Ok, so I'd love to say that my many-month absence has been tied into my inability to change the language settings on my Gmail account. I'd love to say that it's because I've been traveling. Or because I've found a new job.
All of these things are true. But they're not correct.
There's no good reason for me to neglect this space except one: I didn't know where to go. What on earth do you say while you grieve? "Hello, everyone... here's a post about how I'm still grieving..."
No. And I also felt the need not to write anything silly. Like how I don't really know what "business smart" means, as a dress code. How the centrifuge at the laundromat shredded my only appropriate pair of pants...
But tonight, I think I've isolated something that is both past and future. In as much as I want to think about either of those things.
I've been reading Nicola Griffith, lately. The most recent of her Aud Torvingen series. Let's nevermind the fact that I think of Aud as--that, in fact, she is-- a superhero. Let's not discuss how passionately I want her to simply occupy my couch; to feel her spring-coiled power, to look at the gorgeous expanse of her legs in my living room. No, that's all just good writing.
What I'm interested in is how deftly this novel explores the concept of fear. Fear in every tense.
My girlfriend and I don't, generally, discuss certain feelings. We don't much "process." We don't really know how to, not with each other. It's a strange state, actually. One that forces me to be far less verbal, and entirely more present. It's important that she gets my message right from the beginning; it's vital that I understand hers.
But tonight, somehow fear came out. The way we anticipate it, the way we hurt over what is simply a message. The way we worry it into a great monster. And my girlfriend--my weathervane and my lee--named her fear for me.
It's so simple in its brutality. I can comfort, I can soothe. I can open myself up and say, "Here I am. I'm just like you." But I cannot protect. It is not only me who has lost. Who is grieving. And who, again, will lose.
There is always a monster bigger than you.
November 6, 2010
May 22, 2010
What I Meant
Well, I haven't posted much. Clearly. Of course, those of you who know me probably don't expect much, anyway. And I guess I appreciate that.
The truth is, I have written. I've written three or four different posts. Most deleted because they're, really, not what I want to say. Always, there is the line from Prufrock: That's not what I meant, at all.
But writing goes the way of living; very often, what comes out is a great surprise. I sit down to do one thing, and, somehow, I create another. So, to circumvent any need for poetry, I will make a list (my writer-friend Jill has illustrated the succinct power of the list) of all that is with me.
1. I miss my brother.
2. I am giving myself license. To miss him and to be self-destructive.
3. Self-destruction is less dramatic, as I get older.
4. I need. I have an intense need--the kind which is there in all of us, all the time.
5. Loss makes this need a sad hunger. Insatiable.
6. History has taught me: this will become a longing. And then a simple hurt. And then a fact.
7. The fact is that I could not save him. I could not, maybe, ever have saved him.
Also, there is this: I'm back in Copenhagen, with what was waiting for me. Regular life. Normal life. Easy to be here, without him. It's a guilty ease. But also, I am immobilized. And I'm not particularly self-motivated, as a rule.
So, again, this is not what I want to say. Or even what I meant. What I meant is his smile and hopeful voice: Hey, big sister... It is a person, flesh and bone. Living, hands and blood.
But I do understand, now, that words are the only thing I can do. And I understand, now, that these symbols are an adequate illustration for loss. Because they are essentially a removal. Sorry little place keepers for the thing itself.
The truth is, I have written. I've written three or four different posts. Most deleted because they're, really, not what I want to say. Always, there is the line from Prufrock: That's not what I meant, at all.
But writing goes the way of living; very often, what comes out is a great surprise. I sit down to do one thing, and, somehow, I create another. So, to circumvent any need for poetry, I will make a list (my writer-friend Jill has illustrated the succinct power of the list) of all that is with me.
1. I miss my brother.
2. I am giving myself license. To miss him and to be self-destructive.
3. Self-destruction is less dramatic, as I get older.
4. I need. I have an intense need--the kind which is there in all of us, all the time.
5. Loss makes this need a sad hunger. Insatiable.
6. History has taught me: this will become a longing. And then a simple hurt. And then a fact.
7. The fact is that I could not save him. I could not, maybe, ever have saved him.
Also, there is this: I'm back in Copenhagen, with what was waiting for me. Regular life. Normal life. Easy to be here, without him. It's a guilty ease. But also, I am immobilized. And I'm not particularly self-motivated, as a rule.
So, again, this is not what I want to say. Or even what I meant. What I meant is his smile and hopeful voice: Hey, big sister... It is a person, flesh and bone. Living, hands and blood.
