She was bad at love. She loved too hard.
Tag: writing
She was one of those people who are irrevocably, incurably honest and therefore both inflexible and vulnerable at the same time.
Sometimes words aren’t enough.
If you have ever lost someone very important to you, then you already know how it feels, and if you haven’t, you cannot possibly imagine it.
The main thing is, pay attention. Pay close attention to everything, everything you see. Notice what no one else notices, and you’ll know what no one else knows. What you get is what you get. What you do with what you get, that’s more the point.
I kissed her until there was more happiness inside me than sadness.
Think of the first time you slept with someone, or the first time you fell in love: that blinding explosion that left you crackling to the fingertips with electricity, initiated and transformed. I tell you that was nothing, nothing at all, beside the power of putting your lives, simply and daily, into each other’s hands.
The Ineffectiveness of Transformation
And so,
I must transform my addiction,
Transfuse my heart’s beat
To give words life.
You will not take my love.
And so,
Your intent transforms your words,
Searing your mind’s will
Into my life.
I will not withhold my love.
And so,
Our ways transform each other,
Smiting our egos’ brazenness
Within reality.
We will not bend or break.
Can we return to that Fantasia:
To that world between worlds,
Where everything exists?
To that place of lingering embraces,
To that place of almost-perfect kisses,
To the moments nearly lost in time?
Can we return to Wabi-Sabi
To be
Just you and me?
I still give you everything you ask,
Everything your heart desires
Comes so naturally.
I am still yours…
And in my heart,
You are still mine.
Call Me Intensity
I am officially “That Crazy Girl,” “That Obsessive Girl,” “That Girl Who Will Not Let Go.”
Everyone’s heard of me: My boyfriend breaks up with me; I stalk him, I cannot let go of my grief, cannot let go of my love for him, cannot move on. I cry and write love poems in my head that never see the light of day; write letters never sent. I take photos for him, pour for long, long moments over whether or not to post them to him on Instagram. I peek into his Facebook page and Twitter profile, searching for any small glimpse of him and his life, every joy of his another crushing pain; I miss him excruciatingly. I become wildly and irrationally jealous – despite myself, unlike myself! – cruelly self-abasing, angry, destructive because I just cannot understand how he would leave – because I cannot allow myself to let go of what I feel for him.
I become the worst that I am, the best that I am in maddening fits of fear and loss, because I cannot be what I cannot be: I am in love, and love is maddening when spent alone, a relationship of one will tear that One in two.
My love, and everything that was once kind and beautiful and sweet between us destroys me, destroys us, because I cannot deal with this pain.
Because I cannot trust him; and I seek to kill the last of the trust he has for me; I would kill all trust that exists, ever, that he become as desperate as I for another way.
My sanity in my own sanity drives me so intensely that I would make myself mad with pain and grief just to hunt down the center of this pain in me, this problem that has caused him to leave, to somehow existentially understand and come to a resolution, to take responsibility for both of us, so I can let him leave. So I can know who I am and why this soul-crushing pain eats away at me.
So I can find some peace.
I am the one who goes deeper than anyone, who hunts in my darkest places for the sources of my trials and tribulations. Who, as a storyteller, will make up all kinds of stories, just to kill in myself whatever emotions drive me.
Just so he’ll come back to me, embrace me, love me. Remember me. Remember us. Remind me of what love is, what life is.
So, where is this going? How do we get over love, or loss of love?
The answer is: We don’t.
We keep loving. Despite the pain. Despite the misunderstanding. Despite everything.
Find that one thing that keeps you alive – and, if you can’t find what used to keep you alive, keep hunting. Something, something will drive you. Something will keep you alive, long enough to come back to yourself.
Cry. Create. Breathe. Meditate. Go to the ocean. Laugh. Talk it out. Go numb. Work. Scream. Go mad. Do anything.
SAY ANYTHING.
You’ll find your peace, when you’re done aching. When you’ve come to terms with the aching, burning, the questioning.
