The Kindest Possible Action

I exist to sit in my apartment and listen. Doors slam. Max starts yelling the alphabet outside, unceremoniously starting with the letter C. If the fan is on and the TV is on and if I try very hard not to be able to hear anything, it’s almost as though there isn’t screaming coming through these thin walls. The screen door slides open, slides closed. Sirens pass, though fewer than I’m used to. Doors slam. The neighbor downstairs who coughed through the past fourteen months is quiet now, just as a respiratory pandemic is affecting the whole world. A cat buzzes. A sigh. Doors slam.     No one knows where we are going. The future has always been amorphous and unplannable, but never like this. Everything is up in the air. No one knows who they will be. Nothing has ever felt like this. Will we get the privilege of looking back on these days with gratitude to the place we eventually make it to? Or are things only going to get worse, and this will be looked back on as a blessing?     I exist to sit in my apartment and fear.     There is so much rage hand-in-hand with apathy. There is crushing sorrow strolling beside laughing fits. There is benefit of the doubt tangled up in resentful accusation. I want to be better than this, I think. I am proud of the work that I am doing, I think. I forgive myself, I think. It’s okay to have bad days, I think. I am not doing the best I can but.     I am not doing the best I can but.     I exist to sit in my apartment and turn over in my head the phrase “things could be worse.” It is not a consolation but it is a comfort. It bobs up in between empty distractions. A wisp of cigarette smoke climbs in through the window, and you can’t help but breathe deeper, and feel gratitude and heartbreak and elation and devastation. I never got that tattoo because I think I will probably never be brave enough to do anything ever in my life, but it still exists within me, this concept.     You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.     I am grateful for the happiness of these months. It is so stark against the backdrop of terror, panic, spirals of instability. The joy is so bright. It is unignorable. It rolls over and holds me as I lay in bed. It brushes against my cheek as I give up on crossword puzzles on the patio. It drips down my nose underneath my mask as I walk on the shoulder of the highway. Tears are more often just below the surface than I am comfortable with, but often they are sparked by the absolute positivity that I am where I am supposed to be. That things could be worse, and would be worse, and this life was found by luck and work and choices. That these people, the ones who matter, the ones who don’t slam doors, are the people that I would trust with almost anything. The ones who will call me on the phone even though they know I hate it. The ones who will always return a text, ranging between the most frivolous of sharings and the most devastating of emotional realizations. The ones who are capable of being kind.     And maybe we’ll never all be together again, and it will never look the way that it did. But we will find new ways to look. And we will find new ways to be happy and grateful with each other. Grateful that these paths continue to cross even through all of us simply sitting in our apartments and existing because that is the kindest possible action.     I’ll send you a picture of my cat. And you’ll send me a picture of your cat. And those pictures of our cats scream louder than anything: I LOVE YOU AND YOU MATTER AND KNOW THAT EVEN THOUGH THE WORLD IS NOT DOING A GOOD JOB OF TELLING YOU THIS THAT IT IS STILL TRUE AND YOUR BEAUTY IS IRREPLACEABLE AND LIFE WOULD BE DARKER WERE IT NOT FOR YOUR EXISTENCE AND I COULD NEVER TELL YOU HOW THANKFUL I AM AND I COULD NOT BE THE PERSON I AM WITHOUT THE PERSON YOU ARE.     There could be a morning when we will wake up, and it might be because of a slammed door or the cat demanding acknowledgment, and it might be because the sun is out and we’ve slept enough and the peace is too great to sleep through any longer, and we will reach for the phones that we always reach for automatically and there will be joy in the world. There will be good news for someone and good news for another one and good news for an acquaintance who has quite frankly always been a little bit rude but deserves good news nonetheless. And there will not be a moment that whole day where the crushing spiral of panicked everything descends. That morning could exist. And we will deserve it when it comes.

Ekphrasis

Sometimes your mind spills.  I don't know if you think I can't feel you, sitting up there, running your hands through your hair.  Your sighs are deafening.

Something about the moonlight brings imaginings to life.  The first time your mind brushed against my face, I thought the apocalypse had come.  Jolting up in bed, fists clenched in front of my face, eyes closed as though that's the way to meet one's doom.  Nothing more touched me, but a persistent rustling.  I squinted one eye open.  Your room -- our room -- was a snow globe of leaves.  I was halfway out of bed to shut the window when I saw it already closed.  You sat on the edge of the mattress, white skin gleaming in the moonlight, head bowed, breath deep.  I touched your shoulder.  It was warm.  You murmured something and the leaves moved a little slower.

Some people sleep walk.  Some sleep talk.  You sleep summon.