But I do understand, now, that words are the only thing I can do. And I understand, now, that these symbols are an adequate illustration for loss. Because they are essentially a removal. Sorry little place keepers for the thing itself.
May 13, 2010
Things
Of course, it doesn't make sense. There is no sense in it.
If this were someone else’s thing, their life, there’s little doubt it might have gone this way. There’s little doubt that the twenty-five year old boy would have succumbed to all the demons he’d met.
How fitting would have been that funeral, then. How easily canonized the pretty day, the hand-in-hand walk from the grave back to the church.
I process all of these things, now. They are all a part of this, and yet still wrong. Grief delivers all things wrong, to me. It makes an uncommon family phone call portentous; it turns the crystal around my neck into a life vest.
In short, I feel the need to ward off everything. I feel myself descending to a place where life is a warning, a line cobbled in stone, a last breath.
The ordinary fact of it is that I ache for my father. A hurt I can’t believe. I ache for me, and for all of us. All of us who had this boy—this magnificent boy—as our care. We could have done better, I have thought. Because somewhere, there’s an outcome—a purely rational outcome, I think. A boy who didn’t die.
Reality, however, is where we all fail. It’s where we grieve and suffer until our throats go numb. It’s where we find how much we loved, are loved; qualifiers so often measured not in major events, but in moments. And in things.
I gave my brother two items of note in the last few years. One, a framed picture: I held him, a child sleeping in a rocking chair. The other was a modest silver cross I’d found in our mother’s jewelry box. I was, for some silly and perhaps not-silly reasons, convinced that it protected me. And I’d told him to wear it.
Objects. Baseballs, and trophies, a worn leather belt. T-shirts and wallets. Just little remainders. These are what I have, what I keep. But, still, they work like amulets. They feel like some kind of power.
Funny thing, though, is the power that we are. That thing that is living, alive and unbroken. I can hold this baseball—I can wear these jeans, this sad little scarf—and I will. But these are nothing so much as an afterthought. A longing.
The day my brother died, there were two things of consequence on his nightstand. One, the picture—an almost blurry, candid shot of his sister holding him in a rocking chair. The other, a tarnished silver cross.
If this were someone else’s thing, their life, there’s little doubt it might have gone this way. There’s little doubt that the twenty-five year old boy would have succumbed to all the demons he’d met.
How fitting would have been that funeral, then. How easily canonized the pretty day, the hand-in-hand walk from the grave back to the church.
I process all of these things, now. They are all a part of this, and yet still wrong. Grief delivers all things wrong, to me. It makes an uncommon family phone call portentous; it turns the crystal around my neck into a life vest.
In short, I feel the need to ward off everything. I feel myself descending to a place where life is a warning, a line cobbled in stone, a last breath.
The ordinary fact of it is that I ache for my father. A hurt I can’t believe. I ache for me, and for all of us. All of us who had this boy—this magnificent boy—as our care. We could have done better, I have thought. Because somewhere, there’s an outcome—a purely rational outcome, I think. A boy who didn’t die.
Reality, however, is where we all fail. It’s where we grieve and suffer until our throats go numb. It’s where we find how much we loved, are loved; qualifiers so often measured not in major events, but in moments. And in things.
I gave my brother two items of note in the last few years. One, a framed picture: I held him, a child sleeping in a rocking chair. The other was a modest silver cross I’d found in our mother’s jewelry box. I was, for some silly and perhaps not-silly reasons, convinced that it protected me. And I’d told him to wear it.
Objects. Baseballs, and trophies, a worn leather belt. T-shirts and wallets. Just little remainders. These are what I have, what I keep. But, still, they work like amulets. They feel like some kind of power.
Funny thing, though, is the power that we are. That thing that is living, alive and unbroken. I can hold this baseball—I can wear these jeans, this sad little scarf—and I will. But these are nothing so much as an afterthought. A longing.
The day my brother died, there were two things of consequence on his nightstand. One, the picture—an almost blurry, candid shot of his sister holding him in a rocking chair. The other, a tarnished silver cross.
February 26, 2010
Happy Birthday, Mangopants
We almost didn't get her. Wait, we said. Don't just get the first shelter dog you see... not just because she is a happy, goofy, beautiful dog who stole your heart. Be practical, we thought. Sleep on it.
I went back the next day because, of course we wanted her, loved her already. I went right to her cage, ready to liberate her from the hot, stinky captivity. But she wasn't there. She was being held for someone else.