And, in that peace, you’ll find that you still love. Even if you’re angry. Even if you still miss him or her. Even if all hell breaks loose around you.
Chances are… you’ll have found out more about yourself, too. Because, no matter what else it does…
Love grows.
Is It Better to Have Loved and Lost?
It is, perhaps, possible to love too much, I am told.
I have experienced several sides: loving so much I was consumed, crazed; loving so much that others felt they were drowning in me. Loving so much that others worried severely for my sanity, for my health, for me – because I did not care about anything but loving.
In books and poems and movies and music and religion, we discuss the ideal of loving others more than ourselves, about not being able to love others more than we love ourselves, about passion being all-consuming, about poets who were so moved by their passions that they committed suicide, about love driving people mad. We talk about all the minor, insignificant beauties of love, of falling in love, of being in love.
So often, we come back to love.
For me, it is the only thing.
I know the thought is enough to drive anyone mad. In truth, it drives me mad: to try to conceive, to try to grasp, to try to understand – and, sometimes, to try to express, to communicate in its simplicity and depths, in all of its varieties. And yet: it is true; it is the greatest truth in me, the driving force for everything I do, for every emotion and for every peace. It is so great that it seems not to have anything to do with anyone – even as it embraces, deeply, everyone and everything.
It is a driving instinct, integrated into everyone and into everything we think and do, into every motive we have for others, for ourselves – it is self-preservation in the extreme: to mend and maintain our hearts, our minds, and others; to mold them, meld with them so we can love them more.
We struggle and work to communicate our love to our parents, to our friends, to each other – through the tasks we do, through our affections, through our words; and that which is our greatest strength so often shields us, plays against us…
…Or, at least, I find my strengths play often against me with painful, hellacious results.
My love consumes me, and I would do anything – anything – to defend my feeling, my understanding…
But, does the love change?
My recent ex-boyfriend showed me it does not, no matter the depth or greatness, no matter the shallowness nor distance of understanding, no matter the number of people. The heart remains the same, even if he is on the other side of the world from me, even if we are broken up (literally: broken up emotionally, mentally, spiritually) over the loss – or supposed loss – of each other.
The heart remains the same.
We are not together, but we are not apart.
This is the way of love: it is a paradox, it is magic. It makes things happen that could never happen: mad catastrophes based on minutiae of misunderstandings; fierce, productive energy towards a common goal; great chasms of distance and time made bearable and infinitesimally closer by the acceptance and embrace of one’s and another’s love.
It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all – because, in the wake of love, even if there was loss or even monumental destruction, so long as we still love, there will come learning, there will grow something new, there is the appreciation for something old, there is the reincarnation and resurrection of what was true.
We poets and authors and artists of love who would embrace all of reality, all of humanity, who would be consumed by our love and by the love of others – even to our destruction – we are the conscious voices of this insane, sometimes mad, oft-perfect desire to understand, to speak the depths and heights and vastness of love. We embrace the pendulum-swings of our existence, the to’s-and-fro’s across the chasm of space-and-time; are capable of sitting mesmerizedly still for hours in excited study of a single flower, of a lover’s eyes, of the perfectly curved line of his gaunt cheek. We are the ones who do not forget, whose love etches deeply and timelessly and methodically as into tall mountains or into tiny grains of sand; who sit for hours, contemplating, waiting, fed by nothing but our love.
It is hard to understand, for those who would not be us, for those who fear being so consumed. It is hard to bear, sometimes, for those who love us, who are swept up in our intensity, who care so much that they would not have us so completely absorbed that we forget ourselves, forget to care for ourselves, forget even the objects and subjects of our love – that we forget even them.
But, we always come back, re-born by love, lured and tempted by love, by intensity, by great and small and beautiful things that we love.
