Week-End Happenings

This week was the first real cold at the Greenmarket--highs in the low 40s. So began the flood of questions about "When does the market end for the season?" It doesn't, and sometimes I think we wear it as a badge of honor, even though it wrecks our bodies for a few days after. And we're not even to January yet, where it can be a high of 25 degrees. I loathe it, and I vow to fight it, and win. I finally understand what's important about how the farmer's greet each other in the spring: "How was your winter?" Because surviving it is a big deal. This will be my fifth winter out there. Some of the farmer's, this will be their thirtieth. I'm lucky to be a part of it all.

On Saturday, I bought a Christmas tree from the guys over at Trumansburg Tree Farms. The guy that sold it to me, whose name I have forgotten, or forgot to get in the first place, admitted that he, like me, and like lots of us, aren't really the farmers. "I live in Brooklyn," he said. "Me too," I told him. "What else do you do?" he asked me, because everyone at the market does something else. "I'm a writer," I said. (I am still new to this answer, but I am trying to own it. Writer in 2011!) "Like everybody in Brooklyn," he laughed. "No," I said, "I really am one."

And then he tied the tree up, folding its branches toward the top, shrinking it into a kind of bundled Fraser Fir joint. (I like the Fraser the best, or a Balsam, but check out these others.) As he was tying the tree he said, "What would make a tree want to do this, fold up like this, what evolutionary purpose does it serve?" We joked a few minutes about how God made them that way, so that we could celebrate his son's birth in style, and we'd need a good way to carry the trees home with us. I don't think this is very funny now, but we seemed to think it was then.

On Sunday morning, Kip and I had brunch at Casmir, a French bistro-type place, with flavors by way of Morocco. Joining us, it was their idea actually, was my friends Pam and Rachel, and their new baby, who is five months old. I like kids, don't get me wrong, but why are people who have kids weirded-out when Kip and I say so resolutely that we do not plan to have, nor want, children of our own? I suspect I know the answer to this, or answers. But I have noticed it a lot lately, as we, I mean I, have reached the age when all the people around you begin to have children or get married, or move away, or move in. Brunch was lovely. I'm happy that Pam and I have stayed more or less in touch over the years, and even happier that one of the pleasures of living is seeing your friends grow into themselves. Also, I am happy for spicy-tomato sauce with feta, capers and eggs.

Later on Sunday, we decorated the tree, which I both like to do and hate to do. I have a short attention span as it is, and a habit of entering long, dark tunnels of sentimental memory, so bringing one ornament after another out of bag after bag and box after box--it can really wear me out. But it got done, thanks to Kip. He is good at making the most out of anything, and I am good at reigning it in at he last moment so that it doesn't become, you know, the most. The tree really is fantastic.

This week, I'm cooking and prepping for our big party on Sunday night: lemon marshmallows, foie gras with sauternes gelée, pork pies, spiced ricotta tartines, pheasant sausage with Madeira, curried peanut dip, mushroom strudel, roasted tomatillo guacamole....and of course, Kip's famous hand-decorated cookies. Maybe I'll see what else I can cook up.

Hey Tim from St. Louis, This One's for You

This week, a lot of information was passed down from the Universe. Sometimes your job is to sift, stir well, and respond. Sometimes your job is just to listen. This post is sort of a combination of both. (Which, by the way, is what I have decided a blog is. Mostly.) So, here are all the things I am trying to make sense of this week:

--J.D. Salinger died. This is a tragedy.

--People at the market wondered whether Salinger wrote anything else. If, say, there were stacks of manuscripts tucked away in safe deposit boxes. People wondered if there was nothing.

--I saw in the bookstore that Knopf has published a collection of Nabokov's note cards, called The Original of Laura, which would have turned into a novel, maybe, at some point, had he lived long enough to finish it. He wanted the notes to be burned, but his wife, as the story goes, "could not bear to destroy her husband’s last work." Could not bear to see her future royalties disappear, if you ask me. Or maybe that is harsh. But art is personal. And me, at least now, I wouldn't want any half-done art in the world after I have died.

