Wednesday, March 15, 2006

I like walking along the beach, barefoot, by myself. Watching the inexhaustible waves. Feeling them wash away these pieces of my broken heart. Sometimes, I think I can fool the world into believing I don't care. And I do. I fool them all. But then, you see, the thing is, I can't fool myself. And I do care. And that's what makes everything so fucking hard. I care, I care, I care, I care.

Imperturbability? HAH!

So I make hundreds of resolutions. I have filled maybe 20 goodly-sized journals with them. I resolve to endeavour to try to pull myself up by the bootstraps. Start afresh. Go somewhere. Achieve something.

But it's all flat, flat, flat. Tepid. A Coke left out in the rain. No more fizz. No more bubbles. No more life. No more champagne. What happened to effervescence? What about that little spark of joy that starts in the solar plexus and travels up to my throat?

Let's see. Let's do a he said, she said, shall we? Just for fun.

He said: I love you. Will you marry me?

Then he said: Oh, yeah, but it comes with provisos. I think we could both work on you, make a few improvements.

She said: I thought you said you loved me.

And he said: I do, I do, but what's love anyway. We live to evolve...we should make improvements. What you need is a loving hand to guide you.

Here's where she should have told him to go fuck himself.

Instead, she said: What did you have in mind?

And he said: I've lined up a personal trainer. He will be here on Saturday.

And he said: No, I think you've had enough. No dessert. Don't forget what we're trying to achieve.

And he said: Have you gone running today?

And she said: My soul is no longer my own.

And he said: Don't exaggerate.

And she said: Look, no offence, but I need my own space. I want to move out.

And he said: You want to move out? Really?

And she said: You betcha.

And he said: In that case, it would be better for us to break up.

And so they did. And they wrote each other out of their respective stories. And years later, she saw him across the street, walking with his wife, both chubby, middle-aged and happy...and she wrote the following:

I'm not there,
You know I'm not
You have cancelled me out
a hole in the air,
an absence
that was never
present.

That picture you took,
has started to fade,
It knows what you've done.
It knows.

Replaced me with flesh and bone
a bellyful of tubes,
pumping real blood.

She's vivid,
with reds and blues and purples.
Rubens, perhaps?
while I am sepia-tinted
unfocussed, blurred.

You can cancel history,
Rewrite the past
so I cease to exist,
if you say it often enough,
they will believe you,
they will believe.

I feel the wind,
blow through me now,
I feel the gazes slide off,
I'm a hole in the air,
I'm just not there.
Not there.

7 comments:

Nessa said...

Very poignant poem.

Barefoot on the beach alone is wonderful.

Just out of curiousity, what is your astrological sign?

Jenn said...

Sagittarius. Why?

Nessa said...

I've been doing an informal study, to see if I can guess people's signs before they tell me. It's like a hobby to confirm or debunk astrology. So far, I always get it wrong. Not really surprising, is it?

Jenn said...

Haha, out of curiosity, what did you have me figured for, in terms of a star sign?

Nessa said...

Usually Sag's are party animals. Do you socialize alot, because I didn't get that?

I thought you'd either be a Cancer (they are homebodies) or maybe a Libra because you like to see many sides of an issue.

Nessa said...

Oh, I have a copy of The Sadona Method on hold at Barnes and Noble. Don't tell Vince I'm buying another book. He already is dreading moving my current stash.

Jenn said...

I don't think I was ever a party animal. I mean, ok, sufficiently primed with the juice I would get a trifle "happy". But, for the record, I hated places like Hard Rock Cafe and all em nightclubs my friends insisted on dragging me to. Finally I decided that I preferred to sit in a cafe, read my book and write.

When I was a journalist I had, what you may call, a "hectic social life" where I was out with different people every night, cementing contacts, etc.

But for the most part, I prefer to be alone.

I think you're gonna love this book (I think Vince wont mind once he sees the effects). But you cannot skim through it. You have to actually do the stuff (especially the one related to goals - hey when you get it you can be my Sedona buddy and we can compare notes, howzzat?)