deep-dark-sad-light-elated choice

I was in the dark hole again. Under the covers. And the only measurement of the fact that I exist, are the inhalations I see of the cat's small ribs rising, the fur rising and falling, ever so slowly, beside me. We are breathing together, in near silent unison. Cats sleep 16 hours a day by design. The depressed human sleeps 16 hours a day by default. 


I consider in my half-awake coma, slightly ashamed but less ashamed than exhausted, some of the people I know, strong ones, motivated ones, people with children and alarm clocks that blare before the sun even rises. I recall myself, not that long ago, that I was a welcome member in that club of doing and being and forward-thinking and growing, and right now, here in this comfortable and dark room, picturing myself, eyes closed, in the dark of another room, a spinning room at 6am, sweating, pumping, moving and feeling, almost, almost, almost that I'm becoming Type A. I remember a feeling of pride in that. I felt so productive and in step with inspired others. I felt like someone, maybe, to admire.


But now, there I was, behind the deep blue, heavy IKEA curtains, wondering how this all happened. 


Depression is not an overnight thing usually unless brought on by some tragic loss. And pity parties are a common problem that one wishes to attend night after night. So long as the promise of a happy party is thrown later. Yet you can't really look ahead to that party for the moment. Your focus is here. Here in this ceiling-fan whir, hypnotic cat inhalations, mind-numbness of now. Now.


A call this morning to a friend on the west coast, a friend who embraces the depths of our innately bi-polar natures (all of ours because he thinks this is a choice, that all humans are bi-polar, it's that some choose not to let the pendulum swing to far to either side), freed me somehow. Perhaps the ability to feel great joy, and I mean great, deep, profound joy on the other side of this dark hole is, in its way, not just a choice - yes, a choice - but a gift. 


The light has changed. I can sense it. Fall is here. I can feel it in the hush of the breeze in the evening air. I can see it, a change, a physical one, but also the butterfly flutter of something small yet magnificent happening all around us. 


I picked paint colors today. Finally. Deep, magical, elusive blue. And it's perfectly juxtaposed contrasting color? I haven't decided yet. It will come to me. And soon.

thoughts from 1992

Sometimes it's good to go back and revisit your former self. Particularly when you're missing a college reunion weekend set aside for the brainy crew you once ran around with. You remember how in awe of some of those people you were (and perhaps still would be given their sheer intellectual capacity). But as you look back on that time and while you realize that, of course, you've grown and changed immensely (and certainly some of your young writing was embarrassingly sophomoric and self-conscious and full of misused words) you're still always just...you in the end. 


I recently came across (let's be more accurate: I unearthed from old files out of curiosity and nostalgia) some old writing of mine from college. Here's a piece (totally unedited) from my 20 year old brain....


February 24, 1992.


There have been times that I've thought nothing matters - not the body, not the soul (whatever that might be) - but a source of sunlight, even the smallest light reflecting into my eyes like the aliveness it owned; there have been times when that light is the light by which I see the life I've created. The life existing in my body, the own child of myself that I carry with me always and which refuses to grow up urges me to stretch from my corner and scream the way we are forbidden to scream, to laugh and hold my body as if it did not belong to me.


Whatever urging the body finds are simply the outlines to a picture far larger than the world, far louder than any sound. Sound is so crucial in our explosion from the box of oppression. To scream Oh My God during orgasm may be our only outlet; were we allowed to scream across campus hallelujah fuckin' a as loud as we could and expelled as primal a scream as our bodies permitted, perhaps sex would not be so extraordinarily "out of body."


And this writing is a scream all its own, a scream of passionate yearning demanding a voice, the voice inside my head, the voice calling from deep within and expressed onto the page. Like the touch from under the sheets, bare skin, the man touching me so profoundly as if we touched the very me.


She was the temple. I was the temple, the arched wing in flight. No one told me either, no one prepared me for what I feel. I asked myself about the color in your eye, no longer a color when I looked again, but a large and open sky. A sky void of stars, closer to darkness, you said: "With you I have days" and then there's the night. It's the night I see in your eyes. Last week fingers were for scribing, I'd forgotten how good they feel in your hair. Have you felt me ever before? No body is the same. Mine is the same, only different. Seeker of hard muscles hid in a fretted friend, I need you.


Your days are numbered but only by the fly-by-night birds that stop to you, drifting the songs that become yours. My ephemeral anguish here, the longer I'm reminded of you pulling back like a turtle's feet into his shell, closer to yourself and me. Don't forget the way I touch you.


And then there's the voice proclaiming (but softly) "By the time you read this, I'll be half way across the country. By the time you've heard of me, I'll be a poet of moderate fame, searching for the love I couldn't find in you." And this is where my body takes me. He asked me to stay awake and write song lyrics for him. Of my shelter - short hair, rope bracelets, kickball - I was still tender, I always felt. Abandoned like an island cat, dirty but soft and manipulative.


