The Reticent Diarist

Eldridge Street, New York City

2010-02-22T23:18:00.000-05:00

Have I come to the moment where I can retire this diary? It seems that way sometimes. It's not that I've been so busy. In fact, I spend quite a bit of my time alone these days. Long stretches of no one. Sometimes it is so maddening that I am tempted to hurl one of my books against the wall, just to hear myself make a sound. Other days, I cannot bear any noise. The drone of NPR offends me, Beethoven a kind of ringing in my ears. And then I go out and see my friends and have a lovely old time. But all the while all I want is to be home.

The days and the hours pass. I am watching the clock. One year. I am fine, so far. I don't know what will happen to me in March. Maybe nothing at all. Maybe everything.

My mother needs me to call her now, to give her some kind of comfort after a big old fight with my sister. But I don't call and I don't write.

I am reading a book about a large family and I see myself in each of the children.

Yesterday, I went to a synagogue in the Lower East Side/Chinatown for a little exhibit called The Last Word where people write on slips of paper things that they wish they'd said. I got there before Wendy and on a piece of a paper I wrote: "I hope you weren't my last chance." I hesitated a few seconds and then I signed my name -- Zoraya.

I don't know if I meant the lost man or the aborted baby.

When Wendy showed up and started pulling out bits of paper and reading, I wondered if from the hundreds of sheets of paper rolled like cigarettes, would she find me?

Bad Boyfriends and Sam's Mom

2010-02-12T01:08:00.000-05:00

Last summer, I lost my mind over someone's sonogram photo of a baby. I spent last Sunday with the mother of that baby. The baby's name is Sam and he is a few months old now. His mother is lovely. Every time I said his name, How is Sam? What's Sam doing? I felt something in me stir -- a pang of love, regret, envy, God knows.

Ericka is Sam's mother. She drove to New York from Vermont so that we could help our friend CC move from her boyfriend's condo into a studio apartment a few blocks away. Three days after a double mastectomy, the boyfriend kicked her out. I could use my powers of description and turn this into a drama. But that seems gratuitous.

CC now posts the strangest things on Facebook about having hope in the dark and other crap that I've never found comfort in. I hope all these cliches do something for her because it's pretty obvious that this cancer and boyfriend ordeal may be the worst sorrow of her life.

Sorrow can only be endured alone, this is what I kept thinking as I packed away CC's things. I folded her underwear because she can't move her arms--if that were my underwear, I would have run away from embarrassment. Ericka moved furniture that seemed too heavy for her. Another woman put away kitchen things in a matter of hours. Four children lifted too many boxes. All of us trying to make a home for someone incapable of doing anything for herself, all of us with good intentions. But at the end of the weekend when all the boxes were gone and we all went home, CC is still sick and humiliated and helpless.

"I cannot bear to think of the cruelty at the core of this foul world."

I just read that tonight. The end of a novel I've been struggling with for weeks. And it is true, isn't it? I don't want to believe it. Even as I sit here typing this, I do not quite believe it. I'm not the negative old bag I make myself out to be -- I am, at heart, hopeful and strong.

But I worry about CC. It's frightening to realize that none of us can do anything for her, and this seems like too much all at once.

I am a porcupine.

2010-02-03T21:59:00.001-05:00

On Saturday I ran into A in the subway. I was struck by how ordinary our encounter seemed. I was walking down the length of the train and there he was. I saw him first. I nudged his foot with mine and sat next to him. After we said goodbye, he called. And then he called again, he emailed, he called, he emailed. It started to piss me off. Last night, I answered. I couldn’t stand his questions about what I’d been doing, I didn’t want to tell him anything. I started off slow and cold. Then something broke and I wanted to tell him everything.

Two objects cannot occupy the same space – this is what I have realized. If A is around, there is no hope for anything with anyone because there is no one I like talking to more, no one who annoys me so much, no one I love, no one who loves me more than he. No one else I almost had a baby with. That’s a lot to say – even I can see that. None of it is enough to change anything. And there’s no one who replaced me faster than he did. That last sentence is a hypocritical statement. I tried the same thing – I tried to replace him. The only difference is that he succeeded in finding someone else and I did not.

All these words and those men I fucked are just different ways of missing A. If only we had been brave enough.

I think this time we are going to do it – this is the parting that will stick. I could keep telling myself I’m getting over it and that might even be true. Some days, it is. As long as he’s around, I’ll keep hoping (though I will probably never admit it to anyone) that he will wake up one day and realize that he loves me enough to take a leap of faith. Intellectually, it’s pretty obvious to me that that’s not going to happen.

As we talked, four and a half hours according to my phone, I realized that we are still very much attached. It felt good – banter and tenderness. Then I felt demoralized and rather desperate. That’s when I told him he had to leave me alone. “Help me get over this,” I said.

This is hard for me to write. It’s an admission of failure in many ways. But it’s my fetus anniversary again. 11 months. March might find me in worse shape. It took an hour to start typing – I will be embarrassed about this as soon as I post it.

How is it that I can write all this about A and then think about M and hope - naively, sincerely, foolishly - that something will happen between us? Why am I not smarter than this?

The Ramble

2010-01-31T21:42:00.001-05:00

Frigid weather again. I have so many items of clothes on that I have a hard time moving. This must be what it feels like to be terribly fat.

I need to stop talking to strangers. Today a street vendor asked me to remove the scarf I was wearing and wanted to take a photo of it. Then he asked me to wear it again and took another photo. I suppose he is going to go back to some sweatshop now and copy the design. He gave me a pair of gloves for my trouble and as I was leaving, I heard him telling someone, “that scarf was expensive!” True, but no one's business but mine. I went from being amused by this man to being terribly offended. No mood swing if I could have just kept to myself.

Friday night, a pedestrian was struck and killed by a car on Broadway and 90^th Street. M and I had just finished having dinner at some Belgian brasserie in the Upper West Side and were on our way to Riverside Park to have a walk when we happened upon the “crime scene”.

M was not prepared for the weather. I gave him one of my scarves – a swath of magenta cashmere with gold and silver sequins. I wrapped the length of it around his head and neck and then we forced his had down his head—a ridiculous look for anyone (including me, but I sometimes love ridiculous things). For someone as uptight as M, it was pee-in-my-pants hysterical. I tried to take a photo but he yelled at me and demanded that I just “enjoy” our time together. I told him he was cranky pants and he bitched even more but in the end ended up laughing at himself.

I am not sure what is going on with us now. I keep thinking this is all in my head but we have our nice times (really, these times are not so grand, but it feels, to me, just right). It seems impossible to me that I would be the only one who feels something. Then again, stranger things happened. We come very close to moving toward each other BUT we don’t.

This is all in my head isn’t it?

He is moving six blocks away from me in a few weeks. I suppose we will continue our strange friendship and nothing will change but there is some part of me that hopes for clarity. The only problem is that I don’t want to lose him. Wendy suggested I jump his bones. I don't see this happening -- it's not my style. But a funny thing to contemplate.

Saturday morning I ran into A in the R train on my way to the bookstore. He was on his way to see a flick at The Film Forum, a Kurosawa. Probably with his girlfriend and her friends. Seeing him was not as bad as I have imagined it would be. After we said goodbye, he called to tell me I looked great (really he is a bottomless pit of compliments, it bugs me) and that we should get together for a drink soon.

