The Practical Sublime

Miriam was a slim girl with green eyes and red hair and milky skin. But she was not of Irish extraction that she knew of. She had grown up in Westchester County and had attended an elite college for girls where she had not worked very hard but had done remarkably well. Now she was engaged to a doctor and her mother was hovering over her and the wedding plans like a fussy helicopter.

Her fiancé had an uncanny affinity with cliché. It was beyond a joke. For example, the other evening they had gone out to dinner and there had actually been a fly in his soup. But the thing was, he had not seen any humor in it. He called the waiter over and said, quite naturally, and with carefully restrained annoyance: “There is a fly in my soup.” The waiter, deadpan not to be outdone, whisked the offending bowl away with grave apologies, and asked if her fiancé would like to choose another hors d'oeuvre. Although he had not eaten any soup, and had been complaining the whole way to the restaurant that he was famished, he declined. Miriam eyed her avocado halves drizzled with lemon vinaigrette for a moment, and quietly carved into the flesh with a long-handled spoon.

Although this was 1987, Miriam and her fiancé had been seeing each other for eight months and had never gone to bed together. It was a complicated matter. She had slept with two of her previous boyfriends, but her fiancé was under the impression that she had not. He may have also been under the impression that she was of Irish extraction. Whenever things between them became passionate, her fiancé would slip off to have a cold shower. Miriam felt rather disappointed, but did not ask herself if it was not this curiosity and ever-unfulfilled desire which had led her to accept her fiancé’s proposal, which had been given, without a hint of embarrassment, on one knee, with the delivery of the classic formula. Whatever the cause, as their wedding day drew closer, it became clear that theirs was to be an old-fashioned wedding night. Miriam felt it was charming in a way, and the difference between this relationship and her previous ones seemed to be a good omen.

It was an unseasonably warm day in late March, and Miriam lay stretched out on the sofa at her mother’s house. Her mother had gone out to the grocery store, and the house seemed to breathe a quiet sigh of relief. The window was open and through it Miriam watched the branches of the trees being taunted by a light breeze. There were no leaves yet, but small buds could be discerned on the branches nearest the window. She inspected them drowsily, and watched the little birds flitting about the branches. Suddenly she saw a kernel of white which seemed to unfold like a fern among the branches of the tree. In a moment, the tree was festooned with a confetti of white blossoms. Miriam was overwhelmed by a sensation of purity and clarity. She couldn’t move; she could only look with a mixture of fear and wonder at the enchanted tree. She seemed to hear a voice within her mind, one that washed away her fear and, with indistinct murmurs, filled her mind with a host of images: eggs, tents, green meadows, a red curtain going up, and a little boy standing on a mountain.

“Are you asleep?” her mother demanded, on her way to the kitchen. “There’s so much to be done!” Miriam rubbed her eyes. Her mother had passed through the living room, a blur of brown paper bags, frilly celery tops poking out, the jangle of car keys, and the voice which called her back to her senses.

“I might have- must have.” she said, stretching out and giving a yawn. “I got cold,” she said, and got up to shut the window.

“Are you going to Josh’s tonight?” called out the voice from the kitchen.

“Oh, maybe later,” said Miriam. “But he probably has to work late.” Miriam’s fiancée was an emergency room doctor. He often worked late, and Miriam sometimes felt that the atmosphere of the ER was one which the import of their life together could never quite compare to. Of course their relationship had ups and downs, and decisions to be made like any other, but these fluctuations and decisions did not save or cost lives in a matter of moments. In fact, she had never seen her fiancée more passionate than when he had saved the life of a difficult case. She wondered if their wedding night would bring that same expression of elation, shot through with disbelief, to his brown-eyed, clean-shaven face.

The next day was Saturday, and Miriam went to the city museum to look at the paintings. She often went there, alone, as Josh was not fond of paintings. That is, he has seen them once, and that was enough. Miriam went as usual to the Hudson River School section. She liked to sit before the big, moody landscapes. Sometimes, though not always, she felt so moved by them that she almost wanted to cry. The detailed depictions of trees and leaves, sunlight and shadow, big craggy mountains, and sometimes small people, made her want to do something, but she didn’t know what. They made her feel calm and restless at the same time. She supposed there was no one else in the museum, or even in the city, who felt moved by these paintings the way she was. She supposed there was something a bit strange about her, and that settling down with someone logical and practical, someone like Josh, would be the best thing for her. Staring at the line of treetops set against a large cloudy sky, Miriam thought that nothing much would ever happen to her, except for in her daydreams and nightdreams.

Josh called her to say that he would pick her up later. She went home to take a bath, and thought to herself, as usual, that everyone looked at their feet in the bath under the faucets, but only Dali had thought to paint it. That’s what makes geniuses, she thought. She sometimes hoped, since she herself was clearly not a genius, that one day, she might give birth to one. That would be almost as satisfying.

Josh was in a foul temper when he picked her up, because someone had left a banana skin on the sidewalk, and he had slipped and almost broken his neck on his way to her door.

“Never mind, my love,” she said, taking his arm. “You didn’t slip.” (“Though it would have been appropriate,”) she wanted to add, but refrained.

* * *

The next week passed as normal. Miriam moved in the narrow path between work and home, she visited her mother, she and Josh went out, and she slept at night alone. But she did not feel very well. She felt as if all the vitality had been sapped from her, and she couldn’t eat much.

“You’re just nervous, darling,” her mother told her. “It’s perfectly natural, the wedding is only one month away.”

“A month and a half.”

“Well, it’s coming soon! And have you spoken to the photographer? And have you met with the florist? You know there’s so much still to do.”

“Yes, I have spoken to them. It’s all under control, mom. And actually I don’t feel nervous at all.”

“Then why don’t you eat something?”

“Ughh,” she said. “I don’t know. Nothing sounds good. Maybe I’ll have a cucumber.”

Josh told her she was working too hard and promised to help more with the wedding plans.

“You shouldn’t do everything. Anyway, I’ll come with you to meet the pastor.” he said.

