Out the Door, Running

It is four o’clock on a Friday afternoon and I am literally running around my apartment in circles. Two weeks of Spring Break, projects and errands and expectations and ultimate procrastination, and I am already running out of ways to satisfactorily laze about my apartment. I pick up a biography on Abigail Adams, but I have no spirit for it. I haven’t had spirit for much, lately. Reality has been fragile and inconsistent, and fulfillment has evaded me for some time. There is nothing more to DO, which of course means it’s time I start on the things I am avoiding. I switch on a favorite Sondheim album, Assassins, and remind myself that I really do love America, at her core. The story, the art, the inviting folksiness of a night on the plain with a harmonica and a fire. But still, nothing quite does the trick. I get up and start bouncing around, energy building. I begin to run in circles.

If I run in my apartment, why not outside? I think.

I don’t like exercising in public. I don’t like exercising. I don’t have the right shoes. I’ll look dumb. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.

Sure you can. You’re running around your apartment in circles. Go run around the block.

The whole block?

It’s just one block. Just go. Do it. Why not?

Why ever not? It’s always why not, never why. I slip on my old shoes, the ones I bought for the camp in the mountains all those lifetimes ago. Too big. of course. I wind the elastic strings tighter and bounce on my heels. I pull at my clothes, will they do? Stretchy black yoga pants. blue tank, Muppets tee, black Swedish Biniki Werewolf Destruction Unit hoodie. Best I’ll ever be able to do. I’m down the hallway. I’m out the door. I’m down the alley. I’m stretching. I start to run.

Okay, I start to jog. I am slow. Outside of a short bike ride, I have been largely inactive all winter. I have been depressed and gaining weight. I have been in these pants for days. Oh, why in hell am I doing this.

Just around the block. I can do it.

Physically, it doesn’t feel too bad. Oh shit, my pants. No, not my pants. My underwear is sliding down my ass. God fucking damn it, this underwear is going to drive me crazy.

Tug.

There are more people outside than I thought would be. Are they staring at me? :Let them stare, I’m doing this because I have so much energy in my legs and I won’t run in circles in my apartment. My underwear will slide as it will. I am making it around this fucking block. I’ve already run a quarter of the way.

More people around the corner. My pants are going too. now.

Tug. Tug tug tug.

There’s the alleyway, maybe I should duck in through here, you know a half a block is just as good as a block, it’s still getting out of the house and besides your pants are falling down your underwear is falling down you are all wrong, all wrong for this go back inside–

No, I’m going around the block.

Tug tug.

I am breathing harder now and so that feeling of dry, scratchy throat is creeping in again. I can’t quite get a breath and there’s a woman just up ahead who looks thinner than me, can she hear me breathing this hard even though it’s just around the block? My nose is running now and I’m breathing hard and I probably look silly with my pants sagging down and my underwear practically off my ass and I should really stop now and compose myself.

But I told myself I’d go round the block and it’s not that far and if this skinny woman really believes in health she would believe in me because even though I am breathing hard after running around the block, so hard that snot drips down my face and my lungs catch in my throat and I haven’t been out of the house that much because everything keeps coming apart, I believe in me and she should still believe in me because I’ve made it around the block just like I told myself I would and if that isn’t health, I don’t know what is.

I walk back inside and feel fuller and healthier and richer, and life moves a little quicker and that pain in my neck hurts a little less and the music is darker and Sondheim more brilliant and now I can sit in my apartment again and feel well.

And if that isn’t health, I don’t know what is.

I am sitting in bed, eating sharp white cheddar cheese and listening to violin concertos, remembering how to feel. I definitely feel things about both cheese and violins. When I was a girl, I saw Music of the Heart in theaters with some of my friends from Barrington Children’s Choir, a WASP-y choral group I was heavily involved with through most of my childhood. in the film, a stunning Meryl Streep plays Roberta Guaspari, a woman who overcomes adversity by using the beauty of violin and the self-discipline of musical expression to inspire and connect with students in East Harlem. I was taken in by the story, captivated by the warm resonance of violin strings and tugged through Ms. Streep’s emotional gamut. I left the theater, eyes bright and bouncing on the balls of my feet, brimming with ideas about becoming a concert violinist, capable of bringing communities together and garnering interest from greats like Itzhak Perlman. If only I could play the violin, I could be great, too. 