I’m not sure how I feel about seeing him on purpose. I do know that I’ve been quite fine without him in the last few months. So maybe a meeting would just set me back. This is not making me run to my calendar to schedule a get-together.

Could it be true that I might actually be a little bit over him? Could it?

What does he want from me? It’s kind of weird. I’m rather unpleasant when I don’t know how to act around a person. I imagine I must have been awkward this morning. Mean, even?

Last week, I ran into that tall guy I briefly dated over the summer (6 foot 7 to my 5 feet). It happened at the bookstore. I couldn’t stand the thought of talking to him so I actually hid from this perfectly nice man.

Maybe I need to find somewhere else to spend my Saturday afternoons.

CC had a double mastectomy on Wednesday. She seems to be doing fine. I am so scared for her. What happens when the pain medication and whatever dope they have her on wears off and she realizes, with a fully lucid mind, that her breasts are gone?

The other night at dinner, I said to M, “we are sitting here having dinner like nothing has happened, but just a few miles from here, my friend is sitting somewhere a totally different person.”

M is not the kind of person who can have such conversations. I didn’t elaborate on it. But I thought of CC all night.

On Thursday night, an unexpected trip to the opera house to see Turandot. The opera makes me wish I were rich and could see performances any time I want. Oh well.

Tomorrow, I am going to see Carmen. I swear I live my life like an old lady. But that’s quite all right.

Glass Houses

2010-01-24T23:27:00.000-05:00

Finished reading The Glass Room in the early afternoon. I was sitting outside a cafe, damp cold and raining. When I got to the end, I started to cry. "I am Ottilie" reduced me to tears. Just as I was wiping my eyes, my friend stepped off the bus and we set off on our usual Sunday expedition. We laughed at me. Am I soft today or was that amazing writing? I will have to reread the last part to ascertain that.

I want to know what house Mawer was describing in his book. It exists apparently but it is never identified outright. Somewhere in the outskirts of Prague this glass house still stands.

Today was supposed to be a trip uptown to the Cloisters but the rain made us lazy. Wendy and I stayed in the Upper West Side. We watched a movie about Queen Victoria and ate terrible Chinese food and complained about the cold.

I have never been to The Cloisters. There is always an excuse not to go. In a way I was glad because I would like to see it alone. I have a strange love for buildings, there are structures I prefer to see alone. Mostly because I never know how I will react to certain places. The Maparium makes me catch my breath and I can never explain to anyone why that is. The Temple of Dendaur, not the temple itself but the room it is housed in, makes me sad and happy in the same moment.

This morning I found out that my friend Sara does know the violinist I was raving about in December. Her cousin went to high school with him in Livorno and her husband knows him from the chamber music world of New York. "Do you want to meet him again?" she asked me. "We could arrange it." My fanhood is not quite so devoted so I declined.

My twin friends are trying to fix up with a friend of theirs. He is kind and trust-funded, they tell me. He could buy you season tickets to the opera. I met this friend on Tuesday (not part of a set up), been to his big townhouse. I don't know about dating him because he is so shy it sort of hurts me, and I am happy to continue self-financing my expensive habits.

Last night I wrote many pages to add to the novel. I hesitate to use the N word. It scares me. The bursts of ideas amaze me, how for months on end I am backed into a corner not knowing how to go from one chapter to another and then suddenly, with two clicks of the mouse, everything falls into place. My haphazard prose has been there all along, it just needed to be organized. Here's hoping for more of last night.

Brava

2010-01-23T00:02:00.001-05:00

I'm having one of those nights when I don't know what to do with myself. There is no comfort to be found in sleep or in my books or in other people and so I just give in to this. The reprieve, I know, will come in the morning. Tomorrow, it will be as if tonight never happened.

Sometime last spring, maybe it was in May, I was at CC's boyfriend's office helping him with his dissertation. It wasn't long after the breakup or the abortion. I was a live wire. CC's boyfriend told me that life would be strange for a long time, that at the oddest moments even after the crisis had passed, I would hear a song or see something that would bring everything back. He was right.

Almost a year ago today, I was sitting with CC at a bar on Madison Avenue, telling her that A suspected I was pregnant and that I thought he was crazy. Of course, I knew he wasn't crazy but I didn't know what else to say. CC went to Grand Central Station, and I, for reasons unclear to me, walked to a Times Square drugstore to buy a home pregnancy test.

This morning, A sent me and a few other people an email asking for an opinion on a pitch video he'd made for his movie. I don't know why that email upset me so much. I told him I didn't want to be included.

That is the truth even though I hold on to him in some way I don't understand, even though I refuse to see him or even take a phone call. Or maybe I do understand that this is what it means to lose someone.

Everything I pick up lately has a story about an abortion. I'm seeking it out even as I hide from it. It makes me crazy that what I deny shows up where I expect forgetting. That's not fair, is it?

All my friends have babies and that does not bother me. Just tonight, I emailed Secret Friend from Vermont telling her I wanted to meet her daughter. And I meant that sincerely. Real babies do not upset me, it's the fictitious ones that bring me to my knees. Maybe it is because my baby feels like a fiction in many ways, most of all to myself.

On Tuesday, I ran into CC on Madison Avenue. She has lost weight since I last saw her less than three weeks ago. Even her wig seemed dull. Next Wednesday, she will have a double mastectomy. I bought her a sandwich and for myself a cup of coffee and we talked about her losing her boobs.

After CC and I said goodbye, I ran into my friend AW's old boyfriend. I'd thought that they'd get back together (but hoped that it wouldn't happen because I don't like this guy). But from the awkward way he talked to me, I knew no reconciliation had taken place.

Then A called and then M and my friend Ann called but I didn't talk to any of them.

All that in one hour. Nothing out of the ordinary but I was reeling in the subway, my heart was pounding. Some superstitious part of me was disturbed.

After all that, I made my way to Central Park West to a dinner party. Nice people, nice townhouse, nice time, my angst slipped from me like molting skin.

Somewhere on Broadway after the party, one of the dinner party mainstays/hosts hugged me goodbye and invited me back. Definitely you have to come back, he said. And I felt a thrill, not of desire or anything even vaguely sexual, but something that I imagine a performer would feel after having put on a good show.

Bitter Winter Day

2010-01-14T21:08:00.000-05:00

This morning, on the Downtown 2 train, it was very crowded. There was a bike at rush hour. Woman 1 got on at 72nd Street. She shoved me, Woman 2 and everyone else around her.

Woman 2 snarled: "Excuse me."

Woman 1: "Wouldn't you just love it if I got my leg got cut off?"

Woman 2 shakes head. "Jesus."

Woman 1: "You would wouldn't you? You'd be happy."

Woman 2: "Oh give it a rest. 'Wouldn't you just love it if my leg were cut off?' Jesus."

Woman 1: "Shut the fuck up."

Woman 2: "Okay, since you asked me so politely."

Woman 1: "Fuck you."

Woman 2: "Fuck you...." (repeat several more times)

Random little girl I couldn't see: "Mommy, why is everyone so mad?"

Mommy: "When you're older you'll get it."

Random little girl: "Like pubic hair?"

Mommy: "For the love of God, that is inside conversation. Shut up."

Everyone started laughing, even Women 1 and 2.

Random biker dude: "If anyone touches my motherfucking bike one more time, I'm gonna kill ya'll."

And the doors opened at 42nd Street.

I never saw the kid or Woman 1's face. I just saw the back of her head.

