she's there, in her red plaid flannel shirt, in front of the dueling elephants, an arm lifting from in front of her face and flaring upwards, a human projection of the trumpeting elephant that is clearly winning the fight.
in the next picture, the museum is still sharp and crisp around her, but she's blurred slightly, half doubled-over with laughter.
then she's fierce, all toothy snarl and shortened arms ending in claws, the skeleton of the tyrannosaurus rex looming over her.
somewhere, near the museum's door, I'm mimicking homo technologus. i'm sitting on a bench, listening to a meeting hundreds of miles away, with the increasing confirmation of my suspicions that losing an hour and a half of my vacation was completely pointless, keeping me from making it to the planetarium across the grounds that I'd always wanted to see.
it's also killing my phone. I check the charge periodically. 15%. 12%. 6%. the odds of reconnecting with my friends is draining away.
but, to be honest, they already had.
I don't know how far back to go in telling the story, in doing the analysis. maybe it was the comment she made 103 stories above Chicago, in front of an educational display that described the world expo, and "it's giant ferris wheel." that error, that confusion of the possessive and a state of things frustrated me.
moments before that, hours before that, we were fine. for most of the days before that, for a year before that, we were, most of the time, fine, or better. and, for a brief while during that year, we were closer than fine.
the times that weren't fine had become less and less a matter of wanting to get back to the past. they, also, were the result of the confusion of the possessive and the state of things.
it feels like fewer and fewer things are mine, as if my slow plummet towards the ground has accelerated, pulled by gravity, pushed by my own actions. the friction is building. it strips away the people around me. it rips identity from me. it shreds hope and its images of happier futures. the heat builds in me, frustration at my inability to stop, anger always roiling just under my skin.
we cannot and should not be together, her and I. but we were, once, and she was mine - she held a meaning that no one else could hold, and that no one else would know. where there is and will be no relationship, there is still the link of history and care, that I clutch close as I fall. it's some comfort - if not a lasting one, then maybe one of the last ones.
losing that completely, losing her completely, is what I fear. I've lost it too many times before, and I know I'll eventually lose it here. I'll become just another story in her life, because time and love necessitate it. I've faded in too many memories, been a short chapter or minor footnote too many times before, and every time I move so easily out of someone's present and into someone's past, it's as though I cease to exist for them.
so now, every time she looks away, even though she knows i'm with her, every time I don't think she cares, even when she does, and every time a comment reminds me of the space between us, even though she never moves away, I feel that fear, that it's just more loss. that fear blinds me, and i believe in that moment that she's taking something away from me, compounding the growing loneliness.
and then, it's anger that I can't control the state of things, that the possession of a heart seems to be taken away.
so there, together, a quarter of a mile above the earth, i set fire to the morning, the weekend, the months, the year we had shared. with a few undeserved words, and days of not talking to her, I touched the torch to all I feared losing, and to myself, determined to burn it all to ash.
we would go longer than we ever had without talking, and without resolution. I would, finally, apologize. she would forgive me.
I don't yet know how charred her heart or our friendship are by the arson. but I look at the pictures of her being an elephant, at her laughing, at her smiling and laughing around the museum, and I wasn't there. or maybe, I was, in the background, sitting on a bench, an angry ghost, a remnant of a coming past, a fading story that eventually might not even be retold.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Friday, October 5, 2012
the price of safety
There's a folder on the hard drive, static snapshots from the blog I once used to bleed myself. Lately, I've dived back into it, remembering something I once felt and put out for everyone to see.
I feel a little nostalgic, but more voyeuristic, looking back into what seems like someone else's life. I feel surprise at what I've forgotten, and I feel a little bit of regret and admiration at the force of the words.
It's a struggle now, trying to come back to writing, maybe like an athlete that left the game, and waited too long to realize what he had. It's so hard to be open to the words, to catch and be carried on the flow, to be swept without effort or struggle towards something beautiful. It's hard to believe the courage, or foolhardiness, that I once had, to write so honestly and completely.
I'm so afraid that it's gone. For most of my life, writing and music, and love, were all that hope was to me. Love has been... well, love. Mistakes and misconceptions and misses.
But writing and music... They've been the means to the moments when I was the most alive, the most myself, the most meaningful.
They were hope. But they are also the objects of my greatest failures - my failures to try, to put in the work, to rebel and be who I was meant to be.
As much as writing was also a passion and potential unrealized, music was always a path for me that was even more clearly marked. My first memories are of music. When I first reunited with my father, at 29, his first real question was, "Are you a musician?" In the 25 years since he had last laid eyes on me, he would linger over the concerts aired on Austin City Limits, believing that's how he would see me again, first, and maybe at all.
I had, in my voice and writing, a sword and shield. The desire to use it to make a difference, to bring a few minutes of feeling at a time to people, burned in me. And admittedly, to be known and loved and remembered, to not be left behind by time and the constant turnovers of lives, was an imperative to me. It was maybe even a point of desperation.
