sunset soon forgotten

Dear K-

I’d like to believe every one of us has that conflicting inner self, the one that is throbbing with pure and possibly irrational desires, usually concentrated into one main pipe dream. For you, it’s sailing through waves buttered golden by a setting sun, drifting wherever the wind so pleases. For me, it’s returning to my homeland. We both know that these things have an incredibly small chance of ever occurring, and if we ever should manage to accomplish our dream it will never be able to live up to its sparkling, pristine projection cast within our minds. It is simply fated to never be.

And so we grow up, we get our jobs and distract ourselves from day to day with the tasks that come our way. The rent is due. Your boss wants you to draft up the new copy of the lease. Your fridge is empty again. But at the end of the day, when you lay in bed waiting for sleep to come, we inevitably return to that deeply seeded dream. You see the undulating waters; hear the slap of the waves against the bow of your gently pitching craft. We’re beautiful and young and happy. I’m wandering the streets of Brno, smelling the brewery down the block and watching the trams go to sleep. I’m still young and athletic and there’s adventure with each and every day.

But look at us now. Should we really be disappointed in what we are today? I don’t necessarily think that we are dissatisfied, but we’re at a point in our lives where we have to buckle down and make the call. We’re putting on the slacks and suits everyday and realizing we’ve chosen our path and it’s finally time to start making some commitments if we hope to get anywhere. It’s God-damn terrifying.

I will take care of your eyes until my own give out on me. I will be there as long as you are still willing to talk to me and receive me during visiting hours.

I will escape with you.

-K

A Short Reply

Dear K,

I just got back from that place where we met, and now a big part of me wishes I'd never left. But I had to we all have to, and everyone will. I'm settling into my grown up job, and I think that maybe I'm scheming for an escape. I'm going to bide my time though, build up supplies, so really at this point I guess it is a matter of where do I want to go.

So where do you want to go?

I'm putting together a crew. What if I bought a boat? Would you come and keep my eyes healthy?

We could get everyone that we never get bored with, a short list to be sure, and sail away to wherever, and someday we'd come back to visit the mainland and find that the world had changed while we were away and that after fifty years of sailing into sunsets we'd become younger and tanner than when we first left.

But I don't want to just live on a boat. I want to go inland, and so I'll bring my bicycle and make room for everyone else's bikes too. And speakers, and it will be a whole bright shining barge. We'll sail up rivers and over oceans and call out to other boats in the fog.

But really I don't want to do any of that.
Well I do, at least half of me does.
But I want to do it with somebody,
and not just a crew.

And don't worry that somebody isn't you,

But I do know who, I think it is, but I don't know if she'd ever allow herself the pleasure of just one person's company for a lifetime.

But still. I am planning an escape.

So where do you want to go?

K

spaces between days

Dear K-

You know, I really don’t feel so bad about it. Not as much as I had expected, at least. I’m used to being alone, and now that I am back to being a solitary figure things seem to be progressing along about as smoothly, if not more so, as they were before. It’s given me a lot of time to myself. A lot of time to reflect.

Some people meditate for relaxation and the collection of thoughts. I exercise. It’s my “zen time”. Nothing allows me to better clear my mind than to spend an hour shooting hoops or running laps or cycling. Lately, I’ve taken to swimming laps. There’s hardly any distraction at all beneath those chlorinated aquamarine waters. It is just the steady rhythm of the splash of each stroke and the whooshing bubbles of every exhalation, a repetitive mantra that brings my inner peace. Those quiet, lonely laps have allowed me a lot of time to mull over my life decisions, and in the end I feel okay. I don’t feel super or amazing or on top of the world, but I feel like I’m still a valuable person. I feel like I still have some worth, hidden deep down beneath all the self-loathing and sentiments of rejection.

It’s autumn. I like to sit outside at night and look at the crisp clean stars in the cold evening air and smell the smoke from the fires of some nearby neighbor burning leaves. You know, it’s illegal to burn leaves and organic yard wastes here. The city expects you to take your trimmings, bag them up, and then place them at the side of the road for collection. I know many people have allergies and maybe the smoke is a nuisance to them, but for me, personally, there is hardly a more powerful nostalgia-inducing aroma than that of burning leaves. It stirs recollections of autumns past, memories of raking leaves in my backyard and shaping them into long piles to stretch across the withering grass. I’d arrange the piles to form the floor plan of an imaginary house, within which I would play and pretend to live a fantasy domestic life, until the dog came bounding through the kitchen wall and sent the leaf barricade spewing throughout the dining room. As a kid I’d volunteer at the church to help rake the yards of the elderly. I wasn’t really so keen on community service as I was with having an opportunity to hang out with my friends who also signed up for the church volunteer group. We’d have raking races and throw armfuls of leaves at each other, squealing with delight as we took an hour to complete what would normally take only about twenty minutes worth of hard work. There was the time when we accidentally broke one of the rakes when we were pretending they were swords, and I had to spend the rest of the afternoon using an old broom as a replacement. At least we usually got rewarded with cookies and Kool-aid at the end of the day.

