—EASLY LIKE SUNDAY MORNING AND WILD LIKE SATURDAY NIGHT

 

 

GETTING OFF / Erica Garza

 

 

Here is what I have learned about traumas. Trauma can be ordinary.

 

I’d rather stick with the thing that gets me off—I’m bad, bad, bad.

 

I romanticized brokenness as a means of resisting change.

 

All the best writers had rough childhoods.

 

There are some things in life you don’t remember, no matter how hard you try.

 

And then there are those things we cannot forget, memories we play over and over in our heads because they have a history of significance in them—they make us who we are.

 

“This is an important word,” she started. “Masturbation.”

 

“You’re only saying that because you love me. But thanks.”

 

I was clueless, actually, but completely malleable.

 

There was something new to be ashamed about.

 

Could I be worthy of friendship and fun?

 

What would happen next? What else would I say yes to?

 

We had appetites as big as our problems.

 

After all, if I couldn’t love myself completely, then I could at least try to love someone who seemed as broken up inside as I was.

 

I nodded and acted surprised every time he announced his measurements because I understood what it was like to hide.

 

You deserve so much more, I thought.

 

Jealousy wasn’t sexy. I got that now.

 

It was a familiar feeling—not knowing.

 

He saw me and I saw him, and we were in new territory.

 

The moment you are willing to change, it is remarkable how the Universe begins to help you. It brings you what you need.

 

Now I had the opportunity to go there, and to say to a person, This is who I am. Do you accept me?

 

Look at me looking at you.

—DO YOU EVEN HEAR YOURSELF?

  

…The truth is, those lyrics were nothing special, but they got to me anyway.

 

…The truth is, those pop-up ads also get to me, sometimes.

 

 …Endurance is a totally under-appreciated ability.

 

…There are situations and events that not even the most adept philosopher can make sense of.

 

…Songs that can make you cry are the best songs ever written. Just sayin’.

 

…Being dizzy is no fun at all, especially when you’re on a ladder trying to unscrew a lightbulb in a cramped bathroom.

 

…We’re going to get over this, because we have to.

 

…The closest thing to me right now is a space heater, desperately trying to warn me about something.

 

…Everyone has their own definition of what love is. But I suppose you could insert any old noun.

 

…I keep scribbling my life away, and it feels really good to be doing that.

 

…If you reboot, things are almost always a little bit better.

 

…The first time I came up over the ridge and saw Big Sur, I thought I’d encountered heaven.

 

…Sometimes people should turn their Fix It gene off, and just pay attention. Just listen for a few minutes.

 

…The loudest thing you hear at 3am is (…)

 

…Books have brought me so much joy. But the best of them have left me crumpled and wondering.

 

…When you’re by yourself a lot, it’s best to be a good listener, even when what you hear isn’t what you want to hear.

 

…Hearing the word Uncle before my name is one of my favorite things in the world.

 

…“A place for us. Somewhere a place for us.” Yep. RIP Stephen Sondheim, and thank you.

 

…Three cups of Joe, before the sun shows itself, is a sign that the day will go (…)

 

…Sometimes it’s those menial hindrances that want to eat you for breakfast.

 

…Sunrise or sunset? I pick the latter. You never know what color pattern you’re going to get.

 

…The moon astounds me, but people who are funny confound me so much more.

 

…Sometimes the walls in my office start rattling, like a woodpecker doing its work. I’ll bang and bang, but that rattling carries on, leaving me unnerved.

 

…I keep thinking I need to form new habits. And by new, I mean better.

 

…It’s interesting how getting older allows your phobias to get bolder.

 

…“People should smile more.” Newton Faulkner. (Isn’t that the truth?)

 

…This time of year, it’s easy to understand why many people hate capitalism.

 

…Some of the people who had the biggest impact on my life had no idea they did, and that’s on me.

 

…I want to believe social media is real just like I want to believe Santa’s real. Like I want to believe the best is yet to come.

