We Reach

I wondered, what to say. An aloof sadness like the shadows in a diChirico painting framed my very existence, down to the core. Rife with beauty though, it was a sadness like the autumn after a summer of hard won decisions and there's change, staring you right in the face. Like finally knowing, maybe, what to do.

I will be the loudest to tell you that it is far worse, friends, to never know what you want, than it is to know and to have failed.

Three lives that at their core are not so very different. I don't know how to tell you that I wanted that house of the three of us, more than anything, and knowing that it would most likely exist only in our minds made it more beautiful than the last breaths of Sunday afternoon when the breath of Monday morning caresses the hairs on the back of you neck. Isn't it funny that we have our entire lives to try something marvelous? And most of the time I am so tightly wound inside my idea of who I am, and I have the hardest time telling either of you anything that is real, aside from that which doesn't really have to do with me. So it comes out in paintings.

of all days, 43 had the tetons.

How do you ascribe meaning to a life? This is not an open-ended question, it is an invitation for a treatise, it is a call for examination. All my life I have been chasing for the thing that will finally elucidate that elusive thing that is my reason for being. I ran last night, and I thought about the painting that I had just finished, the one of the giant head of a Roman sculpture. And I thought about the meditations, and I thought about my job and the test on March 8th, and I thought about what mark I might possibly be making on the world, and then I thought

how silly a thing

when the world is as giant as it is, and I am as small within it as I am. Perhaps my problem lies in having too large a scope. And I thought about my painting again, and how I feel that I get the most out of each moment, and really....

how do you ascribe meaning to a life? It is a personal query, full of crags and traps and spiders, but the answer (I think) is really quite simple. "He was loved by all he knew, and had a quick mind, and never had a dull moment." And the bagpipes play on. What more is there to possibly say?

For My Valentine

I started crying. I opened the car door after the most trying of days and there he was, that smile, and Tim Armstrong singing our anthem. A mile down the road and he looked over and my clandestine weakness was laid asunder but I couldn't reply to his "what's wrong," more than with an "I don't want to go to the bank anymore, let's just go home." I just started crying and I didn't know why until ten hours later.

I had taken a bath and drank too much red wine and garnered some strength from the Meditations, and thought the plight of the day to be behind me until I laid down to sleep. "Tomorrow," I thought, "I have to go back." I pictured the face of the new secretary looking at me the way she does. She knows that I loathe her, or anyway, the look she gives me intimates that she knows that I loathe her. I can't hide, in my return gaze, the fact that I can't stand her inability to come to work on time, her shitty attitude with the kids, her sorority girl way of life. Usually I blame Dad for my indefatigable sense of justice. It is rarely quenched and unless those scales are perfectly balanced I am Porcelina with a pea under the very bottom mattress. She used to try to win me over but her irritating over-niceness has given way to a constant attempt to prove herself more competent than me. It's depressing because it never works. It's depressing because it exists at all.

I have to go back. At that moment I was gripped with a fever-like paranoia. "There is nowhere that I fit!" The thought rolled over and over in my mind until I couldn't take it any longer. I got out of bed and opened the living room door. "Will you crawl into bed with me for a little while?"

Head on chest. I hate that I try to hide the fact that I'm crying. "What is it?" He was running his hands through my hair.

"We had this staff meeting after work today. They had brought in two people to administer this 'personality' test; it was supposed to be a fun activity, something that would help us learn more about ourselves. I've heard from more than one person that the new Superintendent is using this test to figure out how best to approach and negotiate with each of us." My breathing was choppy and his chest was soaked. "You are assigned one of four colors based on how you respond to the different parts of the test. Four colors! How can anyone possibly believe that, out of the entire range of human reactions, emotions, and personalities, an individual can be winnowed down to one of four possibilities?!

Everyone thought it was this great game, they were laughing and answering the questions and eagerly awaiting the outcome of the test so they'd know which color they were. I felt trapped. It suddenly struck me that no matter what I decide to do with my life, I will always have to interact with people who believe in this kind of thing. There is no escaping it. The moment I had this realization I felt more depressed than I have ever felt before. There is no place for me to fit."

He just held me tighter and after a few minutes, when my breathing had settled down, he said,

"You fit right here."

And it suddenly dawned on me that really, life is no bigger than a 6' x 6' square. I fell asleep like that, puffy-eyed and wheezing, held securely by those strong arms, and I thought about how improbable this course of events that has brought me here. How sacred and blessed and improbable, and how lucky I am despite the labels that I would try to pin on my life. Somehow, I think, we Jindras have this Russian penchant to struggle only for the future, and to neglect the simple beauty of here and now.

You do not have to be good. You have only to let the soft animal of your body love what it does...

Of All The Days

He kept looking over, and I wanted to hide. I wanted to die. Take me out of this situation. Don't even let me think it.

"Look at his stupid mad face, he's so ugly."

She laughed and I laughed, and he looked over again, and I thought about the eight thousand universes that exist between what we could be and what we have chosen to be. I told myself that I only went so that I could give the girls their scholarship letters since it had to be postmarked by tomorrow. In my heart I knew why I was really standing on the varnished court floor, Friday night, hands in pockets. Another look over and the eyes dart away.

I must remember my own advice. I gave him his check on Thursday as he passed by to go into the gym and he barely even made eye contact then, my hand brushed his and a "ohthankyou" managed to escape and I thought, how dorky of a voice for one so intimidating. He came out five minutes later for the first of several drinks of water from the fountain. My own advice; so fleeting a thing when that hand is brushing against mine.

"Zeus, rain down on the land and the fields of Athens."