--An unfinished Ralph Ellison novel has also been published, Three Days Before the Shooting. Juneteenth, which was published earlier, was culled from this same material.

--My friend Jane wonders, in this post, if writers "become better and better at considering [their] audience not purely out of generosity or thoughtfulness, but as a strategy for getting what [they] want?"

--But there is my dear Meg, in videos of old Circus Amok shows, which are hosted on the Hempispheric Institute's website, streaming, for all to see, enjoy, study, relive. Even though she died some years ago--there she is, real again, her movements and gestures, her stature, her economy.

--Is seeing Meg on video anything like the Nabokov note cards? Or the Ellison novel? Or Jane wondering if writer's get better at getting what they want as they become better writers? Because what does it mean that these novels are published after the writer, ostensibly, isn't in control of what he wants?

Help. I'm not sure what to make of it.

Recalibrating

Saturday, for me, was one of those days when I don't have patience for anything. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me--the customers were perfectly tolerable, the weather was bright and unseasonably warmish, the day went by without incident. But somewhere, my molecules were out of order, shifted perhaps. Uncertain. This feeling has continued through the days, and I've decided that the only way to shake it is to clean out the closets. Literally. Or maybe figuratively. Both?

Jennifer said today on the phone, "That sounds awful, reliving every past moment with every old piece of clothing." But I feel the opposite. It frees me. I feel released from the promise to hold that memory forever. I feel released from the need to carry around the object that contains the history. The old, the unwanted, the style-less--notice that I didn't say unfashionable, and note the difference--will go either to the Salvation Army, or to the Greenmarket's textile recycling program.

The Get-Rid-Ofs:
--The Tommy Hilfiger plaid button-down that I wore every other day when Meg and I went to London. I wore it underneath the hand-altered sweater that Becky made for me when she was at RISD, which I am keeping.
--The woven white Oxford that I wore to Meg's memorial service.
--The Club Monaco striped thing which I wore only once, to a few compliments, I think, but which now strikes me as unlovable.
--The handmade, very expensive shirt that I wore to Amanda's wedding dinner. It was always too big for me, and looked a bit sloppy, but back then I didn't know better.
--Shorts, shorts and shorts.

The Keeps:
--The REI anorak that I wore every day in Iceland. It was lost for a few years, living inside an old coat that I never wear--like Jack Twist's shirt was folded inside Ennis Del Mar's. It might find a new life.
--The English Laundry shirt from a few years ago, before they went all too-too. Anybody have solutions to a little yellow around the collar? Bodies betray us, there, I said it.
--The train conductor's cap which was handed down to NYU by the costume department of the musical "The Capeman." Andrea thought I should have it, and I still do.

The Uncertains:
--The fabulous vintage Wrangler shirt bought from eBay for only $5.00, but which I can barely fit into now. Create a new, thinner you? Or accept the you that is now?
--The insane Edwardian overcoat, which fits me beautifully, but, like, can I work it?
--Some AMOK costumes that I've worn over the years. They are flawless, singular pieces. But do I need one more bit of frippery?

Next week, the chest of drawers.....

Blood Poem

First, it was the used tampons at the bottom of the wastebasket,
The white string coiled around the rust-colored plug,
In the bathroom when you came to stay with me that summer.
I had forgotten that you were a woman.

Then the water jug in the refrigerator leaked
Onto the container of pickled plum paste,
Which you always bought when you came to town,
Like it was part of the bigger ritual.
The water dissolved it, and it dripped down over the racks,
To the bottom of the white box.
When I opened it that morning
I thought something had been slaughtered,
Some feral animal turned irrevocably inside out,
Until there was nothing left but this murder scene:
Wet, and cold.
Red, and redder.

Finally, it was the shirt you were wearing when the
Truck crushed you underneath it.
And the shoulder bag, which carried your belongings.
They were stiff by the time I got to them, congealed.
Brown and ferric, smelling like earth,
Sealed inside a numbered plastic bag.

