This is my little corner of the web to rant, rave, cry, laugh, snark, preach and idol worship in total anonimity. Like the proverbial tree falling in the forest, if I write it and no one reads it...then it probably sucks.
Some have God’s words; others have songs of comfort for the bereaved.
If I can pluck courage here, I would like to speak directly to the dead—the September dead.
Those children of ancestors born in every continent on the planet: Asia, Europe, Africa, the Americas…; born of ancestors who wore kilts, obis, saris, geles,wide straw hats, yarmulkes, goatskin, wooden shoes,feathers and cloths to cover their hair.
But I would not say a word until I could set aside all I know or believe about nations, wars, leaders, the governed and ungovernable; all I suspect about armor and entrails.
First I would freshen my tongue, abandon sentences crafted to know evil—-wanton or studied; explosive or quietly sinister; whether born of a sated appetite or hunger; of vengeance or the simple compulsion to stand up before falling down.
I would purge my language of hypberbole; of its eagerness to analyze the levels of wickedness; ranking them; calculating their higher or lower status among others of its kind.
Speaking to the broken and the dead is too difficult for a mouth full of blood.
Too holy an act for impure thoughts.
Because the dead are free, absolute; they cannot be seduced by blitz.
To speak to you, the dead of September 11, I must not claim false intimacy or summon an overheated heart glazed just in time for a camera.
I must be steady and I must be clear, knowing all the time that I have nothing to say—no words stronger than the steel that pressed you into itself; no scripture older or more elegant than the ancient atoms you have become.
And I have nothing to give either—except this gesture, this thread thrown between your humanity and mine:
I want to hold you in my arms
and as your soul got shot of its box of flesh to understand, as you have done,
the wit of eternity: its gift of unhinged release tearing through the darkness of its knell.
“Usually, that’s the way it goes. But, every once in a while, it goes the other way too.”
I dreamt about the house I grew up in again last night. This dream happens more than occasionally, but not often. I consider it a recurring dream because while the plot & action are always different the setting is the same - that little ranch house I called home until I was 17 years old.
I grew up in a small North Shore Long Island town that, in the 1970s, was significant to its residents mainly for being an official stop on the LI Railroad. There, you either lived close to the water or close to the train station. I grew up close to the train station, which means I’m literally from the wrong side of the tracks. But not in a scary “I’ll cutchoo” type way. That element didn’t come in until the ’90s.
Fast forward 30+ years. I’m waiting at the gate for my JetBlue flight from Orlando to Newark. Orlando International Airport is really a shopping mall that has runways for 747s instead of parking decks. The amount of retail here is actually 1000x more diverse & impressive than the mall in my hometown. But that’s not why I’m writing this.
As I was briskly walking to my gate with rolly bag in tow, I flashed back to a few years ago when I was traveling for a living. A National Education Manager for a midsize clinical skincare brand, I was on the road 80-85% of the time, crisscrossing all of North America (including Canada) & Hawaii. And you know what? Most of the time I loved it. I was often exhausted & stressed, literally running in heels to catch this or that flight, packing/unpacking in hotel rooms, etc. But there was a certain rush I got from not being in one place for too long. There was no movement without purpose, & I was constantly moving. It felt a little like having my own little traveling road show. Swoop in, dazzle them, then leave as the audience was still filing toward the exits & on to the next. I liked getting the free car rental upgrades & always having my meals brought to me in restaurants or to my room. I loved knowing I was not responsible for changing the sheets or cleaning the tub. And that lifestyle affords a luxury that cannot be assessed in fancy little soaps or mini bar indulgences. Because I was always in motion, everything felt temporary. Even the stuff that weighed on my mind & made my heart ache. If I had a heavy heart in one city, by the time I’d made it to another I didn’t have the extra load anymore. I’d simply leave the emotional baggage somewhere in the ether between destinations.
While I wasn’t really dealing with anything, it was also deliciously liberating. I couldn’t wait to get out of my hometown after high school & lead some exciting kind of life. In a way, that’s exactly what happened. And ironically, at almost 35 years of age, the place that most frequently manifests in my dreams is the house of my childhood.
Maybe I enjoy being on the run because something’s running after me too…trying to catch up…
We like to comfort ourselves with the idea that we control our own lives. But we really don’t. So much of my life is dictated by people & forces that really have nothing to do with me but end up exerting enormous impact & influence on the trajectory of any given day. I can try to pull it back on course, but it’s really just a valiant attempt.
New York City is rainy & dark as I write this. It’s not even 6:30 yet. October starts this Friday. But it already seems like summer ended a long time ago. Soon the chill & frost will move in & the transformation will be complete.
I’m going to be 35 years old in less than 12 weeks. I’m certain there will be no fanfare. Being born a week before Christmas you learn early that people will either be too broke or busy to celebrate the day you arrived in the world. This year it finally feels appropriate to let it pass without note.
I had this vision in my 20s of how I would be at 35. I thought I’d be successful in some amorphous way. I think I couldn’t define it because it was tied to this powerful expectation that I would be confident. My own woman. I would make definitive decisions & be master of my destiny. Not in a rule the world sense but in the sense of feeling like I possessed my life instead of the other way around. But I still feel like I’m waiting for that woman to show up. I’m starting to think I gave myself a little too much credit for believing she’d ever come around.
My 35th year is the end of my bloom. My body is soon no longer ripe to create life. Even if the factory is still open the machineworks are moving more slowly, starting to rust. I can no longer be relied on to produce consistent quality product, which is why I shouldn’t try. I guess because I waited for my empowered self to emerge from the chrysalis, I never grew the voice to say what it is I really want. And I know better than to speak up now. Better to let regret simmer inside & create a slow rot, like mold, then to be shot out in careless fits of emotion & instantly infect everything around it.
Just because I’ve let a lot of my life happen to me doesn’t mean I’m ignorant to it. I just don’t know how to change it. I know I’m a butterfly who got stuck in the cocoon. And now I’m used to watching the wind as it blows me back & forth in my tenuous little net.
