River of Ink

You changed the world

riverofink — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 01:22:41 +0000

I cried when I heard that Steve Jobs had died. I know I’m not the only one. I can’t speak for the others, but for me, I think it has something to do with the way he lived his life, when so many of the rest of us helplessly watch ours dwindle away. I would like to be one of those people who changes the world in some drastic (positive) way, but I’m not sure I’m the kind that can. Those people seem to have in common a confidence – no, scratch that. It’s more than that. Their vision for what they’re going to do in the world is so complete that it already exists even before it’s been executed. I can’t even decide what to order for lunch most of the time. I’m sure people like me also have a role to play, but for now, I’m saddened by the loss of someone who really did change the world.

Phasing

riverofink — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 03:15:09 +0000

I’d thought at the time that it was a stupid argument about a stupid song, but the years pass and I still think about it now and again. That Celine Dion (I know, I know) song, “Because You Loved Me.” She sings over and over again, “I’m everything I am because you loved me.” I made the pronouncement in my usual way, for my usual reason. ”There’s no one you can really say that about except for Jesus and your mother.” I knew you’d object to the Jesus part, but your reaction was unexpected, not in the least for your vehemence. Or was it? Was that why I’d said it after all? You said, immediately and fiercely, “The only reason you say that is because no man has ever loved you enough.” What you really meant, but I didn’t know or understand this until so much later, was that “no other man” had ever loved me enough.

I can’t take back the callous way I handled your feelings, and it’s much too late and too pointless to ask for forgiveness now. But I can say that I understand now that I was wrong. The people who love you do change you, even if you don’t love them back. And those changes, sometimes they stay with you.

To sleep

riverofink — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 19:24:55 +0000

I’ll just put it out there that my problems are nothing more serious than lack of sleep, a condition that has existed . . . well, for years now. I’m so tired I often find myself wanting to cry. So tired that I no longer remember what it feels like to go through the day without a pounding headache. So tired that sometimes I worry that I’m going to fall asleep behind the wheel, or pass out because I’m so tired that I’m lightheaded and the world spins around me. I have had more than a few close calls lately. Sometimes I think I’m depressed, but that brings me back to what I started out here with. It helps a little bit to talk about it. Sometimes I feel like no one’s listening. My needs fall through the cracks between the outsized needs of everyone around me. I wish I could curl into a ball and hide somewhere for a day.

I sleep so little that there doesn’t seem to be a distinction between sleeping and waking. And what dream-shaped thoughts I have!

Families: I am such a voyeur. I am so interested in the peeks I get into other people’s family lives. It’s a jolt to realize that even the psycho bitch that haunts my past may have a warm family life. It’s harder to demonize people when you see them in happy pictures on vacation in Disneyland with their families. Not that I like them any better, but it’s another lesson in letting go of anger and resentment, and learning to forgive. If that makes any sense.

Work: I have a coworker who keeps saying that many of us in the office remind her of victims of domestic abuse. I don’t really think the work situation is that bad, but it’s hard not to get caught up in the general unhappiness around here. What with layoffs and the concomitant stress and fear, we’re all a pretty demoralized bunch.

Community: Sometimes I feel this weird urge to confide in someone. Confide what? I’m not sure. But to confide. To feel close. But then my natural misanthropy kicks in. I was the kid who used to read by myself on the couch day after day, rather than playing outside with the other kids in the neighborhood. But sometimes I feel like the little matchbox girl, peeking into lighted windows and wishing I belonged somewhere.

I feel like I’m walking around with weights on

riverofink — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 19:56:21 +0000

underwater

Letting Go

riverofink — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:58:12 +0000

Since the new baby was born, my parents have been coming over nearly daily to help with my other, older baby; to give me a chance to nap and recover from the ordeal of childbirth. Today is a beautiful, sunny day – they wanted to take her out of the house. I was glad for that because she loves to go out, and I haven’t been able to take her anywhere myself. She walked out of the front door by herself, my big girl, and, as she went down the walk, turned around and said, “Bye-bye.” And all at once I was hit by the sense that, from now on, she will spend her life walking away from me. As necessary a part of life as that is, I still feel my heart breaking.