So they went together, through the city and into the grounds of the hall where they were to be married. Getting out of the car, Miriam put her hand to her head, and trembled. She held onto the open car door to steady herself.

“What’s wrong?” Josh asked, rushing over. “Are you ok?”

“I feel dizzy,” she said.

“Because you haven’t eaten anything,” he said. “You can’t go on like this, Miriam. Your system is reacting badly to stress.”

“I’m fine,” she said. “Let’s ask the pastor for some water.”

They walked up the grassy path to the hall, Miriam on Josh’s arm, and found the pastor by the door, waiting for them. He took them both warmly by the hands, and looked into their eyes with that longing that pastors so often have.

“I’m so glad to see you,” he said. “Let’s go inside.”

They went into a small office, furnished minimally in neutral colors. The pastor sat them on a couch opposite his chair.

“Can I offer you anything?” he asked.

“Some water would be great,” Josh said. “And some cookies or something if you have any? Miriam’s blood sugar is low; she hasn’t eaten anything.”

“Sure. Just a minute,” the pastor said, and left the room.

“Are you sure you’re ok?” Josh asked, holding her hand.

“Actually, I think I’m going…” she said. “I think I’m sick.”

The pastor came back in with two glasses of water and several slices of pound cake on a plate.

“Father, where’s the bathroom?” Miriam asked, then put her hand to her mouth.

“This way,” he said, opening the door he had come out of, and pointing.

The Pastor and Josh sat back down in the office.

“She must be coming down with something,” Josh said. “She hasn’t been feeling well all week.”

“That’s too bad,” the pastor said. “It’s the time of year for it. The change of seasons and all.”

“Yes,” Josh said. “And Miriam isn’t that strong.”

“Well, she might be stronger than you think,” the pastor said. Then, “So, how are you feeling about the wedding?”

“Oh, I’m- we’re both excited,” Josh said. “And looking forward to settling down, moving into our house, going on our honeymoon. Seems like we’ve been waiting so long.”

“Yes, it’s a wonderful time when you’re first married,” the pastor said. “But it can also be a challenging time. It will be an adjustment for both of you.”

“Oh I don’t expect much will change,” Josh said. “We’re best friends.”

* * *

Miriam was ill, but it was not like any illness she had known before. She just felt tired all the time and not hungry, and sometimes she threw up.

“It’s stress,” her mother said. “And I want you to go to the doctor.”

“Yes,” Josh agreed. “It’s been two weeks. But I’m convinced that this is psychological.”

So she went to see her doctor, who told her she was pregnant.

“But, that’s impossible.” she said.

“You mean you’ve been using protection?” the doctor asked.

“I mean, I – we’re not. It’s impossible… Can you check again?”

The doctor gave her a second pregnancy test which confirmed the result.

“So I guess this isn’t planned?” her doctor asked.

“I haven’t been sleeping with anyone,” Miriam said. “I-“

“Well, in rare cases, pregnancy can happen through sexual behavior without intercourse,” the doctor said.

“No, I, there haven’t been any instances. At all.”

The doctor looked at her.

“Miriam,” he said. “There has to have been an instance. You are pregnant. Now think about any possible time that this could have happened.”

“My fiancée and I are waiting until we get married,” she said, her eyes getting wet. “We haven’t done anything except kiss. We-” She started to cry.

“I’m afraid I can’t help you in any other way,” the doctor said. “Except maybe refer you to the family planning clinic. They have counsellors there.”

Miriam walked out of the office and to her car in a daze. She got into the car but didn’t drive towards home. Instead she drove out of the city and into the suburbs. Beside the road, an old interstate from the Eisenhower era, she saw grassy meadows, and in the distance, a canopy. Under the canopy sat an old woman at a picnic table selling flowers. She stopped the car.

The woman wasn’t doing anything. She was just sitting on a lawn-chair, in front of the picnic table, upon which sat buckets of carnations and tulips- red, yellow, pink, and white.

“Hi there,” Miriam said, and smiled at the woman.

“Yes, my love,” the lady said. “So nice to see you at last.”

Miriam looked at the flowers.

“I’ve been waiting. The world has been waiting.”

“I’m sorry?” Miriam said.

“We’ve been waiting for you.”

“I’m sorry,” Miriam said. “You must have mistaken me for someone else.”

“No, it’s you,” she said, fishing in the bucket of tulips next to her. She got out a bunch of yellow ones and tied them together with string, and wrapped them in paper.

“Here,” she said, offering the bouquet, “You take these and go tell your fiancé what happened.”

Miriam extended her hand dumbly, took the flowers, and didn’t even remember to offer to pay. She just murmured thank you and walked back to the car.

* * *

She was waiting for Josh to come over for dinner. The tulips were in a green glass vase on the table, and against the white tablecloth, it was a lovely effect. She knew she had to say something, but what was she going to say?

The doorbell rang.

“Hello, Mir,” Josh said, kissing her. “How are you?”

“Yes, good,” she said.

“Feeling better?”

“Yes, well, yes,” she said. They went into the living room and sat at the table. “You know I went to the doctor on Friday.”

“Yes, what did Allman say? Stress, I’ll bet. Like I told you.”

“Actually, he said, but I don’t understand, Josh. I can’t understand what he said.”

“What did he say?”

“He said, well, it’s impossible, but, he said I’m, we’re, going to have a baby.”

Josh stared at her. “Miriam,” he said.

“I-“

“Miriam, what do you mean?”

“He said I’m pregnant, but I don’t understand how that can be.”

“You know how babies are made, Miriam. You know how that can be.”

“But you know, we-”

“Yes, it’s impossible that we...” Josh said. He looked at the tulips on the table. He razed his arm across the table and the vase broke upon the marble floor.

“Josh!” Miriam said. “You don’t think.”

“Miriam, I’m a doctor. I know what this means. I just don’t know why you even try to pretend.”

“I am telling you,” she said, tears running out of her eyes, “there is no one else.”