Someone left a comment on this blog with a link. Well, it wasn't a comment, it was an invitation to view Japanese porn or something like that. Can't that jerk see that this blogger is making an earnest attempt to get a life?

I saw my shrink yesterday, and (surprise!) I told her things I didn't think I could share. As I was walking to the bus, I felt resentful of her.

Reading Anagrams and don't think I will finish it. I'm on page 30-something and there's already been an abortion. Of course, there can't possibly be two abortions in one novel could there? When I got to the abortion / pregnancy plot line, my heart sank. I can't even think of another way to say it. I'm not against it, I don't think it's bad, but I simply do not want to read about it. Even if it's fiction. The odd thing is that I keep seeing it. If I hear about someone who had an abortion and didn't feel that bad, I start to think I'm a freak and that I made the wrong decision. I drive myself crazy trying to quantify the loss of something that was never there.

It turns out my friend Tom was right -- this whole mess nearing its one year anniversary is going to tear me apart a little. He didn't say it in so many words, but there you have it.

It's time for another good cry. I've been trying for days now but it doesn't seem to be in me anymore.

I do not want to turn into that woman in the subway.

Get lost in a book

2010-01-11T22:02:00.000-05:00

I sometimes think that the lives led by obsessive people can never be clean. There will be collateral damage, harsh words, unsaid farewells, heartbreak, shameful acts. But then I backtrack. Clearly I am thinking of myself in comparison to people I have deigned to label unobsessed. On bad days I think of these people with some derision mixed with more than a healthy dose of jealousy. But who is anyone to judge another person’s life and actions? No one is allowed but we all do it anyway, don’t we?

The reason for this rant? A book by a beloved author. I was reading the Times an hour ago and came across a review of a book by Amy Bloom. I went a little crazy, called the bookstores in neighborhood (there are two) and found out that the title isn’t due to be released until tomorrow. I begged the manager to unpack it and let me buy it. I went to the store and it turns out I know the manager. Eight years ago, when he was a grad student and we were next door neighbors, we dated. Or more honestly, we slept together for a few months. Small world.

We fell into a strange kind of conversation that lasted all of three minutes because I wanted to get back home to (a) write about how crazy books make me, (b) how I used to sleep with the manager of the bookstore and (c) obsessive behavior.

Amy Bloom does not generally get me all riled up but this collection of stories has a story about Lionel and Julia. Every year or so, I reread the stories she has written about them. I don’t know why – it’s twisted and doomed and unclassifiable. At least to me. My plan is to read the old Lionel and Julia stories and then to crack the new book.

The bookstore manager is from Kashmir. We met when I first moved to New York and we had sex on 9/11. I don’t own a TV and went to his apartment to watch the coverage. Together Amit and I watched that guy jump out of tower on CNN at least 20 times. Post apocalyptic sex that lasted longer than I thought possible. Anyway, we parted amicably and I haven’t thought of him in years. I forgot that his eyes are that strange shade of green and that I used to have a hard time looking at him because those eyes of his were a little too intense for me (he wasn’t creepy, I was simply uneasy about everything when we were “together”).

My obsessive behavior amuses me most of the time. (I was never obsessed with Amit, we were a diversion to one another.) It makes me wonder if I am hurting myself in some way. I come form a long line of crazies after all. The book thing is what gives me the most satisfaction. I do not like to borrow books (I won’t want to return it). I don’t like the books with a cracked spine unless it’s from a used bookstore. I don’t like to lend books. My favorite book about being a book freak is Longing and Literacy in L.A. It’s chicklit really but it hits home with me.

My friend Wendy is the only one who can judge if I will like a book and gives me books knowing she will never see it again. I trust her judgement.

I’m hopped up on cough medicine right now. Forgive me for sounding a little manic.

I'm thinking of my friend Alice. She is one of the unobsessed. I have always been jealous of her even though I don't want any part of her life. Sometimes we talk and I wonder how we remain friends. We're past the two decade mark at this point and no matter what happens, she and I always love each other even though we might not understand the other much anymore.

Alice doesn't hurt people or say mean things. She's never had her heart broken. She's never been through a break up. She has the quietest, most stable life. What is that like? She is the person I understand the least -- what I cannot imagine. Sometimes I think I love her because she is like a fairytale to me -- I don't want to live her life, but I like being able to see it once in a while because it does seem to have its charms.

Guada

2010-01-10T23:47:00.000-05:00

I am sick again. My immune system has let me down and I am a little pissed. I should probably not anthropomorphize this or else people will think I am mentally ill on top of everything else.

A childhood friend from International School in Manila found me on Facebook. It's hard to explain what it is like for me to be remembered by people I knew in the Philippines. With relatives, it's expected. But the 3rd grade, not so much. Maybe it's because of the circumstances of how I left school in Manila or my intermittent attendance -- whatever it is, I have always thought of these classmates.

This girl was the richest person in a school of rich people. I can't even begin to describe her house -- a white mansion with a blue tile roof, a guardhouse, dogs patrolling the property. She had a Hello Kitty bedroom.

If I ever go back to Manila, I wonder how I'd feel. There is a deep attachment even now. I think it's a bit unusual because I was fairly young when I left and I am, for the most part, completely assimilated. But my Tagalog is almost perfect, I know big words. People are surprised at what I remember when kids who left later than I did claim to remember nothing.

My good memory is a kind of currency. I didn't set out to do this, but I have learned that people like you simply because you remember small details about them. And why not? I can see the allure--it's the same thing as my getting happy that Guada remembers me--it is existential reassurance.

This weekend, my friend CHS was here. I admitted to my clinginess and she was surprised. She said she thought I was a person who could take it or leave it (I'm paraphrasing). I won't deny that it's easy for me walk away, but it comes at a high price. When I fall in (romantic/family/friend) love, it's pretty much a guarantee that it will last a long time.

I can't manage any more than this tonight.

Next time, don't come.

2010-01-06T22:04:00.000-05:00

A year after we moved to America, my mother, faced with the burden of supporting me and my sister and herself for the first time in her life, had a kind of nervous breakdown. One day, she dropped us off at school and disappeared.

Over time, I've begun to wonder if abandoning us was a strategic move or surrender. Make of it what you will. I don't suppose I'll ever know and I have tried with all that is in me to make that time a minor episode rather than a pivotal event in my life (I've been to therapy, I know there's damage).

No one wanted me or my sister. We got shuttled from one relative to another. Years after my mom came back and life got better, I refused to see the relatives because seeing them made me hate my mother and reminded me of being unwanted.

For three months or so, my sister and I stayed with my cousin CB in the Bay Area. She couldn't keep us for reasons I didn't understand when I was 13. Who could blame a person for not wanting to take on two adolescents? She never knew what to say to us, me especially. She watched us do our homework, she picked up my textbooks and my dictionary and studied my vocabulary words. Cousin CB began to study the dictionary the way I did. This probably sounds silly to Americans but to immigrants, learning new words is a big deal.

One day she said, "Do you know what vex means?" Yep.

"Do you know what ejaculate means?" She meant the other definition -- to exclaim, to yell.

And so CB and I developed a way of talking to each other by using malapropisms and hyperbole. She used every opportunity to use the words vex and ejaculate. And even though it stopped being funny, I laughed every time.

Then one day in June after the school year was over, CB apologetically announced that my sister and I were moving to L.A. to live with other relatives. My sister and I were driven down in the (covered) flatbed of a pickup truck to Carson, CA where another cousin's ex wife lived. She wanted to take us in.