If I could give any advice to those who love us, I would say: Be patient with our intensity. If it is too much to bear, find other things to distract you – and rarely try to stop our swinging, for, like a great pendulum with intense force, it will likely hit you hard and hurt or startle you – and, in hurting you, will hurt us more intensely, swing us harder or shatter us completely. But, if you manage to find us stopped, isolating around a small thing, be very careful and keep us there with gentle strokes and quiet love, drawing our attraction slowly, so we do not suddenly bowl you over with our immediate attraction; so we do not hurt you, nor hurt ourselves in hurting you.
And, if you are – like us – a great, swinging pendulum of love…
We must be even more careful of each other, with each other.
Our likenesses and differences will be strongly attractive – and repulsive – to each other; our individual powers are capable of creating immense happiness and extraordinary destruction, should we not love and respect and embrace our commonalities and divergences.
It is the embrace that is perhaps most important; and then, the release.
(Until time stops again for us, my white-linen-handkerchief friend.)
He asked me why I love him.
“Because,” I explained with faintly childish impatience, “you’re a MAN.”
He laughed and grinned in his boyish way, and asked me what I meant. "…Because,“ he explained with resonant patience, "that means all kinds of things to different women.”
Of course he’s right, but my arrogant self-assurance in my appraisal says that doesn’t mean THEY are correct.
I grew up with a principled father who loved his family beyond measure, whose love for his parents, for his wife, for his children has meant all kinds of things to him, but meant so much more to me.
When my dad was away on his frequent business trips, I indulged in books, in exploring the creative aspects of my mind, in learning as much as I could, in playing outdoors and swimming at the neighborhood pool, in helping Mom with cooking and cleaning and generally trying to keep out of trouble so, when Dad came back, I could get giant hugs from him, follow him up the stairs to his room and watch him unpack his bags, chat with him about where he’d been and the people he’d met on planes while traveling across the nation.
Dad’s life was an adventure, to me; I thrilled in his tales, imagined vividly the places he’d been, embraced his life so thoroughly. On Saturday afternoons, I’d sit on the floor in his room, watching, as he polished his shoes every week, until I was old enough to ask if I could help. I took so much pleasure in working the dark creams into his shoes, carefully polishing and buffing out the handsome leather until they shone. I loved the big, metal watches he’d wear and would pass to me while sitting in church when, in my boredom and curiosity, I wanted some distraction from the very-adult-oriented speeches. I’d snap and unsnap the clip around my small wrist, letting it dangle and fall like a bracelet as I tried to balance it on my childish arm to examine the large face, my eyes following the tiny second hand perpetually ticking off time. And, when I was cold, with the smallest word of complaint from me – and sometimes, with only a shiver as my fair hair lifted in goosebumps on the backs of my arms, he’d slip his giant suit jacket off and wrap it around me, still warm with his body’s heat; and, when I still shivered, he’d curl his arm around me and cuddle me close.
Perhaps we don’t understand the impact of our fathers, of their natural and subtle ways of being with us, when we’re children; and perhaps they, too, don’t quite understand their impact while it’s happening.
For my impressions of men, of the beauty of men were formed in the music Dad listened to, by Simon & Garfunkel and their melodious tunes, by The Eagles, by tales of Dad’s history as a bassist in a band, and of the mother-of-pearl-inlaid guitar that he’d sold in exchange for taking care of us.
The idea of handsome, honest, honorable men was reinforced while watching his favorite movies with my dad: gorgeous black-and-white and early-color films from the 1940s and ‘50s with tall, gaunt, well-built men who danced lithely with glamorous women and treated ladies with respect and adoration, showering them with classic romance. The variants melded and intermingled in my analytical mind as I subconsciously came to understand that men were simply… men: strong, independent, honest, conscious, deliberate, courageous, caring, noble, self-respecting male humans with individually-chosen character.
My dad is still of the men who always open doors for women, who scolded my dates if they dared show up in jeans while I was in a dress or skirt, who loved me, no matter what.
He admired my mind, respected my beauty, treated me with a kind and gentle and serious hand, surprised me with flowers every Valentine’s Day and brought home little gifts, when he could, from his adventurous trips.