“Well, what is it, then?” he asked. “The second coming?” At that, Miriam looked for a moment at the shards of green glass and yellow petals on the floor, and fainted.

She woke up stretched out on the sofa, with her feet elevated on a cushion, alone.

“Something has happened,” Miriam thought. She thought about the paintings in which the landscapes are so large and beautiful they go on forever beyond the canvas, and the people are just tiny shapes, little creatures dwarfed by that grandeur. “Something has happened to me,” she thought, placing her hand on her stomach, and smiled.

May 2007
© RMT, 2009

Yes, You Are

I loved the way his heart fit into my hands. Pink still and fresh, the same smooth tissue as his lungs. Unlearned, unused, easily captured.

I remember last summer in faded sunshine and sweat trickling down my back as I scanned the green fields for him. The camp was swarming with children, and us, the small army of red-shirted counsellors, trying to bring them to order. Our eyes would meet at unbelievable distances, him out on the baseball field waiting to bat, me passing with my flock of five year olds. I could always recognise his form, no matter how far away and how many other children he was among. Other children would run up to me giggling and shout “Ryan loves you! Ryan said he’d die if he kissed you!” They expected anything but my smile. And if Ryan was there, and they said it to me to tease him, they only received his quiet retort: “I don’t care. She knows I love her. I told her a hundred times.”

This summer I have to give him up. But what could I say now? You see, Ryan, last year when I wasn’t letting you put your arm around me, I was in the bathroom of a dingy café sticking a needle in my thigh. You could see the bruises when I wore my bathing suit.

He ran up to me with red Kool-Aid stains at the corners of his mouth and held out a water bottle.
“Thirsty?”
“No. Yes.” I took the drink to my mouth. It was cool down my throat, burning. My stomach turned every time I saw him. He would pick the heads off yellow dandelions and pour them into my hand with a big smirk on his face.
“These are for you.” Eyelashes fluttering, as if in a play, knowing his friends were watching.
“Why don’t you kiss her?” one of the girls asks. She puckers her lips, caked orange with cheese puffs.
“Your shoelaces are untied,” I say. She extends a dirty pink sneaker. I bend down and tie the wet gritty laces, and stand back up, hands on my hips.
“I have to go pee,” she says.
“I’m coming, too,” says Ryan. We cross the gravel path and the child runs ahead to the locker room, clutching the crotch of her corduroys, and disappears behind the wooden door. There is a flash of white tiles, and I lean against the wall and smile at him.
“Why do you always look at me and smile?” he asks.
“I don’t know.” He leans his head on my shoulder, turns his face into the cloth of my sweatshirt. The girl bursts back out of the bathroom.
“Eeew!” She says and screws up her mouth.
“What?” Says Ryan, a smile sneaking onto his face, his blue eyes flattening. Back at the playground, he runs to the side of the pavilion where milkweed grows in thick bunches. He harvests quickly, filling his hands with the green pods, and runs towards me. He peels open the plants and rubs handfuls of the dense white fuzz onto my arms and shoulders as I squirm away, shouting “Stop it!” laughing and grabbing at his wrists. He pushes more cottony down onto my face and hair. I grab some off the ground and put it down his shirt.
“OK, cut it out!” I say and take off my smile. He throws the rest of the milkweed at me and runs a short distance off, turns and looks back at me, grinning.


He was so earnest. I asked him if he went to church.
“Ye-s,” he says. His voice hits two tones, grave. “And I have a rosary, and my priest, he blessed it for me.”
“Oh,” I say, and smile.
“Ryan! We’re leaving!” His counsellor beckons.
“Bye,” he says, and runs off to his friends, boys all shorter than him. He smiles at me and they disappear down the path.

The lapping water skirts my ankles, chilly at first but now almost warm on my skin. A small artificial sea, a sloping bowl of white concrete, and me at the edge of it. I lost my sunglasses again. I strain to keep my eyes open, but the brightness forces them into slits, so I can only see patches of watery blue and white dints of harsh sunlight. He hasn’t come swimming today. His group came ten minutes ago and he’s not here, but my eyes still skim the pool and grassy area for him. After swimming lessons, he used to drape his towel around my shoulders and put his arm around me. His friends and classmates would laugh and point.
“Kiss! Kiss!” They say. He turns his face to me, puckered lips wobbling in laughter. I roll my eyes and push his forehead away with my hand.
At lunchtime once we were sitting by ourselves at a picnic table.
“I humped a girl once,” he said.
“Yeah right,” I said and looked away.
“Well, it looked like we were, but we weren’t really.” I didn’t say anything. “But we could do it. Boys are usually on top. I’d have to be on top because you weigh more than me.”
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said. I walked quickly up the grassy path along the pool fence, the warm thickness of the air stifling me. My shirt clung damply to my back, and I couldn’t get a deep breath.
When I came out of the bathroom there was a steady stream of children passing, and Ryan standing by the tree. He walked over to me and handed me a paper bag.
“You forgot your lunch,” he said.
“Oh, thanks.”
“Bye!” he said and took off.

The next day at lunch one of his friends came up to me with half a bag of potato chips. He was smiling that embarrassed smile I recognized from other children. I never saw the expression on Ryan’s face, often a joking or a funny face, but always sure.
“These are for you. From Ryan,” the kid said, and handed me the bag. “He really loves you.” I smiled and took the chips, and ate them with difficulty, almost choking on them. He came over to me.
“Thanks,” I said and smiled. “Why the messenger?” He sat down next to me.
“I don’t know. He wanted to talk to you.”
“Oh.”
“He said I can’t be your boyfriend because I’m only nine.”
“Well.” I say, and empty the bag’s last crumbs into my mouth, “It’s only ten years.”
“Yeah.” He rubs my shoulder.
“They don’t understand us,” I say, and scratch his head, and he starts laughing, his hand over his face.


