A Feast of Burdens

On This Morning

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 08:37:03 -0700

The train glides with an unusual grace as cool morning droplets of dew pursue a skipping downward coarse along the wide window next to me. I look out over the stillness of the sound. The distant short, lightly cloaked in a disintegrating mist. Above, the full moon still shines brightly, watchful maybe, defying rebelliously the oncoming rise of the sun.

The tide has come and erased the shore. Here and there ducks coast, content and unafraid. Familiar landmarks are submerged. In the distance, a lone, small boat cruises; I can barely make out two figures. I imagine they’re bundled up against the early chill. There’ll be no sea lions on their floating platform this morning.

We pull into the next station, the connectors between the cars squeaking and growling. The train is remarkably empty for it being the last train of the morning. A pair of friends on the far side of the car have been chatting quietly to each other; that combined with the constant exhale of the air conditioning has been remarkably pleasing.

A dozen people board. They look dazed. They move slowly. Most of them aren’t yet fully awake. They take their seats, some uncertain as to which they should take, and the train pulls out again.

There are two sherriffs or deputies on board. They’ve walked the cabin twice. I’m irrationally nervous.

‘You want to take position up here?’ A voice behind me asks. I don’t hear an answer.

I didn’t sleep much last night. Insomnia happens sometimes. I expeted to be more tired and irritable this morning but, instead, I feel peaceful. It’s been increasing in that direction. The days have gotten easier, the toiling depression slowly relenting from its vocation, a sense of a new normalcy infiltrating this pourous state of affairs.

I wanted to be angry but I could never latch on to any. When I was younger, anger was my sanctuary. When I felt like I had gotten too out of control over the past few months, I resolved myself to find that black emotion and make ruthless use of it. But it remained elusive; a ghost from my past who also wanted as little to do with me as possible. When anger did come, like the sky unexpectedly and loudly clearing its throat on a clear day, it was flash of potassium on cool water: a bright and fleeting spark.

Instead of angerr, I often feel empty. Although empty isn’t necessarily the right word because ‘empty’ in terms of emotions has a negative connotation. It’s a peaceful kind of emptiness. But it’s all too easy to mistake it for a sense of defeat, of resignation, of failure. Maybe it’s acceptance. If so, then it’s definitely not a negative kind of emptiness. Maybe it’s emptiness in the sense of Bodhidharma. That, too, is definitely not a negative kind of emptiness.

I know, though, like those ended snarls of anger, this feeling too will soon slip away to be replaced by another. And then another. And then another.

I am in a room with no doors. I sit down.

• • • • •

I was wrong: there were three of them, those slippery majesties.

An Irritating Void

Sun, 09 Oct 2011 15:57:00 -0700

I miss my wife. Of course, I do. We’d been together for nearly a decade and she had been my ballast and best friend. She understood me better than anyone else; even moreso than the soulmates about whom I’ve recently written. She figured things out about me, illumined the darker regions of my personality, and provided order in areas of my self where chaos once ruled unchecked. I loved her—and still do love her—unconditionally and I am proud to have shared the time and experiences we had together.

For the most part, I have nothing but great memories: our yearly adventures in Leavenworth eating at Visconti’s, drinking wine, playing miniature golf, her being excited about watching the taffy puller in action, and lazily tubing down the river before our drive home; discovering and loving together 2-step and dubstep; coming home late one night to find a couple of neighborhood cats trying to chase down a mouse that we tried to save; crying together when we figured out which song she should walk to at our wedding; going with her to classes to and being present for her conversion to Judaism and sharing with her her first Jewish holidays and how we took a photo of the first year of Shabbatot we shared; walking to Greenlake and sitting on a bench for hours, talking, sipping on a Nalgene bottle full of Diet Coke and rum; … I could go on and on.

What I find interesting now is that, in thinking about some ex-girlfriends the other day, I fully realized how remarkably similar my ex-wife is with a particular ex-girlfriend. I don’t put any faith in horoscopes or the zodiac but their birthdays are a mere two days apart and they have a practically unified method for handling negative emotions: they bottle them up and thus they were often emotionally unavailable.

This was manifested uniquely between them. My ex-wife, for example, simply would never think to ask me how my day was, or ask how I was feeling. I believe that this wasn’t because she didn’t care but that the thought simply didn’t cross her mind. When we talked about things, when I reminded her to ask or when I talked about my day anyway, she cared and she showed it. When I was sick, she’d occasionally check up on me and take care of me, and when she finally took the kids and left and she was worried about my emotional state, she checked up on me. So I know that she cared. It’s just part of her personality and I don’t fault her for it.

