Laser Point Poet

Almost everyone I know and everyone invited endlessly to write their inane, uninspired but still self-important thoughts on the New York Times and other big media sources has come out guns firing about Obama's unworthiness in receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, without the briefest pause for the quiet or respect that is due our President or the Nobel institution. The general argument: he hasn't done enough. It does seem evident, and most people seem to acknowledge this, mainly Obama himself, who proffered it, that this is a type of encouragement award, a way of giving weight, prestige, momentum to a cause. The cause being, presumably, a diplomatic, progressive American government. It's a testimony to the warmongering and hypocrisy of American foreign (and domestic) policy not only but especially during the previous presidency that a Nobel is even conceivable to a President only nine or ten months in office simply because he's behaved decently and spoken rationally. My first point being that if this prize seems empty it speaks more to the dismal state of American political integrity than it does to Obama's bewitchment of every left-leaning individual or organization.

A second thing to consider is that the nature of the prize is necessarily different depending upon who gets it. When it goes to people who are not prominent world leaders, and possibly poorly-known outside of their cause, it is often an award that acknowledges a lifetime of dedication to a righteous cause or consistent bravery when confronted with the danger that working for a righteous cause incurs within the oppressive regimes that necessitate it. Shirin Ebadi comes to mind as an example of this type of winner. When Ebadi won, I don't remember anybody arguing, except possibly Ayatolla Khemenei, that her prize was undeserved: ignorance of who she was sealed people's lips, few Americans considered the prize noteworthy, and those who thought about it deferred to the supposed judgment of the Norwegian committee.

But now, every American feels him or herself such an expert on Obama that they feel qualified and impelled to critique the Nobel Committee's decision, as if they understood well their (erroneous) reasons for selecting him or what they were really looking for in the next laureate, or who else (more deserving) they were considering. High presumption for each person with a grudge of any kind, especially a second-hand grudge inherited from one or many pundits, to criticize the Nobel Committee now, just because they've finally selected someone they've heard of.

But back to a point I never finished about the nature of the prize depending upon who wins it. Unlike when someone relatively low-profile wins the award, when high-profile people from politics or the world stage in general win the Nobel Peace Prize, it often corresponds not to a lifetime of uphill work for an oppressed group, but to a commitment to moderate (not even liberal) goals, and a rigorous pursuit of dialogue and diplomacy rather than harsh or unilateral action. I think this has to do with the fact that a person in a position of great visibility and power has at once a huge ability to influence many and also significant incentives to be self-serving and corrupt, so a person in a position of great power, has to do less, in a sense, than a person of marginal visibility and power, to merit the recognition, because its context provides the umph that time or sacrifice may not be there to lend.

This is not true of all world leaders. Some of the most prominent Nobel Laureates have been great and tireless crusaders of peaceful causes, and among them we can not YET count Obama. But if the Nobel believes in him, it means he stands a good chance to place himself in such a category in time. And with the backing of the Peace Prize, I'd say he is more likely to.

Still, what most offends me about the critiques of Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize is that the argument necessarily ignores so many past (and recent) winners of comparable stature who won the award for one small, brief and highly visible political action when their lives had not only not been dedicated to peace, but had been staunchly against it. Laureates that come to mind are Yassir Arafat and Menachem Begin, who won at different times, in correspondence to different (and sadly short-lived) political events despite their having been warriors and, really, terrorists, their entire political careers prior to receiving the award. And I'm not necessarily saying that the Award can't have that flexibility too--again, to give support to a difficult and precarious cause, but in those instances, to give former (what shall we call them?) men-not-of-peace the Nobel Peace Prize for small but symbolic progress in the Israeli-Palestinian crisis and to have that progress ruined and underwritten again and again with ongoing violence anyway, that's a Nobel year to lament, to look back on with sadness and despair. And even if he's no Dalai Lama, Obama is no Arafat or Begin either and the things he's done to show that have not been of the flashy, impermanent variety, but have been done at the level of policy and long-term reform, so that, even if, like Carter, he is a failed President, he will be recognized for his purity of purpose as a politician.

Lastly, I can't help but say how absolutely shitty I thought Thomas Friedman and Maureen Dowd's op-eds on this topic were. By the end of Friedman's onanistic "what speech Obama should give" essay, I'm sure he had forgotten that Obama and not he had won the prize, but how cute to set it up so that if Obama says any of those things he can take credit for it. And Maureen Dowd just showed how much she'd like to write creatively but can't even manage the lowest, gaudiest form or parody.

