labile (adj.)
Friday 30 May 2008 | 3 cookies in the jar
When you try to explain to the Brujo why he should know Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s version of “Over the Rainbow,” to which some of his students have set a dance for their high school graduation. You’re sitting in the auditorium of some ridiculous overly air-conditioned regional arts theater, waiting for the ceremony to start and leafing through the photocopied program, wearing your $6 silk dress from Goodwill and feeling a little petulant because he’s scoping out the crowd for face-recognition and not, you think, paying nearly enough attention to you. Suddenly you’re in tears. “You’ll know it when you hear it—they played it on that ER episode when Dr. Greene died.”
“Dr. Greene died?!”
“Yeah. Brain cancer. A glioblastoma, I think. And he’s with, like, Dr. Corday, and they’re in the Caribbean or Hawaii or somewhere?”
“He and Dr. Corday were going out?!”
“I think they got married. They had a baby. Anyway it was really sweet and it was so fucking sad. The breeze is blowing through the window and it’s this sunlit room and he’s listening to this song on his Walkman, and Lizzie comes in and he’s just—”
•
The Brujo comes home from posting his final grades while you’re watching the YouTube video and sniveling. “Oh crap. I’m SO busted.”
“No, love! You can sit in here and cry all you want.”
Here; you be labile, too.
3 cookies in the jar
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You know what I hate? Is how I start weeping at what should just be basic ordinary decency, the tenderness people ought to be showing for one another all the time, the stuff we should never be taking for granted but slip into taking for granted until there’s a jolt/reminder not to. Is it that I hate needing the reminders myself? Fixated lately with May Sarton quote: “One must think like a hero merely to behave like a decent human being.”
PS: Much less explicable evidence of lability than crying for the tragic end of a promising but fictional doctor’s life due to a brain tumor and right after he’d found love and started making his life work is…tears upon being moved by horses running or whales and dolphins leaping at SeaWorld shows. Sometimes you can’t take me anywhere.
Not to get too guru on you (new CD name? Guru on You) but having a feeling isn’t a problem. The split where you judge that having a feeling is a problem creates the illusion of a problem. It’s sad when people die (even fictional people) and there’s wistful music playing. As I think I already mentioned to you, if I had encountered you watching someone die while sad music played and you were sitting there giggling maniacally or punching your fist into your hand and saying “Yes!” I might wonder.