But that was last summer, and now I am afraid of him. I overheard the camp director on the telephone in the office. Her professional voice floated down to my ears through the screen door. I heard her say my name with the intonation of a question and follow as an answer “She’s very sweet.” I knew she was talking to his mother.
Last year had been marked by a feeling of abandon. I’d thought it was my last summer at the camp. But here I was again, back among the same grass and trees and gym equipment, back among the same kids, who remembered everything with a kid’s perfect memory.
The first day back, my eyes chased the fields for him. I recognized his group. One of his friends, the blond chubby kid, came up to me.
“Ryan Patterson still loves you,” he said.
“Oh yeah?” I said, terrified and pleased, playing it cool. The kid ran back to his group. Where did he get this information? Ryan is not with his group. Must have been at school. He must not be here this week. He’ll surely be here next week.
Only later, by the swimming pool, wrapped in my towel and staring at the reflections of sun, I turn my head and he is standing right next to me, silent. I know it is him, but somehow I can’t believe it.
“Hi!” I say, in a cheerful counsellor voice, and look away. I look back to see his skinny legs and blue trunks receding from me. I dive into the pool and swim the length of it, wishing to remain submerged, mute and blameless as a fish.

He was the opposite of me as a child. I hid in the bushes when a school bus passed my house. He was loud and funny and a talker. He orchestrated several shows with his friends, lip-syncing and dancing on stage in front of the whole camp. He was sent to the director’s office once for leading them in ‘an inappropriate dance.’ I tried to react as the other counsellors did as I watched him swing his narrow hips and mouth the words ecstatically- “I want you back, baby, ooh yeah!” His friends, the back-up singers, were all laughing and being silly, but Ryan was dead serious. He sang like he was famous. After the show, I stood talking to another counsellor. One of the little girls was holding my hand.
“He’s a great kid,” the other counsellor said of Ryan. “Really talented.” I nodded. The little girl swung her arm, moving my hand back and forth like a wacky pendulum.
“I don’t like him,” she said.
“How come?” I asked.
“He’s too weird. He acts like he’s a man.”

There were glances exchanged but they were sparse. And though he avoided my eyes, he seemed to always be near me, lingering behind the bushes at lunchtime and peeping at me. Finally he made his approach to my lunch table, followed by the blond chubby kid who was smirking and pushing him from behind.
“Hi,” I said. He looked alert and quiet. Like a deer in the forest.
“Ryan still loves you,” his friend betrayed. I smiled.
“That’s ok.” He stood a moment and turned sharply before I could breathe. After that my smiles were not returned, but his blue eyes darted away from me painfully.
The summer dragged on. When I drove to camp in the mornings, I would smoke a cigarette and try to savour it. I would promise myself not to sneak one in the bathroom, smoking being forbidden on the campgrounds. I did not look forward to the end of the day, not to dinner or going into town to float and come to rest on stoops or to follow my companions into indistinct apartments where people hunched over tables and rented time next to other people they did not know.

It was the last week of camp the day the science counsellor brought in a baby robin he had found. He had it in a little cage lined with a towel, and he got the children to find tender young worms for it to eat. At the end of the day the groups all sat on the grass and waited for their parents to pick them up. At the corner of the field by the soccer goal, I saw Ryan squatting by the cage. A few others were resting by their backpacks on the grass. I went over to him and looked at the bird.
“Oh, he’s so cute.” I said. He nodded.
“Did you find any worms for him?”
“Nah, there was too many for him to eat.” The bird was chirping and hopping around in the cage, fuzzy and awkward.
“I found a baby bird once a few years ago,” I said.
“You never told me that!” He said. He looked reproachful.
“I guess I forgot.”
“Oh, it’s my mom,” he said. He gathered up his bag and ran off to the car.


The kids goggled over us. “They’re back together! Do you love her, Ryan?” He squirmed.
“They think I still like you, but I like someone else.”
“I know,” I said.
“She’s sixteen.”
I smiled wanly. She was a junior counsellor who flirted with the other juniors and wore skimpy shorts. I had seen him walking with her and wearing her sweatshirt, the sleeves covering all but the tips of his fingers.

In the evening I drove downtown. When I found myself in one of the old apartments overlooking the park, and one of my companions’ head nodded onto my shoulder, I went into the bathroom and thought about shattering the mirror, ripping the door off its hinges and hurling it into the living room where they all sat like a bunch of corpses. Instead I rolled up my jeans and took another shot and laid down on the bath mat. There was a damp patch under my cheek where someone had stepped with dripping feet.
Later, when I was walking down the street, someone I knew saw me. He stopped me and gave me a hug.
“Hey, what’s up?” he said.
“Nothing.”
“You look fucked up.”
“I am,” I said.
“On what?” he asked, amused.
“K.” I said. I had looked in the mirror earlier. My eyes were red and my pupils were black holes.
“Wanna get a coffee?” he asked. I looked at him. I had loved him for about a year but had forgotton him over the summer. His eyelids were pink; his skin seemed old and soiled by dirty air. His lungs were probably grey and tired with the smoke of hundreds of joints, pipes and straws.
“I gotta go,” I said, summoning a weak smile. “I have work tomorrow.”
It was the last day of camp. Ryan stood by me, and asked me if I ever smoked cigarettes.
“You better not smoke cigarettes,” I said. “It’s stupid, they’re really bad for you.”
“I won’t,” he said. “Did you ever smoke?”
“Yeah, I did. But I quit. It was stupid of me to ever start.”
“When you’re twenty-one, I know you’ll drink, too,” he said. “I can tell.”
“I’ll probably taste it,” I said. “You’ll have to wait ‘til you’re twenty-one, too.”
“I will.”
I ruffled his hair. He smiled hard and looked at the ground. He looked at me.
“I do still like you a little,” he said. I smiled. His mother’s green caravan swept into the dusty circle.
“Your mom’s here.” He slung his book-bag onto his shoulder and straightened up. He’d gotten a lot taller since last summer.
“Am I your favourite camper?” He asks, looking up at me hopefully.
“Yes,” I say. “You are, Ryan.” And he smiles and runs off.


c. 1999
© RMT, 2009

A pair of Poems

Ante

Some drops of water will not slip
Even off the waxiest leaves.
I learn a new way to know eggs:
The kind which amble in curving arcs;
And those which lie still on tables
Holding themselves against tremors.
The first kind have skins both smooth and engraved
Like a beach fired badly and then cooled.
In water the others are silent divers
Which calcify even as they disclose their porosity.
I could let one of these rest in my grasp
And describe the volumes within.
If I hold it long enough my hand will forget
And the shell collapses, weightless.
For now paper eyelids open and close like moth wings
While I envision the oily surface inside the pearl.


