9:55 a.m. - 03/14/02
if you keep your eyes that way...
do you ever feel, in the very early morning, as if perhaps a lifetime has gone by in the time the clock claims has been only an hour? I know the previous sentence is oddly constructed, but that's just it - it being what is on my mind; that's just what's on my mind: construction. the construction of time as this straight-line journey, this straight-line entity that defies every other rotating, revolving, spiraling piece of existence. I really doubt time is silly enough to spend it's entire life(time) walking heel-to-toe, heel-to-toe, heel-to-toe...I bet, honestly, the path of time looks like one of those odd little white plastic dance patterns with the shoe prints. And all the numbers have been taken out, and time just sits there, laughing, because we're all fools, and we're trying to find some semblance of cause and effect in this little skipping, clogging dance zie did. We're trying to find logic and meaning in this step and that one, and Time is amusedly musing, "oh, give it up! that's just there because I found that gorgeous wooden horsie and *had* to go for a good ride- I hadn't the slightest idea she was wild!"
do you ever feel, in the very early morning, or perhaps closer to noon, that your life is a joke, but the kind of joke that feels *good* - the kind that makes the whole room smile, even if the whole room is just you and her, and you're holding each other, and it's all ok because somewhere along the line you looked over your shoulder and your sobs sounded like laughter so much so they had to be?
I wouldn't mind too much if it were just me, so long as there were others with their own stories to tell.
this is my morning quote progression: "in dublin's fair city/ the girls are so pretty/ it's there that I first met sweet molly malone/ through streets broad and narrow/ she rolled her wheelbarrow/ crying 'cockles and mussels'/ alive alive oh..."
And then just that: "alive alive oh, alive, alive oh...crying cockles and mussels/ alive alive oh..."
Irish songs are so pretty and funny and beautiful.
Then: "Lord, what fools these mortals be.
And: "Every day you walk with longer step/ you walk with stronger step/ the worst is over..."
Then: "Empty chairs at empty tables..."
And all the songs that follow.
Including, oddly, Melissa Ferrick (Hold On, Mr. Bumble) which works somehow, so I'm letting it. So I could just sit here, and laugh like my imagined time, while any readers linger to furrow their brows and try to decipher the connections...but it makes more sense since this is a journal, and not, in actuality, an exercise in OCD (or at least I don't *mean* it to be)...I'll point them out myself.
Oh, depression. Damn her. (You know what's odd about me? I hate the personification of Anorexia and Bulimia- other than "Ed" because Ed is an asshole, and everyone knows it- but I've long discussed depression as a girl, a force, a hurricane. "Skeleton boy by the side of the road/ he warned me, he told me..." It's hypocritical, and yet it makes sense to me, because talking about depression is like talking about this fucked-up former-friend who gets inside my head sometimes, who I love but know is bad for me, who I can't quite separate myself from, who I can't quite embrace. And Ed is a manipulative, coercive bitch, that wants to believe he's a part of me. And yes this sidenote is important because, as is evidenced here, the sidenotes are mostly where the quotes come in. The footnotes are the best references...)
molly malone was in my head because yesterday in my, let yourself be calm and soft, and watch black-and-white movies, (black-and-white movies are basically the cinematic equivalent of taffy, especially when they're *good*), I watched "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" which is really bad if you've just read the book and don't want to understand that 30s movies do not do well to encapsule amazing, somewhat risky, novels...but isn't so bad if a few years have passed since you've read the book, and the flowers are still there at her graduation, and when Francie starts to cry you start to cry a little too, not because the movie is just so good, but because you need to cry because well, "there's a grief that can't be spoken/ there's a pain goes on and on..."
so yeah, I sang Molly Malone with my mommy this morning, and it was nice, and the last little part, the "alive, alive oh" stayed in my head...and was kind of happy there in spite of the tragic nature of the song and the tragic nature of my mind...
After Mom left for work, I went upstairs to gather happy shower things, like the scratchy brush that makes up for my current soapness not having jajoba beads (jajoba beads are *gooood*) and the soft little squishy thing that makes the soap all smudgy and suddy and foam-like. And I don't really know what happened then; I suppose I started talking to myself, or talking "to" Dr. R. - since I'm seeing him today, sometimes I think about the every-time questions (which of course, no one asks if I think about them) and mused about how I might answer them...and I started talking about how I was ok, of course. And he said, "Of course?" i.e. "what do you mean: of course?" and I said, "well, of course, I'm ok. I mean - it's a decision. It's not easy. I don't wake up in the morning, and think, hey I'm happy and things are good. I think about all of the things...the things I could do. You know. Things. But then I don't do them because I'm ok. Because I'm going to be ok."
It's a choice, this okayness. And I want to know, "I want to know...honestly. I know you're a doctor, but I want to know in all truth if you think there's going to come a time when things are different. Because I've believed in it before, I have, I've believed there would come a time when I would know that hope was always there, and that I was going to be ok, but now...now, I just really need to hope for something *real.* I need to know that what I'm believing in, what I'm working toward is really there. I mean, I know it's not ever going to be all rose petals and rainy saturdays" (I said this) "but will there really be a time...when...I don't know..."
And then I asked him what happened if someone else died. Or left. I told him, "I have these dreams. These dreams where people come and they tell me, 'so-and-so isn't doing ok,' and I wake up and think 'what if?' but there's nothing I can do because I can't get in touch with them, and if they're not, if they're not and it happens that I knew...I *knew*...I just can't deal with anymore of that guilt, you know? I can't deal with this again." And then I started crying, and Dr. R kindly saw himself out, and I started talking to this spot on the ceiling, a few feet in front of me, and I told Tracy all the reasons I was sorry, and I asked her to please do what she could to make sure that the rest of them, the rest of us, made it through ok. I told her it isn't all on her, but if there's something she sees she can do, to please...please...because what if it's really one in ten? what if it's really one in ten?
I just can't stand still in the statistics...
So I cried for awhile, and then I felt like someone was behind me, sort of pressed against me, like when someone puts their arm around your back, and I looked over my shoulder and told her thank you, and then I bust out laughing because, she'd been sitting behind me, watching me, while I talked to the ceiling. She'd been sitting behind me while I talked to the space a few feet ahead, and I couldn't stop laughing, I couldn't *stop* laughing, and I just thought over and over again, "that's just the type of thing she'd do..."
I miss her. I really do. Whether I'm supposed to, or allowed to, or not. I miss her, and my grief does not lie.
So, yes, realizing that the spirit world was a gallery at my back while I spoke to the ceiling it occurred to me "what fools these mortals be"...I mean Christ, am I BLIND?
So eventually, I gathered my sniffles and my showernesses, and as I caught my messy little sadsmile in the mirror (right *behind* me, that *girrrrl) I thought "every day you walk with longer step/ you walk with stronger step/ the worst is over..." And then I ran back to kiss the tracypup and took my shower, which was nice.
When I got out of the shower, I listened to that song (which is from Les Mis) and to Empty Chairs, which is also from Les Mis...and then I decided I needed an intermission, which led to Melissa, and now to a mix tape, which is happy...it has Cake's "I Will Survive" and Ella's "Blue Skies" and Veruca's "With David Bowie" (which has really happy lines like "I'm falling in love/ my best friend and me/ with David Bowie/ him and me/ in a tree/ i-n-g/ yeah/ like it did for you/ I kinda heard you singing..."
One of these days I'll go back to my own words- but in olden times, the storytellers were the keepers of age/old words...
chord
who has many excuses for her quote-addiction
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