I received a letter and a poem from John yesterday, so upon Elizabeth’s advice, I called him. He made first contact. I called because I was concerned about his accident and possible whiplash. He said it was karmic revenge. It happened on Monday, Halloween. He said, all the times I’ve wanted to call you on the phone but I couldn’t talk to you, not after sending you that dear John letter. He wants to move me into the rank and file of ex-wife like Jan and Alta.
He said he truly wants to work on his ambivalence, and he wants to do it alone precisely because he is so clingy. He hates feeling dependent upon another, He feels he’s done the heavy work of breaking up, and doesn’t want to re-open those doors. As if it were a hurdle to jump through. Says when it’s over for him sexually, he never goes back. I get that but I also find that hard to believe because nothing is black-and-white. The history of the universe however, is compartmentalized.
He says he’s sorry for me getting caught up in his crossfire, what he calls his sea cucumber vomit stage (acting out) and he's pretty sad. At least I made a firm stand and acted upon it. It’s true I’m not sure how wise it was though.
Mexico he said he’s going, and he didn’t cancel my ticket. He isn’t inviting me either, but he isn’t not inviting me. Do we go and travel separately? Share hotels travel arrangements? Part of me wants to go, it might be absolutely hideous. It might be a good time to process information to work through things it might be too soon, and all wrong. We’ve decided upon nothing—other than we’ve broken up. He seems to think I’ll be throwing myself on him. And I said, that option doesn’t exist anymore. I won’t become lovers with you again, not after this. I am game shy. Not my style. I can tell he is offended. Ego.
We talked about how after our fights, I was so unbending, and how I couldn’t come to him and how I always made him come to me. And yet with this call, I was making an effort to reach out to him. That last fight in Cusco, when he came to me, and I couldn’t even turn over and forgive him, let alone, let him in. That was wrong, I knew it, but with the fighting, my pride was rigid, and I felt he stripped away my secrets and lead me there, exposed my own inner workings, and I did not like it.
Yes, because he made the first overtures, I could climb off my pride, and we could forgive each other? Yeah. No. But when he used my own self defense weapons against me, I felt betrayed I couldn’t even use my own painful defense system. I was really cut off from reaching out. The ground cut out from under me.
Yes, I should have reached out, but I didn’t. So this time now, after it’s far too late, I reached out to him and reestablished a link—a shaky line of communication. He acknowledged it as he knew how far I had come to cross that divide. I knew this progress was new to me and we both knew how I either shut people out completely, dismissed them forever, or barely let them in again, however cautiously, slowly. He said it’s like family, they do things to you would never forgive with anyone else. But you continue to relate to them because they are family and you have to relate to them. He said, I am family but I am in the aunt Jane category right now. I am tired of all this processing. Too draining.
And then my mind wanders over to Joel Bennett across the way. I’d like a man who can take care of himself. Marsha reminded me that I once had a crush on Joel a while back. I had totally forgotten about that. My neighbor Lynn Watson had taken that dream from me. Moved in on him like a shark while I hung back, too shy. And now I feel nothing. Wondering how he too is flawed. We all are. I’m also looking at everyone negatively as static and not changing.
I will miss John‘s nurturing qualities. I miss his bread baking, but not his bed breaking. Spoonerisms, a lack of daily sex equals dyslexia. In this case it was certainly true. My friends have been so good to me. This all makes me want to cry. It is so hard for me to cry, to open up. If I don’t love him, why does it hurt so much? Or, if I do love him in spite of it all, then what? How does one dissolve three years of relationship? No matter how rocky it was, and how we talked about breaking up—but it was always just talk. And this is reality.
This is real, and it hurts, like with my grandmother. All the preparation in the world doesn’t lessen the blow. Lesson the blow? A lesson is a blow. The blow a lesson. It comes as a blow, severing you from the known world. What seems constant, but that to you is an allusion. At times I feel strangely confident and capable, free, and other times I feel my entire world has collapsed. There is always hope. And defeat. I need to keep talking to him and he needs to keep saying it’s over, so it will become real, like my grandmother.
