That huge longing

That huge longing, you speak of, is my life. It started as a tiny ache when I placed my heart in his hands and said, " Here, take it." Failing to mention that it needed care, more like an orchid than a muscle. Failed to mention that without the proper care it would begin to droop. He was reckless and selfish and forgot about my heart, until he was in danger of losing his own. But by then it was too late. The tiny ache was replaced by a small blank square of muslin waiting for possibility.

I am still his wife. Still a wife. Still. Mainly still. In the past three years, my life has dwindled. Reduced to nothingness. My body is waning. And it is not only physical, of course. I used to think that my life was a series of poems strung together. But the poems are now Memento Mori. And they are not mine. Where are my poems? How can I find them? It's not in a conversation about the Euro that I will find them. Angela Merkel holds no dreams for me. Oil spills have more poetry. There are patterns and textures. They hold water and oil, never meant to mix. It reminds me of my marriage. I can only lament, not harangue. It is tragic in both cases.  And yet. And yet. Instead of falling into self-loathing, instead of falling, I stand up. I stand up straight and look around me. I see a middle-aged woman who feels like a neophyte in life. Feeling the need to start over. I don't know myself. I know myself too well. I despise myself for my failures. I love myself for my failures. I am not good enough. I am not good. I am not enough. I am not.  All has turned into, "I am." Dwelling in possibilities with a hope to have something to hold on to. Like that pole in the subway I used to ride. I am holding on for the life I am headed to. I am.

Svetlana

Svetlana is gone now. The man of steel will linger on forever. She cried out and told us how he broke her life. Her life. A broken mess. Running from place to place. From man to man. My old Russian aunts kept his photo on their wall. Their hero. Her demise.  With hands so small, she couldn't hold her own life in them.  Stuck as a little girl without a mother, when a bullet separated them.  Her father simply erased  it from her personal history. Leaving her to make her own way, knowing that she could not. Never able to recover. Not knowing where she belonged.  Stained for as long as she lived.

This is what comes from reading the obituaries every day. I do it because I am searching for a life and hope to find it in someone deceased.  Looking for the answer in the arc of someone else's life. I am hoping for  a non-linear story, of course, because if a pattern develops, then it's out of the question. I am looking for something along the lines of plumber becomes celebrated painter. Or, she published her first novel at 87.

Svetlana could have taken the broken pieces and made herself stronger. But the determinist I know would say that it was impossible. It was simply her fate. I refuse though. I see my broken places and work on repairing them. The wounds are deep, but the world is vast. I cast a net to find a way out.
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Learning to write in full sentences

A rupture can be so liberating. Creating a shift that starts things moving. Because I am slow to change,  the movement is so gradual that when it finally happens, I am not really sure about it. An inner shift that takes me by surprise.  But, something has indeed changed.

All the wounded animals gather to howl.  It does sound tempting. When you start with words, you never know what is going to come out.  I try to remember things that have eluded me for decades. Encrusted, but not embittered, I dig, looking for those words. But, the unsaid accumulates, echoing in these vaulted chambers.  Talking does not constitute the unsaid. Because it is not the same. The unsaid weighs more heavily than any subtext. So maybe howling is best. It can't define you.

Call me Dr. Stockmann. Pointing out the obvious and parceling it out. I examine it and decide how to move with it. You need less as you age. Each word a way forward. Put them together and then, maybe, those sentences will come flying at me. Fully formed. Elegant. Flowing.

Two Stranded Polar Bears

An ice floe. On it, two stranded polar bears. Having grown up in poverty, they constructed their lives on the premise of disbelief. Knowing from the start that it wasn't theirs to begin with. It wouldn't last.  Just something borrowed and definitely new. And yes, there was plenty of old and the only thing that was blue was the feeling left to their children. But that marriage lasted and lasted. Just the two of them, even with everyone and everything they amassed drifting in and out. Deaf to the anger they engendered. Outliving friends, relatives, not to mention their childrens' marriages.