So, whether I knew it or not, whether I could help it or not, my desires for love come well-attached to the man who raised me, who treated me well, who helped move me to Midtown Atlanta (and back again), who helped move me to Cincinnati (and back again), who came to visit me time and again when I moved away to Canada and left my family and friends behind.
Yet, I have never fancied myself as looking for my father in my loves.
Still, it was with my dad that I enjoyed meals most frequently, going out for work-week lunches and dinners at his favorite diners and delis and, occasionally, at out-of-the-way restaurants. And it was my dad who introduced me to the restaurant world I’ve come to love so much, making a go at running a small diner in Florida when I was only three, and my older sister and I would “take orders” for our family. It was because of him that I decided, at a precocious age, that I wanted to be a waitress – which I later came to be and love.
It was my father who first expanded my palate, introducing me to freshly-squeezed orange juice on a trip from Orlando to our suburban home in Duluth, Georgia, when he halted his cherry-red Audi Quattro at a roadside stand selling freshly-picked citrus, and I tasted the sweetest juice that had ever touched my tongue. And he taught me to drive, and to love driving: on that trip and on so many roads, in that beautiful Audi, letting me shift through the gears as he worked the pedals; sharing with me his love of sports cars through so many conversations and tales and photos of hot rod shows in his youth.
And my father who taught me, first, to be honest and true and sensitive. He may not have said everything he felt, but when my dad spoke, I knew it was honest and true; and though he may not have been completely open with his feelings, my dad was sensitive in his dealings with all of the children, with my mother and with his colleagues and employers. He was gentle and aware of our feelings, always; and he always responded to us with as much warmth and affection and kindness as he could muster – while still being rational and honest and true to what he knew.
I was never “Daddy’s Girl” – there were too many daughters for him to ever choose or isolate one; but I was Daddy’s girl, and when I was with him, I knew I was loved. How he managed to love each and every one of his eight children so profoundly that we each, to this day, feel an individual relationship with him is quite astonishing… and his love taught me to love just as infinitely, just as individualistically.
So, in years hence, I could not help but be the girl he raised me to be:
Honest.
True.
Sensitive.
Loving.
Pure of heart.
Strong of mind.
Rational.
Reasonable.
Gentle, but firm.
Kind, and generous to a fault.
Adventurous.
In love with nature and the world.
I took everything I learned and loved from my father – in fact, from both of my parents and from both of my grandparents and from everyone who loved me – I took all the goodness I saw, cultivated in myself what I wanted so I might be as purely as I ever considered a woman might be, and looked for the purest culmination of these that I could find in a counterpart…
And that was, to me, a man.
Why do I love you, my dear one?
Because, unbeknownst to either of us, you have somehow fulfilled my dreams of the perfect man: a heightened amalgamation of the principles my father taught me, added to my girlish ideals of exploration, adventure, truth, honesty, romance and love.
I love you because I am my father’s daughter, my mother’s fascinated little girl; because my grandfather loved the sea and my grandmother was so infinitely giving and understanding; because my parents left me to myself, to determine my destiny, and my siblings paradoxically let me alone and challenged me.
I love you because, with every man I ever loved before you, I was honed and tempered by all that they loved and all they could not tolerate in me, becoming stronger with every part that I knew myself to be and softer in the parts I did not know I could be; because my mother taught me to follow my heart and my dreams, and, through that, I loved and loved infinitely through pain and heartache and confusion, through depression and fear and misery, and I learned to learn to love and accept and cherish every drop of love that was given me – which I am yet learning to love and accept and cherish – even when I do not know why I receive it.
I love you, my darling, because I am me, and you resonate so perfectly with me.
So, thank my parents for all they taught me, for all they are; thank my siblings for loving and hating me; thank my loves and all of those who loved me – whether they love or hate me now; thank my children for showing me new parts of myself, and for teaching me to love more greatly…
For they are all the reasons I love you, and all of the reasons you love me.