I avoided CB for years. I eventually moved to the Bay Area as an adult and she called me repeatedly to ask me to visit. At first I said no and then eventually stopped taking her calls altogether. It was not until I moved to New York that I became comfortable around her again. Each time we talked, she talked about those words and I faked a laugh. No fail.

This year, my cousin Danny's family moved to L.A. His wife F is much older than him, religious and conservative and uncomfortable with my family's kind of excess. His children are awkward and shy.

One day over the holidays, my brother asked me, "What does finagle mean?" So I told him. He tried to use it in a sentence, incorrectly. So I corrected him. He tried again. Bingo. Then I told him about Finagle a Bagel in Boston. My mother started laughing and making up stupid things just so she could use the word finagle. My other brothers joined in and so did my dad. After we wore the word out, I told them about CB, how she used to say vex and ejaculate all the time.

This made everyone hysterical. Cousin's wife F sat there staring in disgust while we laughed when one of my brothers said "F., you look so mad. We're just joking around. Please don't ejaculate."

Our mother, out of politeness, said, "Don't talk to your cousin like that. She's not used to us." And then she started laughing again.

A few days later, we all drove to the Bay Area to CB's house. CB looked at me (we had not seen each other in at least four years) and said, "You never visit even though I know you come to San Francisco every year. I am vexed."

My mother and my brother said in unison "Don't ejaculate!"

F walked right out of the room and CB said "what's wrong with her?"

That was the end of that.

This entry is about to get overlong and repetitive. It's been a trying day. A emailed wanting to get together. I said no but I felt like shit about it. M called and I didn't answer. Instead I went home and tried to cry. I was unsuccessful.

I wonder now if my sadness is more intense than it was six months ago. I keep saying it hurts less but I realize I'm working too hard to not feel bad. The hurt is not so visceral anymore. Now I feel humiliated and reproachful and rational. Bitterness coexists rather peacefully with the longing.

It's probably fair to say that everything I wrote above has always been in me but it's only now that I can face it.

Caught Blogging

2010-01-06T00:57:00.000-05:00

A fit of paranoia. My cousin saw me writing and asked me if I kept a blog. What could I say? He asked for the address and I refused to give it to him but who knows if he might have gone through my computer later. He is 17-years-old. Hardly an innocent at this point, but I don't want to share this.

So I have deleted my photo.

It always surprises me how little I disclose to people, especially when I think of what they share with me. The other night, a friend told me she'd been trying for weeks, without success, to have an orgasm. I know someone who has a massage parlor/happy ending habit. My 17 year old cousin got a blow job in the fitting room of a JC Penney in Glendale. My ex's new girlfriend was a virgin (at 30!) when they met (this knowledge I would pay a pretty penny not to have because this makes me think my ex has no standards). I know someone who has to do everything in multiples of four (the optimum number being 16). I am fascinated by the things people do and how they live and I want to know everything.

I just realized almost everything I listed has to do with sex.

Saw CC yesterday. She is in the west coast with her family. When she returns, someone is throwing her a party. I have no idea how one is supposed to celebrate under the circumstances. She is getting a double mastectomy in a few weeks. When we were saying goodbye, we both began to cry. I wished I could be the kind of person who could come up with some positive aphorism but that is where I come up short. All I could do was cry and I felt like I had failed CC in some way.

On my way home from work today, a beautiful girl got on the train at 103rd Street. She belted out an old Donna Summer song called Radio. She sang so well I considered staying on the train just to keep listening even after we arrived at my destination. I gave her five bucks. I don't money to anyone on the subway so that was a first.

Today is an anniversary. Or close to the day anyway.

NO TEARS.

I even forgot about it. I was tired at work, didn't sleep well so I couldn't concentrate. But other than than, not much else to report.

No tears!

Nowhere

2010-01-04T00:17:00.000-05:00

I hope this doesn't turn into a sleepless night.

I am thinking of the word vacillate -- it reminds me of limbo, emptiness, and of course, indecision. Vacate, vacuum, vacation.

Vac is the Latin for empty.

This is probably not the kind of conversation that will get things started at a party, but what the hell. It's a word that defines itself when you look at it on a page -- before I even heard it used, I saw that word once and knew what it meant. Static but moving. Vacillate is pendulous and weightless.

I've out-nerded myself.

Another thing I think of often and for no good reason:

WHOLE
HOLE

Get it?

Why a pair of pants but not a pair shirt? A pair bra? What makes pants (two legs) a pair but not a shirt (two arms)?

And I don't know the right time to use despite and in spite. Are they interchangeable? One would think I would just look this up rather than spending too much time thinking about it. But one day it'll come to me.

January

2010-01-03T22:46:00.002-05:00

I had one day alone in L.A. because I worked for a few hours at my friend's shop in downtown. If not for the sandwich adventure, there would have been no solitude at all.

After my tour of duty was over, I wandered around in search of this building. I passed Bunker Hill and the Los Angeles Public Library, walked up the hill of Grand Street and wandered into the MoCA store where I bought a calendar for 2010. Further up was the Disney Music Center. For years, I've wanted to go there but this was my first time.

I had dubbed the building Frank's Folly before I ever saw it up close. I think Frank Gehry is silly, the guy people go to if they want something monumental but ultimately end up with something prefabricated. Didn't he already do this in Bilbao? And how are the acoustics? In a way he really is a Los Angeles architect.

That said, this cynical diarist fell a little bit in love. And it was then, standing in front of this building, that I realized that I am a little foolish and a lot romantic. The kind of person who admits to falling in love with a building, who goes out and buys a calendar with a not-that-great picture of a skinny man whose resolution is to stand up straight, who talks to strangers with hope of hearing about an interesting non-creepy life.

Here is my January man:

and skinny cartoon man's New Year's resolution although I doubt it will be readable in this tiny space:

I was in a sentimental mood, I guess. I bought a Beethoven CD and some woman named Kristina Train. If I weren't heartbroken, I would probably find her annoying but now her songs resonate with me, a new way to say what I've been thinking all these months.

M called me on Christmas to say hello and on New Years Day, a few hours after I returned to New York, he came to my 'hood and we ate ice cream in the cold and walked around. Romantic one might say. He showed me the apartment he is buying -- ten blocks south of me. And the end of the story is this -- still nothing happened. I guess I would be more surprised if something did happen between us at this point. We are a done deal, destined to be almost something.

One might ask why *I* don't do something about it. I'm chickenshit hiding behind the excuse of being an old-fashioned kind of girl. It's pretty simple. And anyway, is he interested at all in me? I was thinking maybe he is a little bit interested -- who the hell calls someone to say Merry Christmas anymore? But then, there is the NOTHING. So maybe he isn't interested.

Thirty six year old women writes like high school girl. Jeesh.

So in my nine days in California, I saw my oldest friends, the ones I've dreaded seeing all year. I saw my relatives. It was a fucking reunion tour. And I liked it. And I loved all those people. And I was so happy to come back to my little apartment.

I didn't freak out at all. When I saw my friends Daniel and Maya, I was afraid I'd break down. But nothing. Is that progress or compartmentalizing? All my friends and their lovely children. And then there was me. I think about it now and I get sad but while I was with my friends, it was fine. I have not lost my ability to be happy for people.

A called while I was in L.A. I didn't answer and I didn't call him back. Is that progress or is that putting off the inevitable phone call I will make in a few days? To my credit, I could have called by now and I have not.