I love this season. I’m trying to be a better person now. Nothing can be done about the past. Nimam obzaluje. When I fall asleep at night I now rest with the knowledge that I will never have to choke on his flesh again. He won't make me feel sick inside and he won't take advantage of my good nature. But I will also never feel his tender embrace, laugh with him, or smile and feel at ease just to be beside him. At parties, I was so proud just to be sitting with him. But now I can no longer feel that peace. There is nothing but agitation and a desire to be alone.

But I still miss the good days.

Tell me about your week.

Still occasionally lonely,
-K

i get world sick

Dear K-

I tried to take your advice. There used to be such a fire in my life, and I used to feel like I was somebody. But lately I have felt empty and dull like a light bulb with a burned out filament, although still warm to the touch, hinting at what used to be, I no longer radiate with such ferocity and intent. Wasn’t I the one who came from an asphalt cradle and chewed batteries as a teething ring? I used to fight, I used to feel a purpose.

This weekend I tried to fight again. I didn’t want it all to fade away from disuse and neglect. I canceled my plans and drove out to see my love. But it was already too late, and he was no longer in love with me. I can’t accurately explain how it feels to sit in a room with someone who won’t look you in the eye, knowing what they are thinking but are too cowardly to admit. The love is gone. Every action brought his anger; even comments that used to be jokes were suddenly uncalled-for insults, and every footstep I took was on the wrong soil. I tried to fight, though. I bought him dinner, cooked him breakfast, smiled at him and held his hand in public. I tried to do everything I thought I should to keep him. But it was too late, and instead he just used me. When it came time for me to load my suitcase and drive away, he wouldn’t kiss me anymore and I left him there, lying on his bed and reading a book of poetry.

It’s over. As much as I wanted to turn left and continue on with him, I went straight. Maybe this was my psych-out maneuver. Everyone believed I was going to turn left- hell, I had even convinced myself, but in the last moment I realized that was not the correct decision. I have to go straight. We have to split our paths.

So now, I have a new bag of memories to pull out in the springtime when I feel nostalgic. There are no regrets, but I do miss many things. He was part of the reason I chose America, and now I’m floundering here alone, rejected, and confused.

As you said, every morning the sun comes up, and every evening the sun goes down. Let the sun make a few more cycles and I’ll begin to feel dull again and it will be okay. Eventually I will look back and perhaps I will say, “That was a fun time, but I made the right choice.” Perhaps I will always wonder what life would be if I had turned left. But I can’t dwell on that. There are new adventures ahead, and soon I will stumble upon them. But for the moment I must spend a few days dragging myself forward, forbidding myself to glance back at that fork in the road, letting the side of my shoe scuff the dirt up in scattered clouds because I don’t want it to settle because I can’t settle. At least, not yet.

At a steady pace,
-K

Dear K,

Pack it in. You've gone over the edge and you're not coming back unless I haul your canoe up with a rope.

It's been a month since you've seen your love?

Where's the brawler I used to know? The one with fists as hard as alley walls and broken glass for teeth and chewing tobacco for blood? You used to be as tall as an oak tree and twice as hard to pull up by the roots.

Look. If you're not going to try for something... then I don't know. I don't really have a threat. I just want so badly for you to understand that yes you can be happy and all it takes is for you to stop treating this life like every decision has been made for you.

You spun my last letter completely on its head, when you said that fiction lets people have nice tidy little resolutions.

I was trying to say that you are free, and that every character ever written will never ever know what it means to be able to turn left when the universe and everyone in society says you can only go straight, or maybe you go straight to fake them out and because they think maybe you're the kind of person who randomly turns left, but then pow as soon as they believe that you're only going to move forward, bam, left turn and you're running through the fields in the hidden woods with the prairie weeds up to your hips and the rattlesnakes hissing in the grass.

Look, every morning the sun comes up. And every day away from spring is filled with memories of spring, and every moment of spring is filled with childhood scents, and every thing is all how you remember to look at it at the end of your life when the curtains close in and finally this beautiful thing, a shining bauble for the rest of the darkness to envy, comes to a very satisfying end, like warm oatmeal cookies being swallowed with a glass of milk, that is what life is.