But it’s harder to deal with now that we’re divorced. I message her, check up on her and the kids, commiserate with her when she’s going through a bad time, ask her how her schooling is going, etc. She never checks up on me. She messages me only when she wants something. When we meet up each week, she doesn’t ask me how my job is going or how I’ve been. I try to tell myself that she still cares and it’s just that part of her personality and not indicative of something else. But it’s difficult to believe. And it’s hard to deal with the fact that I still care what she thinks.

Now, to be clear, this isn’t because I’m looking for some sight of reconciliation. It’s that, honestly, I’m kind of weak here. It’s wrong of me to put any emphasis on whether or not she asks me how I’m doing but that unavailability carries a greater weight in the wake of our divorce and my subsequent bout of, I don’t know, being a regular person.

For the two years that I was with that particular and unbelievably similar ex-girlfriend, I had often talked about how I’ve always wanted a bonsai tree. Ten months after we broke up, she moved away. Before she did, she wanted to buy gifts for people. For her boss, she bought her a bonsai tree. For me? She gave me a Chia pet.

It’s amazing how in the wake of our divorce, I’ve been given a similar consolation prize.

A Legend Cannot Perish

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 20:23:00 -0700

When Apple announced the original iMac, our designer asked, ‘Why would anyone want a VT100 made out of colored plastic on their desk?’ Here at Eastgate, we’d predicted a very different product and expected the new machine would prove a debacle. We were completely wrong. A few weeks later, I spent a day visiting art galleries on Santa Fe’s Canyon Road, and the most prosperous galleries all had colorful new iMacs atop their stylish desks. Some of those desks were 17th-century hand-carved Spanish heirlooms, some were spectacular steel-and-wood fantasies of contemporary crafts, but on all of them stood Bondi Blue iMacs shaped just like that long-obsolete dumb terminal.

The galleries weren’t responding to the retro tech allusion: they responded to the iMac because it was different. It was designed. Someone had thought about it—it wasn’t just another beige box. It didn’t matter that the old beige box might have been better, in some ways; the iMac was trying to do what the old package didn’t, and you could sense a personality and a vision behind that attempt.

Mark Bernstein

The Tinderbox Way

A Dullness Pervades

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 08:03:00 -0700

Rolled out of bed on an early morning, an early morning in a sarcophagus of fog. There’s something enchanting about fog as there is about snow. Both bring a kind of stillness with them but they deliver their parcel in a different way. Early morning fog is the best. It seems to want to attenuate the night rather than blind it, letting it edge out with dignity, a slow retreating tide. And, of course, there’s the mystery of fog that has been bequeathed us by movies and television. But there’s not much noir on a Wednesday morning, on a commuter train, surrounded by middle-aged workers still in transition from rudely interrupted sleep.

Over the past few weeks, with one exceptional moment which I’m sure to write about later, I’ve felt an increased dullness. A dampening of sharp edges and a dimming of lights. Although I am still very happy with my job and am perhaps happiest when I’m at the office working—for obvious reasons—, it’s become increasingly difficult to encourage myself out of bed in the mornings, to fight off that indistinct feeling of… well, not nothingness but something quite close to it. Honestly, it’s hard to explain because it isn’t a sense of nihilism but simply a difficulty in getting started. To put it another way, I’m a car that doesn’t want to turn over when the engine’s gone cold.

At first, it was the evenings that were the worst times for me. As the day would slip into dusk, feelings of depression, of hurt, of guilt, and of missing my children would become nearly unbearable. That schedule has now switched and it attacks in a new form in the mornings. The evenings have been rather good. I’m usually in a good mood when I get home: I tease the cats; I eat dinner; I watch television, read, or play games. I feel pleasant in the evenings. But at night, if I am unfortunate to wake up—and I always do—, I am plagued by black thoughts and an enraged guilt and self-loathing. Sometimes, I go downstairs and turn on the television to anything not irritating just to give my mind something else to chew on. And then, as of late, in the mornings: dullness.

This morning, I tried to ease the feeling by suggesting I hang out in bed for awhile, treat myself to it, and then take a later train. But I can’t let go of that discipline, of getting up when the alarm commands me, of getting in the shower, and getting on the road. And I was rewarded this morning: half-way through the shower, my mood began to brighten, the dullness began to recede, and by the time I drove out into the fog, I was feeling normal again.

Is this progress? I hope so. But I’ll never know for certain until tomorrow when the game resets and I find myself back at square zero.

• • • • •

A burdened tanker cuts its way across the gray of the Sound. In the distance, the horizon is lost between the water and the sky; it looks like a monotonous serenity. I get tired just by looking at it. How can the water reach up to the sky and the sky down to the water? Of course, it’s just the mischief of fog, fooling us into believing we’ve sank into some kind of limbonic corridor, a vast and indistinct dome.