I missed him while I was gone. What a stupid thing to say. It's not as if I have been not missing him before. What struck me was how I could miss him so much but have no desire to make contact and how whenever he asks me anything, I get angry and share nothing of value. Back to the drawing board, I guess. But I'm a little further along.

Old Love

2009-12-31T19:25:00.001-05:00

Los Angeles

12/24 – 12/28

In my mother’s house on a Saturday night, the TV is blaring, two computers whir a slow drone and there at least three conversations going. It’s hard to discern if anyone is listening to anyone. We all compete to be heard. I am sitting at the dining table looking for quiet that will only be found if I zone out.

In my house on a Saturday night, it is usually dead silent but my home is 2000 miles away and I won’t miss it all that much until it’s time for sleep.

Two dining chairs away from me, my cousin Danny is watching a movie on his computer. Danny is here with his daughter and his wife. Four years ago, he gave up a very lucrative career at Johnson and Johnson in the Philippines for the promise of America.

Now he rents a room (an illegally converted garage) in a bad neighborhood in Long Beach. The room fits a double bed and he sleeps alone most nights. When his wife and daughters are in town, the four of them sleep on that bed. The room has no insulation and so small that they often go to my mom’s house just to find breathing room.

This must sound dire and pathetic. But they are grateful for everything they have -- everything being jobs where they work too many hours for too little pay, substandard living conditions, a sort of condescending kindness from my know-everything mother.

Not that I blame my mom. It is tiresome to hear about exploitation that is recognized but tolerated. If you plan to keep on living with something, then don’t complain.

When I look at my cousin, I wonder if he regrets giving up his life for this. What pushed him to come here when what was in Manila was not bad at all?

The promise of America will never cease to amaze me. It is a testament to hope and ambition and folly.

The little girl cousin just peered into my computer screen and asked me what I was doing. Nothing, I said. “Are you writing a story?” she asked. Yes, I said. Her father gave me an apologetic look as she skipped away yelling, “Whoa, author!”

It is always entertaining to be here. I get a good dose of regular life and realize that I live in a kind of bubble in New York. I keep singling out the city where I live, but really, it is a bubble all single people live in regardless of geography.

San Francisco

December 31

I went to Union and Laguna in San Francisco. Modest and almost pretty was not the way I remembered this part of town but things have changed in nine years.

Now this city is like an old love – fondly remembered but not quite the thing that you want anymore.

It has been a wonderful sojourn to California. I don’t think I’ve ever said that in all the years I’ve been coming and going. Most visits are fraught with negotiation. This time is no different but somehow it is okay.

I am ending the year with family. My oldest friends will be coming around in a few hours to say hello and to have a few laughs. It is a fitting way to end my very bad year and I will say, in spite of everything, that today I am not unhappy. I feel quite fortunate and loved.

When I reread this post later, I will be dissatisfied with what I’ve written. But I wanted to get one last word in before we all bid this year a collective adieu.

The downside of all these reunions is that I also have zero privacy. Last night when I was trying to write, my 16-year-old cousin sat next to me, peered at my screen and said, “do you mind if I sit next to you?” Then she slept next to me on the floor. If I go outside to smoke a cigarette, someone will follow me to “keep company” and now, other relatives have arrived and they are asking when I’m leaving.

How can it be that all this minding is so nice and so awful at the same time? Right now, my youngest brother and I are both in search of quiet but there are five people sitting with us at the dining table.

One more cousin and her boyfriend arrived. My friends – one group of six and a solo will arrive later. There will be about 26 people here. The youngest cousin just asked me (as she did in L.A.), “are you writing a story?”

That is my cue to post and be done with this—it isn’t getting any quieter in the house of family.

I will try to post a picture of everyone and write a little better. But that is for later.

Here's to a happier next year.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/12/31/opinion/20091231_opart.html

We Are Made of Others

2009-12-21T23:33:00.004-05:00

If this is true, then it explains much about goodbyes and hellos, doesn't it?

Christmas is a few days off and my family and friends wait for me in California. I look forward to going home as much as I dread it. I think I say this before every trip.

My father requested that I take three of my watches back to him (he will get each one cleaned and overhauled). I got my first watch when I was about seven years old. It was an Omega with a tiny face and a thin strap. He and my mother decided it was time for me to have it -- it was the first expensive gift he had ever given her. One day at school, I washed my hands and water seeped into the watch.

A year later, a Cartier. Stainless steel and 14K gold for an eight-year-old. My mother, then with a gambling problem, took this watch from me and pawned it. When my father found out, he kicked me so hard I rolled off my parents' bed and onto the floor. Later that night, he said he was sorry.

When I first heard the Elizabeth Bishop poem The Art of Losing, I thought of all the watches I’ve owned. There is but one line about losing a watch but for that I will never forget the poem.

Now, at 36, I own about six watches. Limited edition Cartier, Bulgari, Gucci, a Panthere, others I don't remember the names of. Last year, I found the balls to refuse my father’s extravagant gift. And this year, I told him I wanted nothing. We will see what I find under the tree when I go home.

I like the gift that most people would not think much of – a pearl one of the Muslim relatives gave my dad, it is large and discolored and worthless. My mother had it set with a diamond and a platinum chain. I love that the imperfection cannot be disguised. The diamond is lovely and clear, and it deepens the scratch on the pearl as if someone ran a jagged fingernail across the surface.

One evening a few years ago, at a black tie affair in Florida, a woman approached me and complimented that necklace. When she was close enough to me, she noticed the scratch, and she understood that it was not ignorance of gemstones that made me wear that necklace. She understood that it was a kind of sentiment. She invited me to her apartment and to one of her concerts in New York – she was a pianist and a crazy lady who doted over a potted azalea that lived on the window sill of the kitchen in her Central Park West apartment.

I have travelled in circles my parents never dreamed of. I’ve met actors and divas, pundits, the very rich, Elie Wiesel and Queen Noor. After each brief encounter, I wanted nothing more than to return to my bed and put on the white shirts I buy from the hardware store. Sometimes, after long days of schmoozing with the rich, I would daydream about calling my very own old friends -- the strivers who would never feel comfortable standing where I happened to be in the moment I thought of them.

My parents gave me what they could to prepare me for the kind of life they didn’t quite understand. This is not to say that they wanted me to mingle with the famous (and really, it was an occupational thing – I was working at these events). This is not to say that they gave me much.

Without rancor, I will say that my parents gave me everything half-assed. It was not what they intended, but it is how things turned out. I have often wondered if they wanted to give me too much and everything was bound to fall short.

I have always been a drop-out. My elementary school education happened in three countries, and I did not complete the third, fourth, fifth or sixth grades. My mother gambled away the tuition and sometimes we would have to stop going to school. Sometimes she gambled away the money to pay the electric bill too so we’d move to one of her sisters’ houses and stay there until my dad sent more money.

Oddly, my father had no knowledge of all the financial problems. It puzzles me to this day. That is how I love my father – I don’t ask him why or how.

I skipped the eight grade, discovered the dictionary and fell behind in math. Because of all the missed school, I have never doubted my intelligence. I came back after each hiatus with a new lie to explain why I’d been gone. I researched countries I’d never been to so that I could say I’d been to Rome or Luxemburg. The reality was that I was home, listening to bad pop songs and reading romance novels until four a.m. I was never the dumb kid.

What is the point of all this?

“We are made of others” is the point.

