sounds like a Russian energy company), and besides that, as most people who know me know, I don't have a car.

For the time being, I'm moving in with a Mexican family. I forget which city they hail from, but it's near the border. Said family is the brother's of a neighbor of mine, a small-time crackhead near and dear to me, since I've found that as long as no one's tweaked out, I can absolutely enjoy nearly anyone's company. I'll amend that to exclude arrogant people. I'm thinking specifically of arrogant white boys, of which bros are an endogenous race of their own, who'll dicker with the middle-aged Sikh guy who runs the 7-Eleven 'cause they thought they had more money than they did, and certainly it's that Middle Eastern guy who's wrong about how much you paid for two packs of Marlboros, since you're white and tatted and think you probably speak better English. (You're wrong.)

Anyway, back to culture shock. My Spanish has been better than it is now, chiefly because the people I hang out with casually are speaking slangy Mexican Spanglish ("Chingon!") and my code-switching's not up to par, so I keep falling back on translating in my head. Also, the previously over-white population of the college I went to (sad) lost me my ability to roll R's with the best of them. I used to have a native-like flair for Spanish pronunciation, and where is it now? Somewhere back in Long Beach, under the painted-over graffiti marking claims like the homeless guy's shits in the back parking lot. "This city is my toilet!" Surprising how common and applicable that statement can be.

This morning I wake up to the sounds of about half a dozen or so people, and a handful of kids, conversing in the garage outside my room's door. I put some pants and a jacket on--reverse Blink 182--and step outside to find that they're all gathered in chairs, gossiping or whatever while the kids run in circles. I wave shyly and step out, 'cause in the process of moving I've forgotten to buy a new thing of deodorant in time, and I'm not going to stop to piece out in Spanish, "Hey, hi, I'd stop and try to be neighborly or what-have-you, but I smell funny and it's embarrassing me." I think I made it through one and a half armpits yesterday before the little spray can coughed and died, leaving me standing in the middle of the room, staring stupidly at the little thing, thinking, "Man, I hope it's not too hot or humid today."

Fast forward to today, when I'd made it as far as Big Lots before I realized, one, none of the stores open until nine AM, and two, it's only twenty past eight. So I turn around and head back to my new room, passing a now-empty garage on the way, and grab a random book to read (Euclid's theorems are fascinating when your head hasn't quite percolated to life yet), and at five to eight put my stinky shirt back on and head back out the door, where I see to my surprise that where had been an empty garage are now twice as many members of the Hispanic Ladies' Social Club and Attendant Children as before, and now three or four of the tiny ones follow me out toward the front lawn instead of just one trying to ask me to help her blow up a balloon.

I don't think I'm a particularly frightening person, but as I bend down to pat the littlest girl on the head and tell her, "Okay, regrese a su madre; no puedes ir conmi--" she starts sobbing loudly. I'm surprised, embarrassed, and a little scared, and I pretty much high-tailed it out of there, muttering to myself in a squeaky voice, "But I didn't do anyting!" as her mother comes to grab her. Meanwhile I'm thinking as I head back to Big Lots for mi desodorante and a snack, "Great. Now, after my first night sleeping there, they're going to think I'm a creep."

I think I've got a lot to look forward to, including writing up a bilingual rental agreement, sharing la cocina and la ducha (yes, the Spanish word for shower is related to the word from which we derive the term "douche"), and getting my own key--not to mention that the inside door doesn't lock, and I'm scared to death of the eldest child, who is a typically nosy, ingratiating little cutie for her age, barging in while I'm dressing for work or something. Shudder, shudder, though it's just a little kid and she probably wouldn't know the difference.

Meanwhile, the cuties of my age are helpfully proving me close to incompetent in my other area of nonexpertise, the social field. Culture shock is showing up here, too, as I'm finding that even though I'm getting helpful lessons in standing up straight and looking the opposite sex in the eye, I can't always do much more than that.

Take three exciting examples, in chronological order. First, toward the end of last year I started talking to a very nice, interesting young lady through one of the too-many social networking sites I find myself browsing out of poverty-stricken late-evening boredom. After some fun conversations, she invited me to join her and her friends to watch some sick and twisted horror opera and maybe grab a bite and some conversation at the nearby Denny's. Since she's coming from out of town for this musical event, I originally agree--and then enters the shadowy figure of my landlord, telling me the rental check he waited three and a half weeks to cash has bounced and if I don't want to face eviction and mild but damning entries on my so-far-empty criminal record, I must give him all my money. In cash. Today.

