Relentless

Day after day, the unintentional sun burns steady, without respite or coquetry.

Anna's Apartment

In this weather - spring streaked gray sky tempered by new-green shoots - I can't stop thinking of afternoons spent visiting my great-grandmother with my mother and baby sister. Anna lived in a highrise by the highway, near St Patrick's in Bridgport. Her small apartment was well-appointed and smelled distinctly of the elderly. She always had a liter of 7 Up on her lace-covered kitchen table when we went for lunch.

My mom was more relaxed here than she was with her mother, Josephine. We would listen to the very old lady tell stories about her life while eating a frittata or Danish butter cookies from a purple tin. Somtimes I would wander out into the hallway, wondering about the other octegenarians, living out their last days all together alone. I worried about dying, then went back into Nonni's for another glass of lemon lime soda.

Good Friday

option 1: after forty days in the desert reflecting, we give ourselves up to suffering and death.

option 2: the god who is always sacrificed if sacrificed again.

option 3: knowing that there is resurrection, we still grieve mightily the dead.

option 4: burial of the dead. (a cave-like tomb, the earth's own womb).

option 5: the union of brahman and atman - the drop being wooed by an ocean.

option 6: triple union, which includes compassion, the comforter in the holy trinity.

option 7: anticipating rebirth and renewal of Mother Earth, we are humbled by God, Death, etc.

Blossoms and Revisions

that is all.

Quoth Rabindranath Tagore

"I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song I came to sing remains unsung."

In the Graveyard

There aren't any signs of spring here. Many stones are crooked, faded markers marking time until eternity. So that'll be awhile, I suppose. Families reunited under the ground. Lavina the wife of a captain. Mother, Father, side by side, with no sign of children in their plot. What about the guy who owns the fenced-in obelisk? Was he a guarded loner before the afterlife? Maybe he prefers leaves to roots. I stumble over brambles and fumble with the aperature, looking at the sky. blue sky. elsewhere crocuses are coming up. It's about that time of year. Renewal for those of us lucky enough to live. I breathe in the brisk April morning. Again.

The Interim Years

What have we been doing all this time? Or better, what should we have done? Instead of moving swiftly from courtship to nuptials to baby time, many of us spend the ten years after college working, drinking, traveling, developing interests, cultivating hobbies, sometimes turning into douches, sometimes not, and pursuing other, assorted distractions. Almost immediately, I went to New York. When all seemed truly bleak in Brooklyn, I took the train back to New Haven. But M wasn't happy there, and neither was I; we weren't fulfilled. The idea for a move to Mexico was born out of boredom and family foresight. M needed a place to caretake his ailing father. I longed to escape my fate, and despite having read Oedipus, I thought I could. Now that we're back, I feel the years we lost most acutely. Nothing was saved, only rearranged, as a surly science teacher used to deride the changing of the clocks. And certainly no one has changed, least of all me. All my fears are still here. But so are my friends also. Finally, a new phase is upon my generation. I don't want to mourn time. We spent the interim years the best way we knew how. I wonder what will happen next, and when.

There and Back Again

Exit 64. To turn left would be a true paradise, the only place I feel complete respite. I dream of driving under the green canopy and walking through stiles into a sanctuary for birds. But I cannot go today. I turn right at the blinking light, toward town and empty houses. 17 Partridge Lane looks the same, half desolate-half cheery. How it always was; I am happy that is unchanged. The tree where I scraped my knee is as imposing, still. I linger, think of stopping, introducing myself and idiosyncrasies about the home, but I don't, I won't, I will wait another ten years for that awkward imposition. To grandmother's house I go. Right on Liberty, left on Glenwood. I never meant to like this house and am surprised by how much I miss her presence in it. The last decade of events we wished weren't happening, or happening elsewhere, or including those who couldn't be here any more with us, all have memories here now. I am so slow to learn that my expectations for my family will never be fulfilled, and I mind less, and accept them, as awful as can be, they are mine, and I am theirs. Josie's never coming back from the hospital. Never going home to this place, my last home in this town. Unless you count the cemetary stone at the beach, which I do not.

Nothing to Excess

There is such a thing as too much pleasure, which leads to indolence. I am fat, lazy and exhausted from weeks of slothful eating and excessive drinking. I have been so lucky, so lazy, so indulged. But now I need discipline, books, and quiet time outside. still looking for the answer. Still lost.

Zelda

at least she wrote a novel, even if it was second-rate. at least she lived to dance though she was far too old... she may have been brilliant, made herself hyperbolic or portrayed as hysteric; maybe Zelda attempted all the things they said she did. her own story was told in words I only half-remember. She was a woman we should admire. Because she would not. stop. living. until she would.

The Second Part of Our Mexican Vacation, In Which We Return To Our Haunted House

We crossed the invisible border. Everything appears bone dry. An intake of breath, not in exhile, but an excitement to be closer to our house, the one we built on the beach, too close to the high tide line, then filled with comforts and trinkets and dogs. I take a pill and wait. The scrubby trees and shabby concrete cottages are all the same. It seems brighter because I have a ticket back to Maine. I don't know if it's Ativan or autonomy, but I am happy to be here; the sky above Chelem is saturated blue. David, the caretaker, is sweeping the concrete patio like a Mexican-Jain wraith. Or more accurately, like the ghost of Mac Bedell. I feel sick. Tripod! She smiles with her entire stupid albino body and I get down on the ground supine so she can lick me like a spazz. It's all a dream. It's like Pompeii. It's aftermath and unconsciousness. I know where there are small steps down and how to turn the lock in key precisely. All the things that were once my entire world, chosen tiles and closet doors built to our height and standard, are at my fingertips. Renovation was a wedding gift we gave ourselves. But it never felt like home. This made my husband resentful; our first year of marriage was the worst in a decade. I went back to make amends and reclaim. I was meant to acknowledge the blameless and faulted. I forgave everyone, including myself, crying, walking, figuring out what to do with all this beach and freedom of movement. Going for a swim in the primordial Gulf.