Walls

He dreamed he was drowning in the Pacific blue with peace on his mind and the sun in his eyes. He wanted to feel the sand beneath his feet and the cool salt in his lungs, but the ocean tasted like blood and he opened his eyes in the dark to feel her tears on his face. She was leaning over him with the moon on her back and for a moment he couldn’t tell who was who. The man in the moon is screaming where no one can help him and he reaches out for her but she disappears like shadows in the dark.

He doesn’t want to know that the words are a promise she can’t keep, a forever she won’t live through. He wants to hear her say them and pin her down like a butterfly whose wings have torn. He thought he heard them once, like a dream he never quite awoke from, but they tasted bitter and red, red as sacrifice. “I love you,” he called out, and thought he was dreaming.

He lay there with his eyes open and the Pacific far away and he felt his lungs squeezed tight and he couldn’t breathe and he was very, very afraid, but he would not move. If she was there, she would feel the sensation of his aching body move and fly away and then he would have nothing. He was used to her silence but he was not used to the taste of her tears.

In the cold white light of torturous moonlight he realizes suddenly that the room is no longer dark and there are no shadows. The emptiness pulls him from bed to window screaming her name. As he turns to search the room, for just a moment the cold white light has him trapped and the moon is on his back; the screaming is deafening in the house reverberating with silence.

*

She is listening to the ocean call her promising freedom but she knows it is a lie and she will never be free. The spray is on her face like tears like tears and the waves are hungry. Her footsteps are disappearing; she is floating like a ghost leaving no trace and she knows it is a lie and she will never be free. She can’t cry because of the gap inside between where she is and who she dreamed of being with gilded wings light as summer thoughts.

She has invisible burns from his touch and she knows that she will never be free. No matter how high she could hope to fly, she would always see his eyes, and the hurting in her heart was a millstone.

*

When she got back, he was sitting staring straight ahead. The gray of the sky was tinged almost blue and they both felt the threatening presence hovering near.

He looked at her in the dim glow of the in-between-times and though he longed to clutch her to him and hold her with nets or pins or cages, he knew that it wasn’t fair or right.

She didn’t come near him; they stood with all the distance between them and neither of them moved. She wanted to sleep, to sleep and never dream. And she is not afraid no she is not afraid but she hurts. He is watching her and watching her hurt and he wonders what went wrong and why they are sitting with all the distance between them and why he dreams of drowning when he kisses her.

*

They are lying side by side, not touching. He feels empty and his face is a mask because he is. Empty. Except for the feeling of all-aloneness that creeps around the bed like hungry fire. Consuming.

She is lying there, feeling his arms tight around her the way she always feels his arms tight around her no matter how alone she is, protectingly, comfortingly, like a childhood she could never grow away from, prison-like. The screaming in her mind is louder now and her head throbs to the hoofbeats of Apollo’s horses coming on so fast. The gray fades, her self fades, and the pale pale blue stings her eyes and she wants to sleep.

Idealist Dreamer

A while back (pre-quitting job), a friend told me that I was the most rational person he knew. (He was also a lawyer; I suppose it takes one to think of this as a compliment.)

Sometimes I see myself as a rational person, too; certainly appealing to logic is more effective than making an emotional appeal, as far as I am concerned. (This may be a post-law school change; I can't remember what I was like before, but I think I was more emotional then.) But the way I truly see myself, the me that I see, is a dreamer. Only, the world has no time for dreamers.

Doldrums

The sun is shining and life is good, but the "mean reds" are back again...

Anger Management

When is anger justified? When someone hurts you unknowingly? What if they hurt you, not purposefully, but recklessly, knowing that it was likely that you would be hurt by their action but doing it anyway?

I have a reckless friend, who has hurt me over and over again. Not because she wanted to see me hurt, but because she wanted what she wanted, and it didn't matter to her that I might be hurt. Or rather, maybe it mattered, but it mattered less than that she get what she want. Am I selfish to begrudge her? It's not a rhetorical question; I honestly don't know.

It's funny how the world makes room for this kind of person. They are more likely to get what they want than the rest of us, because they're out there pushing for themselves while the rest of us are hanging back. I want things, the way anybody does, but I always have doubts about whether I deserve the thing it is that I want. It must be nice to have no doubts.