RMT Dec. 10, 2003




Post

There is a brown germ in the blue of my father’s eye
When I look at you I see him
When I look at him I see safety.
You cracked like the faintest trace of light under a doorway
It hurts you to keep it closed
But you push your whole hard self against it
Muscles bound up tight
Blood held in close
Words vetted and vetted again
Choking you with what they want to be.

I like the look of your shell
Smooth and fine and the color of chalk
It felt different from how it looked
Cooler and more leathery, like a reptile’s egg.
I picked it up like I had not been skirting it the whole season
Keeping it free from cover by dark seaweed
Safe from the hungry gulls, the rising tide.
I held it and could feel no movement
But it was not as cold
As the wet sand, the wet wind.

The smell of salt made my wrists heavy
And the light changed in an indiscernable shift
Above me were callous legions
Of sea birds black against the grey of the sky
I pressed you.
The skin gave under the weight of my thumb
And I left it where I had found it-
On a basin of sand
On the edge of the tideline
In reach of the sea.



RMT
March 23, 2004


© RMT, 2009

Megalo

This is two chapters of an unfinished existential novel set in London, written in 2003. Would anyone want to read this? I have no idea. But it's got to go.



MEGALO



CHAPTER 1

My story is all wrong. I do my best. I try to tie it, to tighten it, to give it an admirable shape. But it is all wrong and always has been. And so I am delayed. With that peculiar sensation I always accrue while reading a novel, I feel that as I read I am holding something in my mind, continuing but meaning to go back and re-read, to work over something more carefully, to make a note even, to fully absorb some sensation that has moved me but a little too subtly, too intangibly, that thing which has piqued my interest, or escaped my full comprehension. When it grows to an intensity sufficient to pull me out of the stream of narrative, I stop, dog-ear the page, and retrace the phrases, searching line by line for whatever has arrested my progression. Sometimes I cannot find it. And sometimes I realize that this feeling has carried over into my life, and I laugh at my own futility, my childish denial of the way things are, at how I long to go back, because it is the only thing I can see. And so it is that aspects of my life have been on hold for increasing spans of time, while I stop in vain, yet in vain to stop, and ceaselessly rework my own history, until it becomes unrecognisable, a painting whose colors have become muddied, a gesture drawing which has been overworked to the point of blacking out all negative space.

I arrived in the morning and walked calmly into the office. The receptionist and I exchanged smiles, but I reserved my firm but friendly handshake for the interviewer. She soon came out to fetch me, and led the way into the boardroom with the glass pitcher of water, the waiting glasses, the waiting panel. I smiled and greeted all round, and sat down with the perfect measure of humility and confidence, professionalism and informality. I explained my firm commitment to a challenging job in which I could utilise my natural abilities and further develop the skills I had acquired in my previous positions. I spoke to them of teamwork and self-reliance, of communication and discretion, of liasons and loyalties. They asked me about my skills. They offered hypothetical descriptions of challenging situations and I answered in an analytical and thoughtful tone which mirrored the reasoned and assured response I would elicit to any such happening. I repeated back to them what they said in arresting reversals of sentence structure, empathising with their search for a reliable and competent secretary. Carolyn, Office Manager, exchanged a glance with Tim from Human Resources. I took a sip of water. Carolyn showed me out, offering me a handshake which I recognised as closing more than the interview.

Yesterday on the way to work I witnessed a small drama under a bush outside the tube station. A flock of sparrows were darting and fluttering around an empty crisp packet, feasting on the crumbs in a completely communal manner, when one of them somehow got stuck inside the wrapper. The brightly colored foil started a panicked dance and the others chirped and flitted around it, in an unconsciously beautiful accompaniment, helpless. I stopped and stared, powerless to do anything. How could I invade their world? Could I even extract him without causing his little heart to arrest with terror at my intervention? Or without breaking up their happy party and forever darkening their beliefs in the nature of reality as they went about their daily business? I waited. Eventually the wrapper got stuck on a branch of the bush and the bird hopped out, his brown feathers shiny and littered with pale yellow flecks, but unharmed after all.

I have realized that something happened to me, and it did not announce itself as a defining moment until after the fact. Not until I went back to it, several days later, and replayed it, and listened to the tonal subtleties, which took me several times, and suddenly that warm glowy feeling crept all the way up into my face and I started. I haven’t said a word about this to anyone, and I know that this is one of the things I never will, because it is too perfect, cannot be touched. I was walking home from work and in no hurry, enjoying the balmy evening, the Indian summer which I also will say to no one, even that phrase I treasure and fear somehow, because it connects to histories I cannot comprehend, when towns thought about building stockades but by then it was too late, when ambushes and Pa’s got the shotgun, Ma’ll take the pistol, take the baby…Nevermind. I was walking and I had this gushing feeling, like I love the City. I started smiling in that way to myself. I started thinking things without worrying about what they were, or how they would sound, or if they were real, because I knew that to me they were and no one else would ever hear them, that I would not mar them with the saying and the hearing, but that I could trade it back and forth between self and self, and it would grow. I walked past Bank Station and even though it was the location of my last revelation, I could not have gone down there. I walked and I felt like all I wanted to do was walk. I will tell you in a minute how I have since walked all the way to and from work every day, seven miles, both ways, and this also I have told no one and I am happy. But there are a few people who I do not tell who witness daily (or semi-daily) various legs of my journey, and if they all just knew it, there it would be, the truth without even being said. It is possible. I don’t even need to tell this to myself, I have proved it with my own life. I walked up Poultry and turned up Old Jewry, whose enchanting name and slight curving I cannot resist even after so many times, then across and down Ironmongers, back to Cheapside and then down Bread Street, a little tour of medieval London, sitting here, seemingly quiet, yet perpetually speaking the history which exists even if it can only be felt as dream or cinema. But I still have not gotten to what happened, because each time I look there is another strand to be pulled into the embroidery, another row, row upon row, and it is all so much bigger and more vibrant than I ever thought possible, so much the opposite of what I always thought recollection to be, that is unchangeable in its nature. I have given up on those kinds of thoughts, and yet even those words makes it sound too much like a negative action, when it is ever so much more one of building. I used to worry about running out of room, running out of time. What a fool I have been and yet even to realise that makes me more happy than I can bear!