To end on a positive note, we are all lucky I didn't go into how crazy the Nobel Literature selections generally are. I am proud of Obama and humbled as fuck that they gave the prize to an American politician. I won't say that only he could have managed it, but I certainly hope he proves himself worthy of (most of the members of) the community of Nobel Peace Laureates, with whom he might have to dine in heaven.

for an essay contest, actually. But all the same. They wanted to know about a moment when you knew you were a "grown-up." I know. They used that phrase.

In some ways, I think I’m still waiting to become one—for someone on high with a sparkling scepter to touch me on the forehead and say, “Voila, now you are an adult.” But like anything that lacks an outward ceremony, becoming an adult has crept up on me as it does on everyone, a slow process of becoming and realizing. Were I from a more traditional culture with a definitive rite of passage to mark my ascent into adulthood, I can’t imagine it would be more sincere or authentic than the moment that comes to mind when I read this question. In modern American culture, we have our rites of passage: college graduation, your first job, perhaps graduate school. And those I haven’t experienced: getting married, having children. But no one becomes an adult by outward changes—really growing up is just that, or more accurately, growing out—the inner changes that come at their own pace, sometimes hastening forth in a crisis, sometimes withdrawing. One thing you can be sure of: when you realize you’re an adult, you’ve already been one for a while.

The memory that comes to mind is recent, and, like so many things, I only took clear stock of it once it was over. I had taken off work to drive to New Jersey where my family lives and help my grandparents move into their new apartment. My grandparents had done the traditional migration from the northeast to Florida twenty years ago, and now were no longer able to live on their own. My grandfather, who we call “Pooh” has Alzheimer’s, and my grandmother, after two serious falls, can barely walk. Between his confusion and her frailty, the least things are impossible for them, so they reverse-migrated to New Jersey, an event itself three years in the making. There’s nothing easy about giving up one’s freedom, even just geographical, and even after Mom Mom was resolved, whenever she broached it with Pooh, in his stubbornness and frightened bewilderment of early Alzheimer’s, he would cry until he forgot what they were talking about. Of course the real reason I was there was not to sort their century’s worth of duplicate kitchen utensils, which naturally I ended up doing, but to provide emotional support and sane companionship for my mother, who saw this reverse migration as the end of her free life.

I don’t blame my mother for feeling this way. The reason she dreaded their coming so much is that she’s spent much of her life already caring for the elderly, and not because of outright duty but too much kindness and generosity. When I was young, for about ten years, in addition to working full-time as a waitress and caring for my brother and I, she took care of her grandmother, her grandmother’s neighbor, and her mother-in-law, almost on her own. She was chauffer, secretary, lawn-mower, and in every sense advocate for all three of them until, it seemed to happen all at once, two of them died and the other, her mother-in-law, went into a nursing home. Things leave their mark, and her reaction to her parents moving back in their dependent state was a traumatic response that I knew she was justified in having. She knew better than I what Mom Mom and Pooh moving to New Jersey would mean and how significantly it would impact her life and the life of our family.

Still it’s hard to understand until you’re in it, neck-deep in boxes, trying to get Pooh to stop opening the freezer and sticking his unwashed fingers into the water in the ice cube tray because he wants a drink and doesn’t believe the freezer is on and can’t remember you put the tray in fifteen minutes ago, since when he’s opened the door every two minutes. Mom Mom has been walking across the living room for five minutes to look for her telephones which, finally, she asks you to find. You look in every box but don’t find them. She starts back across the living room, yelling at Pooh all along, who responds, “Wha?” and, picking up a bottle of Glenfiddich from 1967 says, “Is this vodka?” which is all he drinks, and then opens the freezer door and sticks his fingers in the ice cube tray. My father shows up with the telephones, which were in the back of their car, which he drove from Florida, and the crisis of their phone number begins. They have the wrong phone number, how will anyone get hold of them? Mom and I are secretly glad we have the wrong number because they have hearing-impaired telephones and we can’t bear any more noise. Mom Mom’s so worried about the phone something has to be done, so I call my cell phone from their land line and find the number. No one believes me, so I have to dial them on my cell and when both their phones go off at once, it sounds like a fire drill. Pooh says, “Ma, the phone’s ringing,” and answers it.