Gardening Woes

Sadly, I've been over-watering my plumeria, having fallen prey to the common misconception that the plumeria is a tropical plant. It is not, in fact, a tropical plant, and, as it turns out, one of the worst things that you can do to it is over-water. Sigh. I will cease watering immediately, but it may already be too late.

In other news, having long been annoyed by the monstrous size of the Italian oregano growing in our planter boxes (where, at some point during the late winter/early spring, it oozed this weird foamy white stuff resembling soap suds), we moved the shrubs to a spot "outside the fence": our phrase for the small portion of our land that lies - you guessed it - outside of the fenced-in portion of the back yard. "Outside the fence" is a rather desolate zone with loose, gravelly soil that has yet to host much life. It is our flora Siberia. We've been trying, however, with some small success, to convert it to a more flourishing region. So far the Lilies of the Nile and tiger orchids that we've planted are still alive, if not exactly vibrant. The bougainvilla* has gone from looking like a dead branch to sporting leaves. And the oregano, despite our none-to-gentle handling, seems to be settling into its new home. So maybe we will transform Siberia yet.

* Have just learned that bougainvilla, although also looking deceptively tropical, should not be over-watered. Damn.

Hermitage

As a writer, I don't interact with many people on a day-to-day basis. Some days, I don't leave the house at all and I don't see anyone other than my husband. Friends often ask me if I get lonely, or if I miss having other people around. Sometimes I do miss having coworkers and going out to lunch with people and all that. (Although you have to keep in mind that, at a big law firm, you don't have much time for socializing with your coworkers anyway; most of the time when I was working, I'd be locked up in my office trying desperately to put out all the fires that had sprung up that day. And who ever had time for lunch?)

Mostly, though, I am quite content with things the way they are now. I guess I've just proven to myself how much of a misanthrope I really am: the less I see other people, the less I want to see them. (Friends and family excepted, of course.) It does worry me a little; I don't want to become one of those weirdos that can't talk to other people at all and just sit in a corner at parties and stare. I guess I should force myself to get out more, join some organizations or something and force myself to socialize.

Eden

The surf was unrideable again this weekend, but we went to the beach anyway. And it was actually kind of nice to be there, sans board - it's been a while since we walked along the shore and paid attention to the ocean's many other attractions besides its waves. The stretch of beach that we were on was deserted, possibly because it was cold and misty on the coast (although sunny back home). I should clarify: the beach was deserted by people, but more than amply populated by avian and marine life. We encountered numerous starfish along the shore, washed up by the tides, which we threw back into the water. Crab shells littered the beach, but we saw only one live crab. My husband put a stick near it, which the crab clung to for dear life, and we threw it, too, back into the ocean and away from the marauding birds.

I've said before, and I say again, I hate birds. Nature red in tooth and claw was definitely present on our walk: we found a dead bird, with a bloody hole in its chest. "Could it have been cannibalized by the other birds?" I no sooner asked the question than a crow flew over and began tearing flesh from the carcass with its beak. No different, perhaps, than humans and their consumption of the flesh of animals, but it disgusted us nevertheless.

On a happier note, we spent the remainder of the weekend gardening. We purchased and planted: yellow pear tomatoes, two different kinds of pumpkin, two different kinds of basil, and a peach tree. We also moved some of the plants around, digging up two wildly overgrown oregano shrubs and re-planting them away from the more delicate cilantro and basil plants. Unfortunately, some asparagus was damaged in the melee.

Product Placement

I have to make a plug for Amazon.com. I ordered a baby shower gift on Monday. By Tuesday it had shipped, and by Wednesday it was at my door. Amazing. I may never leave the house again.

Empty Spaces

We are finally returning the hospitality of all the people who had us over repeatedly during our apartment-dwelling years, and so have been having little dinners every couple of weeks with various folk. Unfortunately, we still have no dining room furniture. We do have a comfortable-enough table and chairs in the eating area next to the kitchen, which is where we've been doing our entertaining, although this sort of dining lacks a certain ambiance.

It doesn't look like we're going to be getting dining furniture any time soon, either. I think we've more or less made up our minds that we're going to use the space to hold a baby grand piano, once we can afford one. (This will probably be many years into the future.) It was my idea, but now I'm not sure how I feel about it.

