untitled, with pale blue polka dots
Sunday 20 May 2007 | I like a cookie
Last night I went to a dinner party—an actual dinner party! I didn’t particularly want to go (surprise) but the Brujo had already left for Albuquerque to hear a bunch of famous musicians making weird loud noises, a.k.a improvisational jazz; and I’d already said I’d go. So I went. Funny how I don’t seem to know a single person who likes dinner parties, yet we all oddly insist on giving and attending them despite this, when probably we’d all rather sit down with one person at a time and share an introspective cup of tea and find out who we both really are. Typically I learn more about my hostess from her bookshelves (Gertrude Stein, book-club trade paperbacks and a fascinating bathroom volume I wanted to borrow, portraits of 25 screenplay authors called Why We Write) than from hurried conversation with her as she prepares, introduces, uncorks, adjusts and rearranges.
Many bargain bottles of red wine were consumed, people grew festive and full-throated with high spirits, I sat quietly and happily eating vegetarian lasagne, some delicious green-bean-bread-crumb dish the Gorgon had made (it was his quick-witted, fiery girlfriend Marie-Claire’s party, with mostly her theater friends and a few strays such as myself) and a lovely chocolate cheesecake with strawberry sauce. I was the only person not drinking, courtesy of a) my congenitally alcohol-allergic constitution and b) the sheer quantity and variety of psych meds I take. Being cold sober in a roomful of buzzed people can be an unsettling experience; as usual I strove to enjoy being the anthropological observer, and had a few brief, brushed-past glimpses of souls in those quick one-on-one conversations (though I never did get to hear the rest of the story from the man who insisted his son, a recent State School graduate, had his appendix removed twice). I lasted until 9:30, which surprised me, though I was the first to leave. “Santa Fe parties!” someone groaned, of my “early” departure. I didn’t care, I was wiped out and frankly quite proud that I’d managed to stay two and a half whole hours. Drove home blasting Little Plastic Castle, husking and warbling along, wondering why I often seem to prefer art about people to the actual people themselves.
but I don’t care if they eat me alive
I’ve got better things to do than survive
I’ve got the memory of your warm skin in my hands
I’ve got visions of sky and dry land
And then, introverted-intuitive-feeling to the bitter end, I crashed in bed with the late Jungian analyst Irene Claremont de Castillejo’s rather silly Knowing Woman; I find her girly take on the anima/animus at times primitive and irritating, but kind of historically intriguing. Sometime after midnight the Brujo arrived, grinning and sweaty and wired, having had a fabulous time hanging out with his kin-pod. We lay in the dark telling our stories, listening, drowsing.
My two gardens are doing fine, hopefully germinating though no seedlings are yet visible. All the houseplants are outside now, because it’s finally warm enough. Yesterday I wore sandals and the tops of my feet tanned. Also yesterday, the B. and I split a calabaza empañada, which—I can’t even tell you how good it was. Like pumpkin pie only better. And this month I had enough money from the Dying Book’s second installment to pay rent and both therapists. Back on my microscopic daily crumb of Abilify, I begin to believe that goodthingscanhappen.com. I don’t feel convulsed with guilt about the Librarians; I don’t mentally recycle every small shameful incident of my life. Even Pyewacket is somehow mysteriously less annoying, and I start to think again about screenplays and about a new group of poems. How can these dots of blue chemical powder make such a difference in my brain, to my mood, my very mind-ground? How can I pretend any more that they don’t?
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