But the path away from what I knew and what was approved was scary. Exposure and the chance to fail were considerable monsters for a kid that desperately wanted approval, but got jeers and beat-downs. Showing everyone who I really was and could be could solve everything for me, but the risk of feeling even more alone in failure and ridicule and the loss of the identity I secretly clung to was too great.
So, when I was told, "No," there was safety. There was safety in letting fear keep me from opening myself by opening my voice.
In the end, it hasn't been parents or bullies that have kept me from singing. It's been me. It's been cowardice, and laziness, and resignation.
A few years ago, a friend got me on stage to sing, and in the years since, I've done more. Played open mics, been asked to sing with other people, been in a couple of promising, but short-lived bands, even sang the national anthem before a crowd of almost 20,000.
But I've rarely done my best. Some fear, some restraint, has usually still gripped me. And more importantly, I haven't put in the work on my own. do work best singing with others. But I also feel a resignation, a fear, or knowledge, that maybe, like that athlete trying to recapture what once was, I waited too long and have lost what could have been.
My roommate watches talent competition shows - X-Factor, America's Got Talent, The Voice. I've been pulled in. I've still got the ear, I hear the missed notes, and the notes skillfully maneuvered, or the barest, most beautiful changes in pitch negotiated with skill and passion. I see and hear the fear that will spell doom.
And, even in the most upbeat of songs, I'm sad, and lost. I see my once-maybe futures 20 years past, from my spot on the couch. I feel the tightness in my throat, from emotion, but also from disuse and misuse. I feel the weakening gravity of the keyboard, quiet and covered in clothes. I sit in the living room, watching live reruns of my old dreams, safe, but learning to have faith in danger.
I feel a little nostalgic, but more voyeuristic, looking back into what seems like someone else's life. I feel surprise at what I've forgotten, and I feel a little bit of regret and admiration at the force of the words.
It's a struggle now, trying to come back to writing, maybe like an athlete that left the game, and waited too long to realize what he had. It's so hard to be open to the words, to catch and be carried on the flow, to be swept without effort or struggle towards something beautiful. It's hard to believe the courage, or foolhardiness, that I once had, to write so honestly and completely.
I'm so afraid that it's gone. For most of my life, writing and music, and love, were all that hope was to me. Love has been... well, love. Mistakes and misconceptions and misses.
But writing and music... They've been the means to the moments when I was the most alive, the most myself, the most meaningful.
They were hope. But they are also the objects of my greatest failures - my failures to try, to put in the work, to rebel and be who I was meant to be.
As much as writing was also a passion and potential unrealized, music was always a path for me that was even more clearly marked. My first memories are of music. When I first reunited with my father, at 29, his first real question was, "Are you a musician?" In the 25 years since he had last laid eyes on me, he would linger over the concerts aired on Austin City Limits, believing that's how he would see me again, first, and maybe at all.
I had, in my voice and writing, a sword and shield. The desire to use it to make a difference, to bring a few minutes of feeling at a time to people, burned in me. And admittedly, to be known and loved and remembered, to not be left behind by time and the constant turnovers of lives, was an imperative to me. It was maybe even a point of desperation.
But the path away from what I knew and what was approved was scary. Exposure and the chance to fail were considerable monsters for a kid that desperately wanted approval, but got jeers and beat-downs. Showing everyone who I really was and could be could solve everything for me, but the risk of feeling even more alone in failure and ridicule and the loss of the identity I secretly clung to was too great.
So, when I was told, "No," there was safety. There was safety in letting fear keep me from opening myself by opening my voice.
In the end, it hasn't been parents or bullies that have kept me from singing. It's been me. It's been cowardice, and laziness, and resignation.
A few years ago, a friend got me on stage to sing, and in the years since, I've done more. Played open mics, been asked to sing with other people, been in a couple of promising, but short-lived bands, even sang the national anthem before a crowd of almost 20,000.
But I've rarely done my best. Some fear, some restraint, has usually still gripped me. And more importantly, I haven't put in the work on my own. do work best singing with others. But I also feel a resignation, a fear, or knowledge, that maybe, like that athlete trying to recapture what once was, I waited too long and have lost what could have been.
My roommate watches talent competition shows - X-Factor, America's Got Talent, The Voice. I've been pulled in. I've still got the ear, I hear the missed notes, and the notes skillfully maneuvered, or the barest, most beautiful changes in pitch negotiated with skill and passion. I see and hear the fear that will spell doom.
And, even in the most upbeat of songs, I'm sad, and lost. I see my once-maybe futures 20 years past, from my spot on the couch. I feel the tightness in my throat, from emotion, but also from disuse and misuse. I feel the weakening gravity of the keyboard, quiet and covered in clothes. I sit in the living room, watching live reruns of my old dreams, safe, but learning to have faith in danger.
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