The next night, I lay rigid, overly-aware of your back pressed against mine, eyes wide open to the dark expanse of my room -- our room.  Waiting for you to move.  Waiting for something to happen.  You barely shifted all night.

You had me fully convinced it had been my dream.  But it happened again.  I woke to scales slipping across my cheek.  Peeked open my eyes.  The moonlight again.  My room an aquarium, filled with air and goldfish as long as my arm.  They dove in and out of dresser drawers, following the currents of our breath, spinning in torrents around your head, still bowed.  You sat.  I pretended to sleep.

I tried to tell you once, but the pancakes had just come to the table and you seemed more concerned with your syrup than tales of moonlight.  I let it go, drowned it in tea.

Are you lonely?  Last night was thunder clouds and wetless drops pounding into your room -- our room --, blue from the moonlight through your curtains.  Fireless lightning.  Noiseless thunder.  Like a scream under a pillow, under the water. Spilling.

Imitating Kerouac

So on an island when the rain falls down and I hide in the ancient shadow-borne cloisters hearing the cold, cold wind rush through the strait and feel the deeply tangible weight of an unfathomable history embracing years and places beyond my imagination, and all the feet treading, all the pilgrims praying in the immensity of it and in Seattle I know that the strangers will ignore one another in the city where they let strangers ignore one another, and tonight the sun'll stay up so late, and who would have thought the fire could be that white? the solsitce sky will be fading and dimming its brightest shades over the wild ocean, which is blue but never black in a way that blesses the earth, lightens all lands, reflects off the sands and shines on the waves, and everyone, everyone knows that the days are only going to get shorter from here on out and there's nothing that can stop our spinning, I write you a letter, I even write you a letter that can never be sent, I write you a letter.

one. or the other.

I figured it out.

I am either completely and utterly enamored with every single creature around me all at the same time.  Except one.  (Calm down.  It's not you.  Well, actually, it might be this time, but cool your jets: it changes).  And that's the limit; there always has to be that one person who is not allowed to be a person.  That's the balancing point. And it's not fair.

But the other alternative is completely and utterly loathing the thought of even footsteps from anyone else on earth.  Except one.  (That one is you, all the time, each time.  You deserve it: to be my Person).  And there's something comforting within that.  Because -- who knows why? -- for some reason, I still get to receive love in the midst of my inability to be a person.  Which is more than I deserve.

They're isolating extremes.  One person to hate.  One person to love.

All those years of begging not to be lukewarm paid off.  Apathy is the enemy.

Well, except toward that One.

because you are.

Cleaning my room.  Found a journal from last spring.  There are a grand total of eight entries in it, spanning from March 20th to May 15th.  It's a chronicle of the dissolving of my faith.  So interesting to look back on.

From April 16th, 2011.  SPU Women's Retreat at Camp Casey, day after the Day of Silence.

If you could hear this wind
You would weep.
Not because of sadness
Though you're almost sure
Your heart is more cracked than not;
Not because of happiness
Though you'll say that "yes,
It's happiness;"
Not because of God
Though the air rips tears
From their places.
No.  You'll weep because
You are.
With cheeks wind-bitten and
Lips chewed up;
With skin peeling off your palms:
You'll shake
Because you feel.
You'll breathe
Because you live.
You'll leave
Because you're cold.
But you'll weep
Because there's nothing more
(And nothing less)
That you can do
To be.

Make Me Stone

I write to run. When the words stop, I am too much.
I sit in this hard-backed chair, surrounded by strangers and their stories.
I watch them read and work and study and be.
They leave and arrive.
I sit in this hard-backed chair, surrounded by strangers and their stories.
They are unaffected.
They leave and arrive.
I am affected.
They are unaffected.
I want to mean something. To me. To everyone.
I am affected.
I feel so much.
I want to mean something. To me. To everyone.
I do not know where my worth is found. Is it found in you?
I feel so much.
I want to feel. I want to feel. Make me stone.
I do not know where my worth is found. Is it found in you?
I watch them read and work and study and be.
I want to feel. I want to feel. Make me stone.
I write to run. When the words stop, I am too much.

But complaining is much more fun!

Good things happen. The sun did not die today. You did not drown in the bath. The bus – though it may have been late – eventually arrived and transported you somewhat miraculously at your destination so you did not have to walk or wait for your neighbor to drop by with her covered wagon to wagonpool with you and her horses are notoriously distractible so surely the bus was faster.

Good things happen each second of each day. You did not just develop gills; thus, oxygen enters your bloodstream via your lungs and you continue living as these words sit on the page.

Oh, but these are commonplace things. They aren’t good things. They are just things.

You are too hard to please, my friend. You say that continuing to live is commonplace? Do not blame the world for a lack of goodness when you are bored with the entirety of your existence.