One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.


--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

--
by Elizabeth Bishop

The Point System

Friday, I recommitted to trying harder. The quest to be normal. The quest to be healthy and give up the ghost.

I’m like a toddler learning to walk, it seems. On my ass constantly, bruised beyond all recognition, just trying to get up and move forward. Not seeming to make much progress, but hoping my muscles and rote memory are on the verge of some kind of breakthrough.

So I put myself on a point system, just for the weekend, and it goes like this: I get a point every time I make a choice that is NOT my ex (we’ll call him The Engineer…because what I’d really like to call him will get me censored). I kept a date to run with my friend Adam on Saturday morning. One point! And when we returned to his apartment, his new roommate Eric was there. Eric, I can only assume, was sent by God to flirt with me. I flirted back and even accepted an invitation to go for drinks later. Two points before 10 AM! On a roll!

As the exhaustion and a whopping hangover set in, so did worry that my willpower would take a nosedive. I make a point of keeping my plans to meet Heather and Alex for coffee in Santa Monica…two points in one sitting. Well done. By the end of an hour though, I’m tired, cranky, and antsy. I agree to go back to Heather’s (really, all I want to do at this point is call The Engineer – CODE ORANGE) to see her place and chat. Here’s where the backslide begins. It started innocently enough…Heather and I bonded…and as a less harmful alternative to calling The Engineer, I inundated her with a tortuous dissection of my situation. Ooops. I’ve given The Engineer an audible presence. Minus one-half of a point. Hey, I can afford that if I’m up 4, right?

We fall asleep mid-conversation on the bed in her ridiculously hot apartment. The electric fan is on and it’s remarkably relaxing. We wake up and continue where we left off. Heather is impossibly wise, caring, and fair. She’s also a lesbian. I find myself distracted by the thought that she might hit on me, then I scold myself for being such an arrogant, homophobic idiot. Of course, I’m not hearing a word that comes out of her mouth. She touches my leg at one point while speaking, but she certainly doesn’t hit on me.

I hate my brain sometimes.

Once I get past my own hubris, I leave Heather’s in a hurry to get home, planning to bail on plans with my old friend Nate and my grandparents for the evening. I have to get home and clear my head. I’ll have to give up two, possibly three points if I execute my current bail-out plan, and that’s not even counting the notion I might try to see him. In the car, I argue with myself out loud. This, my friends, is the portrait of crazy.

But good crazy because I somehow manage to talk myself into turning the van around and pointing it in the direction of Nate and my grandparents. I figure I’ll let the drive take care of itself. I’ll just try to be where I’m supposed to and let God handle the rest.

I visit the grandparents, soothing my guilty conscience, and I talk to my old friend Nate. So far, I haven’t burst into flames or died of sadness, so that’s a plus. Nate & Co. have decided to go to an LA club tonight. Go figure. Right back where I came from.

I’m game though. After all, it is closer to The Engineer’s house. Yeah, I know, minus another point. I’m subtracting it already…

I get as cute as possible, deciding that tonight could turn out to be fun and I could be really glad I went with Nate instead of giving in to The Force. I choose an outfit and sign up for the Optimist’s Special by hitting Starbucks for an espresso…let’s at least be prepared for a long night, right?! Yeah, I want that damn point back now.

I meet Nate and one of his friends for an amusing dinner. Turns out, nothing has changed with us. We get along swimmingly and there’s no awkwardness. Well, I take that back. We’re both awkward, but not with each other. Case in point: I went flying across the (significantly overly-polished) wooden floor like a graceless hippo on our way out of the restaurant. You can wear the nicest Calvin Klein heels on the planet, but that shit just won’t matter when you’re splayed across a wooden floor in the middle of a busy restaurant. Without missing a beat though, and with both of us laughing hysterically, Nate helped collect my wallet, my keys, and my clumsy body up off the floor. We then enjoy a hysterical ride to L.A., exchanging life narratives and generous helpings of sarcasm in my Mom’s mini-van.

‘Cause that’s how we roll.

At the club, valet is $10. I’m poor. I do not like this. This club is also in the ghetto. I do not like that either. But I valet my mini-van for ten freaking dollars, and we make it in the door at 11:30. The cover is $20. Did I mention, I’m poor? The club is full of remarkably short, Asian teens, and it's dimly lit. Nate’s friends are total strangers to me. Good lord, what am I doing here? This place looks like the seedy opium den you see in almost every Steven Segal film. It’s called The Little Temple, for crying out loud. As we push our way in, I check each closed door for streams of blood trickling out beneath. The dance floor is sweaty and the lights make me want to stroke out. I look at my watch.

The three girls with us are sweet, but they’re all teeny and bouncing around like popcorn. All our little girls have rhythm, and as luck would have it, zero inhibition. I feel like I don’t belong here. Oh no, here comes that feeling…

Must…shove…it…back…down.

