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May. 24th, 2006
Sounds I Make
May. 24th, 2006 08:05 pmFreewrite:
I don't know how I'm going to write any of this without the snippets of music that I'm listening to thrown in. So much of my emotion is encapsulated and formed by the music I listen to, defined is I guess the right word. It's not even a lyrical association, there's just something that feels like... I love things. I love my brothers. They showed up for family dinner, all of them, which is more than mom could get reliably, and now they're doing it reliably for me. I love my mom. She's so old. The world has given her an amazing beating, and she's never laid down and let it run her over. Or, I suppose she did, when I was in high school, and that was a problem then, but she's kicking now. We're all doing well, and that means a lot to me.
Don't forget, no regrets, except maybe one, made a deal not to feel, gods that was dumb.
I remember the first few times I got this feeling that I was in a community of enough people who loved me that I just could not fall down. No matter what I do, how terrible or dysfunctional, there is an army of people to lift me up and move me onwards and forwards with my weight on my own feet again eventually. It's a force so strong there's no resisting it. I can't fall down. If I ever thought of suicide when I was younger, it was always as something I couldn't do because I needed to be the strong one, because since I knew at least one of my brothers as going to kill themselves anyhow, mom would need me not to. I don't know what I would have thought beyond that; I don't know if the idea would have been attractive beyond that absolute no. And here we are, can you believe it? Here's all of us, they're all working now, they took me out for Ethiopian for dinner. I didn't tell them about Sweetie because I'm busy being in denial. She's buried in my community garden, the earth is cold but it will hold her better than I ever could. One brother just returned from volunteering in Ottawa, the other thanked the chef on the way out, the third is done his program at UCFV and going into thr world to do the useful thing he loves. We're all real people now, look at us! And I always thought we'd fall down. And we haven't.
There's no real telling the tale of a life, is there? All these little anecdotes you get (Juggler pronounces it 'antidotes', he too learned most of his English from the silence of books) from me, they form little pictures but they don't express it very well. I can't guess at what the inside of your head looks like. And yet, here you are, a solid support, and there is no way for me to even falter, really, anymore.
I have radishes. I came home and Sweetie was dead, Tillie had taken her out of the cage because Helen was acting freaked out (no kidding). I took Sweetie down to the community garden to bury her under my plum tree, and there were dozens of radishes ready to pick. I picked them, and I will eat one as I do one of everything edible that I pick, because that's what we're meant to do with the world. I wonder if Piotr wants the rest? I should call him, but I want the silence of music for a few minutes more. I want the flow of words, it's always so soothing to let them spill out like this.
There's silence in the back of my skull as I type this. I never think of what I'm going to say before I say it, and for writing it's the same. I don't have a voice mechanism inside my head, it's hard for me to string concepts out fine enough to hear words inside my head. Instead I think generally about something, and it comes out differentiated into all these syllables and letters.
I've been thinking, today. My mind is quiet enough with exhaustion to think. I can't tell you what I was thinking, because I can't refine the concepts into the small, precise fragments that language requires. Bevan called me. It made me happy. Do you know that my life is full of people who want to be here? It's such an astounding concept, that other people could derive joy and happiness and fulfillment from having me in their lives exactly like I do from having them in mine.
That's why, Kynnin, my only answer to you when you say I'm tired of staying away, is that you have my number. Guess what? This makes me cry to write it. Guess what? There are people in my life who love me enough to not stay away. And guess what? They're coming into my life, they're making the effort to do that, not because they think I want them to, but because they want me in their lives. It's because they want it enough to do that, to make the effort, to pick up the phone or drop by. And I do the same to them. Do you know, all along, all those nights when you wouldn't call me, it wasn't me. It really wasn't me, being so blah that it just wasn't worth the effort (well, to be fair, maybe I was then). Look at me now. Just look!
I couldn't even tell you why I'm crying now. I remember being so unhappy. I remember so many times when I was lonely, and I don't know if I'm capable of it anymore. There are people who love my mind, who love my body, who love my soul. There are huge masses of them, and my biggest care nowadays is to remember to go into my garden in the rain and gather radishes, or to turn down the lights and push back the coffee table and let the music take my muscles until I am nothing but my body. I remember those, and now I feel like some enormous source of gravity into which people drift and then orbit, some closer, some further.
I love you.
Look at all these words. They splash! I confided to Bevan that I was thinking of getting a pottery wheel again. I could make dishes-- my own, my friends'. This is where I was when I was fifteen, I am returning, the trite wheel of metaphor is turning. And I am here.
Thank you. This is more than I ever wanted, and it's so beautiful, and more, it's so deeply right and satisfying. I see the image of a shoot thrusting up from the soil and drinking in sunlight-- do you know how fast they can grow in those first days? They grow fast because all the embryonic cells are already contaned in the seed, they are merely (merely? Simply?) pumped full of water, they unroll and uncoil, and then the sunlight greens them.
It's a fitting image, growing into one's cells. It's fitting.