Ghost in the Machine

I had forgotten how she moved, the way her stare had in it everything she was considering about any one task, and also everything outside of it. She taught me more about focus than anyone I've ever known. I had forgotten that in the year before she died, she'd starting doing her hair with some very expensive clay-based product, forming an unruly spray on top of her head. I had forgotten how her voice carried through the room only if you were listening for it--only if she meant for your to hear it. She said to me once, "I don't like speaking without meaning."

But it's all there. Or rather it's all here, in this YouTube video, which was sent to me by her once-partner Pam via email this week. My friend Meg died three years ago this September. The details are here and here if you want to go through them again.

This forgetting is exactly what I was afraid of. As backwards as it is, the grief that drives you deeper and deeper into yourself after something awful like this happens, it brings you close to that person. The details of their life explode into view over and over, even while you sleep. Especially while you sleep. This is not to say that I liked it. I hated it. But in some way, grieving is like hanging out with that person. And so you get to have them around a bit longer.

I realize that this feeling that they're hanging around is false. It's only your memory of that person replaying in your head--a sort of one-sided friendship. The time you stayed awake until the sun came up talking about your fucked-up families. The time you caught her, literally as she fell from the top of of the stairs, and landed in pile at the bottom. The time you started making jokes about the pickled plum paste in the drawer of the fridge and how that became a huge, undying metaphor for everything you ever did together, or knew of each other. For some reason.

In the Tom Hanks episode of "Inside the Actor's Studio," he talks about making "Philadelphia," and working with an HIV+ extra, who died before the movie was released. "And there he is on the screen," Hanks says, through tears. "These things, they last forever."

I'm glad the tape lasts forever.

Visits

Lately, I have been thinking of Meg. The armored trucks are the trigger. And it never fails that every other day, or every day, I see one parked outside of some or other business, just waiting there quietly for the attendant to do his job. They are all young men.

In September, it will have been two years since she died. I think of the time that has passed--how it has been empty, and how it has been full. I think of that long, arduous phone call with Laura--which saved me in the moment. Me sitting on the edge of my bed, periodically sobbing and asking question after question after question--none of which had any answer.

The weeks following her death, after clearing out her apartment, after the services in Chattanooga and Massachusetts, people would call or email and tell me of a moth that appeared and wouldn't leave. Or a tiny green grasshopper that sat patiently on their leg and made them feel at ease. There is Jennifer's pigeon movie. They all said what a comfort these small appearances had been, these vague, soothing messages from the natural (spiritual?) world

That first night alone in my apartment, I felt so full of Meg, so surrounded by her that it nearly hurt to take a breath--I had no more room to expand. She was in every molecule, in every painting on the wall. She was in my head, literally. She was behind my eyes, using them to peer out, to point me in various directions. All of this has only become clear to me in the last several weeks--now, 2 years later. Why hadn't I thought of all this before?

I know all this now. If everything I know to be true were to vanish, I would still have the understanding that all that pressure, all that focus and nearly/almost/bordering on physically unbearable--it was her. She was there. It was Meg.

When I Go

My friend Meg had the smarts to tell people what she had done to ensure that after she had died, (Did she know it was coming soon? Had she sensed something?) we would do what she wanted, nothing less, nothing more. She wrote it all down in an envelope, and she told her sister where to find the envelope. We did everything she asked. And it was beautiful. I recently read this article by Joan again, in which she lays out the Terry Schiavo debacle, and wonders just who has the right to decide what makes a life worth living.

So.

I don't want there to be any confusion. Here's what to do when I go. It's quite simple, really.

1) Give away everything that science/medicine/organ people might want. Eyes, spleen, kidney, liver, collectible first editions, etc.

2) Cremate the rest of me. Then share me. Let everyone take a tablespoon.

3) Scatter me around; I want to be in a bunch of different places. Choose the places yourself. Pick a place because I liked to sit there, or you think I would have liked to sit there. Or pick a place that you would like to visit, so that when you want to think of me, you can visit that place. Or when you visit that place, you think of me.