I come to the river and I climb up the stairs to Southwark Bridge. It is fully day, softened by evening but still elegantly day, and I stand and cross my arms on the railing, and lean my head on them, and look out over the scene, at a thin piece of driftwood rolling surprisingly fast through the muddy waters, at the evening sun glinting off the dome of St Paul’s. There is nothing to keep me, there is no one to tell, and I realise that my freedom is the thing that I prize above all else, and I don’t mean American Freedom, or Economic Freedom, or the Freedom to Succeed. There is no success here nor failure, there is just me, me moving, me stopping, me writing, me being quiet, me living, me dying, me keeping it all to myself, so it grows stronger and more vibrant, and more unstoppable. Oh how I stop it, oh how I bundle it up inside me and put on a different face, and go to work in the morning. But even that is not a chore, even that is a decision. There is nothing which is not my choosing. I might keep that one, and tell it to one person, perhaps, if I ever come across the one who needs it most, who might take it and not touch it too much, but put it away and not smile and say no more about it.

By the time I get to St Paul’s, the sun is low, and the churchyard has that shadowy look and I can pretend it is full summer, not September, and I can believe that more is possible than I could ever imagine. Because I sit on the stoop and I look at my body, my life, dwarfed by Wren’s achievement. And I walk past King Street and Queen Street, facing each other across the intersection like a pair of unseen silhouettes, chess pieces, cards- and I think, without a trace of embarrassment, my lips still moving with the fervor of my thoughts, Do I live here? Is this my life? Am I so lucky? See I don’t want to tell anyone. It is enough for me, too much for me, to feel this, to walk home, to take a bath, to lay on my stomach with my hand curled by my face, and to sleep.

In March I now realize that I was someone else. I can barely believe that I walked along the river and felt that it was spring, and launched into a reverie about the seasons, unable to believe that I was feeling the spring feeling, the change in the weather which I had known in my childhood and which I felt sure I had never experienced in London before. Was the weather changing or was I? I liked the rhythm of these words and I whispered them to myself as I walked. I ended up in the churchyard and I felt a contentment there which has drawn me back again and again. I like it best in the evening, when the crowds have gone, when the interior is cool and dark and unseen, and the smooth shell of the cathedral allows the air to circle and circle its perfect geometry. No one has yet realized that I haunt this place. But I will come to later what I came to know myself on a different day, which is you can never know the mind of anyone else, even if they try to tell you and you try to hear it, because what they tell you will be only what you hear, and what you hear will differ both from the telling and the teller’s hearing, as his own words play back to him, surprised, or satisfied, or ashamed. But on this day I was not having these kind of thoughts. Instead I was thinking about the dead people buried under the ground where I sat, the tombs quietly resting in the shadows of the pines under the Cathedral. What would London be without St Paul’s? What would the world be? And then I suddenly realized that people do, everyone does, I could, I was, altering the world. Even after I was dead I would be, like those dusty bones under the old ground, apparently beyond all agency, but in the world and of the world yet.

A fox wandered into the churchyard and I felt one moment of elation, bordering on fear, as I tried to orient myself to his presence. He sniffed under a tree, so light on his feet, so compact, effortlessly measuring his strength. Then he looked up at me and I did not move, but looked back at him, at the picture he made in my eye, and tried to see what picture I made in his. Then he turned and trotted away into the shadows. See that was not nothing. I might come to later what I thought it was, if I can find a way to say it without destroying it. I think I have done all right so far.

For a long time my problem was I kept talking. I kept looking at people and trying to say something to them, and the words just flooded out of me, almost against my will. I could tell even before I did it what I would do and what would happen. I would begin by releasing a soft sigh and floating my eyes above my head, or far out across the room, and then I would say something like “Sometimes I feel like something is happening to me,” or “I have been spending time in cafes.” Immediately how betrayed I felt by my own words, how ashamed, and yet I kept talking. “I wonder how long I will continue like this. Don’t you feel that sometimes?” And the people around me would shift uneasily, and answer vaguely or not at all. I would then leave shortly after, feeling completely drained, as if any shades of authenticity, of real feeling which I had been building up secretly for a few days, or a week, had been purged from my being, leaving only a shabby vessel, ruins. But along with the shame, I would also feel a kind of relief. At least they knew the truth about me, the paltry clichés which I employ to cover myself over, to keep myself going. At least we could all stop pretending about me and my life. And some time later I would recover, I would make my vow again, to keep quiet, to store it all away and use it to make something better than myself. But it always comes back to the same thing with me. You will see that I am right.