So I drove home, thinking about how Maricris--who'd never been much of a pet person--had fallen in love with this silly yellow dog. I drove back.
It turns out, the family never came. And so we had a dog, a dog who loved to run and jump and chase... everything. A dog who was a little nippy, sure, but who came when you called her. A dog with stinky feet and silky soft fur... a dog named--most improbably--"Shelly."
It seemed pretty obvious to us that she was a Mango, though. That was July 28, 2006.
Today, Mango is being fostered by Maricris's brother, a veterinary resident in Texas. And she is as happy and healthy as a young dog with hip dysplasia and a bulging disc can be. If she plays too hard, she is often in pain, which is sometimes debilitating. And maybe, just maybe a complicated back surgery will make it all better.
How do you decide? How do you make a decision for a being with no knowledge of her condition, no voice of her own? The surgery could leave her paralyzed. Doing nothing might end the same.
How on earth do you decide?
February 15, 2010
Olympic Hopeful
The other night I attended a little get-together at the Niels Bohr Dark Cosmology Center--known professionally and affectionately as simply "Dark." (I have no credentials for this, or even the remotest idea of what people do in "Dark," but somehow I manage to talk my way into these things.)
Anyway, at Dark I pretty much held my own with science people in serious conversations such as this:
Me: "So, do you know if there'll be any Danish coverage for the Olympics?"
Science Person: "Who cares? It's just the Winter Olympics."
Me: "But the Winter Olympics are awesome!"
Science Person: "No one watches the Winter Olympics."
Me (disliking Science Person, who eats pistachios and refuses to look at me): "Where are you from?"
Science Person: "Athens." (And then, as if I clearly wouldn't know) "Greece."
Me: "Oh, ha ha. I didn't realize I was speaking with an Olympic expert."
Athenian Science Person: *much self-satisfied pistachio eating*
So the rumor is confirmed. I have it from a Doctor (probably) of Science Stuff. And not just normal Science Stuff, but Space Science Stuff. The Winter Olympics is dead. And anyone who's anyone from a hot climate knows it. Except for me.
I freaking love the Winter Olympics. And, I don't care what people know, science or otherwise: I love it way more than the Summer Olympics. You know why? Because I've never done any of it.
Oh, you can swim? Awesome, great. You can ride a bike? Me too! You can run, fling a rock across a field? I've been doing that since I was three.
Eh, fine: I'm not an athlete. I'm not even athletic. And I am profoundly in awe of anyone who is, regardless of the season. When I run, I do it because I must. In tennis shoes. While someone chases me. But I don't ever, ever do it on a sheet of ice with razor blades attached to my feet.
I have a reverence for snow that can only be defined as childlike. A frozen puddle, icicles off the roof--these things send me to near giddiness. When I watch the Winter Olympics, I reflect not only on the dedication of the athletes, but also on the sheer joy they must have known once, when they first fit their feet into skates, into skis, and glided across and over winter's quiet places. It's a glimpse of snowmen through the trees, of frozen crystals on the window pane.
Maybe this is the fantasy of a someone who grew up with hot sandy beaches at her door step, the romance of a girl who imagined moguls instead of waves. But I have always loved the smell of ice over salt. For it, I would have suffered scarves and snowsuits gladly.
In a few weeks, I will be in Norway. On skis and hopefully on my feet in a little village called Lillehammer. If that name sounds familiar to you, it should. I can't tell you how stoked I am to learn on slopes first known by some of the world's greatest athletes--for the awe and the joy of it--as the Olympics.
And I'm pretty sure I'm going to break something. This is about as cool as it gets.
_
Anyway, at Dark I pretty much held my own with science people in serious conversations such as this:
Me: "So, do you know if there'll be any Danish coverage for the Olympics?"
Science Person: "Who cares? It's just the Winter Olympics."
Me: "But the Winter Olympics are awesome!"
Science Person: "No one watches the Winter Olympics."
Me (disliking Science Person, who eats pistachios and refuses to look at me): "Where are you from?"
Science Person: "Athens." (And then, as if I clearly wouldn't know) "Greece."
Me: "Oh, ha ha. I didn't realize I was speaking with an Olympic expert."
Athenian Science Person: *much self-satisfied pistachio eating*
So the rumor is confirmed. I have it from a Doctor (probably) of Science Stuff. And not just normal Science Stuff, but Space Science Stuff. The Winter Olympics is dead. And anyone who's anyone from a hot climate knows it. Except for me.