4) Gather everybody in whatever geographical locales are easiest. Have a party. Everyone tell stories. Tell bad jokes. Tell good ones. Make jokes about me being a control freak. About my grumpiness. About my affinity for mail waiting to be sent. Play music.

5) Eat. Eat lavishly. Eat yourself sick and tired. Be ridiculous in your menu planning. Have it catered by the best. Or have everyone cook. Have french fries. Have tiny boursin and avocado sandwiches. Have manchego and quince paste. Have fried baby artichokes with lemon sauce. Have something with flour tortillas. Have gay-sounding ice cream flavors.

That's it.

Sunday Morning

One thing I miss about grief is the clarity. The focus it puts on your emotions. The way it illuminates the muddiness of the day to day, lengthening the time it takes for the sun to cross the sky, and perversely, achingly, stretching the night into an endless quiet space (those frozen hours when the rest of the world is asleep and so who are you going to call?) At any moment, if asked how you're feeling, you have the answer. And though you are grappling with everything, (compounded by bullshit like the electric bill and the goddamn subway,) grasping at complicated feelings like you'd pick a Bingo number, what pervades the entire experience is something simple, strangely comforting.

The one-year anniversary of Meg's death was back in September. So now everything I do, if I mark the time, a year ago, well, she was already dead.

Kip never met her. He was the first seriously important person in my life that didn't know me in the context of her. For a time I didn't know who I was. I guess this happens after long marriage that ends in divorce, when your parents die, or your child is lost to history, the ocean, a careening drunk driver, whatever. You aren't sure who you are. You aren't sure if you know how to go it alone. We so often bounce ourselves off another.

I miss her still, every day. But the sadness has lifted. And, mostly, only the charming, laughing love for her remains.

A New Year

Last Saturday morning, December 30, my longtime neighbor and surrogate grandfather, Bob Buckingham, died at home of congestive heart failure. I think they should change the name. Failure sounds so passive, like your body made an error. It should be called "Pro-Active Soul Liberation."

If we are lucky, that is.

As a gift for my birthday when I was twelve, Bob took me on a train ride through Chattanooga--the Missionary Ridge Local, which runs from Grand Junction to the East Chattanooga Depot and back. We stood against the railing while the engine changed direction on the turntable. Bob was slowly disappearing for the last couple of years, retreating into his memories, into story after story, each carrying an immense gravity. Talking to him, it was impossible not to feel a space opening, a strange distance which must have been even more alarming to him than it was to us. Wasn't it?

My mother's great-aunt Marie, who lives in a nursing home in Atlanta, said the woman who shared her room was walking down the hall one day and just fell over dead. "What a way to go," we all said.

My dad's parents, both in their late eighties, are stuck in time at different moments--quite possibly the time in their lives that were, for them, the happiest. My grandfather when he was a boy, aged eight to thirteen maybe. My grandmother later, in her years as a tourguide. I try not to think much about how these times are decades apart, about how neither much includes the other. Where are they? I sometimes wonder. And I don't blame them.

This year I learned that Meg is still gone, and gone really is forever. That her objects, her furniture, do not really contain her as much as they contain my memories. "Do you want to take a trip?" they say, peeking out at me from the bookcases, from the cabinets and locked boxes. They are wyrm holes you can touch.

Back in November, my friend Ashley wrote to me in a card: "May all your dead be at peace." I'd never heard anything so comforting.

My nephew, on the other hand, is remarkable in his alive-ness, his pure person-ness. The way he has adopted what is, apparently, our family posture--some slack-kneed way of standing that I've seen in photographs of my brother and I. The way he'll just tell you sometimes: "I don't know what that is."

Talking to Her

My friend Ashley, a dancer and Circus Amok ring performer, asked me yesterday if I could marry someone who spoke to the dead, would I want to? I knew what she was asking. She was asking, If you could talk to Meg, would you?

I told her I wouldn't. What would Meg have to say to me, I thought, that she didn't already say when she was living? The things I want to know aren't things that she, specifically, would have to tell me (although I would appreciate them from her sensitive yet removed perspective): What is the journey like? Is there a tunnel of white light? Do the angels play harps? And, as I've written before, did you get all the text messages I sent after you died?

