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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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The Demons Who Tried
I wake up crying. (�The tears just kept leaking out,� The Demon Who Always Does The Right Thing tells me of her wedding aftermath response.) I can count on a single hand the number of times that this has happened to me in my entire life. The sleep is thankfully dreamless. I put the camera on the floor next to the bed and I fall asleep. I lay in bed, nude, taking photos of myself with the digital camera. I take them against the white sheet.
They are stark. Lean. In them, I look old, worried, tired, worn out. I keep a few of the photos, thinking that I might post them online. And if not, I keep them as mementos, mementos of evenings like this.
I take photos of myself in the bathroom mirror. I want to see what I look like because it seems that I have forgotten who I am. I take off my shirt (the black shirt that used to button at the cleavage but which has grown to big and so exposes too much and which has me worried all night that I look cheap). I leave my shirt in the sink. I take photos of my Hand of Fatima tattoo, which refuses, tonight of all nights, to resonate. (What protects me if not this?) I take off the rest of my clothes, leave my jeans and underwear in the hall. I sit on the floor, naked, take photos of myself. I delete all but a few of them.
I want to see what I look like at the end of the evening, an evening like the one I just had. I feel old, tired. I feel worn out and worried. I sit at my desk and I write. I write about running. I write about running, about running away. Everything inside me says to run. Run, I tell myself. Run. Run. I write about Sue, who ignored the signals to run and ended up forcing herself into herself. (Don�t be Sue, Sublingua. Run. Run Away.) I write about earlier, on the treadmill, running, fighting (within) myself: I begin to run, thinking, I can�t. I can�t. I can�t. I can�t. (Ignore it, Sublingua. Ignore it and run. I ignore it and run past I Can�t into a part of me that is unfamiliar to me, into a place where I can. I can run. Stop smoking and you can run faster, says this part of me. Do what you thought you could never do and you will run farther, says this part of me. Run, says this part of me. Sublingua, it says, Run.) I cry. It takes me a long time to start crying even though I want to cry, want to let it out, want to purge my failures. I have to look past the barriers put into place by my father, who always punished me for crying. Crying is a weakness that I have been instructed in every way never to engage in. (You will Not be weak. You will Not cry.) With Max (Matthew), it was water. I thought I could dissolve the sadness, that it would go down the drain when I pulled the plug. The body remembered swimming (misses swimming), remembered the meditative quality of the movement, remembered the way you could outswim thought, remembered the way you could leave it behind. It thought any water was capable of this miracle. It was right. I sit at my desk. (Take off your boots, Sublingua). I untie one bootlace but leave the boot on. I cross my legs, pray for tears. I pray for them and they come. (Be grateful, Sublingua, for answered--and unanswered--prayers.) We Are All Trying, But What Is It We're Trying To Do? Mayflower: Mayflower calls at nine in the morning to ask about drinks and dinner with x that has been planned for nine or nine-thirty that evening. I know she needs a more definite plan, but I haven�t yet talked to x. She will call another half-dozen times throughout the day, feeding her need to control the situation (but trying to find a way to appear as though she is not controlling the situation by instead controlling me). I love her (so I forget in the times between when I see her that interacting with her drains me).
She drinks too much. She talks about her fingernails and toenails. She talks about George and Roger. She cries and apologizes, asks if I still love her. (I do. I love her and tell her so. I want her to love her, but she can�t do this. And I can�t do it for her.) As we are walking into the bar, she tells me about a fight that she had with The Enforcer. She yells at him for forgetting to put his dishes in the sink. "Why can't he do this one little thing?" she asks. (He may have other things on his mind. The Enforcer�s father is dying of cancer.) �What are your intentions toward my Sublingua?� she asks the Aisho. The Enforcer: Everyone loves The Enforcer. (I love The Enforcer. Sometimes he�s the only reason I can find to love Mayflower�because I know that The Enforcer loves her.) He tells funny stories. He props himself up in an uncomfortable situation by telling funny stories. (I love him for doing this. I do this too, or try to, though I am never as successful as he is.) He tells me about how, as a kid, he was afraid of angels. His mother told him that angels were the spirits of people who died. His interpretation was that that they were dead people like ghosts (or demons?) who waited at his bedside for him to fall asleep so that they could attack him. He didn�t sleep. (He still doesn�t.) He does voices: Tonight it was the voice of a Russian kid who, while being taken into custody, tried and utterly failed to cuss out the cops. �Mother pisser!" the kid yelled at The Enforcer. "Fuck ass cunter!� The Enforcer is very straight faced as he says, "When he said 'You...stupid,' I told him, 'Now you've gone too far.'" We laugh. (That is our agreement and we both do everything possible to hold to it.) We trade �I grew up poorer than you did� stories. �Did you have rats in the walls?� (�No, Spanish people build with adobe because they�re been so poor for so long that they�ve learned how to do things right.�) �Did you have to live in a barn?� (�No, five of us lived in three rooms.