Another river city

That's actually another windy city. That is surrounded by the widest, bluest sky I've ever seen. We've been here for a few weeks now.

What have I learned so far? The space between two places is filled with so much, really. And Montélimar has reminded me often enough that nothing is ever permanent here, the wind makes sure of that.

A few boxes remain, the mezzanine is still a mess and my habit of being barefoot whenever I'm at home means my feet have been dirty every day since we got here because the dust and boxes are more efficient than I am.

Last week was easier than the week before that and I'm hopeful I'll feel the same way next weekend. I would just like to know the names of the hills I see every day, and the mountains beyond them.

The things I don't know

Cannot be counted. Some of them probably can't even be imagined.

No longer waiting to live, I'm trying to live while waiting. Don't ask me what I'm waiting for, I have no idea. If I did, it would be anticipation, not waiting. Right?

Map this

Map the lines you've crossed, all of them, they will be the scale. Every map needs a point of reference.

Map what you've lost, it matters, the way a neighboring country matters - best to have good relations, but that's enough. Peace between borders.

Map what you know, it's precious little, but precious still. It is the ever changing landscape. Time and season always take care of what you cannot.

Map what you've learned, a mountain range. Hard to get to but majestic views worth the risk.

Map what it cost you to learn, the valley nearby, carved by glaciers of hard truths.

Map the grace that melted glaciers into a river of acceptance whose beginning and end cannot be mapped.

What we don't know

There was no real reason for it to happen that night.

But something about going to the grocery store up the street, where we went at least once a day for beer or brownies made him mad. You pushed, he pushed back. He got ugly then, his face a mirror of tragedies unfaced. You knew that though, going into it, what he hadn't faced, it was inscribed into his skin. Probably picked him because of it. And you did pick him, regardless of how he told the tale. That first kiss in the elevator? All yours. His tragedies made him easier to manage, and even weakened you could make him spin if you had to.

After the ugliness you left, went to a friend's house to sleep. You woke up early, calm, before dawn.

You walked back to the apartment, armed with hot coffee and a night spent in a girlfriend's bed. You quietly gathered your things together, the important things. The rest you left for later.

You did not kiss his sleeping lips before you left.

Tapestries

I was a marble statue on a stone bench when he walked out, his pack of cigarettes already in his hand as he opened the door. He sat down next to me, our thighs touching, remembering. We smoked and he told me himself what I had heard around the department.

He told me gently, with regret. I laughed at him, also gently. I knew where his wife was from and I knew what the South could do to its women. His situation, all bittersweet poetry and wilting flowers for him, was actually all pragmatics and strategies, southern style. As familiar to me as the smell of pine trees on the way to the beach on vacation.

He told me he loved me then. He didn't, but I knew what he meant. And I knew what he wanted from me, even if he didn't. I accepted the part with a farewell kiss, still more bittersweetness for him and just a kiss for me.

I played my part well though. It was my parting gift, to make up for my gently mocking laughter. Electric glances and accidental touches and suggestive sighs to help him add sweet tragedy to his bitter comedy.

Past in present

When the young girl thought of the grandmother, she remembered the grit of the raspberry seeds in her mouth. Fresh raspberries she picked herself, not even as tall as the bushes she conversed with, asking and thanking for each berry, a bowl in her hand, her bare feet gently bathed in dew. She chose each one carefully as it was offered, picking off the tiny insects and imperfections she saw. She brought her bowl inside, full, and held it out to be covered in fresh cream.

The food was always better at the grandmother's house, how could it not be? Food was not prepared there, it was managed, just as the family was, without its consent or cooperation, giving in only to the cemented lack of choice.

The young girl watched this woman's hands make everything. Shape pie crust into girlish swirls and flutes, this harsh specimen of a grandmother. The grandmother was generous only with food, gray memories of summer weeks filled with her steady disapproval mercifully colored by bubbling fruit pies too perfect to have been made from bitterness and scorn alone.

The grandmother preferred boys, had little time for girls, or even anything feminine. The dark red lipstick she wore when she went into town, 5 blocks away, was the only concession she made to femininity. But it played out as mockery more than anything else, her broken teeth and cruel smile outlined with the blood she drew when she spoke.

And yet the young girl returned, was even anxious to go there. To sit on the cracked steps in front of that big house filled with hidden passages and round windows and a black basement that coiled around its own darkness and waited.

The grandmother died there, in that waiting basement, among her canned vegetables and the clutter of a life she never went through.

Seen And Unseen

I sat in that office everyday. It must have been something else before, a shop or something. I never asked, but why else would there have been a window like that? Floor to ceiling, wall to wall. It was like working in a fish tank.

My desk didn't face the window, it was next to it. I watched people walk by occasionally, but mostly I just did my job. Papers, computer, phone. I had replaced someone very competent and thought I had much to prove. I suspect I may have been hired for reasons other than my cv. I was an odd mix of young and old at that time and often spoke of foreign cities I had visited. My smile was genuine but my eyes were not.

I looked up from my desk one day to see that a photographer had set up a tripod on the sidewalk across the street from my window. He was older than me but young still and had that artist look - hungry, but for art, not food.

Since when was I art? I looked down at myself, sitting in my chair. Little black sweater and pearls, straight out of the 50s, minus the hope.

We had a conversation of gestures during which he told me he wanted to take a picture of me in that fish tank, but working, not looking at him. I tried to do that. I went back to my tasks and he started his. But he gave up quickly. Because even though I wasn't looking at him anymore, I wasn't the same woman.

He packed up his stuff and left without taking any pictures or saying goodbye. I could not go back to never having seen.

Reception

You have been welcomed home. There's a wreath on the door, crystals that shine even when it's cloudy. There's a fire inside, you can see the smoke coming out of the chimney. A light is on. You do not know who is home or what they are doing - maybe reading - but you do know you'll go inside.

You don't knock, why would you? This is your home now.

The first thing they say to you when you walk through the door?

Lay down your troubles.

And you do. You lay them down, suitcases of suffering you leave at the doorway. They disappear as you walk towards the kitchen.

Minor crisis

Of the blog variety.

Just meandering out loud. What to do with the blog.

Having come up with no answer, I'll ask you.

What to do with the blog?

Breathless

From interviewing 40 students over the past two days - part of their midterms.

From the horrible bronchitis my petri dish children gave me.

From running around this week trying to get the house back in order after the out of orderliness brought about my the no-heat for four days thing while taking care of very sick children and very sick self and interviewing those 40 students.

Yes, I know, deep breathing would help. But every time I take a deep breath I cough.

Lay your hands on me

In the past 36 hours, I've seen an acupuncturist, an energy therapist, a massage therapist, and an osteopath.

Which is to say that I've been unblocked, re-energized, relaxed, and realigned.

Short term results: very tired.

Long term: too early to tell.

I did all of this, saw all those people, well, partially because I've been meaning to but never get around to it and the boys are away until tomorrow and I didn't have any classes yesterday or today so it was logistically possible. But really, it's because I was feeling stuck in the worst possible way and I figured if I could get the inside unstuck the outside might follow.

You know what I'm talking about.

As within, so without.

Nearly an island

You cannot be an island, no one can be, that is what they say. But you are surely not, obviously not, mainland.

So what on this earth, literally, are you?

A pennisula? Perhaps. No. Even better, well, not better, but more accurate, a presqu'île. Which is not an island, not at all, but closer to being one than a pennisula. That is you. Joined to the mainland only by the long slender curve of your neck. Head on the mainland, body and viscera finding their ground in the surrounding ocean.

Understanding finally, you allow the soft fingertips of mercy to trace the outline of your lips. Your smile will never be the same.