Love, The Infinite Unknown
It’s not the easiest thing in the world, to love.
I mean: it’s easy, but so many things can get in the way, distracting us from love, from letting ourselves fall into the flow of loving, of giving everything we are to the act of caring for another person, for the knowledge of them, for the knowledge of what impact they have upon us, for the responsibility of our impact upon them. So many things can hold us back: pains from past experiences, confusion over lost loves, rules and cautions given by well-meaning others.
For years, I’ve fought those rules, those cautions, those fears; for years, I’ve sought to find the truth of my impact, to see who people truly are, to understand why they behave in all the ways they do.
And I’ve loved.
It’s actually the easiest thing in the world, to love. To give of oneself; to listen beyond oneself, to watch silently as someone moves in their native – or adopted – ways. To take in someone else’s essence as quietly and non-judgmentally as when looking at the ocean water push again and again in rippling seafoam upon the shore… to marvel at the patterns and at the way those patterns make us feel, rippling even into our own hearts and minds.
To know that one may not be able to affect those waters, aside from having them slide around us as we wade into them, to allow ourselves to be embraced, surrounded, loved back in the ways natural to them while we stand, basking in the warm sensations of saltwater washing on our skin, kissing our cheeks in sudden splashes, filling our sinuses with cleansing seaspray.
It is enough, sometimes, to bask, to take in the beauty of a thing again and again. That, too, is love.
And, yes, there is more, should we wish to go there: there is protection of those things and people we love, ensuring that no harm comes to them, that we may indulge again and again in its beauty, that others too may share in the beauties we value.
But, imagine the fear and terror of something so benign as the sea, should we have waded in too far when we did not know how to swim, if we were pulled under by a current to strong to resist. Imagine the fear we might concoct of even wading in shallow waters, if our fears grew great enough.
And imagine the beauties we would miss, if we let those fears take hold and rule us, instead of facing our fears and the reasons for them, if we did not learn correctly from our life’s lessons: if we understood incorrectly that the waters were life-taking instead of life-giving, if we concocted tales of monsters pulling us under the seas instead of currents from which we could actually, in growing stronger, swim.
Imagine if we decided not to love, simply because we were afraid, because we had been pulled under and choked on a love stronger than we knew how to handle. Imagine if we tried to empty ourselves of all the waters within us, simply because they resembled those waters of the sea.
It would be a crime against ourselves, and such a great error in our understanding – and yet, this is the conclusion too many draw from the pains of love, of loving: To withdraw. To stop. To die. To fear.
There are some waters in which one cannot sink, in which the salt content is so high that it is impossible, even when one cannot swim, to fall beneath the water’s surface. There are some waters so clear that one can see straight to the bottom of the sea bed. Would we want to miss these beauties, just because we had some painful, incomprehensible experience at some time?
I would not; I do not.
Love is only another mark of life, of living; and, to love, we must know what love is, how it works, from whence it comes.
But no one has taught us love.
I would say: As with anything worth knowing, as with any skill worth learning, keep trying. Keep living. Keep learning. Keep loving.
To me, love is the final magic, the infinite unknown into which so few deeply delve, from which there are inevitably the greatest rewards.
I love loving; and I will always love you.
Patterns Found in the Dark Winter Mornings of Love
It comes again, and lingers again, this morning, as every morning since I have left the men who I’ve loved, as it comes every morning when I wake to find myself yet alone.
The bed is too narrow, I tell myself. It’s the wrong bed, and the mattress is too old, and that’s why I sleep so poorly, why I wake in a fight with my psyche – wanting so much to be happy, embracing the beauty of the day and its potential while facing the reality, day after day, of my astounding aloneness.
“Honestly, I can’t for the life of me understand why you haven’t been snapped up by some eligible bachelor,” my first sailing instructor tells me in some fashion or other every time we chat since I left Ontario three years ago.
Honestly, I can’t, for the life of me, understand why I haven’t also. Except, I do understand.