There are two new girl cousins who have moved to California from the Philippines. They will fare better than my family has because they have more realistic desires. They want, simply, to have a life in America.

I want to give the 12 year old girl a copy of Anne of Green Gables but that is a gift that will disappoint. I want to give the 18 year old a dictionary and The Elements of Style because her written English is not good. But these things are not important to them or their parents.

Would any of my family give any credence to my belief that it is language that sets a person apart? What do I have? I have no education, no money, no whiteness—I’m not throwing a pity party for myself, I am stating facts. But more than any of my family, more than any of the people I went to school with, I am the one who fits in and the one who can fake it.

I want to teach those girl cousins something that has brought me a kind of intangible success, but it was strongly suggested that for Christmas I should buy them perfume.

This is how I count the days

2009-12-19T20:50:00.001-05:00

A suggested that we have coffee before I leave for California. We have not seen each other in almost three months. If I see him now, I would have to start another tally. And counting days, much like counting sheep, is not the most fun a person could have. So I said no.

One day, I will stop keeping track of how long it has been between meetings, and that is the day I get to tick off “not pathetic anymore” in my mental list of things to strive for.

My ex secret friend and I spent the evening in my little apartment. We drank beers and had mediocre Mexican food. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that is seemed as if no time had passed but it was a relief to know that our present lives fit into our conversations so that we didn’t spend our time together with nothing but nostalgia to keep things moving.

We used to call each other secret friends because we met though CC and her ex husband. We used to sneak around, uncomfortable to let the people who introduced know that we’d formed our own sort of team.

I am hoping to pay a visit to Vermont one of these days. I would like to see how she lives now with a daughter and a husband in a town that seems so quiet. I can’t even imagine that sort of life simply because I’ve only ever lived in cities.

Secret friend told me that she wanted my life. I laughed and she retracted her statement – part of my life, she corrected herself. That made better sense and I told her that I wanted part of hers. The good parts of both our lives meshed together would make for the ideal existence. Drunken talk of course.

But it did make me realize that everyone is always looking left and right, that we spend our lives figuratively crossing the street. Forward, even though to the right and to the left might be where we’d prefer to go. Or where we like to dream of being.

I think I just fucked up the road less traveled cliché and I don’t even know what the point of that was.

Today I worked toward the front of the bookstore. I saw everyone who walked in, I saw the snowfall starting in the afternoon. First it was nothing at all, as if someone had upended a boxful of packing popcorn. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to snow. It always delights me.

Delight is not a word I would use easily but that is the only way to describe how it feels when I feel ice touch the tip of my nose. No matter where I go, always an FOB.

After the bookstore gig, I tried to go Christmas shopping but I walked out of every store empty-handed. It’s pretty simple -- I don’t want to give anyone anything. I mean that in every way that it can be interpreted even though just the other day, I baked cookies that I gave away and last night I shared my apartment with someone who was almost a stranger (isn’t that true when you don’t see or talk to someone for many years?) and now I will spend a good part of this snowy evening in a bar talking to a friend about everything with much affection. But I don’t want to give anyone anything or take anything.

I want only to tend to myself.

‘Tis the season.

The Girl Who Said No

2009-12-16T22:31:00.003-05:00

Perhaps because I just had a birthday or because the holidays are a time when people are most lonely or because certain people I didn’t think I’d ever see again have reappeared in my life, I am thinking of two Yeats poems about love and time passing and death and memory.

A few days ago, it was decided that an ex friend of mine and CC’s would come and stay with me for one night. I am somewhat sorry that I invited this woman to my house – we had one of those strange friendships that began and ended quickly. Still I want to see her even if all we might have to say to one another is hello and goodbye. I like to think if that is what will happen, at least we will be able to say it properly.

And then A made a reappearance though I don’t suppose that is a surprise to anyone.

My old trainer, stupid and perfect-bodied, started contacting me again. We were never involved even though he once told me he loved me and called me boo. I laughed and never went back for another exercise session.

A few hours ago, a man I slept with a few times over the summer called me. This man, my dreamboat who turned out to be a footnote, as Elvis Costello once sang, wants to see me again.

Someday, if there are ever any grandchildren, would I share any of these stories with them? That is probably a strange thing to contemplate, especially for a girl who has turned down pretty much every sexual/romantic opportunity that has come her way in the last three months.

Not that any of the options listed above would lead to any kind of meaningful relationship but I am starting to worry that this self-imposed exile will turn me into the girl who said no and ended up with nothing.

One Perfect Day

2009-12-13T23:41:00.000-05:00

5:00 a.m.

My stomach hurts from hunger. It is five a.m. on a Sunday. I slept for three hours tonight but woke up at four a.m.

For my birthday, I received a DVD of Saraband and a bar of lettuce scented soap (I wonder what lettuce would smell like as a fragrance since I still can't smell anything) and went to tea at The Peninsula. The best scones in New York City, no arguments. I spent the morning in SoHo in the nice bookstore wrapping gifts for charity. An interesting day -- begin with a "good deed" (I don't like to think of volunteering that way, it seems too self congratulatory) and then end with genteel overindulgence at one of the most expensive hotels in the city.

We were served Earl Grey tea first and then Dragon Jasmine. I found the jasmine too bitter but loved the way each leaf, before steeping, curled in over itself like tiny fiddlehead ferns. When the water was poured in, the leaves unfurled and darkened like sage and the heady scent of jasmine rose so strong I wanted to turn my head away.

Today, for my birthday again, I am going to the Frick to look at paintings and the garden in this gray winter light. After the museum closes there will be a concert (violin). Then dinner in Chinatown which I could skip but will attend and most likely enjoy. I would prefer to go a few blocks uptown and have dinner at Cafe Sabarsky but I am going to dinner with my friend who is unemployed. I know she will insist on buying dinner because of my birthday thing and because I paid for the concert tickets. Normally, I wouldn't care who pays but I watch out for this friend. She seems on the verge of breaking (financially and emotionally) and doesn't seem to realize it herself.

She thinks dancing is going to fix everything. Oy vey.

Noon

It's raining now--lazy annoying rain. Can weather be described as perfunctory? Why not rain all the way?

I move slowly. My little apartment requires a lot of maintenance, picking up clothes, washing cups, gathering tissue (I am sick!) that litter my floor like puffs of cotton. This apartment is so small that any mess shrinks the place and makes it look unkempt than it actually is.

When I think of the amount of space I live my days in, I actually find myself contemplating moving. And sometimes in the subway, when I feel someone's elbow dig into the middle of my back at rush hour, I consider it again.

If I ever do leave this city, the decision will be made in an instant like all the other decision on flight. I am somewhat surprised I'm still here after all the crap this year. My younger self would have fled and gone for reinvention in a new zip code. But this woman I have become insists on staying put.

11 p.m.

If I were seriously considering leaving this city, I would have changed my mind after going to the concert at the Frick Museum earlier in the evening. The violinist was young and German and had scars all over his face and neck. He played Beethoven and Prokofiev. The best part came at the end, three encores and two standing ovations -- he played bits of Carmen and for a minute I had to laugh because after the intermission, I kept thinking "this boy would play Carmen beautifully" even though Bizet was not in the program. But old Georges made an appearance after all. The last piece I didn't recognize at all but the nicest surprise of the evening -- Liebesleid.

The scars on the violinist's face reminded me of Louis Kahn the architect. I saw his face clearly after the performance when I went backstage to say hello. So tonight I was a kind of groupie. It is always a wonder when I find myself so moved and makes me think of some woman who long ago told me that art heals --maybe she was not such a crackpot.