I started playing the piano when I was three or four years old. In junior high and high school I used to compete. And I hated it. The competitions, that is, not the actual playing of music, which I enjoyed. One day, one competition, I completely forgot the entire final movement of the sonata I was playing. So I played the first movement over again and retreated from the stage in great embarrassment. After that I quit, and I haven't really played (except for messing around when I go to my parents' house) or even owned a piano since then. Over the last few years, I started to miss it a lot. Thus was born my great desire for a piano of my own. But I guess I'm not sure how it's going to feel once I have one again. I don't think it's like riding a bike; you lose a lot of the skills when you haven't touched a keyboard in years and years and years. I'm sort of afraid of it, having to start over, re-learning stuff before I can get to the part that I actually enjoy. Maybe it's better to just get a dining room set after all?

Drifting

Last night's menu: goat cheese souffle with spinach and feta sausage and asparagus spears.

We've had strawberries from our own berry patch every morning.

Sometimes life feels idyllic. This house has definitely been a blessing.

Letting Go

I've been so, so blessed in the friends that I have, who have supported and encouraged me in this new writing endeavor, as in all my other endeavors. I can't tell you how much it means to me, when I'm doubting myself, doubting what I'm doing, to hear you say you think I'm doing the right thing, that I have to keep going, see this thing through. I am grateful for the way you believe in me even when I have trouble believing in myself.

One of my good friends recently sent me an article about how to get past the hurdle of your own negativity while striving to reach a goal. One of the things the article said to do was to avoid people who are negative about you. When you take a risk like this, you find out who are the people who really believe in you. There are people in my life who try to avoid ever asking about what I'm doing or talking to me about it, as though my giving up my salaried job was equivalent to contracting a loathsome disease that I should be grateful to them for overlooking. Maybe part of the reason they treat me differently now is that I'm no longer the resource that I used to be for them? After all, how much good is an "unemployed" writer to anyone? Some are people I've known for a long time, and it feels strange to see them this way, now. But I have too many good friends to keep devoting time and energy to people who don't care about me or care about what I'm doing. Maybe it's finally time to let go.

Summertime

By eight o'clock in the morning, it's nearing eighty degrees outside. During the day, it gets over ninety. Temperatures have been this way for the last week. Summer weather - it makes me forget where I am, think I'm somewhere I'm not. Grass swaying too tall, wishes floating overhead, the sun bleaching everything pale, burning colors. People I loved, now, too, bleached out memories. Just kids talking dreams - everything seemed so serious then, big decisions to be made, whole futures. I think I'm more pragmatic now, although I guess my life belies the statement, because here I am, wasting a legal education, making the kinds of decisions I was afraid to make back then. Where are they now? We cried at parting; that, too, seemed so serious. We weren't old enough yet to know that parting is a way of life. Over and over again we let go of the people we thought we could hold onto. Promises to write, but what was there to say? Once separated, we had already given away the best parts of ourselves, the parts that synthesized into understanding. Most of us felt very misunderstood. Maybe we were, too serious, too filled with angst and a drive toward something we ourselves didn't understand. Still don't understand. And here I am, changed and indifferent, but somehow still chasing the same dreams.

Nightmares

When I was younger, I frequently had vivid, terrifying nightmares. In college, they were so bad at times that concerned friends would sleep on my floor, or, if they had to stay up studying, would do so in my room, just so they could be there, be a comforting presence, when I woke up in a chilled sweat. Sometimes I would be too frightened to fall back asleep.

I still had incredibly vivid dreams, but, for the most part, the nightmares stopped after I got married. Until now. For the last week or so, nightmares have once again woken me from sound sleep. Upon waking, I find myself contorted into the same strange position each time: both arms bent and thrown up over my head, as though to protect me from some blow. It's an uncomfortable position; my shoulders ache and feel stiff, like they do when they've popped out of joint and I've had to pop them back in.

I don't know what it means. I'm not under a lot of stress, and certainly not as much stress as I've been under in other, nightmare-free days. I haven't been eating funny things before I go to bed (supposing this actually makes a difference to your dreams; I've never spotted a pattern). I wish I knew what was causing them, and how to make them stop.

I'm too young for this

Two of my friends from law school separately are on baby #3 each. Three kids apiece. Six kids total. And we are barely four years out of law school! This isn't even counting all the first babies that have come along in recent years. I receive baby notices as often as wedding invitations these days. Baby after baby after baby. What's going on, people??? To top it all off, I'm throwing a baby shower in a couple of weeks! Both my sisters-in-law are pregnant, one with a girl, the other with a boy. Craziness.