I accept and expect a certain degree of aloneness in my life. It is only when I am alone – even amidst other people, even with those I love most – when I can fully appreciate the things I love: the way the wafting breezes lift and play with the summer trees’ leaves, turning thin, green appendages into shimmering waves of laughing silver-green, playing midstream between earth and sky; the way certain chefs’ dishes, presented in artistic perfection, interplay in textures, flavors and scents on my palate, arousing endorphins that heighten my culinary sensitivities as strongly as any sensual, sexual interplay has ever done – and with none of the expectation, or disappointment.
I begin to see a pattern in myself: that there is not an ounce of expectation in those things I love all by myself, when I am alone; I was not taught to expect, to demand that the sun shine or that leaves shimmer in the breezes – and yet, they happen so naturally, so easily, all the time. I was not taught to expect bursts of flavor on my palate, food plated in perfect artistic fashion, sudden endorphin highs from food. Food was nutrition, practical, and only occasionally fun.
But men, and love… and some degree of pain in regards to them….
Those, I was taught to expect. To endure.
Why?!? I cannot help but wonder.
Why should I not meander through life, giving love and learning to expect, in so many places and so many times, beauty and love returned, shimmering with the same kind of random repetition as can be found when the trees are full of their tender, fragile fans; as can be found in restaurants the world over.
That I am alone is not a problem. That I wake every morning, remembering the glory of being with one whom I’ve loved, with whom I can share need not be pain, but a gentle reminder that it happened once, twice, several times; and it will happen again.
I am in the springtime of love, even if I am alone – or in the late winter, perhaps – but, somewhere on Earth it is summer, and the breezes lift and play with leaves in that way I love so much. Somewhere on Earth, even if it is night here, chefs are making gorgeous plates with deliciously-woven layers of flavors to lilt on diners’ palates.
Somewhere – in many places, in fact – there is love.
I’m just in the wrong place, or in the wrong time… and it will come again, or I will find it again, when my eyes open, when they’re not so clouded with tears. When I accept where I am, and where I’ve been; when I accept it will happen again.
A Lazy Summer
It’s not just a lazy summer, though one might think it is to see me from the periphery.
I have the luxury to spend time outdoors, basking in the sun at the neighborhood pool, volunteering at beerfests and other events around Atlanta on weekends, meeting new people and making new friends. I even flew away to California for five days a little more than a month ago; it was the most amazing trip of my life, so far: full of spontaneity, new friends, surf, sun and movies-come-to-life.
But, in the background is my life, and the true stresses and trials left to me to solve.
Granted, I’ve arranged my life and outlook so as not to have so many stresses as some have – at least, not in the same ways most have. Instead of worrying over my health, I whittle my diet to things I know I can eat without much concern; I watch my activities so as to reduce the possibilities for physical harm to myself. Instead of worrying too much over money (which does, yet, concern me a bit), I worry over how best to make my way to the sailboat of my dreams, to the life of my dreams, to the work of my dreams that best fulfills me. Instead of fighting eternally with those I love (or like) over any given issue, I hunt mercilessly for solutions, for work-arounds, for freedom and greater love, for understanding and even distance so I may gain perspective – or, at least, peace.
I am, therefore, single; I spend a great bulk of my time thinking of others, worrying about others; and a great amount of time working on the projects that most move me, that fill me with great excitement, endless ideas and momentum.
The rest of the time, I spend enjoying life.
It is important, vital; and, somehow, I see so many who’ve forgotten it, who fall into the trap of living vicariously through the excitements and hazards and problems of TV shows, of family members, of neighbors and co-workers and friends. There is no attempt to help anyone; merely to watch from the fringes, to observe and make commentary; to tell others’ stories.
I suppose that’s important, too: storytelling is certainly an art. But I’d rather tell my own stories; live my own life. Find my own way.
So, I bask in the sun and let my mind work its magic while I’m paying attention to nothing but the luxury of peace, of hot rays beating down on me, of cool breezes picking up the sweat from my skin, of children playing Sharks-and-Minnows in the pool nearby. Of the music I choose to hear from my Pandora app, meanwhile.
