Just This

Sometimes the universe graces me with the smallest things: a clean pair of underwear when I thought I was out.

Back

Writing here is like coming back, after many months, to a restaurant I once loved. The waiter still knows my name and gestures me to my favorite table with an ocean view. Brings me bread. A candle flickers. "I'll have the chowder," I say when he returns. I inquire about his family. His youngest son has discovered that if he hops up and down long enough, his pants will fall down. We laugh. He leaves. Outside, the sun is falling too and the waves are iridescent. I imagine mermaids. Or sirens. But no one is going to sing my ship to the shoals tonight.

Princess Leia Was Braless

When Carrie Fisher modeled her now famous white gown for George Lucas for the first Star Wars film, he told her she could not wear a bra "because there's no underwear in space." How did he know?

The Night Before Easter

Yesterday, I bought boxer shorts covered with tiny Krispy Kreme doughnuts. A lot of sublimation going on. I'm two or three weeks off sugar. Not craving doughnuts this moment but keenly aware that tomorrow morning will bring no chocolate bunnies hopping in my direction. Not even a small one. Not even one missing a limb.

Sleeping with Cabbages

I cleaned my bedroom, and now I'm anxious, in fact, so anxious I didn't sleep well last night in anticipation of having to tidy. I likely would not have done it with the same alacrity and thoroughness if my landlord didn't have an appraiser coming tomorrow. He's remortgaging the house. So I cleaned. I have a slob history. Outrageous messes achieved seemingly effortlessly. I slept with a cabbage for several days once not knowing it was hidden under the covers. I think I was on my way to the kitchen to make coleslaw--then paused. After things fell apart in early 2001 and apart and apart for several years, my sleeping with cabbages habits became even more pronounced. I seem to have an idea that if I live with chaos then if chaos comes, it won't be such a step down, such a sudden steep slope to nowhere. I protect myself as I can even if it doesn't serve me. Tonight, I told my "itemness," as I call her, that I'm not just turning over a new leaf, I'm turning over a new tree. "Life is both boring and dangerous," Edward Gorey, the illustrator, once said. "It's dangerous because at any moment the ground can open up beneath you, and boring because that hardly ever happens." But when it does, sirens may never sound benign again. In 2001, on the plane, before I knew how depressed I was, the man next to me kept handing me kleenex and glasses of water. All the way from Maine to Seattle. I think of him. I think of what came after. My sister at the airport. The feel of her Norwegian sweater against my face. One step after the other. And now, I am here. Alive and well in this beautiful room. Beautiful clean room. Life is both boring and dangerous.

Fish Facts

This information may become useful, you never know. "It's best to cross piranha-infested waters at night, when piranhas typically rest. Swim or walk across the water quickly and quietly. Try not to awaken the piranhas." (From The Worse-Case Scenario Survival Journal by Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht)

Long Distance

Before we say goodnight, we slip into a characteristic silence. I begin to hear her get sleepy. A deep breath. And then another. Sometimes she murmurs a few words. Then more silence, except it doesn't feel like silence. I listen to her breath, to her falling asleep. I press the phone to my ear so I won't miss anything. I slide into a state of being I can't even explain to myself. A kind of watchful tenderness. I will say anything to make it easy for her to move from the world of awake to the other world. The world that takes her from me night after night but brings her safely to the next morning. To the next time we speak.