�) The Enforcer�s father has cancer, a lymphoma that Randy found the last time he went in for dental work. (I ask him what his father is doing.) He�s doing the same thing. (I ask what that is.) Going to work. Coming home. Doing yardwork. Eating dinner. Watching TV. (Living his life, in other words.) Yeah. (I ask about his spirits. How are his spirits?) He�s�okay. He�s starting chemo this week. The Enforcer looks down at his plate. (I can feel the worry and sadness coming off of him in waves. Our agreement seems suddenly to include our ignoring his sadness, his worry. He is trying hard, so I do too.) He gets paged and has to leave. Chain-of-evidence protocol means that he signs Mayflower over to me. Fu: Fu looks drawn and worried. He comes over and stands next to the Aisho for a moment. He smiles at me and says hello but it is a forced smile, a polite smile. (I am grateful that he can manage to do it at all.) He is busy and makes it up when he isn�t. (The restaurant is busy.) He says hello to Mayflower. He is already drinking but we send over a beer anyway. Max: �I would have left at midnight if I would have known,� he says (when I ask why he and Mayflower just hung around all night). He gets pulled over. Expired tag. The cops give him a ticket. �I didn�t mean to get so angry.� (Twice in two days: Once at the wedding (when I asked him to dance with me and managed with this question to provoke a sudden anger that shocked even Ama) and once as we drove back to the student ghetto (over my saying, �Maybe you and Mayflower could have [filled in the blank].�) x: He is leaving in the morning for DC and has spent all day at a puzzle that has more than seven parts. He may have solved it in time�though if he doesn�t, he will still get on a plane. He has a beer, a salad, a bourbon and coke. He smokes my cigarettes and watches Heavy Metal on the television set behind me. The bar is too loud for conversation. He wants more to eat than just a salad but wants to wait for the Aisho and then go. He is considering within himself how long he has before he runs out of fuel. He does this without informing any one of us that he is doing it. He decides that he has to go. �Where is Aisho?� he asks. Aisho: Like Fu, he seems tense. Like the rest of us, he is trying (but trying to do what?) At the bar, he chides me for not remembering a discussion we had. (I remember the discussion, a relatively important one that we had while laying in bed together a week or more ago, but because the discussion seemed to me to be about his teacher, I had not filed it under "Aisho" but under "Sensei" and so do not immediately recall it the way I am supposed to.) �We talked about this, Sublingua. Don�t you remember? You must have forgotten.� He brings a tattoo magazine and shows me a dragon and demon tattoo. (What�s the demon? I ask. Why the dragon? Where will you get it? What does your other tattoo mean?) He thinks about the monkey name question for too long. ("No," I say, "don't think about it. Just answer. If someone shook you awake in the middle of the night and said, �What�s your monkey�s name?�, what would you say?�) �Yoshi,� he says. He brings up several topics of conversation from here. (I don�t realize this until this morning.) �I can�t believe you were married to Max.� and �You�re Aji.� (Aji? Why Aji?) �Because it�s Spanish mackerel. (Doesn�t it also mean horse mackerel?) �Yes, but�It�s Spanish.� and �I don�t want children.� (Why not?) �I just don�t.� and �Magdalene? Oh, I read about her.� (I don�t tell him that, like him, she reads the diary and so a lot of the entries about her are tucked away cozily next to his in a private folder. He�s read some of what I�ve had to say, what I experienced, went through with Magdalene.) He doesn�t touch me except accidentally. He tells me (when I ask what he will do on his day off) that he is supposed to go to a blues festival with a friend who wants to set him up with a friend of his fianc�e�s. (What�s the woman�s name? I ask, for want of a better question, for want of any question, for something to say.) The fiancee�s name is Rose. The friend�s name is Laura. She is Korean and knows all about Aisho�s mother, claims to know and understand all about the Japanese Mother�s propensity to protect the oldest son. (I think, Try Hispanic boys; All of my brothers are treated like princes. I think helplessly: I like the name Laura. I like the name Laura and have since I was little because of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Laura and Almanzo named their daughter Rose. Laura is a pretty name. I like the name Laura. I say--for want of anything better to say--that I think he should go and meet this woman. I say that I think it would be good for him to meet some new people.) He leans back, resting his head on the booth, says, �Nah.� (I ask why.) He says that his friend was supposed to call but hasn�t. Sublingua: These two things seem to me like clear signals. They seem like clear signals (but unlike Sophistica I don't have the discipline to get up and excuse myself to go to the bathroom and instead leave the restaurant.) No. No, instead I sit in the corner of the restaurant booth, leaning away. Instead I eat my multigrain pancakes with sugar-free, maple-flavored syrup. Instead I smile and joke when I think it is appropriate to smile and joke. Instead I drink my coffee and weather the presence of Mayflower and Max and listen to Aisho talk about Fu and his gambling habit and about Lance and his wandering eye. Instead of saying what I want to say, I excuse myself to go to the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror. Instead I think, You look old and tired, Sublingua. Instead I say goodnight when it is time to say goodnight and I don�t say anything else. I don't say the things that I want to say. (I don't say what I want to say even now.) Instead I try to chop wood. I try to carry water. I pray for enlightenment. (I manage to be grateful. I manage to be grateful for it and that is as close as I can come.) The puzzle is not as difficult as you imagine. In fact, it has only seven pieces -- far fewer than you've assumed. Perhaps you got thrown off by its simplicity; it does have a superficial resemblance to a more complicated puzzle from your past. The ironic thing is that you'll never figure it out as long as you're so serious and stressed about it. To create the conditions that will lead to a solution, relax, have as much fun as possible, and assume that the puzzle will soon solve itself.
More lies:
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