When I come home in the evenings I do not do what they do. I do not hang my coat on a peg and flip on the TV, or stumble in around midnight, after-work drinks having clouded the whole night again like ink in a glass of water. I do not do anything to forget myself. Everything I do is with the knowledge that I am still here and I will be somewhere else before anyone realises it. I may be accused of envy. It may not be believed that I enjoy preparing a meal for myself, or that choosing the hour of my bedtime still delights me as it would a child who knows the indignity of obeisance. I do not need to prove it. I decided not to walk today, but waited for the bus on Princes Street, and watched the people rush by. I could not make out what they were in such a hurry for, how so many could pass by the charming street names and curling lanes of the patchwork city, and not stop, not look, not take a moment to notice the world and their place in it. For there is no dividing line where one begins and the other ends. They are the city; it moves and changes with each intake of unconscious breath. What is the difference between this pulsing city and the limbs of a tree which seems to breathe in the wind? If we could find someway to be alert without noticing, to adopt the habit of effortless strength, ah, but who am I preaching to? When I come home I do not even take off my coat but quickly choose a record, something to drown out the sirens and the dogs outside the window. I pull it out of its sleeve and place it on the turntable, and I sink onto the couch and wait for the music to reveal itself. I have unwittingly chosen the rainy one, and I press my scarf to my face and feel something, like a tension, like I am in love, but there is no one it is directed to, so I pull it back in, and hold it, and wait for the music to build. I recognise the sparse soundscape, sombre strings holding themselves open to the little bunches of notes which fall like raindrops off wet trees, both expected and astounding in their strange timings. I like to listen to it and try to hear it as itself, a chance piece which I may pick again tomorrow, or not for several months. See, I don’t want to “know” classical music the way this is usually meant. I don’t want to take it up as another object of study, another canon to be mastered and expounded upon in certain circles to show that I am a credible member. Circles are not made of people. But music can describe them, if you listen and only hear that moment of hearing. Even if you have heard a piece a hundred times before, you can discover a new shape for the first time, where you previously thought there had only been green space. That is why I buy old classical records in charity shops in large quantities, and cover over their labels in white paper, and place them all in white sleeves. There may be the odd piece I recognise, or some familiarity my mind registers and cannot help but pipe up “Berloiz,” but I do my best to unlearn it. I don’t want anything interfering with my relation to the sound. I want to receive it as it is, so that all the structures which have been built around it melt away, as I used to, as an exercise, try to imagine Tottenham Court Road when it was just an empty turnpike filtering into farmland. I made the mistake of beginning with that, and spent many years in bitter disappointment.

I speak strongly to myself, but in reality I am just as weak as anyone. I still feel old feelings, and allow myself to rummage through the photographs I used to take. In fact my whole adolescence was propelled by the desire to record. I took photos of myself in the mirror. I recorded my room, my family, my daily life, the journey to school, the people on the street. There is one of an old man eating bread over a garbage can. The pigeons are flocked around him so that he has become an island. He appears as oblivious of them as he was to me, snatching his picture and feeling my eyes well up with my own humanity. See not his, mine. It is the same with all of the pictures. I acted like I was crafting something, but I was only crafting its appearance. I keep them to remind me.

My old journals I keep but don’t have the stomach to read. I tried last year but couldn’t get past the first page. It floods back a whole realm of self-indulgence. How I threw it all away, like my thoughts and my feelings were objects in and of themselves, like they could never be weakened. When really with each stroke of my pen I was killing them, one by one transforming my life into dead moments, frozen images, affectless scrap. I know better now. I walk down Green Lanes and I hold myself in. I feel my stomach tighten as I pass the open shops, men locked into tiny clapboard cubicles, speaking to their far-off families in a dozen languages, in a hundred stories. I see a bride in the hair salon, and a flock of adolescent girls in sleeveless satin gowns, sparkling on the pavement like a lost handful of gems, their bare necks shivering in the autumn air. See I still feel like I want to keep it, but I resist. I know that there is no way to keep it. Better to keep walking, to notice it and relish it and let it pass as one lets the wind enter a window and exit by another across the room. I see a mother and child on the common, the mother holds a ball out to him but the child is only interested in the changed world, in the way his path is covered with dead leaves which crush and crinkle under his steps. He laughs and she laughs and I feel myself turn again in a direction which stuns me.

Other times I let myself get too far. I may sit in a chair listening to what I can’t help knowing is Smetana’s Ma Vlast, a piece I have loved since before I decided to unlearn things, and which I don’t mind knowing, because his vision is so perfect. I feel sometimes that even if I was never told, I would see the same rolling hills, and curving river dipping down into dark woodlands, so clearly described by the music. I closed my eyes and asked myself if I was becoming narcissistic. And I answered myself, with some measure of indulgence, that if I was I had always been so, and that it was the most natural and beneficial way to be in relation to one’s self. So many people run from themselves. They do not take the time to love themselves and give to their own beings the way they would to anyone else. Swooning with myself, feeding on myself, there is no danger of letting me down. I push myself higher and higher. I make myself giddy. Even if I burst into tears, I hold my own head and enjoy the release, the pleasure of being comforted like a small child. There is no one who can treat me as well as I treat myself.






CHAPTER 2

Meg Connors is an illusion. I like to walk and sit and stand, and feel it coating me like an oily residue. It shimmers when I dance. I walk into the office and I feel myself shift. I am suddenly someone who really only wants a cup of coffee, who is nice because she will offer the same drink to others, who asks after weekends and families and lives she knows nothing about, people with whom she never makes actual contact, and who interact with her as if things were different from what they are.

Carolyn showed the first signs of insanity today which I have been expecting since I began work at the bank a month ago. She questioned my positioning of a staple on an inter-office memo, saying it would look neater if I had done it vertically. I smiled. I didn’t know what to say. So I said I’d put the kettle on. In the office kitchen I picked at a tray of triangular sandwiches left over from the board meeting- tuna and cucumber, cheese and tomato, egg mayonnaise. The kettle turned itself off, a self-contained unit. I tried to remember making the last cup of coffee before this one. I had not had one yet that morning, so it was at home. I imagined myself in my pajamas, bare feet and messy hair. I retreated to the image of waking. Did my alarm wake me this morning or did I wake before it, racing with it in my sleep, and winning, so to speak? Did I remember my dreams? Out of bed and the first walk to the kitchen. Did I stretch, rub my eyes? Was the kettle in its usual place by the cutlery tray, or was it left askant on the counter? Did I make real coffee or instant? I think it was real.