One retreats, the other wavers. Together they wave goodbye. They drift. Two halves of an imperfection that endured wars, pestilence and the occasional indulgence. What will life be without them?

Late blooming

I have come so late to myself. So much later than most. But in order to get there, I needed to know that I was never there. Never. It hits me at 35,000 feet listening to Chopin. A nocturne if you must know. The past hurtles towards me and it is dark and unknown. All the injuries I would prefer to ignore, insist on presenting themselves. Everything I did not understand comes unraveled in front of me. Only in that state of undress do I dare proceed.  Everything must go. The past, the present, the future. Everything once known must become unknown. Who once was is no more. It is the call I have been waiting for. The call I have made to myself. That I have been reluctant to answer. Because how do you really start over again? How do you leave behind the familiar negative?  The awfulness that is second nature to you, but is all that you know. I did an apprenticeship in it.  I could teach it if I chose, but I do not care to venture with others into those waters. Dark and daring you to drink. One swallow and  Lethe-like,  all forgotten. No, I will not drink. I will remember. I will come late, but not unbidden.

When in doubt

The trouble is, I am always in doubt. I doubt the meaning of things, even the word, 'doubt'. So, being an avid fan of the dictionary, I find that doubt has more meanings than I knew. It means to be uncertain. Of course.To question. Yes. To distrust. Kind of. To fear. Bingo. So, which is it? Maybe all, although I do my damnedest to appear otherwise. The doubt comes from not knowing, not trusting, deceiving myself and just the inability to understand what the hell my life has been so far.  If I try to make sense of it, I see the fragmentary nature of things and never seem to come up with a whole. So, of course I doubt. Because the pieces should fit into place, shouldn't they? The trajectory of my life should be linear or at least have a semblance of a pattern. It should tell a story. But, I doubt my ability to tell a story, so it should come as no surprise that my life doesn't tell one. At least to me. It tells hundreds of stories. The question is, which one is the real one?  My father used to say, "I may be wrong, but I am never in doubt." He also used to say, "If in doubt, throw it out." Well, which one was it? Never in doubt? No. Never. Doubt is not such a bad thing. Fear is. Have I mistaken myself for the fear?

Degas and his dancing girls

They tortured me when I was a young girl. Degas and his dancing girls. Those tutus. The toile. The tulle. The toil. So beautiful. My mother painted them over and over again. Copying Degas but never quite achieving Degas. Never quite getting there. Stopped in her tracks. Held still by her longing. While her heavy limbed daughter tried to get some attention. Competing with the swirling girls dressed in white or blue, blurring the landscape with their grace. I could see that they had something that I wanted. But I did not know how to proceed. Did not know there was a process for each step, each leap, each twirl. They were only images on a canvas but they had something I did not have. They could perform. They could hear the music and come to life. Between the painter and the painted, an understanding. She never got there, although she never stopped trying.  Like me, she wanted to be a dancing girl. She thought she could get there by copying others. By plying the brushstrokes over and over on newer and newer canvases. In the end, all those dancing girls looked like her, Degas had disappeared.  The images still haunt me and I wonder why I still cannot leap.

Russian arms

We refer to them as our "Russian arms", although they hold equal weight as bat-wing arms. The geographical specificity ties them to us and is our term of endearment. We never thought we'd have them. It was the provenance of our aunts, our grandmothers, our mother. The arms that swing out from under us, and support the endless hangers on.The arms that are pinched by our children who then make fun of us and yet lovingly hold on for dear life- what would they do without them? These are not the arms of the athletic. No, they belong to the book-loving, flower gathering, piano playing sisters. Sisters who nurture all who come near. Except themselves. You can't swing from your own arms and we would not dare try to swing from each other's.

