I used to say "I'm sorry" when I meant "I understand"

[gurdonark]

"Did you never call? I waited for your call
These rivers of suggestion are driving me away
The trees will bend, the cities wash away
The city on the river there is a girl without a dream"
Berry, Buck, Mills, Stipe, from "South Central Rain"

I think, as I look back, of the heavy leaden boots I wore over my emotional Converse tennis shoes all through my teens and early twenties. It's as though the boots were magnets for spacecraft, intended to help me with weightlessness. When the weightless moments came, everyone else was floating so high, and my boots kept me anchored to the hull. I love that way that the smallest moments of fluidity and grace now occupy separate mansions in my mind. I can attend filmstrips at cinemadromes of good memory, playing out on massive projectors, tickets free at any time. I think these moments of remembered rapture, though, obscure the day to day reality of never quite fitting in, and never quite wanting to fit in. I don't regret the choices that I made then so much as wonder that I could have been so rigid. In theory, eccentricity should give one a certain laissez faire fluidity, but for me, following rules I had set became much more important than exploring freedoms. I was always the strongest believer in dogged loyalty, for example, but with hindsight I wonder if I did not let dogged loyalty transmogrify into simple doormat-state. I spent some seven years of my younger days waiting for someone who was not on the incoming bus. I even knew that someday the bus would stop, the passengers would disembark, and I would be alone. My theory was that if one accepts the futility of one's effort, then one can deal with the emotional fallout.

My shoulder is arguably enriched from serving as a place for someone to place her head and cry about other men, but I wonder at myself, just a bit, being willing to stay in that situation. But perhaps it's a good discipline to learn--one's own desire for something is not enough, loyalty is not enough, and kindness is not enough. One must have something more, and whatever that something might be called (charisma? sex appeal? the spark?), mine was lacking. Later, when I recall the years after that phase of my life had passed, I think of missed opportunities and strong hints ignored, and wonder if the scorching one gets waiting patiently in the fire doesn't numb the senses just a bit. I had been scorched, and I was not particularly interested in burning again. I'm glad my life is in a different place, now, as those earlier times were difficult.

Comments

[chaptal.livejournal.com]

Just want you to know I read this. Loyalty equaling doormat status is real tough to work on in hindsight. I used to wonder, too much, about what would have happened if I'd not stayed silent about it.

Different times now, better places, no?

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Thanks for commenting. Much better times now, and, yes, the real challenge is what, if anything, to make of it in hindsight, when the moment is entirely passed. Maybe one doesn't learn from past times so much as just live through them.

Re:

[chaptal.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the hardest thing about looking back is seeing how many times the same behaviors were repeated. That puts you on the couch, wondering why :)

[coollibrarian.livejournal.com]

The "couch" is a good thing. :)

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Yes, for all the popular press about the "couch", more people in my observation benefit from it than waste time with it.

[chaptal.livejournal.com]

yes, it can be.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

whatever that something might be called (charisma? sex appeal? the spark?), mine was lacking.

This whole post touches on stuff I've been thinking of the last couple days. Thank you.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much for commenting. These pheronomic issues are difficult for me to grasp.

Burn baby burn

[kelquestor.livejournal.com]

You wore Converse tennis shoes in your teens? I wonder if Australia had them back then. I certainly wasn't trendy enough to wear them (in my teens, I wasn't trendy at all): mine were Dunlop Volleys, won in the annual high school fun run.

I wonder what has brought this time in your life to the foreground of your mindpicture screen right now? Not that any of us ever forget the emotionally-charged days of adolescence...

And I wonder too, what is lost when we 'settle' (?) for/into a sustained warm glow, rather than pursuing the intensity of fireworks, that in our experience light up the sky fleetingly then die, leaving ugly debris and an acrid smell, things it is hard to see a point in? Even the more moderate glow kindles and ebbs, and displays a heartbreaking transience; it is a beautiful, nourishing thing and I for one would not want to live without it.

But I am reading again those precious slim volumes about when it all came together like I wanted it to - incredibly, the teen dream (!), when the passion was requited momentarily, when it was enough, when the variables arranged in significant and exquisite pattern for a second and I WAS THERE! I am gasping again as I revisit the treasured ah! moments, and then slide them carefully back between the long, heavy bookends that, despite their enormity, somehow never manage to overwhelm them completely.

Baby's on Fire

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I don't know why I'm travelling down this ancient history this month. Perhaps it's just for a bit of "and now for something completely different" after all these drudge-y "my novel and me" posts. But you're right, the rapturous times from those days are pretty amazing.

[schpahky.livejournal.com]

Hi. This is lovely. nickelchief sent me your way and I see I will be richly rewarded.

Greetings!

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Welcome and greetings and I've reciprocated and glad to have you aboard and such!