 

…I wonder what Lucy would say about all this.

  

—I’M KEEPING IT CLOSE TO THE SURFACE BUT THAT’S NOT REALLY MAKING IT HURT LESS

 

 

 

OPEN WATER  /  Caleb Azumah Nelson

 

 

 

You were waiting for something you didn’t know you needed.

 

Loosen up, she says, and your hips break like the language.

 

You’re far away, she says. Don’t hide from me.

 

To be you is to apologize, and often the apology comes in the form of suppression.

 

Sometimes this is all you can have. Sometimes, faith is enough.

 

It’s one thing to be looked at, and another to be seen. And seeing people is no small task.

 

Some days, the anger makes you feel ugly and undeserving of love and deserving of all that comes to you.

 

You want to tell her there are some things you won’t heal from. You want to tell her that in trying to be honest here, you dug until shovel met bone, and you kept going. 

 

Death is not always physical, and crying is not always an expression of pain.

 

You told her not to look at you because when your gazes meet you cannot help but be honest. 

 

Sometimes, you cry in the dark.

 

There should be no shame in openly saying, “I want this.”

 

What is better than believing you are headed towards love?

 

You don’t have music, but you do have your way of seeing her.

 

There’s so much more you wish to say but there aren’t the words.

 

 

—IT MUST BE DIFFICULT TO LET GO OF SOMETHING SO BEAUTIFUL

 

 

THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING / Joan Didion

 

 

Clearly I am not the ideal teller of this story.

 

Grief is different. Grief has no distance.

 

I could not give away the rest of his shoes.

I stood there for a moment, then realized why: he would need shoes if he was to return. 

 

Dolphins have been observed refusing to eat after the death of a loved one.

 

I realized that the answer to the question made no difference. It had happened.

 

The way this is going is up. Because it has to go up.

 

Why do you always have to be right, I remembered John saying.

He never understood that in my own mind I was never right.

 

People who have recently lost someone have a certain look, recognizable maybe only to those who have seen that look on their own faces. I have noticed it on my face and I notice it now on others. The look is one of extreme vulnerability, nakedness, openness.

 

Time is the school in which we learn/Time is the fire in which we burn Delmore Schwartz 

 

I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us.

 

Would I need to relive every mistake?

 

We imagined we knew everything the other thought, even when we did not necessarily want to know it, but in fact, I have come to see, we knew not the smallest fraction of what there was to know.

 

I wanted more than a night of memories and sighs.

I wanted to scream.

I wanted him back.

 

A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty.

 

I love you more than even one more day.

 

I thought about the way we danced, close.

—A HARD RAIN’S GONNA FALL

 

 

  OPEN WATER  /  Caleb Azumah Nelson

 

 

You would soon learn that love made you worry, but it also made you beautiful.

 

You’re drawing a line towards her. No, the line was there, is always there, will always be there.

 

If flexing is being able to say the most in the fewest number of words, is there a greater flex than love?

 

Here, you know that this is a feeling you cannot ignore. It’s one thing to be looked at, and another to be seen, you’re scared that she might not just see your beauty, but your ugly too.

 

You’ll learn that kindness is rarely enough.

 

You want your bodies to say what cannot be otherwise said.

 

Under what conditions does the uncontainable stay contained? Things unsaid don’t often remain so.

 

Like Baldwin said, you begin to think you are alone in this, until you read.

 

Perhaps that is how we should frame this question forever, rather than asking what is your favorite book, let’s ask, what continues to pull you back?

 

You’re not very good at answering questions.

 

She reaches up, fingertips grazing the window, as if light is something that can be held.

 

The happy ending is never universal. Someone is always left behind. 

 

You wonder what it means to know someone, and whether it’s possible to do so wholly.

 

There’s no solace in the shade.

 

You don’t always like those you love unconditionally.

 

You think about spillage, and whether this is something that can be mopped up. 