The cold hell of the corpse-colored beaches in winter is approaching.

• • • • •

A fisherman casts out his line, fights against the incoming tide; the fish go deep.

Cathedrals of the Wastrel

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 18:11:56 -0700

It’s easy to put all of the blame on her, to formulate dense accusations, and in some ways it would be pleasing, to assuage any guilt I might be myself feeling. I want to clench my fists and say, ‘You should have talked to me…’ Actually, I did accuse her of giving up on me, on us, in one of the many tear-strained voicemails I left for her after she had gone and cut off all communication with me. But it didn’t help.

Against my will, I’ve found myself retracing our situations, questioning them, furiously ferreting out other possibilities; searching under battered and dog-eared moments, looking for some clue, some way to hold up what little I feel I actually know, embarrassed of how much I didn’t know, how much I took for granted, how maybe I could have changed the outcome. But it didn’t help.

I’ve looked back, lining up parallels, searching for likenesses in the shadows cast from all of my failed relationships. I wonder what consistency might arise that could help in the definition of my magical ability to ruin people’s lives. I wanted to shoulder like Atlas all of the blame, free her of her complicity, carry it like a stone of brutal weight, claim in full the guilt, and groan under the unleavened despair for all to see. But it didn’t help.

It would be remarkable simple—and simple-minded—to dismiss the situation, with the way I felt then, with the way I feel now, with the way she felt then, with the way she feels now, as some function of destiny, to slap a pathetic bumpersticker on our failure which reads, ‘It was meant to be.’ No one can prove that assertion; maybe we’ve made a huge mistake. Maybe it will forever damage our children and we will be fully criminal in their destructions. Thoughts like these are easy to come by, simple to construct edifices of spineless nightmare. I find myself thinking them more often than I’d like. But it didn’t help.

I’d make a liar of myself if I didn’t admit to my own happiness in spite of it all. I’ve thrown myself headfirst into my work in a way that is completely against my normal character. Maybe it’s because of the divorce—and I do joke now that I’m married to the agency—but I’m excited to go to work in the morning, I rarely work less than nine or ten hours a day, and I have to force myself to leave to catch the last train. And my dedication has already been proven as they’ve transitioned me from contractor to a full-time employee. It’s hard not to be bemused at the irony that the one thing she cared about the most—a stable employment—came a week after she had left. I wonder if the timing had been slightly different, would it have saved us? Did she really care more about money than my heart? However, I seriously doubt I would have been able to have become the worker I am now if I were still married; she wanted me to be at home as much as possible to take off from her the full burden of the children and the long hours required of me now would have probably dismantled what was left of our marriage anyway. Thinking it’s a lose-lose situation seems to have enjoined some imaginary justice. But it didn’t help.

Sometimes I focus on the future, on how unbelievably well my career has suddenly become, how that the life I thought ended is merely in transition, for her and for me, and how one day she’ll fall in love again which will completely shadow the love we had, perhaps diminished to where it seemed like an untrustworthy ghost, a faint bad taste in the back of the throat at the moment of waking. Maybe I’ll fall in love one day too; maybe I’ll rediscover my romance; maybe a youthfulness will erupt in me again, washing clean the dust and detritus that has accumulated over my spirit. Maybe some beautiful soul will take me into her trust and provide me the space to rebuild all that I had been sure was lost. It’s pleasing to think about this, to be hopeful about our bifuricated futures. But it won’t help.

A Mythology of the Unique

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 08:08:00 -0700

I’ve been thinking of some ex-girlfriends recently. I’ve actually been wandering down many old secluded paths. Sometimes I’m trying to find something, I think. But mostly I’m just revisiting pleasing avenues, good memories, resurgences of hibernated fondness. The thick undergrowth is resplendant in episodes made romantic through the passage of time which dulls and erodes the sharper corners of those passed realities into sensitive and rewarding façades. I idle at will, linger as I might, traspass with no compunction, and loiter carelessly.

Two girls, in particular, have as usual caught me in their nets unworn and immune to the passage of time. Both of them are gone now: one living across the country who might as well be living on another planet and the other who has been dead these past seven years. On both of them my mind alights and from them I draw some revisionist comfort as I consider my current situation and how it mirrors so vibrantly the prologues of my times with each of them.

In particular, I’ve been thinking about the roles people play in our lives and how selfishly and egoistically we mantle rude constructs around their mythic natures. In particular, the idea of a wife (or a husband) and of a soulmate.

