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june 7, 2001.8 p.m. When I was 20, I used to write emails to Poet and drink with people. That's pretty much the beginning and the end of what I did that year. From February onward, he decided that he didn't love me. So, depending on my level of misery, I would often cry when I wrote to him. I wrote him an email today and it was the same. Only it wasn't. The feeling of lead pressure in my chest is the same. The dull dry burning itch in my eyes is the same. The fluttery pulse of my nauseus stomach is the same. But this isn't about me, for once. This is about mortality. They told him to lose 80 pounds and if he's not better after that, to start planning his last decade. He is never to drink alcohol again. I loved him and he loved me and then he didn't and then I went crazy and then I stopped loving him. We stopped even liking each other. Everyone around us was scandalized and horrified by our behaviour. We never even kissed, you know that? My entire social life went down the tubes in honour of a relationship that never went as far as a kiss. That year I made a rosary. I was out with Preacher; it was an activity run by the local divinity school. I made my rosary out of plastic - plastic beads, plastic string, plastic Jesus. It was never blessed, so I wore it as a necklace. When I really wanted to make a commotion, I would suck on the cross like a soother. I wore it the first time I saw Poet after That Tuesday. (The whole plot of That Tuesday revolved around retaliatory drinking.) I was still half-mad, he looked like he hadn't slept in days. For the first time, I saw white in his hair. And at one point I laughed hysterically and said that I had the rosary so that the power of God would protect me during our meeting. I'm wearing it now. This year he graduated from university, got his citizenship, got married. In a life that too often looked aimless to outsiders like me, these events loom enormous. It's so massively unfair that to say that word, to say 'unfair' is to rip the lid off my grief. The balloon in my chest pushes at my throat and heart. I want to say that my chest feels sick and dead but I cannot bring myself to think those words. Sick and dead are not my words any more. Love never goes away. It can't. I feel like I'm in a dream in which my heart is being pummelled.
And now, as then, Tori Amos sings my story back to me. "Can't stop loving, Can't stop when it's on it's way.
"This is not really happening.
10 p.m. We live on a road that cuts through the woods. The woods are not deep - they themselves are cut off by the nearby highway - but to a city girl, they seem dark, tangled, impenetrable. I went walking down the road at twilight tonight because the Boy has said something that he thought clever about Poet's upcoming diagnosis. The Boy said it was like Schroedinger's Cat, the one that is neither alive nor dead until you open the box. I said that it was most certainly not like that at all. The next couple months will just unmask a destiny that already exists now, they are not the coin-toss that will decide the game. I said something slighting about his literature major use of science and he walked away angrily. So I left. I was tired of crying and writing and waiting for him to be done with his small email so that he could comfort me. I walked on down the road. I felt full of light in the beginning. I felt quick and right. I realized that this feeling came from the fact that I had no idea where I was going - I was just going. I always have a destination. This is my orthodoxy; I am always doing the next thing. Tonight I walked without walking towards. It started to rain, a light little sprinkle that exactly matched my sadness. I still believe in pathetic fallacy. On That Tuesday we did things to make the day beautiful and tragic, while stopping short of the actually beautiful or actually tragic. Tonight I had a journey through twilight woods, a sincere grief and light rain. Tonight I had the beautiful and the tragic served up to me on a silver salver. Somewhere in there I smiled and thanked whoever had arranged this, for I knew that I may never be that lucky again. You cannot ask for too much of the gods. I once asked God for clarity and I received madness in response. The next day was That Tuesday. I walked for a long time, longer than I would've in the normal course of things. Eventually I was vouchsafed a vision. For there is a point when the road ends. I stood with my feet half on turned earth and half on tarmac and I looked deep into the wall of trees growing perhaps 30 feet away, across a tiny plot of long grass & weeds. This is the edge of the known I thought. Past here is darkness and mystery. Past here you cannot see ahead of yourself. I contemplated it like a picture. I wondered how many of us have 10 years to go. I wondered if it were better to walk into the forest hand in hand with your mate, or if that made everything worse. I wondered if the road was an illusion. The mosquitos discovered me, and found me an unresisting dish. Eventually, I was annoyed enough to turn away from my contemplation. As I turned and started walking home, I suddenly became afraid that there was something bad in the trees, something that I had just foolishly turned my back on. There is nothing stronger than the fear of the dark. When I couldn't stand it anymore, I quickly looked over my shoulder: nothing. Then I was struck by mythological fear - had I just fallen into the Orpheus trap? Don't look back. Don't look back. Don't look back. The walk back was awful.
Questions for the student to consider: Did I look into the abyss? Does the road exist? Does the obviousness of the metaphor cheapen the beauty of the experience? |
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