(no subject)
It's April 8th, and I still get the cards.
I'm never really sure how to react to them, you know, because when people do shit like that it's not necessarily just for the person who's on the recieving end. Sometimes people send cards to help themselves work through tragedy. But I still get these things, and in some ways it makes me feel like there's something I should be doing, a way I should be acting about it.
I'm a firm believer in the power of I'm Sorry. This isn't to say I'm quick to apologize, or that I'm quick to accept the apologies of others, but there's a power in it regardless. A lot can be mended with a pair of words, and there's often far more said than just the obvious. Not everything can be taken at face value, guys. When I see "I'm sorry" or "I'm sorry for you" or even "I'm sorry for your loss" written across the inside of an otherwise empty card, I can't help but think they expect me to be mourning, and I'm not mourning. Don't get me wrong. I was. For a pretty long time, come to think of it. But there are stages, and you can't keep crying forever. I won't lie for the sake of utter stoicism and tell you that I'm never sad, or that I don't recall specific occasions with all the impact of a punch to the stomach.
I think I'll always remember the way he could sit for hours with his ear pressed up to my belly when I was pregnant with Frances Bean, humming and grinning as though he could hear her heartbeat sans stethoscope. The way he tirelessly learned the assortment of scents I liked for soap and tried to find the equivalent in lotion and shampoo. The way he held my face sometimes in the dark, fingertips splayed out over my cheekbones, light like spider legs. As though he was afraid I would break. But it wasn't always gentle, and it wasn't always bliss, and it wasn't always safe.
Both of us were scared, but I think he was a little more frightened than I. By the world, by the idea of creation that only musicians are privy to; poets know the creation in words and artists know the creation in paints, and I'm sure both would argue that what they birth is as alive as they are... but there's something else about music. It breathes with you and against you, it's the gloves that you wear and the hair at the nape of your neck and the faint hollow beneath your eyes where the lashes settle in rest. It can be as terrifying as it can be beautiful. When you layer it on top of the fighting and the drugs and the booze and more of the drugs, and the press and the everything, terrifying turns abruptly to overwhelming.
And some people can't deal with it. And so some people die.
It's not noble but it's not cowardice, either. I think it's just coping, and a one-fingered salute to circumstance.
I'm sure there're whole crowds who assume I'm furious about it, still, though I'm not. I went through my rage just as sure as I went through the period when I did nothing but make a nest for myself under blankets and alternate between heroin, percocet, and double-fudge brownies. Those same crowds probably assume I'm indignant on my daughter's behalf, but that's not my place. If I spoke against him to Frances it would be more disrespectful to her than to anyone else. My opinions are mine, and in some situations guidance is appropriate, but this would never be one of them. Sometimes she'll take out the photo album and we'll sit together on the couch while she leafs through them, and I'm always silent until she points and asks questions. She likes the ones of me when I was younger, shorthaired and overweight; she told me once that I looked "like a promise". She never elaborated, only flipped a couple of pages forward and stared at a series of the three of us.
One of those pictures went missing after a few weeks; I found it in Frances' room, face-up in the top bureau drawer, with the word "happy" printed largely on the back, purple pen, in her distinctive scrawl. I didn't take it back, only rearranged the ones left in the album so the empty space wasn't so noticeable. She knows it wasn't perfect, she asked once if her father and I argued and I said yes, sometimes. She just nodded, solemnly, all big eyes and small mouth the way she does when she's trying to process something, trying to understand. I get the idea that she's worked it out well for herself, all that she knows placed side-by-side on the bulletin board of consciousness, arranged in perfect clarity. Children have a way of sorting things like that simply and cleanly.
She's sleeping now, but I can't. It's not insomnia, it's memory, and the day. Despite my lack of fury or despair, it's draining and I have the feeling it always will be.. even when we're only minutes into it. What do you do when you can't change a damn thing?
You sit with a glass of wine and a pack of cigarettes, with your feet up and no music to distract you from the intricately tangled, confusing beauty of your own thought. And then, you proceed normally. As directed. School and groceries and writing, walking the dog and changing the cat litter. When you're stagnant, you begin to mold. When you're not, little can hurt you. So, you move.