Whitman said: I sing the body electric! You said: My body wrapped around my guitar, I let the music speak for my heart....But were they your words? No. No one's words are their words, you said yourself everything is stolen. All the great things have already been written, all the great music already composed....it is the stolen PARTS of the body that make it unique for it is all taken from the same source.


Like the child in the burning building, go to that child. And my words give me a thousand years of freedom. 

Celebrityishness.

I was nineteen when celebrity hit me like a gale force wind. This was long before the celebrity worship and reality TV crap that pervades the world today.

To be sure, celebrities have always been adored and treated like otherworldly beings. Even when I was really young, I thought the idea of screaming at someone or jumping up and down at them like a crazed fan at a concert was pathetic and ridiculous. Even if I admired a person for their talent, it would never occur to me to claw at, cry, or act desperate towards them if I got close to them. My natural reaction was to probably want to shake their hand and tell them how much I respected their work. But that’s because I don’t worship people readily. Never have. And because, to me, people are people.

And, as my brother Rich says, “Even Angelina Jolie poops.” For real.

In any event, at one time, celebrity did impact my life. Considerably. And without warning. In the summer of 1991.

My roommate and I went to go rent a movie at the local movie rental place in Vineyard Haven. I’d been out running and I was sweaty and wearing a pair of faded dark green with white writing Proctor Academy shorts and an oversized t-shirt. We scoured the racks of old movies and, for whatever reason, (I’m pretty sure our other roommate Maisley requested it, she liked the classics which was a good thing) we rented a Marilyn Monroe classic. I honestly don’t remember. What I do remember is the movie: Some Like it Hot.

In the aisles of the tiny store, we suddenly saw the statuesque, tourquoise suit-wearing, Carly Simon. She was so stunning and so self-possessed in that movie star quality that you can’t quite put into words. Something ethereal, yet immediate. Goddess-like and accessible all at once.  It wasn’t until she was in line behind me, though, that I dared speak.

Because we caught eyes. And she just looked so strangely familiar. And she clearly knew I knew who she was.

“I just have to tell you,” I said, making my voice bigger with each word, pulling myself as much as I could out of my nineteen-year old shyness, “I’ve been told my entire life that I look like you.”

In the theatrical way that I later tried to mimic because it was so compelling and dramatic in this genuine way, she didn’t say a word, but instead she let her left hand soar to her heart, as if her body itself had been possessed by my words and she broke into that broad, unmistakable, famous smile.

“Really? I’m so flattered.”

I considered my roommate, paying for our video rental, looking for a shared experience. But she was oblivious.  She didn’t even notice. Nothing wrong with her, not at all, but she was likely stoned, actually. Just ready for some hummus and filafel back at the house. And some leftover Black Dog cookies. The broken ones that Maisley was lucky enough to bring home to us.

“No. I’m flattered,” I said to her in return, smiling my very own signature toothy grin.

And then, in a moment, a thing that changed my life forever, this beautiful introduction occurred, an event that left an imprint that would tread the road of my brain for all time.

“I’d like you to meet my son,” she said, gesturing behind her.

I followed her hands.

“Ben.”

And there he was.

I had to turn almost all the way around to see him standing there – and there he was -  all 6 feet 4 inches of him and his big blue puppy dog eyes. We shook hands. He bowed his head graciously, and smiled.  A sweet underbite smile, eyes as blue as blue ever was, and he said in an almost Southern accent, “Pleased to meet you.” That’s when I knew. This was the Southern charm, the consummate gentleman behavior, he learned from his father, James Taylor.

to be continued

my nine-eleven (ten years later)

Ten years ago, on September 11, 2001 I was about to get married.

I was about to get married - on the following Saturday, September 15 - and I was already out of my head. The wedding was imminent. They’d done the requisite dress fittings but, in my preoccupation with all the planning and nervousness and, perhaps, utter panic at the idea of losing my identity, I had become too thin, and they simply couldn’t cinch the organza and lace any tighter.

My mouth was filled with canker sores. I was grinding my teeth. I had night terrors.

The ‘love of my life’, Jeff, was drowning himself in Jack and Cokes pretty much constantly and I don’t remember us speaking much after one day in March that he tossed a 1.5 carat round brilliant diamond in platinum (in a classic, pleasing diamond baguettes setting) on my finger. All I remember is that the wedding itself had become a thing of its own, outside of us. And it breathed. And it demanded all of my attention. Was this not what love what about?

Ten years ago, I followed a path in the dark with someone else holding my hand telling me it was alright. I was twenty-nine years old. It was time to grow up. I said, alright then, I’ll close my eyes and follow you.

It was an ordinary, albeit sun-filled, morning, and I was puttering around in my new condo in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, emptying the dishwasher in my tank top and cotton panties. The phone rang and I let the answering machine get it. My mother said in her expected grace under fire voice, “We’re under attack. The pentagon. The world trade center. We’ve been hit. Perhaps the white house is next. The buildings are on fire.. Jess, call me right away. Do not go to Boston.”