What a scene at your memorial service, I might say, with that long strange painting hung on the curtain, and the very colorful...quilt?...shawl?...draped over the podium. When you-know-who said you-know-what and I thought you might send lightning down to smite her--but I knew you wouldn't because you're like that. Or you're not like that.

I suppose I would want to talk with Meg. But if I can't, that's fine too. The last words she said to me were 'Happy Fucking Birthday,' which I cherish unlike anything else in this world. So--in our many nights laying awake in my bed together, stacks of letters, phone calls so long both my cell phone and cordless land-line went dead--we said basically everything we needed to say to each other.

I won't write "as if we knew." Because we didn't.

Old Stuff

I was in Chattanooga not long ago and Mary Beth, Meg's sister, gave me a manila envelope which was full of things I had written forever ago, and had sent to Meg back in the fall of 1997. It was in Meg's apartment, of course, in a drawer full of ancient things; she was such a packrat.

It's good to read your old stuff, even if you're horrified that any of it came out of your fingers. It's not a reflection of your work now, it's just representative of your work then. And you're always learning, so there should some gradual upward slope, right?

Some highlights from the envelope:

From a monologue:

"You guys wanna know what love is? Love is seven hours and all the trash bags you want. And I packed my shit up in half the time. I took the truck because the lawyer said it was a pre-marital asset, which means it's mine."

From a short story:

Standing on the burning asphalt, your mind plays tricks with your body. You can't tell if your feet are burning or freezing, like when you put your hand in scalding water, first it feels cold, then hot. When the bomb detonated, it was so hot. Like all of suburbia's ovens were thrust open at the same time, and all of our glasses became foggy. The street heated up so fast, but I just stood there, knowing that I was becoming stronger.

From a poem:

where the knocking of knees makes us tired / where the urgency of breath floats us like lighted / lanterns on a river.

Rabbit Hole

My friend Ken took me to see Rabbit Hole, the new play by David Lindsay-Abaire, starring Cynthia Nixon, Tyne Dale and John Slattery. I loved it. The acting is incredibly nuanced, and considering the subject matter--a four-year old is hit by a car and killed, and the family must then deal with their individual paths through grief--it's also very funny.

At one point in the second act, Ms. Nixon asks her mother--who in the play, eleven years earlier, lost her son, Ms. Nixon's brother--if "this feeling" ever goes away. Ms. Daly says that eventually you are able to crawl out from underneath it, and then you carry it in your pocket like a brick. Some days you forget about it, and then you reach in and you're reminded, "oh yeah, that."

So much of the play felt like my own experience with Meg's death. (It did occur to me at one point that everyone around me, all the other people crying, were probably thinking that the play felt like their experiences, as well; such is the brilliance of the writing; and such is the nature of grief.) How sometimes you feel like moons orbiting the people you love, empty space spanning the distance between you, impassible. How the objects left behind are both exalted to a new level of preciousness, and yet you carefully remove the reminders from your immediate view, because to have the person staring back at you from the outside is often too much.

So. Run, don't walk, to see Rabbit Hole if you're anywhere near.

On Blogging

New York Magazine's cover story the other week was on blogging. Reading the article, I couldn't help thinking over and over that blogging is the kind of thing that, if it were to vanish from the earth in an instant, it would hardly be missed. This is not to say that I don't cherish my own blog, or champion the lessons, posts, words, ideas, love, that I've written here -- but I still wonder sometimes, who cares? It's like when I went from having cable to not having cable. Sure, you miss lots of entertaining TV, but what are you actually missing?

I get about 20 hits per day (about 3,500 since the blog began back in July 2005,) a lot from people I know, but also from people I don't know. Some of these strangers come back every day to see what's here. That's particularly nice to see.