I asked for a violin for Christmas. When I say that, I mean that I didn’t stop talking about violins or how much I wanted to learn to play the violin or listening to Vanessa Mae CD’s on my Discman or learning who Itzhak Perlman was and listening to all his CD’s for about three months prior to Christmas so my mother went ahead and rented a violin and got me an instructional book before committing to finding a violin teacher. There’s a great picture of me, age eleven, in a terribly ugly housecoat of my grandmothers holding the violin under my chin for the first time. My smile is ringing and true. I usually forget that I ever felt happy at that age, but I loved the feel of that violin in my hands. I spent all Christmas day screeching through the first few pages of the instructional book, managing to creak out an awfully painful version of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle’ by the time the last piece of pie was eaten. I continued to pluck at the strings of my violin all through winter break, but when school began again, I was reminded how much life fucking sucks for an overweight, intelligent, misunderstood middle schooler and I fell into depression again. Hope and success and discipline and dreams and greatness returned to the realms of “other people’s lives” and I numbed myself. I stopped believing I had any music in my heart at all. 

My mother was thankful she hadn’t invested in a violin teacher. They were expensive and it seemed that I stopped being interested, anyway. I wonder whether they ever planned to get the lessons, or if they knew I was just a lazy and depressed fuckup who just wanted to consume consume consume to feel like anything filled the hidden chasms of my self. So they returned the violin. I forgot how it felt to feel like I could do something, if I applied myself. I could never apply myself. There was no me to apply to my self, or the self I was supposed to be, or the self who could have had the fucking guts to learn the violin or keep writing poems or really do anything much of value besides create a reasonably comfortable existence with enough distractions to keep me convinced I should be happy. I’m always convincing myself the things I have in life ought to be enough, but I never quite make it. There’s always something missing. Maybe if I had actually learned to play the music from my fucking heart, I wouldn’t feel this way. Maybe I’d feel worse. I’d probably feel worse. Maybe there’s too much music in my heart to feel, so as long as it doesn’t have anywhere to come bursting out, it can stay there making me restless and flighty and nervous and unfulfilled forever and ever and ever. I will never be great because I never learned to play violin. Only great people play violin well. Great people like Sherlock Holmes could think and play concertos and solve their problems. I was left alone, without music and without solutions. Too lazy, too afraid, too overwhelmed to wrench the fitful grace of soaring concerto or aria from my stupid, useless, wretched body. Out of my reach, out of my reach, just beyond my grasp. I could only hear and know I would never be great.

Elephant at the Sea

Wherever we were, we weren’t

as breath held in cupped hands

still slipped through fingers that

loosened in shape as toes curled

and eyes peered for themselves.

What could have, could not have

because the absence of an elephant

from the forms of cloud or painting

sand or beach did not ever make him-

                                               less so.

There where we hid, we found before

we invented cleverness and hid our

tracks by feeding our convolutions

with suggestion and interpretation.

Wise and Others

I seem to dream in days of moody lackadaising

hazygazing through the stillness, running away

but from or toward, I can’t be sure of anything.

I could be right, or I could be wise but I would

thorough-drink in sheltered sighs and house

a thrumming, sacred prize instead of lying bare.

(sic)

the corner of the newspaper tore

and we were ripped of speech. 

 

the sun behind came bursting

to take up residence in sighs.  

Your Lips Were Blue

I want to sit beside you,

solitary,

and breathe.

If the morning comes

like shatterglass

and wakes the dormant thudding

that lays underneath my chest,

I will remember.

Pump, pump.

Pump, pump.

I silenced you before

you silenced yourself.

Thief, thief!-

unrepentant thief,

it is harder to carry

hollow

than gain.

On Happiness

At times, I try to put the air in rhymes and lines and designate their space in time and tell myself it’s making sense of something. I only want to babble how the world looked to me today, what I find as life peels her clothes off her back and leaves them in a huddled lump at the foot of my bed. She invites me in as a lover, lays me down and clutches my neck and hands while breathing sweet, so sweet on my earlobes. Gravity is not lost on me: who can feel the weight of the atmosphere pressuring their chests? Who thunders in our breastbones and tells us to hold tight? If I could keep my eyes open, I would look to the spirit who wound our hearts to tick- but instead of pining urgent why, I stick surprised in shock’ed Oh!

Dignity

Oh, I am weary of the fighting and the tools that we misuse

In the grasping for our freedom, in the cries of our abuse

I’ve been tarred

I’ve been feathered

I’ve been battered up and bruised

All for digging in my heels and insisting I can choose

There are cracks sprung in the stone wall from the chisel of the muse

We’ve enjoyed our spot of sunshine, we came marching toward the ruse

So kneel and praise Bar Altar as parishioners in pews- then, ask me

 where my heart true lies, and I will not refuse.

Stardust

I never knew how important the stars were

until I threw my name across the sky and

clothed the dark with a glorious now.

 

Remember, I am dust and to dust I return

to nothing, the permeating everything that

burns the earth to rock and churns the sea.

 

I could set one dawn, one dusk each day

instead of wading wax and wane in tide pools

but see- sunflowers drop their heads so low.

Ivy

Content grows unchecked in my mind like a vine

the grapes crushed from our energy sweetens the wine

drinking joy-soaked rebellion makes mountains of time

pick our feet up and down, purpled heels from the climb-

it’s a very good year.