Laughing at the rain

Songs I used to listen to on repeat:

• In high school, Soul Asylum's Runaway Train and Guns 'n' Roses' November Rain and Counting Crows' Round Here and Chris de Burgh's Lady in Red, for my ladies in red;
• Freshman year of college, The Cure's Pictures of You and REM's Everybody Hurts and Tori Amos's Silent All These Years;
• Sophomore year, Little Texas's Say What You Want and songs sung by a might-have-been;
• Junior year, The Outfield's (I don't want to lose) Your Love;
• Since then: Sade's By Your Side, Beyonce's Upgrade U, Nine Inch Nails' Hurt, Jurassic 5's Contribution, Notorious BIG's Going back to Cali, Cat Power's Good Woman...

Not great music, but listening to these songs is like meditating, for me; my mind drifts away, away, away, and I'm hearing them but not listening, I couldn't tell you what they said, what the lyrics are, I couldn't hum them for you, but they make me feel peaceful.

Hanging up the saddle

I don't like to have people touch my face. It feels too personal: if I don't know you that well, there's no reason for you to be going there. It's funny, the gestures that different people find intimate. I knew one girl who liked to pat people's faces, touch their hair; to her, this wasn't a big deal, and she didn't think it was a big deal if you did it to her. The intricacies of putting your arm around someone of the opposite sex, or of having someone of the opposite sex put their arm around you: not a big deal if the arm goes around your shoulders, but suddenly a much more uncomfortable situation if it goes around your waist. At least for me. And even the arm around the shoulders can be a big deal if it stays too long. Arm around the waist, hand on my lower back, or holding my hand while I'm standing next to you: to me these things feel like you're trying to say I belong to you, and unless you're my husband, I don't.

Two or three things I know for sure

Few writers can grab your heart and wring it the way Dorothy Allison does. I read her books years ago, but every now and then a line or two that she's written will play in my head. The title of her memoir especially.

What do I know for sure? I repeat them to myself - my central tenets - over and over again to ward off the anxieties that besiege me. Anxiety is a terrible thing; being struck by lightning is one thing, quick and easy. Anxiety is like being chewed to death by little mice. The constant pounding of your heart, the difficulty breathing, day in and day out, like drowning slowly with the sun in your eyes, knowing the surface clear air is near but unreachable.

So what do I know for sure? "Cast all your anxiety upon Him because He cares for you." 1 Peter 5:7.
The love of God. My husband. My family. Certain friends.
This, too, shall pass.

It's more than most people have, more than most people know.

Birds and Bees

On today's to-do list: build a small cage around our strawberry patch to keep away marauding birds. I hate birds, even pretty ones (hummingbirds excepted), and the blue-jays and magpies that surround our house are at the top of my list. They've been picking off the strawberries as they ripen. This is unacceptable.

Other things on the to-do list: clean out old letters/cards. I have to admit, I'm something of a packrat. My husband, too, although less so. Between the two of us, we have quite an archive of correspondence. I have cards I received twenty years ago, from people I no longer remember. I have really personal cards from people I can't remember having been that close to (admittedly, my memory for such things is not long). I think I've kept every scrap of paper that anyone has ever written me, no matter how insignificant the message or the relationship. While it seems sad to toss away a fifteen-year-old message asking me if I want to go shopping, I think it's time to put these in the recycling bin. Of course, I'm going to continue to keep some of them, the ones from people who still matter to me, the ones with really meaningful messages.

A subset of the old letters/cards category is the memorabilia of past relationships. Both my husband and I had a "box" for each former flame. Going through these boxes was amusing - we've been together for so long that it felt like rifling through someone else's life, like gossip, rather than anything we had personally gone through. It did, however, make me feel old. Were we ever really as young as we sounded in these notes? I can't remember having been so young that it seemed important to keep things like receipts, showing where I'd been and when. And yet, they were there, in the Boxes. I do remember cutting paper snowflakes, which, when unfolded, said "I love u." Embarrassing to think of now. Hopefully, somewhere out there, my exes have already destroyed any Box they may have kept.

My husband, being a boy, had fewer such embarrassments. The same can't be said for his ex-girlfriends, who should be very relieved to know that these Boxes have now, finally, all been laid to rest in our shredder/recycling bin. The stuffed animals and other assorted gifts have been packed off to various charities. Ah, de-cluttering. Makes me feel like a new woman.