One of the worst confabulations we’ve stressed ourselves with is the idea that we can have only one soulmate. I too when younger, more naïve, and more romantic believed the same thing: the preposterous idea that there is but one soulmate for each of us and that it will be the muscle of destiny that brings us our soulmates together in a match that through no conceivable act from the natural to the divine can break apart and, like the wrong-headed idea of enlighenment, of Nirvana, that once soulmates are met, there would be no further heartache between them.

How could this possibly be? Putting aside the absurd notion of predestination, which itself should disprove this idea, we’re left with the odd notion that our souls are so specialized that there could only be a single and perfect match. Or, to put it more negatively, that our souls are so crudely dimensioned that we’re afforded only one compatibility. And if that were the case, how could the match be as rewarding as the myth purports the meeting to be? Either way, if we’re only granted a single match—regardless of its perfection—, that would mean that we must be guaranteed a birth date relative to that of our soulmate unless we entertain the disheartening idea that our soulmate may have died before we were born or were born after we died. That’s not really reassuring, is it?

Furthermore, where is it guaranteed that soulmates must be romantic? Usually, the Harlequin idea of an exquiste soulmate is crudely grafted on to the one occupation that is the most volatile and riskiest venture we masochistically and repeatedly put ourselves through: the office and affairs of love (to borrow from Shakespeare); in particular, romantic love. Look back at your own history and of what you’ve endured; would you put your soulmate through that gauntlet? Would you appreciate it if it were done to you? Probably not.

One of my ex-girlfriends mentioned above was beyond the shadow of any doubt my soulmate and I hers. It was patently obvious to both of us and to anyone who witnessed us together. We were inseparable and a force to be reckoned with. We were a team that let no one else into our little world no matter how much they wanted a part of it. When she and I were together, it was us against the universe. Yet we never shared a romantic moment. When we kissed, it was a kiss between friends. Our relationship was purely platonic and our dedication to each other pretty much guaranteed for with any romantic relationships we tried to strike up outside of our compact. Admittedly, at first, I wanted to make it romantic and she considered it too and it engendered turmoil between us. When we realized the true nature of our relationship, we never again suffered uncertainty. Once we stopped thinking of each other as possible lovers, our friendship went supernova.

I doubt my experience is unique. And I find it depressing that, should we only have alloted to each of us a single soulmate, that mine has gone and never another one come along. Yet I know that souls encounter mates regularly. Sometimes, I imagine, through circumstance the match is never properly enjoined. I believe this because she wasn’t my first. My first was my cousin, who died in a car wreck when we were young. For me, at least, it’s patently obvious.

In my mind, I think of wives similarly. Because of the indestructible example presented by my parents, I never imagined myself divorced. I expected to be married once and that marriage to last forever and, honestly, I was dug in. I can only imagine a few extreme scenarios where I would have given up on her. This isn’t to suggest that she isn’t as strong or determined as I was. In fact, I see her as very strong and brave for having ended our marriage; I think, regardless of my tenacity, it might prove to have been the right thing for us.

In the aftermath of our dissolution, I have thought strongly that I would never marry again. I had my chance and it didn’t work out; end of story. I had a wife; why would I want another one? In a sense, even though some people’s second or third marriages can far outshine their first, there can only be one first marriage just like there can be only one first kiss, one first love, one first lovemaking. Regardless of the fact that all of those experiences were most likely awkward and possibly unrewarding or even unwanted, those experiences will never be the same and could never be erased from the register of your mythology.

I don’t want to get married again but I’m no longer blindly against the idea. Of course, I didn’t want to get divorced in the first place and I didn’t want my first two soulmates to die young. No one will ever replace any of them. My wife, the mother of my children, will always have about her a legend and a place in my heart that can never be occluded. I would never be so crass as to even compare her with anyone else. It isn’t that she set the bar too high but that she set the bar where it cannot be seen.

What’s going to happen next? I don’t know. But I’m slowly starting to relinquish my death grip on my situation. The passing of each day seems to do so with more grace; enough so that I’ve dumbly thought myself to be healthier than I am; but I know the truth: I have a long way to go and like all things, these moments of peace are transient. I will enjoy them as I can.

An Eruption of Italics

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 18:12:00 -0700

He’s not sure what to make of her, of her small glances and her nervous smile. He’s not sure what to think about her sudden and then more frequent presence. She seems nervous; perhaps as nervous as he. When they see each other suddenly, there seems to be a sudden shift in her: an eruption of italics about her face. Another tiny smile. He’s not sure what to make of her or their small, thrilling game which, of course, must surely be in his imagination.

She’s taller than he is and he’s not sure what to make of that either.

