the shiny life.
Today I had teaching for three hours, class for three hours, an office hour, and then over two hours of grading papers. Not counting reading. I am so exhausted that I am lathering myself with body butter and falling into bed. But first I can share what I spent Classical Theory class writing this afternoon regarding possible jewelry and/or life updates:
We never really know until we’re there...this is the irony. I think back to what the good life seemed to be, the life constructed of increasing your loot, your number of “haves,” and how shiny you can seem. This sinister, deceptive good life. It was L. who seemed best for me once upon a time, but irony...my mom, looking at this tall straight handsome Norse god, and saying how she always thought that I’d end up with a computer geek. Well, I found him, and left the Norse god to his own devices. And it was better after, all. This Ph.D., logical conclusion to my being, and now, I’m already bored of this beaten path, longing to wander back off into the brush, find something that’s better fitting, or just careening off walls until I happily learn whatever it is that I need to know. There was always a time I was willing to fight a fight I couldn’t win, just for the sake of fighting, and now it is not possible for it to be different. I’m not a shiny life type girl. It seems.
I leave it, mentally, will it not to matter so much. I try to read less, sleep more. Think less, feel more. Or feel less. I don’t know. When J. leaves NJ, I don’t cry but my eyes burn and water and I watch the train pull away, slow, fast, fast, faster, thinking that I’ve lost something again, that our relationship is a series of walking aways.
After this weekend, I walk away with a ½ carat diamond on my index finger, that J. and I picked out at the mall on Saturday night, set in 14k white gold. Three princess cut stones in a row, and three tiny ones on either side of them. Nine diamonds, sparkling past, present, future. Right now, it’s the present/tense, I think, and if I were French I’d be waiting for the futur, proche. Because the future, all alone, is too far away, and I too often lately hear myself complaining aloud.
A diamond, example of love, commitment, relationship of some or another scale. It makes me happy and ashamed, because J. is my sparkle, not the ring, and I’d trade it to have him here with me. Ring as symbol, J. and I as circular. I push, and push and push hoping something will give way and I’ll find all this exhaustion and heartbreak eased on the other side. But I get a diamond and a train, and a wait. J’attends, for the train, for the bus, for the alien starcraft, for them to beam me up and into something new. I promise myself that I’ll try to believe it doesn’t really matter that much, that I’ll try to take my own advice, get more sleep, be nicer to my cat when she sleeps on top of my head at night, accept J. for what he cannot do or feel.
I miss him and I don’t know how to communicate it in any effective way. He is a new J., recreated every week or two weeks or month or six months, with J/space in between, filling the air and crackling in the wires, in the shower, in my bed. J. as creation.
Or maybe I’m just tired of the in and out. In and out. In and out. Time limits on all. The time limit for this life, I know, is almost up. Me and my diamond have new places to go and things to see, already. This time, it'll be with J.
We never really know until we’re there...this is the irony. I think back to what the good life seemed to be, the life constructed of increasing your loot, your number of “haves,” and how shiny you can seem. This sinister, deceptive good life. It was L. who seemed best for me once upon a time, but irony...my mom, looking at this tall straight handsome Norse god, and saying how she always thought that I’d end up with a computer geek. Well, I found him, and left the Norse god to his own devices. And it was better after, all. This Ph.D., logical conclusion to my being, and now, I’m already bored of this beaten path, longing to wander back off into the brush, find something that’s better fitting, or just careening off walls until I happily learn whatever it is that I need to know. There was always a time I was willing to fight a fight I couldn’t win, just for the sake of fighting, and now it is not possible for it to be different. I’m not a shiny life type girl. It seems.
I leave it, mentally, will it not to matter so much. I try to read less, sleep more. Think less, feel more. Or feel less. I don’t know. When J. leaves NJ, I don’t cry but my eyes burn and water and I watch the train pull away, slow, fast, fast, faster, thinking that I’ve lost something again, that our relationship is a series of walking aways.
After this weekend, I walk away with a ½ carat diamond on my index finger, that J. and I picked out at the mall on Saturday night, set in 14k white gold. Three princess cut stones in a row, and three tiny ones on either side of them. Nine diamonds, sparkling past, present, future. Right now, it’s the present/tense, I think, and if I were French I’d be waiting for the futur, proche. Because the future, all alone, is too far away, and I too often lately hear myself complaining aloud.
A diamond, example of love, commitment, relationship of some or another scale. It makes me happy and ashamed, because J. is my sparkle, not the ring, and I’d trade it to have him here with me. Ring as symbol, J. and I as circular. I push, and push and push hoping something will give way and I’ll find all this exhaustion and heartbreak eased on the other side. But I get a diamond and a train, and a wait. J’attends, for the train, for the bus, for the alien starcraft, for them to beam me up and into something new. I promise myself that I’ll try to believe it doesn’t really matter that much, that I’ll try to take my own advice, get more sleep, be nicer to my cat when she sleeps on top of my head at night, accept J. for what he cannot do or feel.
I miss him and I don’t know how to communicate it in any effective way. He is a new J., recreated every week or two weeks or month or six months, with J/space in between, filling the air and crackling in the wires, in the shower, in my bed. J. as creation.
Or maybe I’m just tired of the in and out. In and out. In and out. Time limits on all. The time limit for this life, I know, is almost up. Me and my diamond have new places to go and things to see, already. This time, it'll be with J.