The Contrarian

2009-12-10T23:28:00.000-05:00

That's what the name of this blog should be. I tend to dislike things other people fawn over. My dear friend and ex roommate once said that made me an iconoclast. Another person who did not have much of a vocabulary told me I was a person who got off on being different.

Because I have nothing else to write, here's a list of things I hate that most people like:

hearts are stupid
balloons are tacky, especially the mylar balloons
greeting cards offend me somewhat. Why don't people take the time to write down how they feel?
"Sweet" is an overused word, but when it is said sincerely and unexpectedly, it breaks my heart (in a good way). Actually I hate hearing it as a description for a person but otherwise, I sort of like that word.
electronic greeting cards are even dumber than regular cards (unless you have Parkinson's and can't write -- I have a friend like this).
Disneyland is a horrible place. If I ever have a child, I worry that I might have to take him or her there and think of ways to raise a child who won't care about such places. How can any adult like it there? What is wrong with them?
black shoes -- this one is personal and impractical, I don't care if other people wear black shoes
crafts -- they're usually ugly but politeness dictates that we ooh and aah because someone made something by hand
people who knit/felt/bake/cook -- oh god (disclosure -- I cook and bake but I am not a nazi about telling everyone)
pictures of food that people post on Facebook
parades depress me
self-help New Age books -- I cringe whenever I find out people read self-help books. To each his own and all, but I'd rather not know
Godiva chocolate -- it is not very good and is of poor quality
Georgia O'Keefe -- blue vaginas and pink desserts. No thanks.
God and the people who can't stop talking about their faith -- way too many people in my extended family who are like this.
shopping with girlfriends -- this is another personal thing
group outings -- makes me feel like a lemming or a snail that has lost its shell
parties -- I can fake my way through most of them it but it is never fun for me
foodies -- why does everyone want to be part of some club?

Well, that was the least satisfying blog entry of all time! I was hoping I would have come up with funnier things but I just sound like a crotchety old bag. And today, that is not the way to describe me.

I am in quite a good mood. I am reading Laurie Moore--she makes me laugh even as she annoys me with her overlong paragraphs (sometimes I don't even notice) and wows me with her skill. My neighbor is playing his guitar and it is lovely. It's too cold tonight and I like it.

I am a bit of a loner. Most people would find that hard to believe but there you have it.

Wood

2009-12-10T01:11:00.000-05:00

By Sarah Arvio

The last thing I ever wanted was to

write again about grief did you think I

would your grief this time not mine oh good

grief enough is enough in my life that is

enough was enough I had all those

grievances all those griefs all engraved

into the wood of my soul but would you

believe it the wood healed I grew up and

grew out and would you believe it I found

your old woody heart sprouting I thought

good new growth good new luxuriant green

leaves leaves on their woody stalks and I said

I’ll stake my life on this old stick I’ll stick

and we talked into the morning and night

and laughed green leaves and sometimes a flower

oh bower of good new love I would have it

I would bow to the new and the green

and wouldn’t you know it you were a stick

yes I know a good stick so often and then

a stick in my ribs in my heart your old

dark wood your old dark gnarled stalk

sprouting havoc and now I have grief again

and now I’ve stood for what I never should

green leaves of morning dark leaves of night

What I Don't Want to Share

2009-12-09T22:20:00.001-05:00

So if you know who I am and you happen to read this, mum’s the word.

I am alone on my birthday. Up until 5 p.m., I had plans. But then I lied and said I had to work late. My phone is turned off and my friend Jonathan has called me three times wanting to talk. He has no idea it's my birthday and no idea that I don't answer the phone even on regular days.

This is the first time I’ve ever been alone on my birthday, and I hope never to repeat it again because I don’t ever want to be in the same place as I’m in right now.

This is what mourning feels like.

To badly quote something I read in the New York Times, there is no emoticon that could convey what life has been like this year. It has been one loss after another. But I always come back to this.

During my somewhat miserable childhood, after one or two of those incidents that involved my crazy family, I remember striking deals with God (that seems like the wrong thing to say – I don’t think I ever believed in God) – “okay, I’ll do it, but no more after this” or telling myself that whatever the bad thing was had to be the absolute last bad thing that could happen because life wouldn’t be fair otherwise.

What I have learned is that life, with all the moments of happy and wretchedness, is quite indifferent to us humans.

My shrink asked me why I wanted to do be alone and I didn’t have an answer at the time. Now I do – it is because I want to look at myself. No liquor, no friends, no exes, no family.

I’ll never know why I didn’t keep my baby. All the rational thoughts that led to that decision could be written down, but right next to that column, would be just as many reasons for keeping it.

I wanted that baby. It’s hard for me to admit that even now because it makes me wonder how I could have done it. I do know that I want any child of mine to have better childhood than I did, and at the time, I didn’t think I could provide. I wanted to be fair.

I don’t know if I will ever have enough guts to decide on whether I was a brave girl or a scared girl or if there will ever be a time when making a judgement on myself won't be so important.

On very bad days, I find myself saying “sorry, baby” again and again as if I’m talking to a person. It is all I have to say and it’s not enough and it’s too much at the same time.

What kind of girl am I now?

Love After Love

2009-12-07T00:16:00.001-05:00

Derek Walcott wrote that poem and I first read it years ago in a piece of shit book. Someone else’s words were the best part of a 400-odd page novel. I ripped that poem out of the book and have had that page somewhere in my apartment for the last four years, something I read once in a while, sometimes out loud.

A called to wish me a Happy Birthday. Three days early. I think he did it on purpose to show me he’s forgotten or maybe he did forget. But never mind that.

Happy Abortion Anniversary, Lucy/Reticent Diarist/whatever I am today. And oh my body remembers. I am sick again. I almost didn’t cry today. Maybe one of these months I won’t.

It is cold tonight, the wintery sort of cold that gets in under your skin. Unmistakably the beginning of another season. I keep track of time in a different way now, as if I feel every change on my skin rather than by what the calendar reads. I don’t know what all of this means, if anything at all. But I remember what it was like to take a walk in the summertime and in the fall and now when it hurts to breath because it’s so cold. With each season, I am more myself. I am less hurt.

It probably doesn’t sound true because tomorrow I will wake up with puffy eyes and a hoarse voice. But these episodes pass. And it is less about a lost relationship and more about a baby.

With my shrink last week, I discussed how joy and grief can coexist. I think now that the good times were almost a kind of punishment, it underscored the grief. The joys of the last few months were so fleeting; and at home at night, it is not what returned to me.

This is what comes to me at night now – sometimes nothing at all, sometimes words from the book I happen to be reading or the memory of someone else’s body. Always there is fear of remembering and forgetting. Both things can’t happen, can it?

I think of jewelry. I pass by the windows on Madison Avenue and imagine myself plunking down one of my credit cards for something shiny. Not because I need another bauble but because I want a kind of memento for this year, to keep close to me. That probably sounds morbid and a little bit shallow. But I would like a little memory to remind myself of something I had but couldn’t keep. Hello, Lou Reed.

Ordinary Days

2009-11-29T21:17:00.002-05:00

To set the scene: I am in my apartment in New York City and it is almost 9 pm. Music I do not recognize is playing on the radio – a violin. Schubert maybe? My apartment smells like cigarette smoke, my dining table is clear of paper and pens and could actually function as a dining table rather than a desk.

