The Write Thing

Things I have learned so far, as another reminder of aging approaches:

- The fact that you can talk things over does not mean that they can be resolved
- The fact that somebody loves you does not mean they will necessarily do anything about it

It is a cold night in Houston, with temperatures dropping below zero degree Celsius. My eyes hurt with the sting of the slow tears that have accompanied me throughout the day. Yes, I am in pain.

I was never drawn to drama, so I am not sure how I got myself into this. I am trapped in an icy prison, like that Dead Man Walking the Houston Grand Opera decided to revisit with Flicka Von Stade as the mother of the convict. I’m probably a dead heart walking, only that mine still beats, despite myself. I wish it did not. I wish it were free…to death or to a happier fate, if something like that exists.

I was recently watching the last movie version of Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair, with  Julianne Moore and Ralph Fiennes starring as the lovers whose fate is doomed by a too likeable husband (somewhat like a Brief Encounter type, with more screen time) and by the mother of all fates and relationships: circumstance.

Timing is always an essential ingredient to relationships, and yet lovers take it for granted. Perhaps because I am behind these prison bars now, I can look at happy couples with a renewed eye, knowing without their sharing in that knowledge how lucky they are to have fallen for each other on a tabula rasa, with no past to pay dues to, or to feel they have to. I did not know how much circumstance shapes facts and options until I met you. Perhaps it was because of the extended suspension of disbelief that accompanies the anesthetized initial romance, or the pursuit of seduction as a game, as an option, that fleeting moment in which we think we know where things are going, and when “inevitable” seems like an infallible word.

Oh, well, I’ve learned that “inevitable” is a nice umbrella word to cover up for the fantasy of thinking that we know, when we really do not. We do not know the secrets, the hiding, and mostly the lying that accompanies each strategy of seduction, the moves behind the scenes  to get what we want, not thinking of the future because it scares us, because it is too far to think about. Greene’s Maurice Bendrix is consumed by jealousy for what he cannot change and he cannot understand…for what he cannot see. In my version, there is only emptiness, as my side of the story becomes a tepid version of Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black.

And now add to the tragedy of a lover’s plight the fact that you may be ill, and then the terror of hearing the worst prognosis is superseded by the certainty that I will be external to you in any process, as you let circumstances take over the fragile texture of a life that a radiologist’s report can change forever. I know more than you do, despite your technical expertise and the medical degree that probably decorates some wall in an unreachable house. I know that rotting out is not paying homage to whatever is left of your time anywhere, be it long, fruitful years, or the sad and lonesome count of a calendar the family you think you are protecting imposes on you. Rotting out is another kind of prison, one that you build around yourself, one that is hard to resist without real love if real love has come to you. And I know it has, and I wish you could stop fighting it like a disease.

After a long time without visiting this site, I got my mojo back and here I am, re-inaugurating myself with a new entry…hopefully with something worth saying.

It is a time of reflection, almost silence. It is a time of living frugally, surrounded by bare essentials, saving energy and material comfort for a time when, perhaps, it will finally be shared. It is an uncertain time, an uncertain world, an uncertain life. But wasn’t it always like that? The problem with aging is that one begins to worry about actual uncertainty, so it becomes less of an adventure and more of a concern.

In moments like that, my attention turns more to literature, and that radar that sends me out on bookstore excursions activates itself suddenly, as if it had a purpose. The first finding was this novel by an author I totally ignored called Brady Udall. The title of the book caught me by surprise…The Lonely Polygamist. I read the blurb (which American books do very well with, unlike French books such as Amelie Nothomb’s Le Voyage d’Hiver, which has no indication whatsoever of what it could be about…but does Nothomb have to prove herself before I grab one of her books? No, she does not). Udall’s book is about an anti-hero, Golden Richards, father of 28 children and husband to four wives living somewhere in rural America. The story is about Golden falling for a woman outside the church, outside the Principle, and getting caught in the trap of actually choosing love, instead of letting it be imposed on him. The story is about the impossibility of sharing wifely duties without feeling less worthy than the others, less valued, less loved. The story is about being a lost child in a numerous family that  is stranded in limbo, no longer recognizing itself and its members. Well, I would argue that one does not need to have 28 kids to get lost in limbo and lose track of oneself…it so often happens in the typical four-member family.

It is amazing how a good author can make you feel you are inside the story, even when the environment is totally foreign to the reader. Udall does an excellent job, particularly at entering the mind of a pre-pubescent boy who is an outcast in that world, who is aware of how unfair and deterministic that limbo is, and who will pay the price for wanting to subvert the dysfunctional order set out by others. I related so viscerally to Rusty, that lost child sitting on the window sill and looking out; I understood the inevitable failure of trying to be like the others when you are simply different, beautifully so although you don’t know.

It was a hard novel, a difficult read, perhaps because it was familiar in an odd and undesired way, a reflection of the polyamorous loneliness that I wish I could escape. I can’t, and I am still sitting here, like the viewer of a movie that I know will end badly but I can’t help continuing to watch. Who knows? Perhaps at some point relief will come for me as it did for my favorite character in that book, and my own Trish will know what to do.