And you know, I think I will.
I'm never really sure how to react to them, you know, because when people do shit like that it's not necessarily just for the person who's on the recieving end. Sometimes people send cards to help themselves work through tragedy. But I still get these things, and in some ways it makes me feel like there's something I should be doing, a way I should be acting about it.
I'm a firm believer in the power of I'm Sorry. This isn't to say I'm quick to apologize, or that I'm quick to accept the apologies of others, but there's a power in it regardless. A lot can be mended with a pair of words, and there's often far more said than just the obvious. Not everything can be taken at face value, guys. When I see "I'm sorry" or "I'm sorry for you" or even "I'm sorry for your loss" written across the inside of an otherwise empty card, I can't help but think they expect me to be mourning, and I'm not mourning. Don't get me wrong. I was. For a pretty long time, come to think of it. But there are stages, and you can't keep crying forever. I won't lie for the sake of utter stoicism and tell you that I'm never sad, or that I don't recall specific occasions with all the impact of a punch to the stomach.
I think I'll always remember the way he could sit for hours with his ear pressed up to my belly when I was pregnant with Frances Bean, humming and grinning as though he could hear her heartbeat sans stethoscope. The way he tirelessly learned the assortment of scents I liked for soap and tried to find the equivalent in lotion and shampoo. The way he held my face sometimes in the dark, fingertips splayed out over my cheekbones, light like spider legs. As though he was afraid I would break. But it wasn't always gentle, and it wasn't always bliss, and it wasn't always safe.
Both of us were scared, but I think he was a little more frightened than I. By the world, by the idea of creation that only musicians are privy to; poets know the creation in words and artists know the creation in paints, and I'm sure both would argue that what they birth is as alive as they are... but there's something else about music. It breathes with you and against you, it's the gloves that you wear and the hair at the nape of your neck and the faint hollow beneath your eyes where the lashes settle in rest. It can be as terrifying as it can be beautiful. When you layer it on top of the fighting and the drugs and the booze and more of the drugs, and the press and the everything, terrifying turns abruptly to overwhelming.
And some people can't deal with it. And so some people die.
It's not noble but it's not cowardice, either. I think it's just coping, and a one-fingered salute to circumstance.
I'm sure there're whole crowds who assume I'm furious about it, still, though I'm not. I went through my rage just as sure as I went through the period when I did nothing but make a nest for myself under blankets and alternate between heroin, percocet, and double-fudge brownies. Those same crowds probably assume I'm indignant on my daughter's behalf, but that's not my place. If I spoke against him to Frances it would be more disrespectful to her than to anyone else. My opinions are mine, and in some situations guidance is appropriate, but this would never be one of them. Sometimes she'll take out the photo album and we'll sit together on the couch while she leafs through them, and I'm always silent until she points and asks questions. She likes the ones of me when I was younger, shorthaired and overweight; she told me once that I looked "like a promise". She never elaborated, only flipped a couple of pages forward and stared at a series of the three of us.
One of those pictures went missing after a few weeks; I found it in Frances' room, face-up in the top bureau drawer, with the word "happy" printed largely on the back, purple pen, in her distinctive scrawl. I didn't take it back, only rearranged the ones left in the album so the empty space wasn't so noticeable. She knows it wasn't perfect, she asked once if her father and I argued and I said yes, sometimes. She just nodded, solemnly, all big eyes and small mouth the way she does when she's trying to process something, trying to understand. I get the idea that she's worked it out well for herself, all that she knows placed side-by-side on the bulletin board of consciousness, arranged in perfect clarity. Children have a way of sorting things like that simply and cleanly.
She's sleeping now, but I can't. It's not insomnia, it's memory, and the day. Despite my lack of fury or despair, it's draining and I have the feeling it always will be.. even when we're only minutes into it. What do you do when you can't change a damn thing?
You sit with a glass of wine and a pack of cigarettes, with your feet up and no music to distract you from the intricately tangled, confusing beauty of your own thought. And then, you proceed normally. As directed. School and groceries and writing, walking the dog and changing the cat litter. When you're stagnant, you begin to mold. When you're not, little can hurt you. So, you move.
And you know, I think I will.