It’s funny to remember it, but day to day it’s not funny watching people who were once sharp and capable and a joy to be with become helpless and, worst of all, irritating, so that along with the ongoing burden of helping them, you begin to feel resentment and guilt. No one should begrudge their parents any sacrifice, but how can we help it, being worn down so slowly and thoroughly? I’m lucky to be the observer and listener who comes by once in a while with fresh stores of patience and leaves as quickly as I came.

The moment when I realized I was a grown-up came before the farcical move-in day, the first evening, as soon as I stepped in the door. As I drove down, I had been on and off the phone with my mother and heard her voice grow more and more desperate. The last time we spoke I asked her if I should pick up wine and she said, “Don’t stop if it will take too long, just get here as soon as possible.” When I walked in, everyone looked crazed. Pooh was confused and angry because his drink was always empty. Mom Mom was angry at Pooh for drinking too much and my mother was so sick with anxiety she had the expression of a little girl who’s nauseous and worried she’ll throw-up that very minute. I was able to see how it was before I’d been there, but then I saw how everything changed once I arrived: Pooh stopped asking questions and became serene, and Mom Mom quieted down too. Mom was relieved, but she kept looking sick for a long time. She was worried about what to make for dinner, and I took over right away and made a big dinner from scratch. While I cooked, we sat in the kitchen having drinks and chatting, Mom and I laughing at our own jokes they didn’t hear. They went to bed a half-hour later and before she went to bed, my mom had finally started to feel sound in the stomach. She said it was the best night of sleep she’d had in a while.

I’ve experienced before when the family’s in a state of semi-crisis and the arrival of one person sets everyone at ease. Once, Mom Mom and Pooh had that magical ability: my dad has talked about them coming to visit when he and Mom were poor and living off of food stamps. He remembered Pooh opening the trunk of the car filled with wine, fruit and finger sandwiches. But in my lifetime it’s been my mom and dad who have played that role in our family. It’s no great gift of the person who sets things to right, so much as how the other people in the family view them, and that evening for the first time in my life, I was the person who moved in, took charge and restored calm.

There have been other moments when I realized I was a grown-up: becoming twice an aunt and godmother to my brother’s children and the sudden, strange instances when I’ve acutely felt the absence from my life of the children I do not yet have. But growing up is not just about how we relate to the generations that come after us, but also how we relate to those that precede us and need us more and more for our physical strength, our clear-headedness, our understanding of the internet, and especially the fearlessness we have because we have not yet come, through experience, to understand how difficult many things are. When you rise to the needs of those around you, and do it not because you’re less afraid or know more than they do, but because you recognize they need you and believe in you, you’re a grown-up.

In the interest of clearing my mind of the worthless things that preoccupy and distract me, I’ll say that it still only takes one small thing to ruin my whole day. And probably the more responsible way of phrasing this phenomenon is that I still allow one small thing to ruin my day. Yesterday, it was that, at work, during lineup, which is when we all have dinner before the restaurant opens and the owner, manager and bartenders tell us relevant information for the day, the owner gave us this talking-to about showing up late. He said that many of us wander in several minutes late habitually and that we will be written up and eventually let go. Now I don’t even know whether I fear losing my job, and I believe, although how can I be sure what his perception of our punctuality it? that I habitually show up early or on time, but yesterday I was late and I apologized to him for it. So I felt like he said that for my benefit and the, what was it? Less embarrassment than the sense of injustice, unfairness, cast a pall over my whole day and evening. I’m still thinking about it now. In this way, I allow work, and a particularly bad moment at work, to poison my non-work time, which is what I live for. I realize that all I can do is hope that he had the right people in mind and that he didn’t mean me even though circumstances would indicate that he did, and strive to be even more punctual in the future. But it’s the impotence of the situation that I think gets me the most. And it pisses me off that I drove all the way from New Jersey yesterday and arrived at work five minutes late and then got called out for it and threatened with being fired. I mean that’s what it seems like.

It’s weird how I feel about my job, probably it’s not that uncommon. For what it is, it’s about the best it can be. I basically hate waitressing for various reasons, but I like the restaurant, the people I do it with, and I make good money. They’re generally fair and in some ways even indulgent. I have a sort of ongoing fantasy of quitting, but I know I need to earn money and in some ways I want to keep working there as much as possible for as long as possible (well not as possible). My major obstacle in my job is my own perception of being there. My general attitude is that I dread going and being there and want to leave. It would be far better if I could just ignore it until it was upon me and then enjoy it to the extent I can while I’m there. I’m generally not miserable when I’m there.