I’m brooding.

This afternoon, I went to Brooklyn to meet a friend to see Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage. I wish I’d seen it alone—there was hardly anyone in the theater and it was the kind of movie where other’s people’s opinions are best unheard. Devastating is not too harsh of a word. And I mean that in every sense of good and bad.

Supposedly the original miniseries that was shown in Sweden includes an abortion. If that had been included in the cut I saw today, I don’t know if I would have been able to stand it.

“I love you in my own imperfect and selfish way…and I know you love me in your own pestering way.” –Johan to Marianne

Tomorrow I am going to see Figaro – I’ve realized that I do like company at the opera. And so I’m going with a friend. A comedy will be good after today’s entertainment.

A few minutes ago, I came across this blog: http://limagequotidienne.blogspot.com/

One portrait of one person every day for one year. Pretty awesome.

I need to some lightheartedness in my life. But the thing is, I don’t enjoy light as much as I enjoy the kind of shit that keeps me awake at night. Call it masochism. I’ve always been drawn to a kind of sadness. Not the poverty-stricken, hopeless, drug-addicted, hungry kind of sadness (I think that is unbearable); it is the emotional struggle of people that sucks me in. The trouble we get ourselves into knowingly, as if we do not have a choice. And really, do we?

I remember a conversation I had with CC about A. I was aware of the flaws of character, his as well my own, but I said to CC, “what am I not going to do it?” And I think I said the same thing to her about some other event in her life.

Do you turn down newness out of fear? Does that make you a smarter person when a year or two later, you are unscathed? Or does that make you a coward who has shut herself/himself into your world, which needed a little shake up anyway?

Four years ago, I was well on my way to being a permanent supporting actor in my own life. It seemed to me that everything was happening to everyone except me. I was the listener and the supporter, the one to provide the snarky one-liners—the Rosie O’Donnell/Carrie Fisher to the Meg Ryans of the world.

I hope I am not on my way there again – it might seem like a strange thing to say because when I think of my life, I realize it’s someone’s idea of interesting. I have a friend who would even go so far as to say it’s a sophisticated life, vaguely intellectual, something to be desired. I could go out every night of the week if I wanted and I would have the appropriate clothes to wear for each occasion. I even have a stalker. (Well, HAD. I sent the email asking him to go away. More on that later.) And I feel myself getting smarter and better. Is that a crazy thing to say about oneself?

But I’m locked inside myself, I have chosen to be quite visible but no one is really allowed to see me. I don’t talk on the phone, I don’t talk to A. I’m on retreat even as I move forward. My life feels a bit like a game of pretend – I enjoy it, but I realize its limitations, its artificiality and I know that it can’t go on forever.

Am I going to have to make a conscious decision to end this way that I’m living at the moment or will I find my way out without my even knowing?

I’m reading Lark and Termite. But tonight I don’t know if I’ll get anywhere with it.

This has been quite an ordinary day and while I’m not in crisis mode or anything quite so dramatic, I am restless.

Book Love

2009-11-27T23:27:00.000-05:00

One of the first books I ever stole was The Heather Blazing by Colm Toibin. I still own that book (my old flame AL called it my trophy, this before I told him that I used to be a book thief which I think amused and then put him off). I still haven't read it. But just now I finished Toibin's newest novel Brooklyn and was fairly wowed. I wonder if I will pick up the other book(s) now? I mean to buy since I don't steal anything anymore.

Towards the end of Brooklyn, there is a passage that is simply gorgeous. I say this fully admitting that I am somewhat biased because it was a scene that could have been lifted from MY life, circa 2009 versus 1950s Brooklyn/Ireland.

The mother in Ireland avoids talking about the daughters life in Brooklyn. The daughter wonders why her mother doesn't seem to have any interest in her new life.

The reading A.D.D. has passed I think. Now I am on to compulsive book-buying and book-reading. Purchases in the last month:

The Museum of Innocence
Lark and Termite
Brooklyn*
Love Begins in Winter*
Generosity
Gourmet Rhaphsody
Prelude
The opera reference book

*read so far

I'm missing a few more but this is what I can think off the top of my head. This happens to me in the fall -- all the good books come out and I go a little nuts.

When I was insane, jobless, newly single and newly un-mothered, I started volunteering at a bookstore downtown to keep myself occupied. It was a bit of a pain in the ass, customer service is not my forte. But now I realize that I love the time I spend at the store. I've found my niche -- I don't have to talk to anyone, the people who work there seem amused that I say very little but work faster than any volunteer needs to. I listen to old opera records in the sub-basement while I clean the old books. Sometimes some of the clients are there and we listen to the old music together. We don't talk to each other. The four hours go by quicker than I'd like and I'm always sorry I have to leave.

Beginning of this year when I was pregnant and A was in Upstate New York shooting a movie, I holed up in his apartment surrounded by his books. I imagined myself reading to my baby or a child at a later age reading next to me. Then I would freak out and smoke to banish the image.

Then after the abortion, I would sit around and cry and stare at my books, wishing I could find any one of them compelling enough to read and lose myself in. But those first few months were rough. I did everything half asleep. I read a lot of books and remember none of them.

It occurs to me that I expect my books to give me comfort. Or maybe it's not books so much as words. When I was 14, I wrote endless letters and I read shitty romance novels borrowed from the Los Angeles Public Library. All those words made me less miserable. And when I was happy, the words keep me from being too happy.

Good deal for a few bucks.

Sleeping with Mahler

2009-11-27T18:26:00.000-05:00

I lie awake late into the night and fall asleep only after I find Mahler on my iPod. Sleep is getting closer, I know, when suddenly I notice that the music is too loud. So I turn the volume down gradually, lower and lower still until finally, the iPod is powered off. This is not a bad way to be an insomniac.

There is nothing to report about Thanksgiving. It was not a joyous occasion or a disaster--I had feared both.

I am reading Brooklyn by Colm Toibin, trying to read slowly because I hate for these things to end. It's actually quite a lovely book.

Christmas promises to be a big soiree this year. My mother tells me that my Aunt Lydia's youngest daughter and her family will be there. So will Aunt Lydia's son but he and my mom have always had a freakishly close relationship (and I do not mean of the incestuous sort).

So these cousins are actually also aunts and uncle. I have been thinking about that a lot since I had that conversation with my sister.

I sent Professor Dick the go away email today and he responded quite graciously. I hope this means he will not contact me anymore.

JV called this afternoon to discuss her love life. She slept with her ex and her current in the same day. Two women and she loves them both, she said. I don't know what she's talking about -- I think loving one person is hard enough.

JV and I did not communicate with each other for at least 8 years and now it is as if no time at all has passed. She has always been my one Filipino friend even though I think there were times when we've hated each other for reasons neither of us will remember now.

Her brother killed himself in January. Last week, I thought about that again and again and I could not sleep. If JV were to read this, she might be angry with me but it should be clear that no one knows this address. I wanted to say that maybe this desire for sex has something to do with death.

That happened to me after the abortion. I wanted to have sex even though I couldn't feel much of anything. Will yourself back to life, little girl is what I seemed to be begging of myself. Life will keep on going. Maybe that is what JV is doing.

This weekend, I'm going to Brooklyn to see Scenes from a Marriage. Hopefully this Bergman flick does not cause my mental health to deteriorate. Tonight, I hope to sleep long and to sleep well. I think I'm a little sad.