This was a day before I was planning to meet said interesting person, and during the one and a half days last year when the rain was storming down like all the water in the Southern California sky couldn't find anywhere more interesting to be, ahorita, than my forehead. But being a man of my word (namely, "uh, okay, okay, I will"), and not much liking the idea of homelessness repeating itself for me without my owning an interesting car and being free to drive to, say, the Grand Canyon, I dutifully walked a quarter mile to the nearest free ATM and withdrew almost every penny I had to my name. Having returned and partially sated the ravenous bill, I now found myself incapable of coming through on my earlier promise to meet and chill, et cetera. Can I manage my checkbook? After this, pretty much yes. I've learned my lesson in being forced by my own bad and irresponsible guesstimation to be a flake.

Possibly in part due to this fun little trek of mine, I found myself near the turn of the year nearly unable to breath. New Year's Eve I made it through a day of work and headed own, feeling my lungs closing up with every breath, and the next year woke up whistling and gurgling when I sat up and tried to, you know, get oxygen in my blood stream. This did not bode well for my working day, and while I made it to work at my assigned time, I couldn't catch my breath. For half an hour. Thinking this might be a good reason to call out sick, I walked over to my boss, tried to breathe in front of her, and got sent home, where I curled up into a fetal position and stayed in bed for the next twenty hours or so. Thankfully I had the second and third off, and after trying to spend as much of that time unconscious as possible so as not to think about the pain of breathing, I woke up the third day and stared at the ceiling, hoping that when I got up I'd be able to breathe. I thought to myself, sensibly, "I should take myself to the hospital."

Then I sat up and found I could breath, still with some difficulty, but not as badly as the last couple days, and thought to myself, "I'd hate to go and get diagnosed with something expensive. Or something medically insignificant but expensive." After a moment's pondering, I added on, "I wish I had health insurance. Maybe I should go to the library to recuperate."

After deciding this was the best course of action, I got my lovely Friday paycheck--minuscule, but still better than three dollars-odd--and hopped on a bus downtown, where I stopped to get a cup of coffee, people-watch, and read a Spanish-language magazine in hopes of improving my vocabulary. At some point, the most beautiful woman I've seen in possibly two or three months walks into the coffee shop. I notice her, she glances briefly at me but with apparent disinterest, and I go back to my frustrating article about certain proteins causing weight loss after their blood levels go up due to exercise. (What a discovery! Regular exercise can assist weight loss?)

After a little while struggling with probably fourteen key multisyllabic words I don't know, I toss the magazine down in frustration and pick up my crossword puzzle, only to find that now I can't think in English. So I put that down too and take a survey of the room around me. Most Beautiful Woman in Three Months-ish is sitting at the table immediately behind me, texting somebody, and I can't help staring at her over my shoulder, probably doing a horrible job at being surreptitious. When she glances up from her phone, I look away, back at my crossword, and then look back. The tall, lovely individual with long, dark, curling tresses is staring back at me, just watching me.

So I straighten my shoulders, take a deep wheeze, gather up my courage, and spin back forward in my chair, eyes wide, hunching in my seat, melting inside. Out of the deep La Brea tar pits of my romantic soul, something tiny inside of me is yelling up at my brain, "Just talk to her, dammit! Say something! Smile at her, even!" And I can't move. Finally, after an eternity of five to ten seconds, I turn slightly, trying badly to be nonchalant, and glance back behind to find that she is still looking at me.

Repeat process. Twice. And then tell yourself, "Y'know, I really wasn't trying to meet anybody today. I'm still sick. It's not like I could afford to take her out or anything." And then realize you're a big coward from time to time, inevitably at the most inopportune moments, and go back to your silly article about Hispanic proteins crying and looking for their mothers.

Third embarrassing confession follows here. I met a cute, fun redhead recently, and this time my confident side found its way out of Señor Temeridad's ridiculous clutches and had a date with her. Went fairly well, for me, as I was only somewhat lame but otherwise acted fairly normal to whatever extent wouldn't've been lying for me. Afterwards, did I do the normal thing and propose a possible second date? No, of course not. I don't do that scene enough to have thought of it. In case she hadn't lost whatever interest she might've had, I texted her to tell her I'd love to do something more interesting another time, which the next day she replied in agreement to, and then . . . I couldn't think of anything to say for two and a half days!