And, when I get home, my copper skin a shade more bronzed, silky-smooth from repeated slathering of extra-virgin coconut oil, I’m ready again to work, to plan, to harness the power of my mind towards my most cherished goals:
My boat.
My writing.
My friends.
And peace.
Why I (Only) Write (Sometimes)
It’s not called writer’s block.
It’s called Writer’s Love or Writer’s Tension or Writer’s Pinch, as in a pinched nerve or some such, when I can’t write. I’m not blocked; I know what I want to write, I know the subject and the method and the mood. I’m not blocked. I’m just damned picky. And, in those moments, my mind just won’t move, and neither will my fingers (to type or pick up a pen), and everything, everything is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Don’t ask me to write, in such times, for I might just write something awful and mundane just to spite you, and you’ll never know it was spiteful because you’ll just love the hell out of it. I can’t do it wrong, except that it’s all wrong, all heartless, all for the indulgence of your petty little soul, for the indulgence of your lack of intelligence and lack of judgement of knowing that I’m spinelessly spiting you and your tapered values. And spiting myself, too, for ever having allowed myself to be in a state such as this one, where someone else can demand, can ask me to write, and I write, like Ayn Rand’s antihero creating cupie dolls while he’s capable of sculpting a majestic Dominique to stand in the midst of Roark’s grandiose lobby.
That’s why I quit anything: I’d rather do nothing at all, I’d rather sit and wait it out than sell out to you or to anyone.
Because I’ve sold out too often and have made the most of it, have made my pennies on those damned cupie dolls with their stupid curl in the center of their dumb, cheeky foreheads.
Don’t ask me to write. Just be grateful when I do.
Be grateful when anyone of any capacity flickers with their grace and grandiosity within your vicinity.
Those are the true angels, the truly great, the genii.
Be grateful, and give them their due, even if it takes all your lives just to do it.
Those debts are the ones that matter, that come first.
I should know. I’m still working to pay off mine. And I’ll find a way to do it, too. If it takes all my life.
The Art of Sitting Still
Memoirs of a Store-Front Mannequin:
Thoughts and Observations from a Live Window Model
Yes, I’m that girl-in-the-window who sat with hot-pink bow in my hair, rattling presents and waving at passers-by of Hawk & Sparrow on James Street North; the lady in white sitting miraculously still while searching my heart and mind and all of you for something to write in my pretty brown notebook; the statuesque woman in an antique brown gown perched ever-so-silently on a vintage cream-and-yellow settee.
I sit and watch all of you, wondering at your bustle, peering just as queerly at those children and teenagers making strange faces, jumping up-and-down and beating on the window just to get me to blink. The window is old, and so I ask that you not beat upon it just to get a reaction from me – as that glass might break before I do.
You make me blink, I assure you; I just manage to hold it within until a better time. Now seems such a time.
“How does she sit so still?” I hear children ask mothers and mothers ask Sarah Moyal, the owner of Hawk & Sparrow. There was a time in history, I’ve read, when ladies used to sit with poise and grace for hours, needing not to speak nor to be spoken to, when we were content with simply observing. Such times fascinate me, have always fascinated me; sitting still, I’ve learned, provides more opportunity for discovery than motion, talk, bustle.
I wonder, when I hear mothers comment to their children that they wish the little ones could only sit so still as I: are these children ever taught the value of sitting still? With constant motion, constant activity, constant stimulus through TV, movies, computers, video games, baseball, basketball, hockey – when do these children ever have a chance to sit? I remember, as a child, I sat and read; I sat in trees and watched the bugs; I sat on my mother’s antique settees to escape the bustle and noise of my seven siblings, and was grateful for the silence. I sat in the car or in our van on long road trips and watched the Florida palms, the passing cars, the billboards. I learned to sit and sit and sit, to take in details and beauty and all the world.