One problem with a job like this is that there are so many little things that go into performing it perfectly that it may be impossible to do them all consistently. Arriving early is only one of them. There are millions and you can do what I do, which is work your ass off taking care of your own stuff and others’ and you will only be partially recognized for that, but somehow every shadow of an error or overlooked thing is noticed and addressed and even when there’s no threat behind it, it still makes me fairly crazy and unhappy. I guess when I write this I forgive myself a little bit for both whatever latest transgression I’ve been reprimanded for, and for having dwelled on it at the expense of my own piece of mind, because I get more upset about being upset than I was upset in the first place, usually.

I’d like to write about something else in the hopes that I can finally stop thinking about this. I went to New Jersey for two days, less actually, to help my grandparents move into their apartment in Aloe Village, a senior citizen community across the train tracks in South Egg Harbor where most of the old people in my life have lived. Pooh has Alzheimer’s and Mom Mom needs a new hip badly. They can hardly walk but they generally refuse to sit down and are therefore always hovering wherever you need to be. Pooh drives you crazy with his repetitive, deaf banter and Mom Mom exacerbates it by yelling back at him and sometimes asking him unnecessary questions, frequently from the other room where he picks up just enough to scream “What?” My mom was having a nervous breakdown when I got there and she was in better spirits when I left but that’s because she was free of them for the moment. I think she probably gets a stomach ache whenever she’s with them because they’re what she dreads before, during and after she interacts with them. I guess they’re her waitressing. (Although waitressing used to be her waitressing.)

I know it’s been a long time since I’ve written, and with the exception of my cataloguing my breakup with Peyton that one time, I haven’t written consistently since I was living in Argentina, which was almost three years ago. That in itself is amazing. The time there seemed to move so slowly and deliberately, here even when it trudges it bounds.

Argentina was a good place to write: I had solitude free from distractions. I have that now for perhaps a limited time. But that situation is one the artist must seek to prolong, to guard jealously as most people should guard their freedom. I think people look to artists for the freedom calls-to-arms when they are needed, but the artist, of inborn and indelible freedom, is the one person who has to be less concerned about that than he is about getting the hell away from people so he can write and paint.

I’ve heard people say, even discussed with people, the idea that a writer has to love solitude more than they love anything else. One present incarnation of the saying arose from Colette by way of my friend Aja. But I think the thing has been said many times and arose from the simple presence of justification for it. And how writers and artists make solitude for themselves is one of the most creative things they do. You think of the recluse, even of the people who disappeared (B. Traven or J.D. Salinger), those who embarked on vision quests (all the beats) or were just nasty as hell when interviewed (all the modernist poets). But they’re obvious. How do young writers these days do it?

Certainly the writers in and around writing programs are famous for doing just what I’ve seen them do (and done! I am the cardinal example) these last two years, which is not to avoid human contact altogether, which is actually a relatively painless and protective way to ensure solitude, but to throw themselves into the fray of social activity, drinking to fight their natural shyness (I’m talking about myself, but doesn’t it describe the stereotype and the real people who fill it?), going out as much as possible with everyone they can, almost not discriminating in who they surround themselves with, taking lovers, often many, getting deeply and passionately involved with one or more of them, and then, as they’ve worsened their lives for writing, sabotaging each relationship so that all that’s left is the art and the drinking. And maybe drugs. Most writers don’t have the money for drugs. I mean this as, if anything other than an observation, an apologia, not a critique. Why apologize or pierce myself with disapproval?

I have heard a lot of people talk about happiness, and the upshot of conversations about happiness is usually that people should strive for it to the extent that they make it their top priority. I think that probably all people can be happy, but can they all be great? Great according to their own gifts and measures. Artists all, I think, or mainly, see some form of greatness in their grasp and many of them, by nature, cannot achieve both happiness and greatness in their art. Some of course can, and some will naturally value happiness and the things that go with it (family, friends, responsibilities) more than toiling after mediocrity (which is actually the sort of greatness I’m talking about: “to have been a writer, even a minor one” as Chekhov had one of his characters say). Greatness, with its implications of commercial or popular success, may be better said as “devotion” because art is a priestlike vocation or that of the lover: the glory is in the single-minded and pure dedication and effort for a thing that is not goal-oriented or finite.

