Mem'ries.
Google Earth is my memory now. Surfing a ridiculously perfect 3D San Francisco, my memory is animated on a 32" screen.
The DeYoung Museum, where she and I broke into the construction site and looked upon the half-demolished ruins of the museum she remembered as a child, the aquarium's tanks exposed, hidden areas laid bare, the last glimpses of an older time.
Cliff House, where she and I spent a whole day picking melted fragments of glass out of the sand to save for art projects, often locking bits of rusting metal or charred wood inside, from the great fire that destroyed the remains of the bathhouses when they were being torn down. She marveled at having found someone who relished these sorts of adventures and cherished the treasures they produced.
Twin Peaks, where I waited, shivering, so many nights for her parents to go to sleep so I could creep down their back alley silently, to painfully climb in a story-and-a-half high window to lie in her warm welcoming arms.
Our apartment in San Mateo, where I was hers and no one else's, and where I became once again no one's. Where she made those faux-bamboo holders for all the plastic shopping bags. Where we grew so far, so frighteningly and painfully far apart.
Then away, to Davis, where we first actually met face-to-face. Her apartment there, that amazing time spent with her, memories and photos of her smiling face. The motorcycle trip to Berkeley on the turbo. The day spent photgraphing birds, planes, and her while she gathered feathers in the bird sanctuary. And of course, to coming around the roundabout that first time to see her playing her violin in greeting. Something I will never as long as I live forget.
Truth be told, I know she was the one I spent my life searching for, the one I wasn't even sure existed. She was the one who I eventually trusted could accept me, all of me, even my darkest places, the one I dared hope would stay by me and hold my hand when I was afraid, and show me the way back to that hidden garden where no one would find us, where we could be safe, and where I could learn to heal from the things that had been broken in me when I was too young to even speak.
That was why I gave myself to her like that. That was why she was the only one I ever came close to trusting enough to submit to. But it wasn't enough. Somewhere along the line, she started to resent me, to see me and my illness as a burden. And I feared that perhaps I had been wrong, and in my fear, that bottomless well of fear that has run my life so strongly and for so much of it that many times I wasn't even aware it was there when it was bending me and everything around me into ugly shapes, I pulled away ever so slowly, but ever so clearly to her. And that was all it really took, I suppose, at that point.
And now I am too sick to do very much any more. And I have passed 40. And I know that no one else like her, even if she exists, will cross my path, and even if there was another her and that other her did cross my path, would I have anything to offer that would make the effort worthwhile?
And if there's no path out of this fear and unhappiness that I can find alone, and I managed to blow the one shot I had at getting out, then what incentive could there possibly be to wake in pain, grasping for a handful of pills I must take religiously or suffer much worse, with the full knowledge that from here I get weaker, older, and less capable by the day, that it's a short trip to needing an in-home aide, and then perhaps managed care, and within 5 or so years very likely a full-time hospice or nursing home? Already I cannot manage more than about 20 miles on a motorcycle before I have to literally go lie down for most of the rest of the day. I have been approved for SSDI going back to late 2004, and the ALJ lamented without being too obvious about it that he could not approve me back to the date I actually became unable to work. Beyond that high hurdle, I've made one that's even harder, perhaps the hardest governmental acknoledgement of disability to achieve -- my student loans have been forgiven due to total and permanent disability. And I didn't have to lie or exaggerate to make that happen, which I suppose is even more depressing and disheartening than having all those loans in default for so long.
The truth is, she is what I was living for these past years since she left me. The thought that perhaps she didn't really hate me, perhaps I could show her how much she meant to me, perhaps she had truly loved me and that she was just disillusioned, we'd had a huge communication rift, and that my continuing love and hope would shine through like they had shined through to her before we even actually met. I would find little things that reminded me of her, little things I thought fit her perfectly (like that shirt of the chicken saying "moo" -- it was she who got me started saying "moo" as a form of communication), things that I knew she wanted or would appreciate, and I would send them -- not trying to track down her residence, not emailing or calling her cell, but to her parent's house, and never went past that boundary. And now I find that she reviled me as a desperate old man who "went after" younger women who were perhaps naive to use them for sustenance, and that I was a "stalker". I did have to make some choices I did not want to when I was sick before I was approved for SSDI, but she was not, and never will or can be, one of them.
And the violin. The folly of the violin. She's had her quality student violin, Dolce, for so long. And I knew that the violin was one of her loves that she hung on to, even though she could only go so far with classical training because of a deformity of her wrist that prevented her from doing some of the bowing required. I don't know if she stopped playing very much because of that, so much, or because she was having to hide herself behind her shell in her own home, something I didn't become conscious of until it was much, much too late, or of something else, or a combination. But she still would take Dolce out from time to time and play, and she talked of wanting to learn to fiddle, to play folk music. And my grand plan all along, one ages in the making, was to build her a better violin, one she couldn't afford to buy for herself, one that would mean something to her... And to fill it with little things, little bits of me, things that would perhaps mean something to her. An enamel inlay of Howl's magic dial in his castle that would take those within to various places, but in its last iteration, the one that took him (and his "crone", the cursed and beautiful heroine of Howl's Moving Castle) to his secret garden, a theme that resonated with me long before meeting her (and which only grew, covered with vines and with ruined brick and plaster walls, while we were together). "See that new color on the dial? There's a new portal. It's a present for you. Come see. (opens into a limitless alpine meadow of small lakes and flowers) You like it? It's my secret garden... (leads her to a small house with a water wheel on one side) That was my secret hideaway... (It was) my private study. Now you can come here whenever you like." The violin as portal to the secret garden, me sharing something I treasure with her, and of courtse she was the one who introduced me to Miyazaki in the first place, so it is something of her to me, always. Inlaid with abalone I collected myself from the beach where Melinda's motorcycle silently rusts. And with a really decent violin costing about $7-10,000 to have made these days, something that someone would really have to *want* to do for someone else to make happen, unless they were stupid rich. Which of course, I am not. I was lucky enough to find a very talented artisan who is just on the cusp of solo artisanship after a diligent apprenticeship, and whose work could be had for a veritable bargain price.
So, there goes $3000. I suppose it'll make a nice violin for someone. I found out how she feels about me before he'd done anything much to customize the design, and I guess it's only half-built at this point. So at least there's nothing that'll detract from its salability to some other customer.
Recently I'd gotten another of the same make and model of acoustic guitar I had back before I got married to my second wife, because it was so beautiful and sounded so good, and because I stupidly sold mine a long time ago and they are truly rarer than hen's teeth. It would have been the ideal mate to the violin, probably even similar in coloring and inlay (although we hadn't gotten that far yet); it's nice, but I can't play as well as I once could, and not for terribly long because I end up in too much pain. But it's nice to have around, more or less. Just sad to think that it won't be accompanied by a beautiful handmade violin.
This morning, I got news that something else I spent a lot of money on was broken and not worth fixing; I got a week's worth of use out of that one. Guess it's just not my week for money-related things, huh?
At least I have some few good memories. I have to try and hold onto those, because at the end of the day, what else do we really have except for those?