Day 54: Fools like me

Okay, so this year has yet to fulfill it's promise.  And I have had a few very low days this past week.  On the couch with re-runs of what my life will never be.  But I pulled myself off the couch (with difficulty) and "suited up" (sort of) and returned to work yesterday.

It was better to get off the couch and out of the house.   Even in the mitten state in late January/early February, outside is less bleak, less hopeless.  Especially with the unseasonably mild air crisp with the promise of spring.   Mesmerized by the twilight skyline from my office window.  A bit of spring in my step as I walked to the parking garage.  I cross against the light, mindful but not especially concerned about the cop car sitting in front of the building.

Then, the cop car's lights flash at me.  And I think: seriously? (Yes, I may have watched several episodes of Grey's Anatomy during my couch convalescence and may tend to over-identify with Meredith Grey.  Aside from the not being a surgeon [law school debt is bad enough], or the daughter of a surgeon, or skinny.  But the unavailable [at least in the beginning married] McDreamy, a silver airstream, a propensity for the [wrong] boys and the booze).  

Just as I am thinking that I should have extended my couch convalescence.  That a ticket for jaywalking will make me the laughingstock of well, everyone.   The window comes down and I spot a familiar face.  Smiling dark eyes that drank me in one Summer night. As we bonded over a shared history of the ones that got away.  Dark brown eyes with a bit of a twinkle, a bit of darkness, far too much pain.  Way too cute.

Randomness.  But randomness that made me smile.  And resolve to never venture forth without lipstick.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njD5lh0vPfs

Fools like Me, Lisa Loeb, who I believe is among those haunted by the ones who got away.  In other words, a kindred spirit:

Everybody go 
The party's over 
I want to be alone in my head 
In my bed tonight 
You never show 

You must really love her 
You think I don't know 
But I do, yeah it's true 
I think over is over 

I'm right back where I started 
(when it comes to wanting you) 
I can't have what I wanted 

[Chorus]
But I did, I can 
I was, I am 
Only human, living, dying 
Just like any fool who ever breathed 
If love is blind 
If love's a drug 
It always is 
It always was and 
Love was surely made for fools like me 

I know where I'm going 
I'm tripping I'm sliding around 
That's ok 
At least I'm excited 
It wasn't how I planned it 
(wasn't how I planned it 
Feet are where I landed 
At least I understand it now) 
My feet are where I landed 
(feet are staying on the ground) 
[Chorus]

Fools like me 
Fools like me 

I did, I can 
I was, I am 
Only human, living, dying 
Just like any fool who ever breathed 

Maybe it's the sanest thing 
Or just the sweetest kind of dream 
But love was surely made for fools 
(Love was surely made for fools) 
Love was surely made for fools 
(Love was surely made for fools) 
Love was surely made for fools like me
 

Day 53: These foolish things

These things come unbidden to me, striking out of nowhere.  Random bits of nostalgic lightning.  The sadness in his eyes as he sat across from me, eating my cold french fries.  The way his body shook in the moonlight.   The slow, easy way he seduced me, seduces me. Time and time and time again.

Like almost always, someone said it better than me. Sang it like I never could.

Oh! Will you never let me be?
Oh! Will you never set me free?
The ties that bound us
Are still around us
There's no escape that I can see
And still those little things remain
That bring me happiness or pain

A cigarette that bears a lipstick's traces
An airline ticket to romantic places
And still my heart has wings
These foolish things remind me of you
A tinkling piano in the next apartment
Those stumbling words that told you what my heart meant
A fair ground's painted swings
These foolish things remind me of you
You came you saw you conquer'd me
When you did that to me
I knew somehow this had to be
The winds of March that make my heart a dancer
A telephone that rings but who's to answer?
Oh, how the ghost of you clings!
These foolish things remind me of you

First daffodils and long excited cables
And candle lights on little corner tables
And still my heart has wings
These foolish things remind me of you
The park at evening when the bell has sounded
The "Ile de France" with all the gulls around it
The beauty that is Spring's
These foolish things remind me of you
How strange how sweet to find you still
These things are dear to me
They seem to bring you near to me
The sigh of midnight trains in empty stations
Silk stockings thrown aside dance invitations
Oh, how the ghost of you clings!
These foolish things remind me of you

Gardenia perfume ling'ring on a pillow
Wild strawb'ries only seven francs a kilo
And still my heart has wings
These foolish things remind me of you
The smile of Garbo and the scent of roses
The waiters whistling as the last bar closes
The song that Crosby sings
These foolish things remind me of you
How strange how sweet to find you still
These things are dear to me
They seem to bring you near to me
The scent of smould'ring leaves, the wail of steamers
Two lovers on the street who walk like dreamers
Oh, how the ghost of you clings!
These foolish things remind me of you

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4jkUlClRYc

Day 52: What the fuck am I doing?