Up With the Sun

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 05:48:00 -0700

It’s Saturday and I’m awake at 5 in the morning. For a long while, Saturday and Sunday mornings were a special time for me and my daughter. I was always the one to wake up early with her as my ex-wife was, and I presume still is, not at all in any stretch of the imagination a morning person. Add to that her having to wake up several times throughout the night to feed our tiny son and I was happy to be the one to wake up first.

During the week, I’d feed her cereal or whatever other reasonable breakfast-like food she wanted and we’d watch the news. No big deal.

But on the weekend? It was our time. It was West Wing time. I’m not sure how it got started exactly but we started watching episodes of The West Wing on weekend mornings. As many episodes as we could squeeze in before my then-wife would wake up and come downstairs whereupon she’d take over and I’d oftentimes catch a nap.

Our daughter loves The West Wing. She immediately associated President Obama with it. When the theme music would come on, she’d point at me: ‘Dada dance!’ And we’d ‘dance’: this consisted of me kind of walking like a zombie with no kneecaps in a small circle and she’d, for some reason, rush to the front door, hit it with both palms, run back to me, and then also walk in a circle like a zombie that could not bend its legs.

Most times, especially when she was younger, she’d sit on my lap, drink milk from her sippy cup and we’d watch episodes (which is what she called The West Wing, by the way: ‘episodes’). As she got older, her attention began to wander. We’d stack blocks, deconstruct and reconstruct a colorful wooden puzzle house, or play with any number of her other toys.

It was our time.

I haven’t thought about it since my then-wife left with the kids. Mainly because I haven’t woken up this early, I suppose. It’s just past 5 am and I’m watching the moon run away from the rising sun. The theme from The West Wing is running through my head. But I’m not sad, really. I miss my daughter. I miss this special time we used to share. I’m nostalgic, definitely. Possibly melancholy. And maybe even wistful. There are probably other adjectives that are apropos but I think that I’ve gotten my point across.

I’m grateful, though. Although sometimes I have to work really hard to convince myself, I’m currently thinking that the right choice has been made for us. I can’t quite say that I’m happier living on my own, away from my family, but I’m definitely enjoying the freedom. I’m not a very selfish person; if I have something to give away, I usually give it away. But I think part of my happiness is based in selfishness: I like being in complete control of my life; I like the freedom of being able to do whatever I want whenever I want it. I’m enjoying that. It’s nice to come home to zero demands when you’ve worked a long and hard day. I can eat what I want, I can play games or watch movies, I can do whatever selfish activity that enchants me at whatever moment it decides to pounce.

But I’ll be damned if I wouldn’t give up all of this relaxing freedom to have my family back at home. It still distresses me when I come in from work each day to an empty house. I miss coming upstairs from my office to deep chaos: our daughter running around like she was being chased by an angry giraffe, our son sitting and complaining for attention next to the baby fence barring him from the kitchen, my then-wife in the kitchen cooking up something that smells so good it’s unbearable, the television tuned to the news… and then both my daughter and my son would be at my feet, both of them wanting to be picked up, both of them so happy to see me.

I could have sworn my then-wife was happy to see me, too.

I was wrong.

The Old Man & the Courthouse

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 19:24:00 -0700

At the end of each work day, on my walk to the train station, I pass by the courthouse. Normally, there are just a number of dejected-looking people leaning up against the edifice smoking and looking miserable. One person, in particular, is there every day. The skin about his eyes looks melted by age and a rough life. His eyes simply look at nothing.

On this day, I pass by a lawyer talking to an elderly man gripping a knob-tipped cane; he’s standing next to a young man. All three of them are dressed impeccably. As I walk past, I hear the young man saying something about separate rooms.

The lawyer asks the elderly man, ‘So you were never alone in a room with him?’

The old man plaintively and tiredly exclaims, ‘No!’

I keep walking but my mind is already at work on the obvious. My situation is less-than-ideal but it is by no means terrible. I sometimes remind myself that it could have been worse, much worse. She could have cheated or stolen from me. She could have tried to prevent me from ever seeing my kids again. She could have demanded a lot more than she did. Our divorce could have been acrimonious; it could have dragged on for months; we could have ended up hating each other. When you look at the whole idea of divorce, we both got off easy and, I think, we’re both better off because of it (but only time will tell on this one).

This man, though, I could only imagine what he was accused of based on that tiny snatch of conversation. Assuming the accusation was as dire as I imagined, that’s almost impossible to come back from. Once you’re accused of such a horrible act, even if proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that the accusation was wrong, you’re forever marked, I imagine. People who might have previously trusted you implicitly now hesitate.

