transitions

I've just come back from vacation in Chile and I feel intangible. As though wafting through. It's rather pleasant.


The opening up of the mind and returning to San Francisco where I like the air, the welcomeness of riding my bike, a dance class and I think: Maybe this is it. Maybe I have it. The feeling passes, or settles, or slides off, but it lightens me. Maybe it is only ever a feeling, not a state achievable. Love and a home. I feel improbable, and infinitely fortunate.

yosemite

Until this past Memorial Day weekend, I hadn't been to Yosemite since I was in sixth grade. I remember that trip well: I bested my sixth grade enemy (as I would have described him then) in a snowball fight, and the valley flooded and everyone had to evacuate. 

This time, I thought I would do a lot of writing. I didn't. But I did a lot of other things that were equally necessary, such as stare at trees, and climb rocks, and cook with friends, and get a little raucous in the wee hours, and gasp ever so slightly.

And if I had to pick a song for this trip, it would be "This Will Be Our Year." And if I had to pick a color for this trip, it would be lime. And if I had to pick a food for this trip, it would be eggs. And if I had to pick a poem for this trip, it would be "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota".* And if I had to pick a sound for this trip, it would be laughter half-heard while sleeping.

*"Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota"

by James Wright

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,

Asleep on the black trunk,

blowing like a leaf in green shadow.

Down the ravine behind the empty house,

The cowbells follow one another

Into the distances of the afternoon.

To my right,

In a field of sunlight between two pines,

The droppings of last year's horses

Blaze up into golden stones.

I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.

A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.

I have wasted my life.

stuff and nonsense

If I were in love with Me (and I would, how could I not be?), I would send Me cute funny text messages all the time. I would send Me distracting funny YouTube videos at work that are so short it will only take a minute! I would have really nice flowers delivered to Me, too, but probably only once because I is not rich. Not roses because roses are boring or orchids which are too serious or daisies which are too silly. Maybe wildflowers because that is very romantic or maybe ornamental kale because that is funny! I would pay a lot of attention to Me because Me is so funny and interesting and smart and I would laugh at all of Me’s jokes and I would make jokes and Me would laugh too, ha ha. I and Me would get bored with traditional romance very quickly though of course because we are too interesting and different and strange and Me would suggest we move to Central America and live in the trees and eat bananas like monkeys and I would agree. I would say, "Me and I should fling our poop at people’s heads and shriek loudly" and Me would laugh and laugh in a shrieking monkey voice.

I would not have wasted time asking Me on a date. Well, I imagine that once I had met Me, I would be excited and a little confused (because Me can be confusing!) but because I am persistent I would have started trying to get close to Me, to talk to Me frequently, and to persuade I's friends to say subtle but flattering things about I to Me so that Me would want to talk to I, too. As Me would. I am a catch. So is Me. We will catch each other! This is a new game. I will score 100 points and so will Me and we will both win. Yippee! Me would make eyes at I and I would be so blushing, oh my! Flip flop and hip hop and skip the heart through the jump rope, please. Me would chat up I so coy and sly I would not know which way was up and would say so only to have Me reply, “Don’t be so normative, please.” Oh Me, oh my.

I would call Me regularly and we would talk and pretty soon I would be calling Me everyday or Me would be calling I because hello Me is not passive but one day Me might say “Me am very busy. Me cannot talk to I everyday. Me have to work!” and this is when we would leave to go live with the monkeys. After that we would go live with the fishes in the Caribbean and sometimes we would be fishes and sometimes we would be beautiful mermaids who lived in an underwater sandcastle and we would be so pretty and I would say to all the fishes “Look at Me! Look at Me!” and Me would smile and hold up a mirror to I's face and I and Me would laugh and laugh.

And Me and I are very happy and have lots of sex but no babies because we are the same gender! And this is why sex with the same gender is the safest sex: Babies are very dangerous! But we decide we want to be dangerous, we are wild and wacky, and so we both get artificially inseminated and have two little babies, Myself and Me Too, and we sing songs all day, hooray! We sing in four-part harmony, I, Me, Myself, and Me Too, we are in love and we are so happy we cry and our tears make rainbows in the sky and then we bake cupcakes and don’t even burn them because we are so good at baking cupcakes and we put lots of frosting on top. I would spoil Me rotten, and Myself, and Me Too. All of our teeth would fall out and we could only eat mush but then our friends the oysters would make us new teeth out of pearls and we would blow them bubble kisses and they would wink back so flirty and say, ooh, your pearly whites! And we would take very good care of our new teeth and eat our vegetables and maybe even live above ground again for a while and send Myself and Me Too to preschool where they could learn important things like counting and coloring inside the lines and then when they got home we would tell them they are only allowed to count backwards and to color outside the lines.

I was telling this story and someone said to I, “But wait! But wait! There’s no You.”

And I said, "That’s true."

love is and love is not

"As we will show, LOVE is not a concept that has a clearly delineated structure; whatever structure it has it gets only via metaphors."

– Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

And, while we're on the topic of metaphors, allow me to offer the following:

1. I like my metaphors like I like my cocktails: well-mixed.

2. I like my metaphors like I like my cocktails: shaken, not stirred.

3. I like my metaphors like I like my cocktails: frequently.

4. I like my metaphors like I like my cocktails: gin-based.

5. I like my metaphors like I like my cocktails: nonsensical.

6. I like my cocktails like I like my metaphors: self-referential.

7. I like my cocktails like I like my metaphors: surprising to the point of alienating.

8. I like my cocktails like I like my metaphors: stronger than me.

A love letter, sort of

Before you end up married and buying a house in the Berkeley hills, before you become respected and a fixture of your community and successful at your profession, before you take your daughter to kindergarten, having played trucks and bulldozers with her for years because you’re so progressive and you’re such a great dad, and before you have a dinner party where you and your wife cook together and she’s not even boring or unattractive in fact I kind of like her, I quite like her, she’s funny in a subtle way and like you she has a good career, a graphic designer, I think, or maybe a psychiatrist, and sure you have your ups and downs sometimes it’s hard, even, but you love one another and you love your daughter and you’re talking about maybe having a second child and you’re fun, you’re fun people, you do strange things and you have costume parties still and in a lot of ways you’re grown up but in other ways you’re still quite raucous, in fact I think she must be a graphic designer or maybe a programmer, freelance, anyway, like you, because even though you’re not rich you still pick up and move from time to time, those three months you spent in Maine house-sitting and clam-digging and that long month in Uruguay where you stayed with friends and the internet connection was poor and you got a lot of writing done, and anyway you’ve decided to buy this house in Berkeley, reasonably close to all of the grandparents and a community garden and when you get up in the morning you usually feel pretty good, at least once you have some coffee, before all of that, before all of that, I’m saying, I’d like to take you out, I’d like to take you out now, when you have a lot of options and let’s face it probably a lot of offers but a lot of things have happened to you already and I think a lot will continue to and all I’m asking is please, before anything else happens, can we please go out. And after that, anything.