Expansion

Moonrise in Sonoma

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

-from Li Young-Lee, "From Blossoms"

I had forgotten this: the feeling of so much concentrated bliss that it's almost hard to breathe, and nearly impossible to fathom, at least for a while, that anything could ever be wrong in the world. But now I remember.

We spent the day in Sonoma, S and I and his visiting friend, and for hours I was so happy I sometimes couldn't speak. Sitting overlooking the lake at Gundlach Bundschu in the bright sun of late afternoon with my eyes half-closed and S's arms around me; looking up from every sip of wine to see that beautiful and adoring face close to mine; watching out the window as we sped through the heartbreakingly pretty golden hour scenery along route 12, my hand on S's knee as he drove: I don't have adequate words to describe how these things made something in me lighten and expand so much that there was no room for anything other than untempered joy and amazement.

Those two can't last forever on their own, of course; back in the city, with night fallen, there were parking woes, an unexciting and overly expensive meal out, S reaching a saturation point after 5 straight days with his friend, and the annoying reappearance of the real world in the form of outstanding work tasks and bills to pay and planning to do for the week ahead. And, of course, there was our goodbye, utterly untenable despite being very temporary, which has left me listless and unmoored.

And yet, and yet: those hours of sunshine, brilliant skies, baisers volés, hands touching, free wine, effortless joy--they've left me feeling calmer and more whole than I have for much too long, and have reminded me that sometimes fate or good luck or good timing intervenes and kicks open the door that's kept you for months in a murky dimness, leaving you blinking, dazzled, and pleasantly dazed in the sudden onslaught of light.

Self-Admonition

"When was writing ever your profession? It's never been anything but your religion. ... Since it is your religion, do you know what you will be asked when you die? But let me tell you first what you won't be asked. You won't be asked if you were working on a wonderful, moving piece of writing when you died. You won't be asked whether it was long or short, sad or funny, published or unpublished. You won't be asked if you were in good or bad form while you were working on it. You won't even be asked if it was the one piece of writing you would have been working on if you had known your time would be up when it was finished. ... I'm so sure you'll get asked only two questions. Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out? If only you knew how easy it would be for you to say yes to both questions."

--J.D. Salinger, "Seymour: An Introduction"

Long Night's Journey into Day

On Friday, in those moments of sudden stillness, N tells me that apparently the body releases some kind of paralyzing chemical during sleep, which is why, he says (after telling me not to quote him on this), you sometimes have those moments during dreams in which you're frantically, desperately trying to move but cannot.

I've had dreams like that: I want to run or get up or turn but I'm stuck, leaden, right where I am, as if some greater force is exacting control over my limbs. I wake up with a start, relieved to realize, though it takes some time, that my body is mine again, that I'm free to move as I please.

This morning I thought of that dreaming, of that sleepy paralysis, and realized that, if you (like me) go in for the occasional grand extrapolation, you might say that much of the grand ol' US of A is on the cusp of being pulled out of just such a dream. It was a long one, and exhausting, in which we thought we could move or scream or do something, anything, to stop feeling like so much was out of our control (and quite possibly getting worse all the while). Something kept us frustratingly still.

But it's morning in America, my friends, and I don't mean the Reagan kind of morning. I mean the kind when we wake up and understand that we can move again, understand that our futile attempts to shift our frozen limbs or open our mouths and hear something come out are over, understand that though much of the past eight years were significantly more than just a bad dream, they're over.

Tomorrow morning, human voices will wake us, but with apologies to TSE, we won't drown. At long last, the senseless, useless flailing and sinking are over.

We won't drown. We'll swim, finally, toward what looks once again like a reachable shore.

Ring out

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

— From In Memoriam, Alfred Lord Tennyson

2008, you were both a delightful success--book published, business craziness (in a generally good way), appearance of fascinating people on the scene, arrival of World's Cutest Niece--and a heartbreaking pain in the ass. You and I, we did our time. Now Tennyson and I would like to show you the door.

2009, you and I are going to take it slow. Don't get any big ideas and, like, start calling me twice a day or putting your feet up on the furniture or anything. I'm hopeful that I'll learn to love you, but I'm smart enough to hold back until I get to know you a little better. Ask 2008 how to make me happy and how, markedly, not to. It'll tell you, especially if you buy it a drink.

In the meantime, I'm going to celebrate a decent first day of you by pouring myself a glass of wine and continuing to work my way through "Curb Your Enthusiasm" from the beginning.

The Corner, The Turning

It's a little early for all this.
Everything's still very bare--
nevertheless, something's different today from yesterday.

--Louise Gluck, from "March"

It was while gazing at another ceiling, with mid-morning light poking in through another window, hearing another set of lungs quietly at work, waiting for another pair of eyes to open, that I thought, Right. This isn't it. That room, those hours, those lungs and eyes added up to something that used to be familiar (a warm Boston apartment, March 2001; a Seattle room near the train tracks, sometime before that; a gray July morning on Geary, not so very long ago)--a sighing blend of acceptance, understanding, and resignation that takes as its unofficial soundtrack Elliot Smith's "Oh Well, Okay" and, if in title and melody only, Cat Power's "Maybe Not."

I've felt this before, and this isn't it.

What struck me this time around, though, was what came next.

Which was this: But still, I'm somewhere else today. I wasn't thinking physically or literally, though indeed I was somewhere else (in a Valley that wasn't mine); rather, I felt like I'd come to a corner and had turned it. Suddenly it felt like I could exhale completely, for the first time in months, and that I didn't have to force myself to loosen my grip on what I'd been holding: it loosened on its own (well, ok, with a bit of a hazel-eyed nudge). Something in me went soft and slack, and for a while I closed my eyes and fell back asleep.

The morning wore on. The light changed. Our breathing changed. A while later, in front of my house, I said goodbye to those other eyes and came inside. Everything seemed familiar. Everything seemed just a shade different.