It’s wrong for me to be grateful in spite of that man’s situation but it’s hard for me not to take some solace in the comparison. I’m still struggling. And when I can, I take what life has to give to make the struggle easier to bear.

I will go to sleep tonight feeling slightly less worse for wear but it would be a lie if I didn’t admit that my thoughts will be with that man tonight.

Once a Romantic

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 19:58:00 -0700

Once upon a time, I was a romantic and a hopeless one at that. In my teenage years, I was innocently eaten alive by the very thought of love: it was something I desperately wanted but my intent was dismantled by my shyness. I was simply terrified of rejection. I was also a rather homely teenager cursed with ridiculous glasses and what I later realized was an array of eccentricities which must have been rather off-putting to any girl who might have found herself interested to begin with. In retrospect, I can hardly blame them for wanting to stay away. I was accidentally an obstinately strange boy.

But it didn’t stop me from brutalizing myself emotionally, fueled quite readily by traitorous hormones. Good intentions and a consuming desire simply weren’t enough and even when I did manage to get close to love, it was sabotaged either accidentally by me or purposefully by my so-called friend who made a profession out of arranging dates for me and then sleeping with those girls when I didn’t move quickly enough.

In the end, though, I did, of course, find love as most of us all do. And with that love came heartbreak. Each successive serious relationship, each of which ended badly, slowly eroded from me that romance. Love was no longer a frontier to be explored and conquered (or conquered by) but became a kind of off-kilter merry-go-round. Each new relationship presented its unique attributes when it had them but overall I was overcome with a sense of having been in this place before. This isn’t meant to denigrate at all the relationships or the women who shared them with me. I just couldn’t help but notice that each time I stepped aboard again, I did so with increasing measures of trepidiation, paranoia, and mistrust. And what I see now is something much worse: somewhere along the way I had lost my romance.

I was looking back over some journal entries from the end of the 20th century and they’re just practically dripping with emotional sentiment. My style in general is very romantic but this stuff is just over the top (as an aside, it’s amusing to see how much my style has evolved; I could see what I was trying to write back then but I lacked the skill and experience that I have now). In reading some of those old entries, I realized that I actually miss my romantic self. I miss being able to give myself away without fear, to take the deep dive, and to truly feel with my heart and not with just my head. Reason and romance generally don’t get along and over the past ten years, reason has trounced romance almost completely.

I don’t know if I can ever be romantic like that again. There are certain aspects of youth and inexperience that can’t be regenerated once time and happenstance have worn you down. I know it isn’t the same for everyone: there are many people older than I am who are far more romantic and I applaud them with some minor envy.

Right now, of course, I feel no sense of romance at all but that’s to be expected. Although I like to amuse myself with the idea of going out on a date, of the thrill of new skin and uncharted conversations full of surprises and warmth, I truly feel dead inside. And not in a gloomy sort of way. More like that part of me has gone into hibernation. I do expect it to one day wake up and I expect that it will one day be woken up and not by me. Probably against my will, in fact. But, for now, slumber and peace are what I feel and I’m sure to feel this way for awhile as I heal from this freshly broken heart that she has given me.

Any Four Walls

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 08:03:00 -0700

I’ve been thinking about moving lately. Actually, I’ve been thinking about it since she left. At first, I expected it to be an easy choice: of course I was going to leave. How could I possible stay there when it is so engorged with memories. Isn’t it now merely a house rather than home with my family gone?

The notion is admittedly romantic but it isn’t practical. I struggled more with the disintegration of presence than I did over the abstract idea of where I live no longer being a home. It’s a fine but vital difference. I suppose, ultimately, I took the responsibility of repair on myself rather than blaming where I lived. I will be sad to leave, though, if I do, but it will be for the better memories: my daughter’s first steps in the kitchen, bringing my son home the morning of his birth, Saturday Game Days in my office, and the magnificent view.

But I keep asking myself, do I need to leave? The rent is fantastic considering all that it is but it’s also more than a single person really needs. Do I need a three-bedroom townhouse? At first glance, no, of course not. On the other hand, when my children come to visit, wouldn’t it be nice for them to have their own rooms? Furthermore, the place is practically soundproof. That’s nearly impossible to find anywhere outside of a freestanding house. Can I expect to get anything even remotely this valuable at such a cheap price if I move south?

Also, the further south I move, the further away I move from my children but that’s really an issue of convenience: a slightly longer drive.% d% dI doubt I’d move all the way back to Seattle although that was my first thought. Although it’d be nice to be close to my friends, I wouldn’t want to commit to a bus commute. I’m spoiled by the train so I’d want to be in a position where I could continue to commute that way which means the furthest south I’d move would be Edmonds and that’s probably not such a bad idea at all.

