Modern Love(r)(s)/Grow or Die

It doesn’t seem fair that we can look back and connect the dots in life, and see what led from that to this, but we cannot look forward and anticipate in any way what constellation today’s dots will form in the vast space ahead of us. I guess it’s just best to assume that heaven is right here, right now, and let the stars fall where they may. Source: New York Times, Modern Love, My Clock Was Already Ticking, Margaret Gunther, March 27, 2009.

…Except when it doesn’t feel like heaven, and one is me—she who desperately tries without ceasing to connect the dots before her, ever in anticipation of what is not, yet, but is perpetually, to come—there shall be no letting the stars fall where they may. That’s what I will myself, even as I, paradoxically, am doing just that(and here, I want to put a Palin-esque exclamation mark(!). The conundrum of a Libra writer, the woe of a former painter, the life of a semi-secret blogger and bored-to-internet-distraction technical editor who no longer believes in The Secret, but shares a drab apartment on Chicago’s South Side with a lover, a boyfriend, a future, and fellow Libra I won’t stop believing in. And yet. Reading the above-referenced Modern Love essay makes me wonder…how will our dots connect 5 years from now?

This morning, I write, from the couch, while he sleeps, in the bed I left. I couldn’t sleep; for the second or third day in a row, I woke up, widely so, with too many things to consider, plan, hope, worry: Find my shot records to avoid getting pricked unnecessarily during the health screening for my volunteer position. Call Sallie Mae to request my second deferment since graduating two years ago. Call my Dad—every week, from now on. Write my incarcerated brother (by hand!) and tell him how wonderful the road trip with his kids was last week. Update my resume and look for a new job—I’m better than editing boring old math and science books. Shouldn’t I begin a new painting? It’s been six years already, since my last show, since I’ve completed any piece worthy of signing. But what do I say (read: paint-write) now? Maybe I should write it in the blog—where the uniformity of margins and fonts and HTML seem to mask the glow of fury so well…

Or not. (“?,” thinks the editor in me. “‘Or not’?” she asks herself idly…) He has awakened. I’ll have to continue connecting the dots later. And try letting the stars of this day fall where they may.

Or not. He has decided to make breakfast for us and so I write a little bit more. Egg white omelets and he thinks I’m bourgeois because I’m not a fan of riding through the hood. He doesn’t know I’ve visualized getting shot in the head too many times over the years, always wondering what the reality of death and near-death really feel like. Shocking, wincing, but not really pain…car window glass shattering, warm blood seeping, surprise…shock, sirens…silence. I think the anguish of what follows, and of what now is, must hurt more than the initial physical reality of the injury—but wait, I digress (and go round and around in circles in my head). Lately, I’ve been having more wretchedly gory dreams than usual, and I’m not sure why. Details. There’s always something devilish in the details of my subconscious forays.

A few nights ago, for the first (or second) time, I dreamt something so terribly detailed I couldn’t even recount it to my best friend. That is oh-so-rare because this friend of mine functions as the depository for all things horrible that my mind concocts, for all the messy emotion that I can’t lay on the boyfriend or others, for my psycho-sexual thought patterns, my fears of inadequacy, my questions about everything from vaginal secretions to the value of art… And this one was so graphic, I feared judgment from even T. should I speak it. And I asked myself over and over and over, where in the HELL did THAT one come from?

I guess it only matters because I think dreams matter…think they somehow connect dots eventually. Believe in the symbols we create for ourselves, and the intricate ways we define things on personal levels. A stove full of empty pots doesn’t mean lack for me; it means my family has eaten well. Somewhere, all of us, must be satisfied because there is nothing left over. And a dream of my father (last night) walking quickly up a street, deftly maneuvering a piece of fried chicken, while concealing a cane, as I went back, in a car with a family member to help him, tells me he is actually alright now. Now, that I have made the sojourn south to visit him, my incarerated brother’s children in tow. That he hid his cane from me tells me that he has troubles, yes, but he manages. He dropped the chicken when I went back for him because he knew he shouldn’t have it. He claimed it didn’t taste good anyway, but the act symbolized a small degree of health…of his approach to health. He will have what he will, when he will, but in his way, not unlike my own, he tries always/eventually to get it right, to stretch his days a little longer…to take the poisons in small doses… Or am I projecting?

There is so much more to say about what happened after breakfast. The egg white omelets preceded my naked giggles, chopped tomatoes, itchy eyes, too much pepper, and a discussion about imperatives and intentions…frequent themes in my relationship. The gap is wide, between our intentions and our perceptions, and that problem looms much larger than our individual and collective lives at times, not to mention the stress of becoming more than we are today…individually, and collectively. I mustn’t dwell now, there, for I have a date, with my white girlfriend whose demise I fear frequently. She lives hard, loses much, grows little. And as my ex-boyfriend’s mother used to say, “Grow or Die.”