I had no television hooked up. Everything was still in U-Haul boxes from our recent move from Philadelphia. I called my aunt to tell her we couldn’t meet in Boston to get our highlights done. I’d go on with my wedding with roots, damnit. (yes, this was the least of my concerns). When I called her to tell her I wasn’t coming, she turned on the TV. She told me, explicitly and horribly, that people were jumping to their deaths. My imagination was soaring; everything was in slow motion the way things are when nothing makes sense.

I had to see this for myself. I went out to my deck only to see my neighbor, Isabelle, placidly watering her many plants in the sunshine. In her broad straw hat with her green watering can. I threw on some shorts and ran outside. She had no idea. I was the one to tell her. She wasn’t much of a TV person but we went into her house and sat down in front of her impossibly small television set and we watched - and we listened. We watched the first tower come down, we watched it fall in a surreal grey crumbling, an oddly weightless ashy heap.

Later that day, we gathered at my mother’s, me, Jeff, my brother Rich, his girlfriend Quenby, my brother Bob, my mother, my stepdad and several big jugs of pinot grigio, the cheap, easy drinking kind in abundance, and several bricks of cheddar cheese and boxes of crackers. We subsisted on this while we watched the second building come down and we waited for the phone calls.

My cousin happened to be in Jersey City that day, instead of onsite. Check. My uncle, whose 8:30AM meeting on one of the top floors had been rescheduled for 9/12, was a lucky bastard, too. Quenby’s friends got out in time. Down the stairs. My highschool friend, Teddy Maloney, was not so lucky. He died in the first tower.

I announced, abruptly and with no emotion that I wanted to postpone the wedding that it seemed like the right thing to do. Jeff had no opinion. He just drank more beer. Quenby was in my corner on this one, vibing off the emotion of people we knew, the closeness of the tragedy and the weirdness of everything happening around us. My mother said that was a stupid idea and that we had to go on. And then my mother and Quenby argued about it while I stood by, silent and disappearing, into my anxious and already too-thin body, disappearing into that darkness and feeling for the hand that had guided me this far.

I couldn’t find it.

The following weekend, just days later, I got married.

I got married on the green grass by the sea. Surrounded by people I loved. I felt, most of all, the overriding feeling that most people shared that weekend, that it was a glorious excuse for celebration, for distraction from it all, for gathering together in such a confusing time.

I’ll never forget how we all slapped American flags on the back of our cars and drove around the desolate landscape of Maine, where, in fact, the hideous terrorists had come through. Canada first, then there. They had trudged this way, through this unmarred land and sky, they had been right here. Breathing this same air. And I could feel them all around me.

Ten years later, I do not have an American flag on my car nor do I have a ribbon of any color. My marriage, based clearly on something we’d already outgrown once the vows were said, unraveled. Without passion. And without regret.

I will never forget that weekend of unity, of a divided world suddenly bonded together, all of us celebrating life and love, and also deeply mourning, not just the innocent people who died but also the profound loss of something we once shared together, something indefinable. For that brief time, we were so unified, as a people, as a nation, "indivisible, with liberty and justice for all" and it was good. But it was only temporary. Ultimately, it seems, the terrorists took something very specific from us. They inspired us to sever apart and hate each other in a whole new way.

I don’t know what to think of our nation ten years later. I know less now than I thought I did then. Party lines don’t define me. I was in independent my whole life and I’m not a Republican or a Democrat even now. I only want what’s right. What’s fair. What’s just.

My car was recently stolen and the thief got away with it. A level-headed friend of mine took a crazy stalker to court not long ago and couldn't get rid of the problem. Our laws protect the criminal more than the victim. We have to ‘prove’ the hideousness of people in the wrong. But when you lead a decent life in this complicated world we live in, who has time for this nonsense? We can barely keep track of the legitimate concerns we have like our cable bills and insurance. Who has the extra time or inclination to do this? And the sad part is, you then become a victim, not out of weakness, but as the result of a very, very broken system.

I’m not sure how things can change other than blowing the whistle, very loudly and very frequently, on what’s not working. But who is listening? Who has the time to listen? There is so much corruption today, more than ever it seems. From the banks and the (let's not talk about the elephant in the room) mortgage crisis to baby-killer Casey Anthony walking free. What is this place? What is America 'the great' today?

I mourn 9/11 not just for the profound tragedy of that day, the awful loss of life and the absolute loss of innocence for our country. But I, solemnly and truthfully and painfully, mourn what I once thought was a great country. I don’t know so much anymore about us.

I’ve lost a lot of faith in this place in the last ten years. It’s hard to really love it like I used to. Am I alone? Who else feels this disenchanted, disenfranchised sadness?

This feels like a dark time in our history. A very dark time. And I don’t know when we’ll see the light again.

Perhaps not in our lifetime.