So buck up kiddo,

Your Elderly K

it's only a paper moon

Dear K-

Time keeps progressing onward. It doesn’t quite feel as if it is sailing by me, like some lightweight clipper, but rather like a steadily chugging ocean liner. When viewed at the horizon it hardly seems to be moving at all, but in actuality it is persistently pressing onward at a respectable pace. Working 7 to 6 every day, I don’t get a lot of time to sit and reflect upon my days. I move from one day to the next, trying to find small events to motivate me through the weeks. My days are spent looking at people’s eyes, which I guess isn’t too much to complain about since that is the career path I settled upon. Eyes are beautiful. But now, when I try to relax, I still find myself noticing the slight amblyopia of an actor in the movie on the television, or I try to guess the eyeglass frame my old friend is wearing on her trip home from college. It’s the first thing I notice. I don’t even think about how long it has been since we’ve spoken and caught up on each other’s lives. Instead, I think about her -3.25 OD and -3.75 -0.50 167 OS prescription. I wonder if I’m losing myself.

At times, I miss the student’s life and I find myself picking up old text books for my night reading. Of course, spending each night reading Remington’s “Clinical Anatomy of the Visual System” doesn’t really compare to your Marquez and it doesn’t lead to very entertaining dreams, but it keeps me focused on the present. It’s somewhat depressing to admit that your life isn’t the makings of some great novel. We’ve written bits of ourselves into so many of our short stories, poems, novels…But, as you stated, those are merely characters. They get to progress through the bodies of text and find neat little solutions and tidy situations which circle around to make some point. Our lives, unlike fiction, don’t necessarily have to make sense. Reality is quite a bit messier, and not always so eloquent.

It’s been over a month since I’ve seen my love. I regret to admit that with each day that passes without his presence my heart grows gradually more remote. While I adore companionship, I’ve spent the majority of my life alone. Left to my own devices, I revert to an independent lifestyle. My heart grows cold and dormant, and I think of him less and less. It’s hard to remember his voice. For the moment, I still miss him. I am not the type of girl who will make demands, but regrettably I am the type passive enough to let a good thing fade away through disregard and cowardice. I hate getting sentimental. I’d rather focus on things more useful and meaningful, like chemical reactions, trains, or iambic pentameter.

Tomorrow I fly to Phoenix alone. I’ll switch to the more personable, extroverted facet of my personality, the portion which has been trained and practiced over the years and is usually recessive, by my choice. Smiling and responding to interview questions with comprehensive, intelligent quips, dressed in a suit and maintaining an air of confidence…it’s an exhausting routine. I enjoy the experience, but when I go home at the end of the day I’m self-critical and weak. Perhaps it will be different in the dry desert air. Maybe it will be good to get out of the Midwest again.

I’ve started writing letters again.
I love the way the air feels this time of year.

Yours truly,
-K

Leitmotifs Don't Really Exist

Dear K,
Whoever told you to stay? For that matter who told you to go? I know I told you both, but we both know you shouldn't listen to me when it comes to these things called decisions. I've been reading a lot of Marquez lately, ridiculous amounts. I read Love In The Time Of Cholera twice, and I'm almost through 100 Years Of Solitude for the fourth time this year, not to mention the collection of short stories that I stole from a friend three years ago. I read that last week.

I've been waiting for this job to start, and everyday when I put down the book by Marquez, I go and look in the mirror. I think maybe I'll see myself grow old before my own eyes, because the books and the waiting and the trembling thoughts about being a taxpayer and a job holder and that gleaming stainless steel future that awaits beyond make me feel as if my youth is a rope or sand running through my fingers, and in my mind I'm grabbing and holding the rope made of sand but gripping around it won't work and it seems as if the time is almost up.

We're talking as if we've already settled into the antiseptic beds of the last hospital we'll visit. As if the phantoms of our failures and successes and our loves and losses are already surrounding our death bed.

I found something out though, we have a common problem. We've read too many books and we've seen too many movies, and probably the worst part is, we've written too many stories. The thing I found out is that we're not characters in a book or a film or even in the New Yorker. It is a trick of memory that makes us think so. Do you know what this means? It means anything can happen to you and it doesn't have to mean anything, but it can if you want it to, and you can really do whatever you want, because there's no giant author there up in the sky deciding what you do.

I'm writing, and soon I'll be out there in the world, living again, and I'll sweep away all these waves of disappointment and displacement. Why are you mourning for a past that hasn't happened yet? Whoever said you couldn't change your mind?

Regards,
K