My journeys at this time were by tube. I saw Terry outside the tube station every day. Somewhere we began to exchange smiles. He had a surprisingly warm smile, face not frozen like the others. There was still lots of sparkle there. He would take off his woolly hat to reveal a balding head, with a few crazy black locks. He took to kissing my hand, after making a big show of wiping his mouth on his sleeve first. We rehearsed some strange play of princess and rogue. But see I can’t even think those words out without feeling sick. It was never about him.

On the underground at my end was nothing. I often saw the same people day after day, and yet seeing them only made me feel that I had witnessed some crazy loop of stock footage. Their images played in my eye for a moment, and I never thought of them again until another moment, indistinguishable, presented itself, and I felt a small nudge from time, nothing more.

I must avoid composing. Why can’t I just let things be? I try to eat my lunch like I have never seen it before. I try to resist rehearsing the making of the sandwich that morning, so I go the other way, and imagine it in my stomach, being digested, my body extracting nutrients from it. And then I am overcome by the intricate processes going on inside me, over which I can assert no authority. The sensation is familiar. When I was younger I often had to hunch over, cover my breast and scrunch up my eyes because I was haunted by the image of my own heart beating. I imagined the pink muscle pulsing continually, sickened at how it had been going for eighteen years already, never stopping to take a break, how did it do that? Even as I think this I feel it again, nausea and fear at that inexplicable pump, opening and closing like a fist full of blood.

Maybe I am kidding myself.

I have things I could talk to Silas about, if he’d let me. Silas is my neighbour. He probably doesn’t expect me to be like him. He’s an old man. But I think we could both sit and talk about some past which exists only like a black and white photo, images rehearsed and relived like dreams which have us convinced for a moment, like the powerful kind of déjà vu which seems untouched by the skipping synapse explanation I have been offered. I could tell him about how I was once dancing with my friends, had a few drinks, and felt my eyes turning funny, and we all danced and smiled, looking at each other, smiling and dancing, and I tried to say something. I said something, but the music was loud. I turned to the friend on my right and said, mumbling, and smiling too hard: “Sometimes.” I looked at the other one and started again. “Guys! Sometimes…” To both of them. “Sometimes…I think things have, hidden meanings.” And I turned and they weren’t even looking at me. It as almost too perfect the way neither of them even asked me to repeat myself, neither was paying any attention, like that too was part of it, some big plan, some infinite thing waiting, just waiting for me to say it louder, to admit it. See these are the kind of thoughts I have. And probably Silas wouldn’t understand them at all. I won’t tell anyone about it, and after all I am glad they didn’t hear me.



c. 2003
© RMT 2009

Deer

hush green creeping wind murmurs
so still but for shaking leaves
under the breeze some smell of cold.
but wait ears up green wind brush-
a little runner in the ferns
did you see him rustle by so fleeting?
come close now though and quiet
and listen to the wood,
come let me run my rough flat tongue
over your wee white spots my young.


c. 1998
© RMT 2009

The great clear-out

I am the first one to tell people how good it feels to have a clear-out. Just ask my boyfriend, a master hoarder. You might not think it if you saw all the stuff in our room- four computers, six art portfolios, a tower of shoe boxes, and assorted hardware of unknown purpose and origin, but I've actually convinced him to get rid of a lot of stuff. However, he still doesn't seem to enjoy it as much as I do. I love going through stuff and throwing stuff away, putting all my papers in order, and piling up bags for charity. But there is one area where the detritus of the past has been left unchecked, and that is my writing. So starting today, upon the advice of an old friend, I am going to launch all the old stories, poems, and fragments I've written onto my blog, where they can happily embark on existences independent of my consciousness. As Joy said of Elsa- "they were born free, and they have the right to live free!"

One patriotic expat

I still can't get over Barack Obama's stunning victory on Tuesday. It seems to me that this victory is not only the result of the presidential race. This event represents a victory over bigotry and the legacy of slavery, over right-wing conservatism, over Bush and Cheney and the neo-cons, over the empty rhetoric of nationalism, and over the thoughtless consumerism, waste, irresponsibility, and anti-intellectualism which has characterized the dominant American culture for so long. I just can't believe it. I can't believe that we have a president-elect who I agree with. After years of shouting at the screen whenever Bush or his cronies came on, I'm now just sitting there saying- yes man yes! Our next president gave the speech of a generation, and he mentioned Native Americans and gays! Unthinkable in the last decade. At last. America has signalled a will to make a change, and move into the future, at last.

I haven't been this excited about politics in a while. I mean, I always follow it, but it generally fills me with depsair. I have tried to guard against this hope, to remain on the ground, armed with my cynicism, but I, like so many others, have been completely disarmed by Barack Obama's intelligence, charm, and apparent sincerity. In fact, the more I watch him and read him, the more I believe that he is, in fact, a great man. A man who will change history and who will leave a legacy of a better America and a better world.

It sounds like I'm towing the new line some how. It sounds patriotic and standard. But I feel in a way like all those American ideals which I grew up hearing about, which I have always admired, and whose betrayal has been so painful, may be about to be rescued. For we do, like many countries, have some beautiful ideals- the most obvious being freedom, individual expression, and the rewards of hard work. The reality has gone so far astray, but people still want to believe them, and they still want to get there. At last, it seems like we are waking up from a nightmare to build the American Dream again. Perhaps it all sounds like sentimental garbage. Perhaps it's just the residue of my cultural indoctrination. But Barack Obama has inspired a new sense of hope in so many of us, and why should we be ashamed of it? Why should we adopt some post-modern malaise because we're embarrassed about sincere feelings? I'm not. I'm going to study Romanticism after all, and I freely confess that I have utterly fallen for my new president.

Amid this excitement and hope, I still know it's not going to be easy. It's not going to be perfect. It might take a long time, many things might never happen. But the symbolic turn in a new direction, by a new generation, fills me with more hope and pride in my country than I've felt in a long time. So many people voted! So many Americans decided to take back their country. It would have been nice if they had done it after four years instead of eight, but hey- the important thing is that they have finally woken up. I really believe that Obama can make a change, or more aptly, that he can inspire the American people to make a change. In fact, his victory shows that he already has.