 

You’re like a pair of jazz musicians, forever improvising. Or perhaps you are not musicians, but your love manifests in the music.

 

It is not so much a matter of the head but of the heart.

 

Or do you dance, even when you don’t know the song?

 

 

—THERE COMES A TIDE

 

 

Dear John,

 

         I thought of you this morning (no surprise there) when several of the wait staff stumbled loudly over a grate for the eighth time. I immediately thought: “Spilled milk.”

         I was with you, having lunch in the café, when you coined that axiom. The café employees continually (though quite efficiently) wiped up the spilled milk that landed on the counter time and time again, but none stopped to consider how to prevent the milk from spilling in the first place.

         I miss you, John.

         I was stupid (again) and read a wonderful but terribly sad book called “The Year of Magical Thinking” all about the death of Joan Didion’s husband and her (mostly futile) attempts at coming to terms with grief and loss. It really made me miss you. And it’s not like I don’t miss you horribly already, every day, after all these years.

         I know I’m romanticizing you, and that I had Hero-worship with you when you were still alive, but you were most definitely my hero. Not just mine, but anyone who was fortunate enough to know you. You were extraordinary in such simple and beautiful ways, a kind, gentle giant with no agenda other than seeing the best in people.

         Like the time you visited my store. Instead of walking the main aisles, you headed straight to the bowels of the store, to the tailor shop and alterations, meeting and heralding the “unsung heroes.” On the receiving dock, a shyster of an employee took advantage of your kind, aw shucks nature, claiming he needed $20 to get his car out of impoundment, which you promptly handed over. When I said, “He’s scamming you,” you looked at me straight and replied, “It’s $20, Len. Twenty dollars, is all.”

         Later or earlier you said, “Len, it’s okay to say just ‘Thank you’ when someone gives you compliment.”

         Later or earlier you asked, “Are you going to be the Union Stewart for our people or not?”

         Later or earlier you said, “Get to know all of your employees really well, all of them, but especially your black employees.”

         Later or earlier you said, “As a leader, your job is really to be a coat that gets thrown over a mud puddle so that everyone else can walk over it without getting dirty or slowing down.”

         Before the Pentagon City store was fully built, we toured it, then outside in the blinding sun, just you and I, you asked me, “Doesn’t it feel like this is what you were born to do?” and I said, “Yeah,” because at the time it was true, though now it’s not. But that moment was another lesson; to believe in one’s destiny.

         Reading “Magical Thinking” (which should come with a warning label for softies like me), I thought about Genny a great deal, how catastrophic the months and years must have been for her following your death on that rowing machine. At the memorial, in the receiving line, she looked spry, alert and hopeful, anything but stricken, that is up until it was my turn. Then she crumpled and sobbed and almost collapsed, hugging me, holding tight saying into the side of my wet neck, “Len, he loved you like a brother. Honest to God, like a brother.”

         Even writing this now is making me weepy. Genny saying that is one of the greatest compliments I’ve ever been given. I hope I told her “Thank you,” instead of telling her why I didn’t deserve the recognition.

         Reading that book made me sad, but not. I got to know you and learn from you and you made me a better person, a better man and teacher and I’m so lucky in that regard.

         Maybe, where you are, you can see my silly tears. Maybe the sight of me bawling like a kid at the table has made you sigh or smile. I hope so. I hope you can see my love for you, here and always, on full display.

 

         Len

  

—ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?

 

 

 

Prick

 

 

This morning a prick 

of primitive dread 

overtakes joy & 

the florid sunrise & 

the brass in pocket & 

the fact that I’m still 

alive somehow & 

so I ride with it, pedaling 

a skeleton bike to nowhere 

while no one notices me, 

not the neighbors or wraiths 

or my parents with their hairy 

knuckles and areolas, so

I peddle faster as the gloom 

spreads and flattens like 

the color of a shiner that 

both wants, and doesn’t want, 

to tell you how it got there