Peter and the Wolf

A letter comes from a far away land and reminds me of my days studying Gogol and Turgenev, the melody from Peter and the Wolf drifts into my dreams. It's the melody from the beginning, when Peter is setting out from his grandfather's house. Embarking on the journey. I've been on so many of them. And, like Peter, I've come across wolves of  all shapes and forms, with consistently sharp teeth. However, I am usually the duck that gets eaten whole and can be heard still quacking, albeit very quietly. Much as I'd like to see myself as the heroic Peter, I know that I haven't gone far enough, can't cavort and tease the wolf; he frightens and angers me. He sticks his tongue out at me and snarls. There is no music. But I know there is weakness in his anger. His teeth will fall out and his snarl will be reduced to a whisper. All I have to do is wait and keep swimming.

If a Tootsie can forgive a Hutu

Does it always have to end up this way? Is being damaged just part of the human condition? Or, is it just me and the people I surround myself with? Can I repair myself ? If a Tootsie can forgive the Hutu who cut off her arm with a machete, and who, by the way, also killed her five children, can't I cozy up to the ones who denied my existence and minimized me? One is so much more horrible than the other. I know that instinctively. Intellectually, too. But, and there is always a but, maybe because one is so much more horrible with a hurt so immobilizing, maybe that is what leads to forgiveness. It's either that, or kill yourself. Even so, I am in doubt.   I know that hanging on just keeps it with you and yet,  won't it will always be with you? Even in some miniaturized form? Can I laugh it away? Maybe and this is just maybe, of course, I have more trouble forgiving because they still can't see me. When I was packing up their house, I found a photograph from when I was 3  years old. I decided to show it to them and they didn't know it was me. But when I was going through the security check at JFK, the TSA agent opened my bag and when he chanced upon the photo, he immediately recognized me. He said, "Look at you!" My own parents thought it was my sister. Folks. Don't you think enough is enough? I am 56 years old. Can't I just forgive them? They didn't cut off my hands or any limbs for that matter. They didn't kill my children, although they claimed their intelligence skipped a generation, meaning me.  Did they kill me? Is that why I can't forgive them?

Eating herring improves vision

Life. It can be a box or an open window.  Life can change in a moment.  Falling in love. Falling flat on your face. Looking up. Catching an eye or missing a step.

My heart is tied to Paris. The moment I arrived there it swept over me. I had forgotten. The gentleness.  Beauty wherever you look.  Familiar tastes.  And yet, I have changed. I am not the same innocent I was 25 years ago. Or even 15 years ago. It’s my Paris now.  But who would have thought that Copenhagen is mine, too? Not Stockholm, but Copenhagen where the herring is lively and the Baltic sea beckons. They may boast of skinheads, but Denmark pushed me. The blank canvas. The openness. The light.  I hated it from the moment we got there. That should have been enough of a clue for me, New Yorker that I am, hating everything. Of course. So much to criticize. But the flowers were everywhere. The navigation easy.  The edgy saltiness stung my lips.

I will go back to Denmark.  To see how I’ve changed.  Denmark. The place that made me ask, " Oh my darling, who will take care of you?" The place that answered- take care of yourself. There is no one else. Just you. And that remarkable pack of friends you carry around with you. No man. No other, not really.

This ends where it began. Paris.  Back in the city of kisses and embraces. Of sweet summer light. Old lovers. Glimpsing faces I knew and never really knew. Where I dreamt and stopped dreaming. Learned to speak a language of my own that made me mute. The only speaker. The only listener.  It is over now. The struggle is over. There was sweetness, but mainly I was spooking myself. Circling around myself.  Unknown. Unaware. Endless circles. Paris is the place that starts it all. The place I can see myself. It’s the starting point.  I will always return. But I’ll never return in the same way because as much as it feels like home, it’s not. 

Flashes appear in my vision from my right eye. I know that I need to see myself. See. I keep telling myself that everything will be ok. But what if it’s not? I keep telling myself that I can start again. Can I? I am not doubting myself. But what about those boxes we find ourselves in? And the boxes I am surrounded by. It’s no accident that the radio is playing “Little Boxes”.  Petites boites. Koroboshki.