Luckily, I’m in no rush. I can at my leisure look for places of character, that are well-situated, and provide me with what I want: the best of all worlds.

The Guilt & the Anger

Sun, 21 Aug 2011 18:42:00 -0700

At first, the evenings were a black misery, a drowning of all that is good and alight in this world, crushed by atmospheres of despair. I dreaded the winding down of the day, knowing that around 3, I would slowly be taken apart by the depressions I had earlier through the strength of day throughtout dismantled; I know too that she suffered equally. But that is no consolation.

Eventually, as fatigue overcame me, the depression like black viscous blood seeped inward and downward and began to fill up my already questionable vessel with exhaustion. I would curl up on our deflated sofa and cry; I would lament, I would feel myself flayed before my grim and personal apocolaypse. I would feel sorry for myself.

Now as time has passed, I found that depression had begun to unspool; it began to collect in sharp coils of anger: where I once had just wordlessly cried, I now heard a rather strident voice at work: a vocalization of questioning, a series of craving waves put at task to erode this shoreline of uncertainty. I began to feel dark; I began to brood; I began to coalesce into a rather immature collation of accusations, of wanting to reach out and, well, not necessarily hurt but to inflict my blackness upon everyone. I wanted to wave flags. I wanted to be melodramatically grim, to achieve that dumb teenage angst, that desire to be Pink: to carefully arrange a disaster on the carpet, to shave off everything; and become the horrifyingly bleak. I wanted to become a genuflecting neutron star: a Chesire Cat grin of attrition with one hand on my heart and the other clutching a stilleto at the base of my spine. I wanted to spill blood. I wanted to experience hate as I have had love.

Over the days and weeks that have accumulated since her departure, I had repeatedly asked her for some time to ourselves, to talk seriously about things; she ignored my pleas as if I had never requested them; I assumed that she had needed more time. You see, all I wanted was some closure. But, ultimately she denied me even that. Sure, of course, yes, she said we could talk as long as we didn’t discuss the motives and actions that have placed us here. So, in other words, we could talk about anything other than the dissolution of our marriage.

To her credit, I was able to get at least two questions answered, neither of which really helped me deal with the situation but, well, when you come at the end of the day to a garage sale, you come away with whatever hasn’t already been picked clean; and it seemed that vultures had already ravaged the corpse of our wedding long before I was unbound enough to hold even one, single, sun-bleached bone in quiet worry. I took my scraps in gratitude and scurried away.

I don’t want to be angry. I want to shoulder the burden entirely on myself because that’s the script I’ve been handed. Aside from that, it’s the right thing to do; doesn’t make it easy, though. My job was and still is to protect her and our children. And if I have to be crushed under the weight of this situation all on my own then that is what I’ll do.

Yet this weight isn’t simply about guilt; if it were so simple, then I wouldn’t have need of this journal or anything else. If you have to walk a mile to your destination, you walk a mile to your destination. You don’t question your shoes; you don’t question the trail or the road upon which you have to walk. It may be miserable, it might be unfair, it might seem unbearable but you accept it as a necessity and so you walk. You do not give up

Just over ten years ago, my heart was truly broken for the first time. I sometimes bemuse myself that their birthdays were mere days apart and that they approached their emotions in a remarkably similar way. But finding commonality doesn’t help. At the end of that relationship, I was afforded an equal amount of closure: hardly any. If I believed in horoscopes, I’d be triumphant right now. But I don’t and I’m not.

I wonder what it is about me that disallows me closure, that enables the, I suppose, noble effort of denial. I can’t believe it’s the enactment of punishment. I may be hurt but I don’t clutch to such deviousness. Yet I can’t help but wonder. Is she afraid I’d become unhinged? Are there things—regrets and mistakes—that she simply doesn’t want to face? Or is it starkly true that if it wasn’t for our firstborn, she’d have left years ago? Does she really hate me? Wait. That can’t be it, can it? Since she had left, she had told me unprompted that she loved more times than she had an equal number of years that had expired previously. She doesn’t tell me that she loves me at all now. What do I take from that? Then again, I don’t tell her I love her either but that’s mainly because I don’t want to fuss with the silence that would follow.

And so, I will never know; she refuses to tell me. Other than her leaning heavily on my depressive drinking and the instability of being a contractor, I’m left only with conjecture and wine-emptied philosphies. I might as well be braying at the moon. This. This is my consolation prize; my parting gift for having lost at this particular and all-important endeavor. I am left with only questions and uncertainties, black pressures against my confidences, each eroding with fierce determination everything I had thought to be sacred between us. Between me and anyone.

