The awareness of the clouds wheeling above the city brings to mind other streets and other skies, ones that I've walked among and nearly forgotten, or else ones that I know only through old songs and favorite books, yet which are so familiar and therefore so real that it takes a moment to remember that I I've borrowed the memory of them from someone else.
These are the days when I like nothing more than to be by myself, to watch television and smoke cigarettes and drink tea and read books. Forget housework and taxes and office deadlines, I just want to sit on the couch and listen to the radio and edit a few photos before making a late breakfast.
Today, though, is Monday, and those options were unavailable to me. I had a morning meeting in Dundalk, where the men are squat and stoop-shouldered, with close-cropped white hair peeking out from under meshback baseball caps emblazoned with military insignia; or else they're rangy and blond, with ruddy cheeks and rough hands and a drawn, haunted, belligerent wariness in and around their eyes.
My car is increasingly becoming a source of anxiety. The wiper blades need changing, so all they did was smear the oily drizzle all over the windshield. The oil needs to be replaced. The brakes are spongy. When the window is down I can hear a high rattle, probably a timing belt or something equally expensive. I have no money for repairs, so I'm trying not to drive anywhere far away, which is one of the reasons I didn't go to Massachusetts a couple of weeks ago.
April 15 is fast approaching and I haven't done the taxes, mostly because I'm worried that I'm going to owe the government money, rather than the other way around. I need new shoes, new shirts, new trousers, new sportcoats. I feel threadbare and lumpy. At my job, I'm doing the work of three people; I had to come into the office both Saturday and Sunday, and I still got e-mails from people demanding to know why they haven't received what they are expecting from me.
And there is the ongoing death of my marriage. We've been separated now for over seven months, the divorce becomes final in just a couple of weeks, each of us has found another partner, and yet those mooring lines, though frayed beyond repair, refuse to give way entirely, which would allow the boat to drift safely away from the pier. It's like a loved one with a terminal illness whom you never wanted to see die, but it's progressed to the point where death would be welcome, and yet he keeps hanging on, the organism clinging to life.
I know that relationships as deep and longstanding as ours was never really go away. Even so, I harbor this hope that once everything is done, once the lines are finally snapped, once that boat gets taken by the current at last, that it will be easier. That the memories won't be such constant companions. That each of us will be free to create new memories, find new anchorages and new berths.
So the rain continues, and I bounce from meeting to meeting and I wince at the amount of unanswered e-mail on my screen, silently chiding me for my lack of response. And I miss the one I love, and I feel alone.
And yet. I'm helping to plan a surprise shower for two friends who are getting married, thanks to Washington D.C.'s recent acceptance of marriage license applications from same-sex couples. And yet I met good friends this past weekend for a night of gonzo burlesque. And yet this evening my coworker and I attended a reception celebrating artwork by young people in Baltimore's criminal justice system, boys who found support and understanding and possibilities in the midst of hopelessness and trauma. And yet I am surrounded by love and friendship. And yet there are spring flowers blooming amid the plastic shopping bags and soda cans and cigarette butts along Greenmount Avenue. And yet the scent of the high, wheeling clouds overhead, brisk and surprising, calls me to other times in other places under other skies.
0 comments:
Post a Comment