journal.
“When he mentioned,
ever so casually, that we were actually going on our first date, I exploded in
giggles and called him a fucking idiot. (Like I didn’t even rate lunch
from the self-styled “King of Lunch.” When I kidded him about it, he
laughed then turned serious for a moment. He said, “You hold the story of
my life.” I was taken aback. Then he said, “That’s worth at
least three
lunches.”)”
“One of my
favorite lines belongs to Doreen. “Write in white heat, edit in cold
blood.” My voice is pained and precise. (I just edited that sentence three
times to get it right.) I need more white heat and less control, no matter how
ugly and too open to judgment and afraid it makes me feel, no matter all of
that, no matter that I must calibrate every emotion with calipers or
die.”
“As if four and a half
years just slid under the pillow and were gone when I woke up. Exploring my
files from the Thinkpad, I feel a hollow, familiar bitterness. Many notes to
myself, reminders of what to do, little projects. Work. But hollow, most of
them. The words are stark and only useful.
How can I not blame myself? Over
and over and over, roving back through the mess, the numbness, the idiocy of it
all. How could I have drowned so easily? How could I have excused myself so
often, so well?
I was hoping for
sparks of myself, that somehow, somewhen, I remembered to write something
down.”
“There is a bend in
the frame where forearms have rested. Three generations of forearms. Whenever I
imagine the women in my family, they are looking out windows. I don’t want
to end like that, waiting by the window, observing what I cannot take with me
when I die.”