not with a bang but with a whimper
Sunday 2 January 2005 | I like a cookie
The whimper, in this case, coming from N.’s hunched form as he sat miserably on my bed here in the Chez Zen dining room weeping inebriatedly after many glasses of wine at a cigar club (?!) with our big-swinging-dick venture-capital Info Mesa neighbor. And after a tortuous post-zazen “party” with the lights dimmed, everyone eating molasses cookies and onion dip funerally, as if at a wake, and speaking in hushed voices. A tortuous party where N. leaned against the wall, unconsciously imitating James Dean, and glared at everyone, his entire body radiating contempt and despising, refusing to speak to anyone—and now crying, saying that no one likes him. I don’t belong here, I don’t belong anywhere, there’s nowhere in your life where I belong. Me with no resources left but only able to hold his hand, stupidly, dully, exhaustedly.
And now it’s 1 January 2005 and Susan Sontag has passed under the crest of that small, individually tailored tsunami which takes us all eventually, spring summer fall winter spring, and I’ve slept six hours and feel more like myself, whoever that is, though I still can’t eat and have local and widespread digestive revolt, and have been preparing my poetry samples for Monday and reading Soen Sa Nim, to work him into the Dying Book (double entendre quite deliberate), shaking my head over his patent Zen insanity:
Is this closed? Is this open? If you say “closed,” you fall into the hell without doors. If you say “open,” you are dancing with all demons. Why?
Um, you’re asking me why?
This morning Herself bounded into the living room, slamming doors and singing out my name. She loves having me here, a pet editing gerbil trapped cutely in her house. I was fortunately awake and able to respond, however dryly I can muster, to her effervescence. Told her I needed to go see a film to review it—she peered at me brightly, You should invite me to one of your movies! Then she commented it was good to see me with N., that we seemed well. I looked at her disbelievingly. You’re being facetious, right? No, no! Everything seemed smooth between you. I’m dumbfounded, re-picturing his surly hostility and my small desperate acts of social supplication and then my eventual fatalistic giving up—for after years of trying to do this with M., I at least know better than to keep it up for an entire evening.
More than once Persephone caught my eye across the room and we looked at one another expressionlessly. Yes, I know my boyfriend is behaving like a little shit. And I do care what people think, especially when those people are my sangha. Does this mean I only care about appearances? Does this mean I’m so rule-bound I can’t live my life in freedom? Does this mean it’s wrong for my heart to sink when he pulls up in the 4×4 with the Missouri plates and hops out, unsteady and smelling like a bar, and obviously in no shape to sit zazen or be with me either one?
And this concavity may continue for some weeks or months yet. When the sun goes down the self-destructive thoughts quicken their pace, coming not once every few hours but every few minutes and then finally every few seconds, along with the torrential teariness. I don’t want meds, don’t want anything but peace and no demands and someone old and wise to listen and nod and say Yes. At least I should start bleeding today and hopefully get this synthetic progestin out of my system quite quickly. Of course I’ll also be fertile as all hell, after a nice six-month round of oral contraceptive experimentation.
I think of Mandarin today, and wonder how she really is in the wake of all that is happening. Wish we had thousands of dollars and a big old frame house on the sea somewhere, so we could just hole up and grieve and mourn and eat potato chips and stare blankly at the water and go for long bike rides and walks and dig savagely in the garden and begin to recover from all the various ravages we have inflicted on ourselves, inflicted on our loved ones, have had inflicted on us by them.
It’s 12:34 pm and best to post this and find some food before the demons take my fasting as an invitation to come early to tonight’s party. I just can’t get that suicidal again, because the next few days include: 1) 500 words on A Very Long Engagement due Sunday night, 2) statements for Iowa and Columbia due by 5 pm Monday, 3) read Thalia Field’s incomprehensible book and write 1,000 words on it for Columbia by 5 pm Monday, 4) fill out an excessively long and weird scholarship application form for Iowa by, that’s right, 5 pm Monday, because this stuff has all to be postmarked and not uploaded à la Brown, and finally somehow 5) work at the Reporter all day Monday and Tuesday, so obviously the application stuff has to be done in the next two days. And I still haven’t told Herself what’s going on, so she’s bound to wonder why she’s housing and feeding me and I’m not putting out Grief and Suffering for her on an hourly basis.
Honestly I’m wild with agitation, how will I slog through this slough, this boggy clot of verbiage, without Mandarin to edit and soothe and stabilize and manage to convince me that my writing doesn’t blow chunks. How would I have finished Brown without her. How will I finish a film review without direct Internet and phone connection to her (she really should start accepting a cut of the $75). How am I surviving Chez Zen and the sulky N. and everything. How will I endure not one but TWO statements of purpose, plus zazen three times a day, plus Herself’s cheerful bald head peeking in at all hours, plus a book review on a book I can’t understand? Here Mandarin would probably wisely suggest I find another book—but how and when can I do that—and here I simply have to force myself to stop because it’s not going to end for about 48 more hours, and that’s just how it is.
I hereby declare that “2004″ will officially end on my birthday, as I poach in the hot tub up the hill with my friends, frothy fruity herbal drinks in our recent past, homemade futomaki and tempura in our future (we’ll get the virgin wok out of storage specially for this purpose).
Let’s don’t ever apply for anything again. Let’s hire people to do it for us. Let’s run away to Hawaii and live on Mayumi Oda’s organic goddess-worshipping farm.
Suddenly “let’s” looks really strange, signalling that it’s definitely time for calories.
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