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sublingua | |||||
| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
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dilemmecca 2.0
dearest heart, well it's the wednesday/friday today. that is, the day before fall break, which makes it a friday, but it's really wednesday. and i think going to the gym makes one not too much smarter because i feel like that makes sense. what's it if we add five more pounds? (did i tell you that story? god.) so i just got back from the gym where ama and i worked out and i pissed her off by suggesting that the troubles she has with her mother could potentially be changed. and her reply was that things will never change between her and her mother and aren't you listening to me? it's obvious that you aren't even listening to what i say if you think anything will ever change between me and my mom. high maintenance much? and isn't it time for some ab work? i'll be over here on the mat if you need someone to not listen to you, dearest ama. on other fronts: so you've started the breakingup process with the bryan is what i gleaned from your recent message. how is that going? i'm guessing as well as it ever does, that thing. that thing, that thing, that thing. girls, you know you'd better watch out. some guys, some guys are only about that thing. that thing...just a little lauren hill to distract you from...whatever. sans some more info, i guess i can't really do much or say much else. just, i know it's going to be okay for both of you and that i hope a friendship can be salvaged from it--if that's what you want. distracting x-news: so his second mama test went not well at all, which you may already know. he's dropping the class. i had to assure him that there was little shame in that as it's a relatively difficult class and without the background in chem, well. well. that was all we had time to talk about that day, as i had to ditch him and run to my next class because christopher "i'm not not inefficient" robin had to do that thing where he hands out the essay/presentation assignments by having each person draw a paper from a beaker and that took for-fucking-ever because people are ridiculously stupid and slow to boot and then the x wanted to hang around and see if he could trade his piece of paper for another piece of paper and i was, like, i'm so fucking out of here because i'm not going to stand around and bargain for a fucking essay question and i have to pee besides. plus...well, this is pretty boring. i'm sorry. not much x news in there. sorry for that too. and yeah, i knew that the x was going to be a problem. x is always a problem. not a hugely problematic problem (and that tends generally to be a function of x, and not a function of the other unknown in the equation), but there were a few sleepless nights over him in our household, i'm sure. x is a boy worth having and those, my dear, are few and far between. and as far as losing someone you love bringing you back to what's essential? i don't buy it, honey. as far as i can see, it's loving and dealing with the consequences of loving that are what bring you back to what's essential. but. but, that bravely said, in re: the consequences of loving: i am still dealing with the matthew. and i've been doing a lot of thinking about this whole why i can't just walk away thing that i've got going on with him and why i can't be more erin-like in my sophistica/stephen/sublingua/matthew dilemma. that is, why can't i just walk away? well, certainly, part of the problem is that he doesn't want me to. the matthew doesn't. it's the whole "i don't want to be your (whatever). and to prove that i don't want you in my life, i'm going to really try hard to engage you in conversation/eye-contact/intimations/blahblahblah." so there's that. but there is also this feeling that walking away is just running away in slow motion. and me? i rather stand and fight. i'd rather fight, period. no, really, let me get this one. i haven't spent a eunuch in months. i've got a whole bunch right here in my pocket. just hold my rosary and whistle if you see father ignacio coming. um. so is it that time in your life when you finally come to realize how much you rely on others and how frightening it is and how much you need and want love and how much you want to run away from it and how you can't do that without condemning yourself to a life of utter nothingness? no? have you heard of the buddhist compromise? because it's more of a compromise than you think, baby. i'm not sure that the buddhist compromise isn't just a guilded sort of walking away from it. but that said, i don't think x wants to walk away from it. i think he'd rather stand and fight. i know this about x: he learns from failure. he knows he learns from failure, and so he'd always rather try and fail than not try at all. that's x. and now maybe my bag's empty, x-wise. i don't know. but the compromise? i feel the need to reiterate that the lying aspect of the do whatever you want side was a sublingua exclusive. yeah, i've lied. the very least of those lies is the playing up of the "poor me" to get someone into bed. it worked, so i did it. more than once. and, yes, it's been years and years and i was young and stupid and have gotten to move on from it, and, no, at the time i didn't stick around long enough to deal with the consequences and i didn't do it if i wanted to even pretend that there was some frienship that might be salvaged out of it, but yeah. i've lied. it sounds ugly and harsh, and it was ugly and harsh. sex in a nutshell. or, as prof f would say: in a messy nutshell. (did i say i loved her?) um. the dream equation? x = bryan? not sure about that one. but i don't think so. rather, i see it as the confusion that results from trying to overlap the x with the bryan. x won't go for it and bryan doesn't know it's happening, so you get this muddled mash. you get the x-baiting (and that boy with his political/grammatical/scientifical baiting would try the patience of a saint) and your teasing/tickling responses. and you get the grandma hearts x versus the grandma's potential impression of bryan. and you get the new you in the old color of (wedding) dress. i'm not being real clear about any of this. what i mean is that the dream seems to mix elements of x with elements of bryan and the sophistica? well, she's out shopping for a wedding dress in her color. (and that's almost a bryan element, isn't it? because it don't seem like you've ever wanted that but that he did and that was, hmmm, problematic maybe?) one thing that isn't clear is whether your decision to run is/was part of the dream? that's not real clear from the recount. but anyway, stop mixing the bryan with the x is what i get from the dream. but you already know that. so your work here is done. for posterity: the latest matthew dream: we are watching the end of a 50's science fiction movie (creature from the black lagoon? bride of frankenstein?). we are on a tiny couch in a tiny house that i think is maybe mine, but i get the feeling that we live there together. the movie ends and it's dark--that kind of dark that you get when you're doing something in the house and you don't notice it's gotten dark until you suddenly realize that you can't see hardly at all but you're still able to keep doing whatever it was you were doing just because you can and it's not a function of light hardly at all. the movie ends and matthew gets up, saying he wants a drink of water. he goes into the tiny kitchen and calls out, "isn't the pitcher in the refrigerator?" and i say, getting up, "no, i think it's on the counter," and he says, very homer-simpson-like, "oh, beer!" and i say, "have a beer if you want." i go into the kitchen. his back is turned and he's rooting around in the fridge getting a beer. i open up the door to the back yard and go outside and stand on the back step for a moment, then walk a few steps into the yard. it's night. i look up at the sky where the clouds are parting and the stars are being revealed. matthew comes out of the house and, moving up behind me, puts his arms around me and kisses me. i turn to face him and we dance around on the grass in this postage stamp-sized backyard. he's talking to me about this email he's read that i had printed out and put on the fridge, asking me about the two artists who are involved in the letter (sylvia and jimmy) and i tease, "you read my personal email?" and he starts joking with me, but i realize as i wake up that the voice he's using isn't his. it wasn't matthew's voice. and that's what stuck with me. i can't see this too clearly, but the one thing that i know i don't want to know about this dream is that matthew's wanting me somehow isn't in his true voice. his teasing me, his joking with me is not in his true voice. and it makes me wonder what it is, in real life, that his true voice is saying. if i take him at his word, he wants my friendship still. if i take him at his deed, he wants to be free of me. or maybe it's the exact opposite. but it is two opposite things. maybe? i'm tired and confused. can i just walk away yet? yours, as always, with love, sublingua
More lies:
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