But I am not angry because from this I draw the strength and motive to write. Thus, if it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be writing this at all.

That’s good. Right?

Right?

• • • • •

Clouds drift in.

Clouds drift away.

The sky is blue.

First Birthday

Sun, 21 Aug 2011 13:29:00 -0700

I tried to pretend that I wasn’t nervous. I deflected the anxiety, covered it up with helium-addicted mirth and watched with dismay as my solace gently drifted upward and, caught upon lofty currents, dissipated as if it had never existed in the first place.

It was our son’s first birthday and it would be the first time since the divorce that I had seen anyone other than my now ex-wife, our children, and her parents; I hadn’t seen her brother or his wife; I hadn’t seen any of the family friends. I was terrified. How miserable, I thought, must they think of me. How lowly in their judgemental castes I must register.

It’s not that, at the end of the day, I care. My life is what it is regardless of anyone’s approval (as difficult as that sometimes is for me to earnestly accept). But, to be trapped at a social function that I cannot—and, for the love of my children, would not—abandon, surrounded by the reproachful eyes of many would be mostly unbearable. Having no living parents, I had with naïve optimism, relied heavily on her family as stand-ins and, by extension, her parents’ wonderful friends. After having thought my family lost, I had unexpectedly found myself ashore with a new and huge extended family, full of laughter, love, and acceptance. I was worried all of that had been dismantled. And, of course, to some degree, it has. However, I was startled to find that most everyone greeted me not with scorn but with sympathy (a few chose to simply ignore me).

Too often people ask, ‘How are you doing?’, not out of any genuine interest but as a replacement for a bland ‘hello’. On this day, however, I felt—and this very well might be my mere and desperate perception—that the question was asked with actual interest. Furthermore, I felt within it, buried in the subtext, was a bit of a rallying cry for me. ‘How are you doing?’ suddenly became to mean ‘Hang in there; it’ll be all right.’ I gratefully took that which was offered to me, a beggar’s display indeed.

Unfortunately, they are no longer my family and if it weren’t for my kids, I doubt I would have seen any of them ever again. But, given the situation, I can do nothing but be overwhelmed by their kindnesses and marvel at their willingness to accept me in my freshly demoted employ. And even though I don’t expect to be invited to any functions other than those belonging directly to my children, I am grateful that I wasn’t made to feel as a pariah, as an unwelcome wraith whose primary purpose in connection to that extended family lately was only to ensure that there was a valid check squeezed tightly in her hand each and every month.

Well, That Happened

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 06:45:00 -0700

On the drive home from work last night, after a quick jaunt to the grocery store, I passed by a yard where a young man was furiously digging post holes for what is probably an oncoming fence, while an older gentleman leaned against a nearby car, playing a tenor saxophone.

Of course.

• • • • •

I haven’t forgotten about the Feast. It is only just beginning. Unfortunately, the timing couldn’t have been more wrong as work has ramped up tremendously this week and at the end of each day, I’m too mentally drained to even face this.

More to come.

A Beggar's Display

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 07:47:00 -0700

This morning, I took my ring off.

It’s something I’ve been thinking about since we finalizd the divorce. Part of me felt romantic, leaving it on: I remembered Leo McGarry leaving his on and he seemed strong. But, most of me felt stupid and slightly embarrassed, wondering if people who knew I was divorced and yet still saw me wearing the ring just quietly shook their heads while making a gently sour face.

I wouldn’t say that seeing her this past Sunday not wearing her ring, the ring which contains the stone my father gave to my mother who gave it to me to give to her, is the final motivation but I’m sure it has something to do with it. I guess I wanted to see her take it off first.

I almost wish, though, that I had taken it off first. But, I know if I would have done so, it would have been for wrong and dishonest reasons: to kind of flip her off in a way or as some kind of beggar’s display of strength: ‘Ha, look at me! Look at how easy it is for me to get over you!’

I understand now that me taking mine off first would have been me taking it off for her; me taking mine off last is me taking it off for me even if there was no fanfare and only silence that followed.

It didn’t feel good or liberating. It felt like tossing the final bit of a dirt on an unwanted grave. I left it sitting on top of the firebox in my office, a stark argent circle against a rough black background. I want to claim that now it’s just a ring, just a physical token of another life but I would be lying. That ring has a story within it.

But, that’s not true either, is it? Anyone else who would find the ring would see nothing remarkable about it at all. Only me. And perhaps her. But probably just me.

• • • • •

It’s funny that the word ‘cling’ rhymes with the word ‘ring’. Well, yes, you’re right, it’s not really funny at all.