I freaking love the Winter Olympics. And, I don't care what people know, science or otherwise: I love it way more than the Summer Olympics. You know why? Because I've never done any of it.
Oh, you can swim? Awesome, great. You can ride a bike? Me too! You can run, fling a rock across a field? I've been doing that since I was three.
Eh, fine: I'm not an athlete. I'm not even athletic. And I am profoundly in awe of anyone who is, regardless of the season. When I run, I do it because I must. In tennis shoes. While someone chases me. But I don't ever, ever do it on a sheet of ice with razor blades attached to my feet.
I have a reverence for snow that can only be defined as childlike. A frozen puddle, icicles off the roof--these things send me to near giddiness. When I watch the Winter Olympics, I reflect not only on the dedication of the athletes, but also on the sheer joy they must have known once, when they first fit their feet into skates, into skis, and glided across and over winter's quiet places. It's a glimpse of snowmen through the trees, of frozen crystals on the window pane.
Maybe this is the fantasy of a someone who grew up with hot sandy beaches at her door step, the romance of a girl who imagined moguls instead of waves. But I have always loved the smell of ice over salt. For it, I would have suffered scarves and snowsuits gladly.
In a few weeks, I will be in Norway. On skis and hopefully on my feet in a little village called Lillehammer. If that name sounds familiar to you, it should. I can't tell you how stoked I am to learn on slopes first known by some of the world's greatest athletes--for the awe and the joy of it--as the Olympics.
And I'm pretty sure I'm going to break something. This is about as cool as it gets.
_
February 9, 2010
Language Barrier
So I started my Danish language class tonight. Intensive lessons. The pretty blonde woman who interviewed me said that, if I apply myself, I'll be fluent by the end of the year. Fluent. In Danish. A language spoken by like .008 percent of the world population.
(I'm going to stop bitching about that. Really. Would it be nice to learn French or Spanish instead? Sure. Will that help me living in Denmark? Not even a little bit.)
The class is free. And, at the moment, I have nothing better to do. So, tonight I shlepped myself over the icy sidewalks, through the immigrant and working-class neighborhood to my own little culture club. Of the ten students, I am the only native English speaker. This, I think, gives me a leg up as the lessons are initially in English.
But then I realize this means I am also the only monolingual student. That I speak only one language is something that separates me from literally every single person I know in Denmark. How lame.
At home, I know only a tiny handful of people who speak another language. One of these people is my girlfriend. They all grew up somewhere else, of course. Middle class, public school Americans don't do languages.
But I am. I'm going to learn Danish--glottal stops and 87 vowel sounds be damned. I'm going to read Hans Christian Andersen in the original, and when you come to visit, I will wow you with my ability to order from the sausage wagon.
Until the sausage guy realizes I'm not Danish. And immediately switches to English. Because everyone here speaks English. Perfectly.
(I'm going to stop bitching about that. Really. Would it be nice to learn French or Spanish instead? Sure. Will that help me living in Denmark? Not even a little bit.)
The class is free. And, at the moment, I have nothing better to do. So, tonight I shlepped myself over the icy sidewalks, through the immigrant and working-class neighborhood to my own little culture club. Of the ten students, I am the only native English speaker. This, I think, gives me a leg up as the lessons are initially in English.
But then I realize this means I am also the only monolingual student. That I speak only one language is something that separates me from literally every single person I know in Denmark. How lame.
At home, I know only a tiny handful of people who speak another language. One of these people is my girlfriend. They all grew up somewhere else, of course. Middle class, public school Americans don't do languages.
But I am. I'm going to learn Danish--glottal stops and 87 vowel sounds be damned. I'm going to read Hans Christian Andersen in the original, and when you come to visit, I will wow you with my ability to order from the sausage wagon.
Until the sausage guy realizes I'm not Danish. And immediately switches to English. Because everyone here speaks English. Perfectly.
January 26, 2010
January 22
I got my only tattoo when I was 18. I was in Boston for the first time, celebrating New Year's Eve in the North End. It was crazy cold, and we were crazy drunk. Liz, my amazonian friend--who would one day wear bright red dreadlocks and become incapacitated by my gravity bong--convinced me that this was a good idea. A tattoo. She knew what she wanted, was going the next day to get it. Would I come?
So there we were on the northern border of Massachusetts, just far enough into New Hampshire to get legally inked. I picked a design off the wall. It felt like a bee stinging. We walked through the snow giggling, back to a car that would leave us stranded for six hours.