I’m not saying that it’s alright to be a recluse or son of a bitch as long as you win a Pulitzer. I’m saying that I think some people are placed in the position of loving making art, the practice of it, the little achievements of it, and they can never reconcile that to their happiness. For such people (and I don’t know if I am among them or not, certainly I keep hope alive that I can strike a balance) I question whether happiness is possible if it means they have to abandon or give short-shrift to writing. These people are rare: they are made almost exclusively to feel deeply and to transform painful and ecstatic experiences into tangible things. I don’t know if it’s more my intellect or my intuition that objects for the sake of these people to the idea that we all must seek happiness. It seems to me like a sentence to failure as well as the unhappiness that is probably already their destiny. And I don’t know if it’s my hyper-valuation of art or if it’s my ego or my sub-conscious and conscious glorifying of the romantic tormented/recluse artist idol or good sense that lead me to these conclusions.

It deserves to be said that not all unhappinesses are made equal. Happiness is a pretty strange concept anyway and I know there are psychologists studying how it varies conceptually from culture to culture and how it’s been perceived over time. I don’t think I’d challenge any data by saying it’s a modern concept and an important one overwhelmingly to Americans, being part of our dense national mythology about what it means to live an acceptable life, which has become, if it didn’t at all begin that way, in almost every way extreme. I have heard that Thomas Jefferson originally wrote “life, liberty and the pursuit of property” but I can’t cite that and have no great wish to. I love the idea of him as pragmatist and dreamer. Property no good? Oh well then happiness. We out of milk? Is there still some champagne? How about that Hungarian health tonic the gypsies sold us?

You can say you are unhappy and still be satisfied in many ways. In a relationship, you can be sexually and domestically and even emotionally satisfied and still feel unhappy. I know this is true. And you can feel unhappy with your life even when all your needs are met: food, shelter, education, the general stuff of being able to live, whatever it is. You can even be moderately or very successful at something important to you and be unhappy. Europeans report feeling vaguely unhappy or indifferent and Japanese think happiness is something that occurs to you, not your responsibility (again, probably messing up these details, but same premise) but I think it’s beyond culture, I think it’s genetic too. Some people are terribly depressed, and this is genetic. Some people are bi-polar or schizophrenic. Also genetic. But the functioning people (alcoholics or not) who are perpetually melancholy, would you, if you could, dope them up or force them to follow some seven-step strategy so that they feel happy all the time, all the parts of their lives being equal? That seems as misguided as the idea that everyone has to achieve a happy marriage or partnership, although I almost hesitate to suggest it’s a given that not all people must find a stable, committed relationship. It seems to be that the same people who value happiness so highly also value relationships. If you can achieve a happy relationship, many young people believe (guilty!), happiness will be complete.

I still, I admit, dream after that beautiful relationship, but I no longer seek an inviolable, shining from within happiness. I want a certain peace. But I know who I am. I am not made for placid happiness, I am made for flashes of joy, much sorrow and, I hope, some degree of peace. Not all people love the same, some love with a sweet simplicity, I love with tormented passion. This is not possible or even desirable for some people, but then their way of loving is not possible for me or entirely desirable although I often envy it.

I meant to write about my new house, a cabin in the woods, just outside of Charlottesville, to brag about how the graveyards don’t scare me and I even went all around the house with a flashlight in the cloak of night with the insects screaming to look for a water heater which I eventually found inside, and how it’s not a place for those bothered by bugs and little lizards. About how I pray to the beautiful forces of this situation I find myself in that I will be again the single-minded writer I have sometimes been in the past and that I will preserve this solitude and write so many blogs my four readers will have to quite their jobs to read them. But I didn’t.

Today I am having our traditional Tuesday lunch, but with Saffron instead of you. And I've tailored the menu to the guest as always, so we're having salad with strawberries and grilled chicken. Not that you wouldn't have liked this, but I wouldn't have necessarily made it either because I'd have been afraid that 1. it wouldn't be filling enough for you and 2. you've never ordered it when we've gone out so it's not your favorite. I just got done watching the inauguration as well and I was, of course, thinking of your moderate indifference to politics. I mean you care, but not like I do. I was thinking that your feeling about poetry is similar. You like it, but it's not the matter of great consequence for you that it is for me. These differences for me are important, for you they were merely differences.