I said once in a conversation that blogging taught me how to write. What I meant is that blogging taught me how to think about my writing -- and how to think about something and writing about something are, for me, really the same thing. (You write to figure out what you think about something.) Blogging has taught me how to give something to read to the world, and then not have to always hear back about it. One thing that's hard to do as a young writer is NOT look over everyone's shoulder as they're reading your work. You want to watch their faces as they come to the line that you think is funny, or sharp, or perfectly devastating. And posting things quietly whenever I find a moment, then actually forgetting about them has given me an entirely new perspective on trusting the sentences to do their work.

After Meg died, blogging about it helped me move through whatever phases of bullshit I was going through, and helped me translate the experience. Tell your story, they said to me in Northampton one night, several years ago when Meg and I were having tea and talking with some of her friends. I thought of that when I wrote about her death. None of what I wrote was therapy. Things you write to make yourself feel better aren't necessarily what you want people to think of as "your work." I have separate files for those other writings. But I'm especially proud of what made it here.

One of my favorite writers, and human beings, on the planet, Sarah Vowell was once asked "If you had to choose, would it be Sinatra or Elvis?" "I don’t have to choose," she answered. "That’s what’s great about the world." That's also what I love about blogging. What (and who) I choose to read up on just enriches my experience. And whatever I miss -- like cable TV -- Oh well.

Signals

I want to print a retraction. In December, I wrote a post about the passing of my great-grandmother. In it I said: "I know too much about death lately." But that was false; I don't really know about death at all. What I know about is life after someone dies.

I saw three armored trucks today on my way to work. Two of them belonged to the MTA and were servicing different subway stations. The third was parked outside Grey Advertising. The men emptying the back of it were holding guns. There was a sign posted on the swinging doors: "Caution: Wide Right Turns."

Objects can contain people; I have written that before. And I suppose that -- strangely, unfortunately, morbidly -- the armored truck will forever be one thing to me, one thing only.

I have blogged about all the Sade stories, the way the universe (is that you Meg, I always ask?) has given me snippets of one song or another in a cab, on a stranger's iPod. Sometimes I will hear Sade on the dumb generic radio and I know it's not Meg. But sometimes I hear it from somewhere else, and my body gets warm and I feel this unbelieveable pressure all over myself, like she's trying to get me to pay attention. Look over here, it says, and for a moment I feel like a dumbass.

But I never know what she's trying to get me to see. Maybe that's not the point. Maybe she's just trying to tell me: I'm here.

Red Wife

Going It Alone

On a train ride home over the weekend I was having a discussion about what I'm going through, and about grief in general. "How are you doing?" they want to know. Then there are serious faces and sometimes as much as a hand on your shoulder. "How are you reallydoing?"

What I find difficult to explain is that I am perfectly fine -- and yet I'm completely wrecked. I get up in the morning, I go to work, I see movies, I laugh at parties, I get excited about doing fun things. I'm really fine. No different from my "normal" life, as far as I can tell. Except that I am also sad all the time.

Imagine that someone buries a tiny black stone inside your body which never warms and always pains you, or the sharp edge of a bullet fragment is embedded in your side, and that small piece of jagged metal just lives inside you for the rest of your life. None of them bother you constantly, but more when you move differently, when your posture or attitude is otherwise compromised. When, like this morning, you see an armored truck parked outside of a bank.

You take on a bit of color, and the sadness is just something you carry. It changes you slightly, another tiny weight to add to all the other weights that everyone carries.

"Why don't you call?" your friends ask. And what is really difficult to explain -- and, I assume for people to understand -- is that talking about it doesn't necessarily help. Going to parties doesn't help. Watching TV doesn't help. Being alone doesn't help. Nothing you do or don't do really makes any difference. And the only thing that does fix it -- time, presumably -- is the only thing you can't do anything about.

My Address Book

I've spent the past several nights doing my Christmas cards, which have become a sort of annual event -- at least in my own mind. I do look forward to them, and occasionally people will ask about them nearabouts Thanksgiving. After I figure out what the card itself is going to be, I go through my address book and see who's still where they were last year, and who I need to get a new address from.