I check my watch again. Ten to midnight. I'm flying back to Texas tomorrow, and I haven’t seen The Engineer. I flew across the country, and soon I won’t be able to see him even if I want to. I’m sitting here in a strange, over-priced, uncomfortable, ghetto club. Nate’s Irish ass is attempting to dance and I’m trying hard to look comfortable perched on my stool. Neither of us are succeeding.

Okay that’s it. I’m not wasting this night here. I’m not wasting my cute clothes on this seedy opium den.

I take a deep breath and make a very sudden, very vague excuse to Nate & Co. I’m exhausted and need to catch an early flight, I say. They clearly don’t buy it, but are polite enough to pretend as if they do. Honestly, I really don’t care at this point. I need to get OUT. I figure I’m operating at a 50-point deficit now anyway, so what the hell does it matter?

The two things I cannot do quickly enough at the moment are:
1. Get in my damn car
2. Send a text message to The Engineer

He replies immediately that he’s still up. I call him, and the drink I had makes it easier to ask. Can I drop by? I’m not tired and his place is on my way back to Orange County. It would be good to see his face. Sure, he says. He almost sounds as if he’s okay with it. Almost.

Valet is too slow. Minivans are too slow. Jets are too slow. How long is this fucking freeway, anyhow?? What if he calls and changes his mind before I get there?

The phone rings. FUCK. I’m not going to look at the display…except I do. And it’s Heather. Oh, thank you God!

She does her best to be open-minded and trusting, but is seriously concerned about my decision-making at this point. Ha. Can’t imagine why. I’m just driving like a bat-out-of-hell, in a minivan, slightly drunk, toward my ex’s house at midnight. Heather’s worried this is the movie where I get my heart broken, not the one where I get the guy. She doesn’t know for sure though, because she’s missed most of the film, and because she likes to root for the underdog. She hopes for the best, and this is why I love her. I also love her because she knows how to accept the things she cannot change, like the fact that my steering wheel is locked. I’m a fucking minivan missile.

I hit some traffic and reprimand myself for not investing in teleportation technology years ago.

Finally, I’m here. A light is on. I see his red Honda in the driveway. Relief washes over me. Now I’m safe to ease into the driveway slowly. He’s here, right in front of me, and he’s not going to disappear. My heart slows down and I breathe for the first time in what seems like hours. Days. Weeks. I imagine this is the way a heroin addict feels, the same relief, when sliding a needle into their arm.

Love is a terrifying thing, no?

Listen

with the night falling we are saying thank you

we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings

we are running out of the glass rooms

with our mouths full of food to look at the sky

and say thank you

we are standing by the water looking out

in different directions



back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging

after funerals we are saying thank you

in a culture up to its chin in shame

living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you



over telephones we are saying thank you

in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators

remembering wars and police at the back door

and the beatings on the stairs we are saying thank you

in the banks that use us we are saying thank you

with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable

unchanged we go on saying thank you



with the animals dying around us

our lost feelings we are saying thank you

with the forests falling faster than the minutes

of our lives we are saying thank you

with the words going out like cells of a brain

with the cities growing over us like the earth

we are saying thank you faster and faster

with nobody listening we are saying thank you

we are saying thank you and waving

dark though it is



--W.S. Merwin

"D" Day

Today was "D" Day. The day no one wants to be a part of, the day no one wants to remember. A day no one wanted to be the boss. I never thought I'd see the day when my family members slunk docilely into the corners. But remarkably, when the time came to check Opa into a rest home, there wasn’t a domineering, controlling personality to be found. You could have put a child to bed by the sound of their voices. By the meekness in their tones.

Which is basically what it feels like we did today. Put a child to bed. Except there was more resignation; a giving up of hope. And, I think what ripped into everyone's soul was that, in a sense, they were giving up on themselves. His wife, his three children especially, saw what their own fate might be and were mortally terrified. They had to accept that this inevitable Beast, this "giving up", would one day come for them.

We like to think that we can fix anything. Using superglue, saline implants, or new slate tiles. Having heart and hair transplants. It's so human and safe and natural to solve problems...to fix and repair and reconstruct. To build. That's what my grandfather did for a living. He built, with plywood and nails and hammers, and his own two hands, at first. Then later, with shoddy wood and rations in his pockets; with the enemy firing and an infantry behind him. And still later, with a contractor and a crew and an entire company behind him. He was a man who created. A man who moved forward. A man who focused on what could be done, constantly casting aside what couldn't.

He was the same way with us kids. I thought he was a harsh disciplinarian, but now I think it was more that he was hopeful. He was an optimist who believed we could be changed; that we could grow and learn. He loved us and wanted us to thrive; being well-trained and successful because of it. Heavy-handed discipline was necessary because change isn’t easy. He knew that well. Even when we hated him for it, he made us internalize that lesson. A motto etched into our hearts.

I wish he could be with us the way he used to. I know he would tell us we did the right thing today...that it was most important to take care of Nona, and that we should put him out to pasture if he'd become old and feeble. But just the same, I wish I could have heard it from his mouth.