All the dreams where she insisted that she was alive saying it’s all been a mistake, I’m alive. And then I have to tell her, no, Grandma you're dead, it’s finished. I’m crying as much for the loss of her as I am for the loss of John. Grieving little pockets. She died before Halloween, so many deaths. John’s break-up took precedence over the anniversary of her death. Was it October 27? Was it an accident that he broke up with me one year from the day of her death, or that he asked me to marry him nine months from the abortion? Internal clocks ticking.
He sent me a poem about setting the clock back, but not time itself. No retrieving the lost hours. What might have been. We’ve been to the ends of the earth together. It must amount to something. I want to go back to that innocence, and wind the clock back up again like a videotape and try a new road, a new path not taken.
But here I sit in the garden drying my tears while the annual plants adjust their seasonal clocks accordingly and begin the process of dying. I plant winter vegetables that will attempt to bloom in spring if we make it that far. And they will die before summer is nigh. Readjusted clocks? Wrong seasonal change. Am I in season, or am I fair game to be brought down by the hunter's arrow in late fall, deep in the forest? Cupid's arrow, cannibal darkness. Caliban hiding in that elegant darkness of the cave. In dim light, red, the color of passion of life is black the color of death. Chinese corpses wear white, in American brides wear white. Resurrection and change of status. Beginnings and endings.
I wish I had said yes, just once. My pride, not allowing me to do so, and so many unresolved conflicts, even if we didn’t go through with it. I know rationally I could not say yes, but it would’ve done me and us good, an attempt to commit to each other 100% just once to see if we could resolve our differences. What might have been, probably with the same result in the end, but just a few years further down the road. Did we really give it our best shot? All that we were capable of giving? John says he didn’t, he couldn’t, and now he wants to do something about it, within himself, without me.
Joel's stereo blares muddles piano music and I am swept away by the crescendo of cords until the respiratory vacuum sucks the sound away, it’s not quite white noise and the passing cars on Mirabel Road are a background noise we look no longer hear. It orchestrates the breeze like an ocean, like jazz fission.
Joel's stereo blares muddles piano music and I am swept away by the crescendo of cords until the respiratory vacuum sucks the sound away, it’s not quite white noise and the passing cars on Mirabel Road are a background noise we look no longer hear. It orchestrates the breeze like an ocean, like jazz fission.
Bumper sticker: fusion not fission. The bomb dropped and my heart is weary. I don’t want to go hunting. I have trouble getting excited about Geoff, that was a proposition, such as it was, didn’t do me any good. Going back to old lovers is not an option.
Time to stop all this indulgence, to cross the street and to check the mailbox to see what news carries in today. Men use letters to say what they cannot say over the phone or in person. Dutifully like the stamp that will deliver a blow at the other end. John, in a confessional mode, said, two years ago April, I wrote you a dear John letter. I even put a stamp on it but I never mailed it. I’m not sorry for it. That information hurts anew. A confession I could've done without. I think of Guatemala, Perú what all we shared. Did he say: I’m not sorry this time for sending it but I’m sorry for the pain it caused in the breaking up? No. The message I received, the words were not sad.
He says the cat is mad at him for sending me away. I am at least as important as tunafish is to Rainycat, he says. I say you’re imposing your feelings upon the cat. He says, I should know what my cat is thinking about right now. She misses you. She asks for you, the petter. I said the cat isn’t exactly like a child keeping you and Jan together. He said, you're still family. If you hadn’t taken that mutagen we would be sharing a child. He said when he told Kia we were breaking up, she said, I never liked Maureen, but don’t you think we should stick it out? You’ve been with her for three years now. John said he was surprised by her response. And I assume he had no reply to give her.
It’s Friday morning, brightly sky of tall and yellow walnut leaves in the wind. Sun warming me. Mad flutter of blueays in the oak gathering in the harvest. I should be glad to be alive on a day such as this. Even if I cannot write about my dreams. Even if they too have abandoned me.
It’s Friday morning, brightly sky of tall and yellow walnut leaves in the wind. Sun warming me. Mad flutter of blueays in the oak gathering in the harvest. I should be glad to be alive on a day such as this. Even if I cannot write about my dreams. Even if they too have abandoned me.