The writer Alan Gurganus said that his address book was the most important book he'd ever written -- it was filled with his friends who had died of AIDS, hundreds of them, he said. And I just listened to Joan Didion on Fresh Air talk about how it was impossible to cross people out of her address book, and so it, too, was filled with the dead.

There are only two entries like that in my address book. One of them just says Mer, for Meredith Helton. The other one, Meg, had so many addresses that her section is filled with smudges of black marker. I've used four different pens, and drawn arrows pointing my eye to the appropriate house number or zip code.

There are phone numbers of men who I no longer speak to, or who I wish I had the courage to call again, or that I never really spoke to consistently in the first place. Wishful thinking, perhaps, on my part. The playwright, the paralegal, the video editor, the photographer, the dancer from Mexico whose name isn't there because it is too painful to write it.

I've been thinking about how you can trace the months as you move through the alphabet, how many years pass when you turn a page.

On Being Mistaken

I woke up this morning thinking that, perhaps, it had not happened. Your body can--literally--memorize another person, unconsciously. And it precipitates into actions: dailing the phone number without thinking about it; making mental lists about what to say to them when you see them next. And, of course, as sad as you are, the one person you want to talk about that with....well, the option does not present itself.

What helps:
-Music (some music, not all music)
-Reading
-Ambien

What doesn't:
-TV
-Food (everything tastes the same right now)
-Regret

But before all that, before NPR started yapping in my ear at ten to eight on my alarm clock like it always does--why do I listen to commentary about whatever inane thing the President did the day before so early in the morning?--I got up around four having to pee.

My mother, more than a year ago, sent me a Halloween-ish box which included two Ring Pops, these being the sort which contain a tiny battery in the "setting" and a little LED that blinks, lighting up the candy.

I was suddenly confused by the orange flickering on the end table, thinking it was a candle that I had perhaps forgotten to blow out. Then when I realized that three days ago I had eaten this blinking, light-up novelty of a sucker--and here it was still plugging away--I just laughed.

Grief = Love

A strange feeling: that perhaps I want to stay inside this grief a bit longer, so as to let Meg stay with me for one more hour, another week, through next month, during the horrible motion of the holidays. Retreating from the world into the memories, into the joys of our life together have been extraordinarly comforting. I say inside this grief because it can feel like that. Like a down-filled comfortor. Like protective armor.

The conventional wisdom dictates that you should pass through your grief not quickly, not too slowly, but at whatever pace is right for you. So, I suppose what I'm saying is that I'm not quite done feeling sad. And why should I be? The one year anniversary makes a difference, I keep hearing. And it's been only two months. Two months today.

I'm not incapacitated. I'm still in basically a good mood everyday. (But, for those of you know know me, you know that's pretty relative, anyway.) Maybe this bluntness never goes away. Everything I've read says that it does not. People in the same situation (predicament?) say that it does not. And I wonder, is it strange, unhealthy? Is it abnormal to want to hang on a little longer? There is joy in the sadness, if you look for it.

I started to title this post "How Grief Can Feel Like Love." But what I'm trying to say is that grief is love.

Messages

Saturday night was the most recent opening of my friend Barb Monoian's amazing endeavor "Musee de Monoian." She has included me in her gallery space based solely on the fact that Barb understands how one sort of art can be meaningful in context of another, i.e. my words next to a painting, both built around the same theme, even though we worked independently and do not know each other, can potentially create something interesting.

And Meg visited during the opening; I am sure of it.

I had pointed out my pages and showed some friends where they were in the cacophony of artwork, and then I bent down to sign the guestbook that goes along with this particular exhibit. And the DJ began to play Sade. Meg and I spoke to each other all the time in Sade -- it sounds rather strange to other people, I find; it sounds corny. But to us it was something different, a shared something that seemed between only us.

I stood up and spun around. "Are you hearing this?!?" I shouted, to Mario, to Laura and Amy, to anyone who would listen. I wanted someone else to hear it. I wanted the message to be witnessed by someone else, because I was afraid, for only a moment, that I had invented it.