I have been asking myself what you've been going through, what you're thinking, to what degree you feel betrayed, and how well you understand why I did what I did. I'm also wondering if one day this will all be over, and will you not be a part of my life, or me part of yours, as if we never had been? And I do not believe that in the future we could come back to each other because I worry that I am too old, and by then you will still be young while I will suddenly be way too old and beyond my and our possibilities.

Since saying I love you is inadequate, both because it inspires hopes it doesn't promise and because it's only well-received within the strict context of a relationship or a would-be relationship, therefore you can't very well say it to someone you've broken up with and have it well-received, and because it's so bandied about that it sometimes seems meaningless, each motive behind it being somewhat or very different, how can we say it so that it means just what it ought to? I am trying to do that with this blog, writing what I remember, what haunts and obsesses me and makes me glad I knew you, that I lived at all to know you, but you can't read this blog, not now and most likely not ever, because you shouldn't read something that makes much of my pain when yours must be even deeper and when it could hurt you more by showing how much I appreciate you without offering the commitment you offered me. I think that often the acts that mean most precisely what "I love you" ought to mean are not directed towards the loved person in such a way that he or she can receive it, beholding its full intention and value. To quote Robert Hayden in "Those Winter Sundays," when he speaks of being the unwitting recipient of devoted acts of love and realizing it only in retrospect, "What did I know, what did I know of love's austere and lonely offices?"

Two important steps between us happened right before we broke up, one that was particularly important for me was that I redid one of the photo collages in my room, taking down several pictures of evan and putting up several more of you. I wasn't that sad about taking down Evan's photos, although I was a little, and I was so happy putting yours up. The other, which was probably very meaningful to you, was when I gave you a key to my house, just days hence. I did this because our door has to be locked to stay shut, but I wasn't opposed to the commitment it implied. Still, the things we do when we're in love and in hope, the keys, the saying sacred things like "I love you" should and do not imply security but love and wishes for security. Yet they make you feel like a fraud when you remember them and sometimes even as you're saying them, knowing they're true but that they are not the guarantee both of you would like them to be.

I told my dad about us breaking up today and he listened kindly, patiently, he only said, after I said how the I-Ching told me to lay low, that once he went through a phase like that too. Sometimes, he said, the universe has to come to you. I think it was Kafka who said that you need only to sit in a room quietly and the universe will unfurl its splendor at your feet.

Dad had called because he found a great car for me and bought it so I can buy it from him. No small task: he had to find a very reliable and durable car (so I can not have to replace it for like twelve years since that's how long it will take me to purchase it) and a low-mileage car (so I can continue to burn up fossil fuels with my highly unsustainable lifestyle) and a great deal (because I am quite poor, technically, although I drink a lot of champagne for someone in my tax bracket). I wish you were in my life so I could have called you matter-of-fact triumphantly. You love cars and are probably appalled by mine. You tolerate it because it's a decent sort of car and a manual transmission, but you would be so pleased to have me in a car ten years younger with no dents anywhere. It would also be clean for the first week I drove it. It was beautiful not only how you wanted to give me nice things, the best things, but how you wanted me to have and be a part of nice things in general. You were horrified when I said I'd like to work at a breakfast place because when you work in a place like that you're always busy and you don't have to deal with the customers as much. It was like you imagined me there, behind the counter, in the frumpy clothes, waking up at six a.m. who knows what you imagined, but you sort of put your foot down, exclaiming that I shouldn't do it. Of course I was not even suggesting I actually wanted to change jobs, I was considering it hypothetically. I thought it was strange and ridiculous that you were alright with me working at Cassis, where I have to listen to a bunch of snobs' bullshit questions, requests and remarks about every conceivable thing, but you wouldn't want me serving pancakes. The truth is, once you tried very briefly to convince me to quit that job too. You thought I didn't need any money besides rent because you'd take me out all the time. You actually said, "as long as you make me lunch on Tuesdays, we're even." It's all madness but it's also all beautiful. Your unrealistic offers, your becoming scandalized by a hypothetical, your desire for me to be associated with, to move within, finer things. It was good stuff, the best. Impossible to remember without longing and sadness.