Scales

riverofink — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 01:45:05 +0000

How do you determine what can be forgiven? Put things on a scale? One side the things that have been done to you; the other, the things you have done. Forgiveness comes with balance. Then it’s easy, a matter of simple mechanics. No questions about the nature of the promises broken, the lies told, the betrayals rendered. And then, too, nothing cannot be forgiven.

The Mind’s Eye, Which Sees What Is Not There

riverofink — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 19:10:57 +0000

Some vivid dreams birth themselves into reality. Fully formed, they spring from the forehead of your subconscious into the realm of your memory. I dreamed that I was lost and abandoned – or no, I am remembering loss and abandonment. I thought I dreamed that my heart was breaking, but no, it lies there broken. When the bitterness of fear binds your tongue, does it matter any longer whether the fear comes from a place real or imagined?

Fall Fall Fall

riverofink — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:56:40 +0000

The Midwesterner in me is glorying in the cooler weather and visions of pumpkins, leaves, frost on the grass in the mornings…. Fall makes me think of trees filtering green-gold light onto quiet streets, houses with front porches and porch swings, pies baking in the oven. An idealization of a place, which may or may not have existed, in which I may or may not have lived. Sometimes the vision is so real that when I come to, in my fluorescent-lit office, I feel displaced, disoriented.

Ignore the geekiness here: I can’t help thinking of this part in Frank Herbert’s Dune, where the narrator tells us that Paul Atreides cannot be understood apart from Arrakis, which shaped him. Really. Who is there who can be understood apart from the place that shaped him? Nationalism is, I think, more than power or people or passe tribalism. There is something about land, about a place, that grips a person. Globalism is great, cosmopolitanism is great, but I think there’s always going to be a place – a real place, not a virtual place – that you think of when you think of the things that make up you. A place in which context you must be understood.

Arts and Crafts

riverofink — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:11:44 +0000

As a child, I used to help my mother with various projects: making wreaths from discarded wallpaper, reupholstering dining room chairs with fabric bought on sale from a dress shop, and other bits of alchemy in which we turned discarded things back to usefulness. My mother could never bear to throw anything away because she was certain that it would be called for again someday, if in some other form. These were not things she had grown up doing or taken any classes to learn, but the word “can’t” has never been a part of my mother’s vocabulary.

On the design blogs that I’m addicted to now, these sorts of activities would be lauded as the sort of creative DIY-ness to which we should all aspire. Back then, it didn’t feel creative. It felt like making do.

I’ve been spending some time on Etsy lately, which sounds like an innocuous enough activity, but for some reason it’s been making me incredibly sad. There’s a group of girls I used to know, all of whom now have Etsy stores, selling items in the Japanese kawaii-style. I’m both drawn to them and repelled by them. In some other world, in some other time and place, I would like to have been that kind of person: cheerful through and through, brightly colored, effervescent.

Madeleines

riverofink — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 17:16:31 +0000

Maybe it’s being a new parent, but life has felt more poignant lately. I find myself desperately trying to hold on to images, feelings…such as the way my daughter looks when she walks, a little unsteady, arms held out for balance…the smile on her face because she’s so proud of herself…all the expressions and little noises she makes as she runs around the house. She’s growing so quickly, and I’m proud of her, and happy that she’s developing the way she ought to, but…all too soon she won’t be my baby. Every day brings me so much happines, but when I go to bed at night, it is invariably with a sharp sense of loss.

I wish my memory were better. That’s part of what scares me, that someday, I may not even remember all these things that mean so much to me now. The other day, I talked to someone I’ve known since high school, and I couldn’t remember most of the things that he was reminiscing about. I don’t even remember much about college or law school. I used to keep a journal, but I haven’t in a while, and I wish I hadn’t stopped. I used to be glad of the chance to reinvent myself, to be someone different than I was, but I don’t have a desire to do that anymore. I’ve finally reached a place where I wouldn’t change anything even if I could. Now I just want to be able to remember it.