Man alive, am I good at life or what? Hopefully all the victims of my social forays will eventually forgive me the annoyance, and by the time I've visited China, India, Germany, France, and Ireland and learned three or four more languages, maybe gotten my PhD in something uselessly abstract but intellectually entertaining, and picked up an instrument or two, I'll be thirty-ish and know what to do with myself around other people.

Meanwhile, I'm going to get a cup of coffee.

Tangerines and Purple Whales

I haven't really talked about it; see the end of this for more on my position on said. Anyway, this is for anybody who was aware or wondered.

I'm getting better, a little, I think. For the second time since she left me, I had a dream in which I was crying, but this time I didn't wake up sobbing--and I couldn't remember what I'd dreamed about. I doubt it helps that I'm pretty sick, and occasionally feverish. Normally I don't dream about it, and generally I don't cry; I resent it when I do have those dreams, even when I don't remember them, because they leave me with a strange feeling inside, kind of like my heart just got stepped on, a pulpy feeling that lets the juices of carefully held and organized thoughts kind of seep through my body and damage internal organs. Grab an orange or a tangerine or something, put it on the pavement, and carefully and deliberately step down on it, with your whole weight on your heel. That's how it ends up feeling for about half a day at a time, when I remember against my own wishes.

It's a long process. The weird thing is, it seems like my surface-level happiness has the quickest recovery, but the deeper I go, whether I'm delving purposely or being accidentally reminded as I described above, the less healed I am. My subconscious is, I think, doing better than it had been; during the times I'm not forcing an attitude on myself (e.g., I'm cheerful and confident when I'm on the sales floor), when I'm simply resting and feeling at-will whatever comes along, I find myself less depressed, more self-confident (or at least more self-worthy, if you will--look it up), more relaxed. When I'm chilling* at my bud's place watching some movie or what-have-you, I don't look to my side every few minutes and find myself surprised that the only girl in the room is my friend's. If something major happens in my life--say, I get fired by the Christians, or I find they're haggling immorally over my last paycheck, or I go to the temp agency and find them wonderfully encouraging there--my first impulse is no longer to pick up the phone and call her. I have other people rooting for me now.

I know what to do with myself at night. I'm getting out of the habit of thinking, "Well, if there's no one to share food with, I don't really feel like making any." Now I simply think, "Dammit, I'm hungry, and I think I have the correct ingredients in my cupboards. Stir yourself, man!" That's helpful. I remembered three days ago that I had a huge hunk of ground beef in the freezer, and it's taken pretty much since then to defrost. In the meanwhile I discovered a couple cans of spaghetti sauce in my cupboard, and a package of spaghetti--my last one, which is why I thought I'd had none. So last night I treated myself to a romantic (tongue-in-cheek) dinner and a movie, though the whole old, black-and-white movie thing backfired for me since I only have one, about the time leading up to the Civil War, and the first half or so is pro-South, which on that issue is something that makes me cringe. Cringing doesn't produce a self-romantic evening, or even a relaxing one, of course, so I ended up falling asleep to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy--original BBC version.

This follows in the same vein. What do I say when people ask? Yeah, I was engaged. No, I didn't make the choice to leave the relationship. I'm doing okay; I have to live my own life. No, I don't consider us to be on speaking terms. Yes, it's hard. No, I'm not bitter. If I think about it, I'm angry, and as with anything, I respect an individual's right to make decisions whether or not I respect the decisions they make. The one I seem to get the most often--I don't know why--is, "Would you take her back?" I have nothing but blank looks in answer to that. It's a moot point--but "moot" means disputable, arguable, so maybe it's just a pointless question. It doesn't apply to reality; it's like asking, "Would you paint that whale purple?"

To essay, creative silence, this time, is more than an unfortunate accident; it's been a means of self-defense, not only out of fear of censure and resentful response to "too much said," but also as intentional self-defense from my own self, from the regrets and now much-reduced but once overwhelming feelings of loss I'd simply grown tired of feeling. Yet midst the struggle for not only sanity but also self-composure, closure, this tangible feeling of responsibility remains, responsibility not only to myself but also to others possibly and probably unknown who could profit from what I can only rightly identify as my innate ability to express, to put into words. Words are, after all, my best gift and greatest downfall.

So, here it is. I put things into words, and slightly less vague ones than usual.



(*OMG, I used that word naturally--I can't believe it! I swore throughout the entirety of college that I would never, ever use that word in my life--I didn't make the same promise about cursing, which I never used to do--and here I am using it!)