The beginning and the end. That's what I chose. A chinese character in black on the back of my neck. One symbol, two words, everything included.
What I liked about the idea of a tattoo was that it could be an outward sign of inner hurt. I have a four-inch scar on my arm to remind me that I climbed a barbed wire fence. I have dents in my mouth where they took my wisdom teeth. I didn't have anything to mark the day my mother left.
For a long time, I drank margaritas on her birthday. For years I took the day off, the day she died, to ride horses. Because that's what she loved to do. But I've long since stopped celebrating her birthday. And this year, I forgot the day she died.
We had fondue with friends, went to a movie. We came home and drank and listened to classical music. Because that's what we love to do.
When I put my fingers to it, I can feel the faintest rise of the beginning and end on my neck. "They cancel each other out," I used to say. Cancel each other out, as in zero. As in a blank page. Grief can be such a selfish thing that forgetting feels like a triumph. Just another day.
So there we were on the northern border of Massachusetts, just far enough into New Hampshire to get legally inked. I picked a design off the wall. It felt like a bee stinging. We walked through the snow giggling, back to a car that would leave us stranded for six hours.
The beginning and the end. That's what I chose. A chinese character in black on the back of my neck. One symbol, two words, everything included.
What I liked about the idea of a tattoo was that it could be an outward sign of inner hurt. I have a four-inch scar on my arm to remind me that I climbed a barbed wire fence. I have dents in my mouth where they took my wisdom teeth. I didn't have anything to mark the day my mother left.
For a long time, I drank margaritas on her birthday. For years I took the day off, the day she died, to ride horses. Because that's what she loved to do. But I've long since stopped celebrating her birthday. And this year, I forgot the day she died.
We had fondue with friends, went to a movie. We came home and drank and listened to classical music. Because that's what we love to do.
When I put my fingers to it, I can feel the faintest rise of the beginning and end on my neck. "They cancel each other out," I used to say. Cancel each other out, as in zero. As in a blank page. Grief can be such a selfish thing that forgetting feels like a triumph. Just another day.
January 14, 2010
Homecoming
I don't think of Denmark as home. The same way I didn't think of my college town as home, or Boston in the year that I lived there.
But after three weeks away, there was a sense of relief coming back here. Settling. Like an old house. It feels good to settle, to hunker down. I feel, if not at home, more and more entrenched here. I have a residency permit, now. Official permission to reside. They will (hopefully) heal me if I am sick; they will (attempt to) teach me their language. Doors are opening. And like a benevolent, but slightly weary, parent, Denmark is telling me to get a job. Socialism doesn't grow on trees, you know.
But, the impending slog that is jobseeking aside, I am happy to be here. Content, at least, because here there are a lot of very kind people, people I like very much, and in whom I have very little invested. There is no one here whose happiness I agonize about. There is no one here who agonizes over mine.
Release. The burden of love is often too great to shoulder. And I realize that this is rather like a gorgeous women complaining that no one asks for her opinion, but honestly, I need this detachment. I craved it. Distance dulls the pain of the hurts at home; allows me to throw up my hands and say, however little I may have done there, "Well, there's nothing I can do from here."
Peace. The way you can believe peace is possible if you live in Topeka, Kansas rather than, say, Kabul. A very selfish peace. When in doubt, we take the next small step. I need to go to the post office. Practice yoga. Take a walk in the sun.
But after three weeks away, there was a sense of relief coming back here. Settling. Like an old house. It feels good to settle, to hunker down. I feel, if not at home, more and more entrenched here. I have a residency permit, now. Official permission to reside. They will (hopefully) heal me if I am sick; they will (attempt to) teach me their language. Doors are opening. And like a benevolent, but slightly weary, parent, Denmark is telling me to get a job. Socialism doesn't grow on trees, you know.
But, the impending slog that is jobseeking aside, I am happy to be here. Content, at least, because here there are a lot of very kind people, people I like very much, and in whom I have very little invested. There is no one here whose happiness I agonize about. There is no one here who agonizes over mine.
Release. The burden of love is often too great to shoulder. And I realize that this is rather like a gorgeous women complaining that no one asks for her opinion, but honestly, I need this detachment. I craved it. Distance dulls the pain of the hurts at home; allows me to throw up my hands and say, however little I may have done there, "Well, there's nothing I can do from here."
Peace. The way you can believe peace is possible if you live in Topeka, Kansas rather than, say, Kabul. A very selfish peace. When in doubt, we take the next small step. I need to go to the post office. Practice yoga. Take a walk in the sun.
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