There seems no reason to start with my crazy act when so much other stuff happened. I worked, I intended to go to enoteca and went, discovered Evan had been fired, had dinner there anyway, it was tiresome and ridiculously overpriced, went to the Box where I thought everyone would be, but in fact it was just Evan, Aja, Jon and I, and we had some fun for a while but the truth was it was a terrible scene and I was reminded by the awful music of some things Evan has said in the past that were so hurtful to me and was confronted again with the conundrum of how you can love someone who brings himself to say such awful things. Perhaps I should be wondering how you were able to love me despite some of the awful things I said. From time to time you said something slightly silly or off-color, but your heart was so good, your ideals so pure, I could never feel hurt by them. Beauty, beauty.

After dropping Evan off at his house, I did my crazy thing, the most forlorn impulse I can remember ever giving into, when I drove to your apartment building. As I approached, I saw that the lights were on in your apartment, and my heart soared, even though i knew I couldn't go see you. I went around back and didn't see your car. Then I drove back in front, a little closer to see if I could see you, but I couldn't. There could be other explanations, your dad maybe never got that jetta and is still borrowing your car or this or that, but probably you had just left the lights on. Like I'd never been there or said anything or loved you for any of my reasons or said awful, insane things that hurt you.

I drove away and felt I'd been unlucky but really I couldn't have gone to you anyway. I could never go to you again except in the most inspired, tested and sincere certainty. I will be a different person if that day ever comes, and you will probably be a different man, one that, maybe, no longer wants me.

In Your Absence

The dog asleep between my legs is the picture of honest fatigue.
The woman keeping her foot where it is falling asleep so as not to wake him,
who types after midnight although she would prefer to sleep,
who is tired from not sleeping two nights though she might have,
whose mind is troubled, who is the picture of redoubled fatigue,
fatigue made in the waking and unwakened hours, fatigue born
in parts of the brain the little dog doesn’t have, she is, I am,
the picture of the human weariness that wishes for the ends of things
and the beginnings of things, for kinder words and in some cases
the sharp words that will not come. She wishes for less and more food
and less and more work. She wishes that the oceans were clean
and that the coral was quietly mighty and that she as a human being
were no less in this exchange, that no human being were less for this
exchange, that no mountain be upturned, that the great paintings would walk
into the museums from the private homes where they are hanging,
that the libraries that armies destroyed would find all their shreds
and rematerialize into books and maps and marginalia. His, the dog’s,
fatigue is the fatigue of running outside on the coldest day in January
but her fatigue is the fatigue of being able to imagine a world
different from this one, and of being able to imagine the world as it is.

Still on the subject of the dog, why didn't I let him into bed with me/us more? Last night was the first night I let him sleep with me and I see now that he might not have bothered us. The few times he made it onto the bed with us he couldn't stop wiggling up to our faces to lick us, that's true, but we always kicked him off after a minute or so. Why did he always want to be in the middle of us, on our shared lap on the couch, licking our faces in bed, involved in kisses? You had a gift with animals. They grew calm in your presence but also respected you. Some people frighten animals, who will obey them in a cowed way. Some people animals like but won't listen to (me). Some people have a natural way with people, some people have a natural way with the world.

This evening, Evan, the ex-boyfriend I, in great part, left you because I could not get over, came over to have pizza with me and watch planet earth. I have seen him a few times since we broke up and he has been kind and careful with me. He seems like he wants me to feel better and doesn't want to press me but of course he hopes that we can go back to being together, some better version of what we were, and I don't know if that is possible, but it may be. When I broke up with you the sense of loss killed it like grief or trauma or starvation. I still love being around him, but in my sadness I feel nothing close to sexual or romantic. I suppose that will come back when I begin to get over this, but I don't know for sure.

All this said, Bear, our jack russell terrier, was verklempt all night and not at all like himself. He barked a little and growled and was sullen and unhappy. A couple times he sort of got between Evan and I when we were crossing paths from the living room to the kitchen or doing something else. I swear it was like he didn't approve of his being there. Like he thought it should have been someone else, you, or no one else because I'm sad, or like it just shouldn't have been who it was. And it's odd because Evan's taken care of bear many times so they know eachother. I thought of how when we used to kiss bear would get between us and lick our mouths where they came together, how different his reaction to us was. Now Bear is sleeping on my bed, under the blankets, between my legs, in the spot you have sometimes, in a more beautiful life, been.