Oh, Sweetie, thank you. I loved you. It was wonderful.
I don't know how I'm going to write any of this without the snippets of music that I'm listening to thrown in. So much of my emotion is encapsulated and formed by the music I listen to, defined is I guess the right word. It's not even a lyrical association, there's just something that feels like... I love things. I love my brothers. They showed up for family dinner, all of them, which is more than mom could get reliably, and now they're doing it reliably for me. I love my mom. She's so old. The world has given her an amazing beating, and she's never laid down and let it run her over. Or, I suppose she did, when I was in high school, and that was a problem then, but she's kicking now. We're all doing well, and that means a lot to me.
Don't forget, no regrets, except maybe one, made a deal not to feel, gods that was dumb.
I remember the first few times I got this feeling that I was in a community of enough people who loved me that I just could not fall down. No matter what I do, how terrible or dysfunctional, there is an army of people to lift me up and move me onwards and forwards with my weight on my own feet again eventually. It's a force so strong there's no resisting it. I can't fall down. If I ever thought of suicide when I was younger, it was always as something I couldn't do because I needed to be the strong one, because since I knew at least one of my brothers as going to kill themselves anyhow, mom would need me not to. I don't know what I would have thought beyond that; I don't know if the idea would have been attractive beyond that absolute no. And here we are, can you believe it? Here's all of us, they're all working now, they took me out for Ethiopian for dinner. I didn't tell them about Sweetie because I'm busy being in denial. She's buried in my community garden, the earth is cold but it will hold her better than I ever could. One brother just returned from volunteering in Ottawa, the other thanked the chef on the way out, the third is done his program at UCFV and going into thr world to do the useful thing he loves. We're all real people now, look at us! And I always thought we'd fall down. And we haven't.
There's no real telling the tale of a life, is there? All these little anecdotes you get (Juggler pronounces it 'antidotes', he too learned most of his English from the silence of books) from me, they form little pictures but they don't express it very well. I can't guess at what the inside of your head looks like. And yet, here you are, a solid support, and there is no way for me to even falter, really, anymore.
I have radishes. I came home and Sweetie was dead, Tillie had taken her out of the cage because Helen was acting freaked out (no kidding). I took Sweetie down to the community garden to bury her under my plum tree, and there were dozens of radishes ready to pick. I picked them, and I will eat one as I do one of everything edible that I pick, because that's what we're meant to do with the world. I wonder if Piotr wants the rest? I should call him, but I want the silence of music for a few minutes more. I want the flow of words, it's always so soothing to let them spill out like this.
There's silence in the back of my skull as I type this. I never think of what I'm going to say before I say it, and for writing it's the same. I don't have a voice mechanism inside my head, it's hard for me to string concepts out fine enough to hear words inside my head. Instead I think generally about something, and it comes out differentiated into all these syllables and letters.
I've been thinking, today. My mind is quiet enough with exhaustion to think. I can't tell you what I was thinking, because I can't refine the concepts into the small, precise fragments that language requires. Bevan called me. It made me happy. Do you know that my life is full of people who want to be here? It's such an astounding concept, that other people could derive joy and happiness and fulfillment from having me in their lives exactly like I do from having them in mine.
That's why, Kynnin, my only answer to you when you say I'm tired of staying away, is that you have my number. Guess what? This makes me cry to write it. Guess what? There are people in my life who love me enough to not stay away. And guess what? They're coming into my life, they're making the effort to do that, not because they think I want them to, but because they want me in their lives. It's because they want it enough to do that, to make the effort, to pick up the phone or drop by. And I do the same to them. Do you know, all along, all those nights when you wouldn't call me, it wasn't me. It really wasn't me, being so blah that it just wasn't worth the effort (well, to be fair, maybe I was then). Look at me now. Just look!
I couldn't even tell you why I'm crying now. I remember being so unhappy. I remember so many times when I was lonely, and I don't know if I'm capable of it anymore. There are people who love my mind, who love my body, who love my soul. There are huge masses of them, and my biggest care nowadays is to remember to go into my garden in the rain and gather radishes, or to turn down the lights and push back the coffee table and let the music take my muscles until I am nothing but my body. I remember those, and now I feel like some enormous source of gravity into which people drift and then orbit, some closer, some further.
I love you.
Look at all these words. They splash! I confided to Bevan that I was thinking of getting a pottery wheel again. I could make dishes-- my own, my friends'. This is where I was when I was fifteen, I am returning, the trite wheel of metaphor is turning. And I am here.
Thank you. This is more than I ever wanted, and it's so beautiful, and more, it's so deeply right and satisfying. I see the image of a shoot thrusting up from the soil and drinking in sunlight-- do you know how fast they can grow in those first days? They grow fast because all the embryonic cells are already contaned in the seed, they are merely (merely? Simply?) pumped full of water, they unroll and uncoil, and then the sunlight greens them.
It's a fitting image, growing into one's cells. It's fitting.
Oh, Sweetie, thank you. I loved you. It was wonderful.