I have a tightness in my chest.  My heart is twisted.  The other night I actually googled "am I having a heart attack?"  Google chided me for googling my symptoms and directed me to call 9-1-1.  

Magical thinking.  Realism. Coincidence.  Fate.  Signs.  Chance.  Serendipity.  Randomness. Numbness. Chaos.   Intractable. Frustration. Static.  Fuck. Sigh. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rphzRv8oHIM&feature=related (Part I)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3KFsm1rJVc&feature=related (Part II)

Day 51a: A postscript

To put it mildly, I am a fan of the postscript.  Otherwise known as the P.S.  I have been know to write letters and emails with P.S.s longer than the body of the letter or email.  I understand that the lengthy P.S. sort of defeats the purpose but it's one of my quirks.  Deal with it.

Any way, I digress.  I saw my best girl this weekend for our annual holiday baking gala and get together where we exchange Christmas gifts.  A few days before our bake-a-thon, I sent her the link to my Day 51 entry titled "Manderly again."  On Saturday, after our kitchen toiling was finished, she gave me a t-shirt that read ""Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again."    


Throughout our 20 plus year friendship, we've never discussed Rebecca--the book or movie from whence the quote came.    After opening my gift, I remarked that she really must have ordered the t-shirt fast, thinking that it was chosen in response to my blog entry.  She ordered it months ago and had not gotten around to reading my Day 51 entry.   (The horror, the horror, I know.)   


A sign?  Coincidence?  

Day 51: Manderley again

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”*    

I have a stuffy head and sore throat so last night, I took some stuffy-head-so-you-can-rest medicine.  Okay, the Walgreen's version of the stuffy-head-so-you-rest medicine but in the "death-green" original formula.**    It knocked me out and back into the arms of the ONE WHO GOT AWAY.  Also known as the ONE WHO CHOSE SOMEONE ELSE.  

The first part of the dream was him lamenting everything that he gave up by choosing to be the GOOD GUY WHO STAYED.   Passion, intimacy, himself.  His true self.  He continued to wage this internal war in my dream.   Until finally, he snuck in and then out of Germany and back into Detroit, which in my dream apparently borders Germany and Canada.   He and his friend were chased by German border agents and after their successful escape to my kitchen, the friend disappeared and the ONE took me in his arms (and on the kitchen counter tops.)

It was during the sweet-spot of this dream that the dream took another twist.  As dreams are wont to do.   In between passionate, longing kisses, he told me that he often thought of me, especially during play group or when reading a parenting manual when a mom named Julie was mentioned.  And my heart dropped.  Into my knees.   With disappointment.  

Then, the slow beep that builds into a series of loud beeps that is my alarm clock.  Pulling me from the magic of his arms, from figuring out why the context of which he thought of me made my heart drop, from hearing all the other ways that he thought of me, from having him choose me, to be with me.  To be with me for more than one night, for more than a few stolen hours.

And then all day, I am haunted.  The elevator door opens as I leave the parking garage at the Greektown Casino Hotel and the first word that I hear is Chicago.  Where we met, from whence he hails.  Then, this long, rambling discussion with myself on the way into work.   Chicago is a popular, storied city that is often mentioned.  As is California.  It's not unusual that people, books, music, and movies reference Chicago or San Francisco or California.  It does not mean anything.  There are no signs.  There are only hard, cold facts from which to draw a harder, colder conclusion.

And here I am.  Still at work.  90 minutes past quitting time.  Still haunted.

*From Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier

**Dennis O'Leary, No Cure for Cancer

Day 50: Time, memory, and endings

Ever since I can remember, I have been fascinated and perplexed by the construct of time.  The measurement of time, the passage of time.  The idea that time exists as a limitless quantity, as the Rolling Stones famously sang that time is somehow on our side.   We waste it and squander it and tell ourselves that there is always tomorrow. 

Based on the Brit's recommendation, I began reading Julian Barnes' "the sense of an ending" last night and finished the final 18 pages this morning.  I was hooked from the first words to the last sentence on page 163.   At 163 total pages, Barnes' style could be characterized as economical but yet it is so densely packed with exactly the right words that conveyed the fungiblity of time, the fragility of memory, the mirage of change.   

I admire it for both its technical brilliance and its haunting resonance.  Take this passage: ‎"Or perhaps it's that same paradox again: the history that happens underneath our noses ought to be the clearest, and yet it's the most deliquescent. We live in time, it bounds us and defines us, and the time is supposed to measure history, isn't it? But if we can't understand time, can't grasp its mysteries of pace and progress, what chance do we have with history--even our own small, personal, largely undocumented piece of it?"

It evoked Salvador Dali's the Persistence of Memory with it's melting clocks and warped landscape.  

Day 49, Pt 2

i will wade out
till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers
I will take the sun in my mouth
and leap into the ripe air
Alive
with closed eyes
to dash against darkness
in the sleeping curves of my body


e.e. cummings