I would ask you mothers of bustling children: when do you sit? When do you stop moving, stop going, stop running from place to place to place? When do your children ever see you enjoying your time by yourself, that they might learn to do the same?
I watch these children-turned-teenagers who cannot believe that a person can sit so long, never moving a visible muscle, never giving evidence that she lives or breathes, never showing a thought on her face or in her eyes; I see these restless beings bouncing, beating violently upon glass, begging and demanding for attention, for a response; and I wonder if they have ever been asked to find a response of their own, within themselves. I wonder if they have ever given attention to themselves; I wonder how violently they beat upon the glass of walls around themselves, that they may be free.
It is likely no wonder to those who can sit and marvel at such things as the patterns of growing condensation on drinking glasses, that one might sit and sit as I do in the window of Hawk & Sparrow each ArtCrawl. For those with deep interests, deep lives, deep hearts, the sitting comes naturally, and life in all of its variegations pours in relentlessly.
For those who yet wonder: I sit to model clothes that I find beautiful, for a store that I find beautiful, so I might share and help share with a world that can be beautiful a place that I find beautiful. I am nothing but a model; and so I can sit for hours and be nothing but a model.
Why then should I move? Why should I react, and how can I, if my purpose is to model?
What’s your purpose, little ones? What’s your purpose, young ones who twist your faces and beat and shout? What’s your purpose, mothers and fathers with wishes for still children? What’s your purpose, all of you who walk in front of my view upon the world, all of you meandering from place to place to place, wondering and marveling momentarily at one who sits and sits and sits…?
Thanks to Sarah Moyal, owner of Hawk and Sparrow on James Street North in Hamilton, Ontario for the photo and experience, and to all of the visitors to Art Crawls who enjoyed watching me do what comes naturally.
Sketches of the South
It’s on days like today that I understand my laziness, my hesitance to move, to do anything but bask and take in this hot Georgia sun, to await cool breezes petting my skin and dancing through my hair and through the shimmering leaves, carrying the sweetness of roses and gardenias and dying lilies and fresh-mowed grass, of simmering pine and leafy trees of deepening green, soaking up the sun as I do….
On days like this, I don’t even wish to speak, to disturb this lovely prelude to summer. I sit and watch glistening leaves and pale petals, and listen to nothing: tinkling wind chimes and calling birds, and the soft percussion of leaf clapping upon leaf. Every moment of this is a vacation – with the dilettante-like luxury of never needing to go anywhere, of never wishing for escape, of never tiring of the same things: blue skies and billowing clouds and fluffy roses.
It’s a cultural thing, I’m sure: this laziness arising with drawled speech and meandering stories and long supper tables laden with food at small white churches and old family reunions. The Old South is alive and well in me, and in this land; and, returning to this lazy world after half my life spent no farther south than Southern Ontario, the scents and sensations and simplicity of this land are irresistible.
The trees beckon, waving full boughs to those inside, whispering songs to which no words can reply.
So I return, realizing that I always return, always wished to return to this place that breeds laziness in the most beautiful of ways.
For Sarah M.
To Blog or Not To Blog…
That has been the question for so many years as I’ve observed the Internet filling with so many posts and blogs of minute-by-minute exploiters-of-lives, discarding thoughts, feelings, moments in the same way we toss refuse into the garbage.
Writers, especially, are expected to join the slough, self-publishing and -promoting to show that we can, indeed, write.
And that is what finally drew me back, though resist I have. Jefferson never promoted his writing, so why should I?
In the end, Jefferson’s first love was farming; mine is to write.
So I write here because I love to write, because I love finding that passing interests and readings arise in timely and well-suited fashion, because I love the rhythm and timing of well-chosen words, because the world is a curious place and I love to share.
Take this for what it is, then: an online résumé and profile showing my ability to write, showing the ways and rhythms of my mind.
I aim to write as voluminously and with at least as much interest and passion as T.J. – since he did not even love this so-called “drudgery.”
Oceans of Mine 