I spent most of the day on my way to/at Moshe's grave, alone. I didn't expect to "hear from him" again this time. This time, I just wanted to talk to myself in his "presence" more than anything.
I woke up a bit anxious today. The next trip is days away. I'm almost ready to leave here, but I'm not sure I'm ready to be in NYC.
So I woke up first with a song in my head that has since escaped me. Then, with thoughts about Hancock (which I saw last night with my cousin Darya), wondering if I have known a Hancock (spoiler coming right now; look away until the next paragraph if you care): less the superhero/immortality bit, more the wecannotbetogetherandnothurteachother part. You're flattering yourself, I thought, so I compromised. OK, so maybe it's the Icannotbewithyouandnotgethurt part that resonates within me. (I certainly don't think I'm someone else's timeless love. I'm undecided on whether or not I would want the position if it became available.) Then, disquietude? apprehension? tension? Heaviness-in-the-chest pain. I'm holding shit in. That pain.
The bus ride to the cemetery was painful: more tightness in the chest (and a bad back). I couldn't wait to get to the cemetery to have an excuse to let shit out—however I was going to.
Finally, alone time…I think.
I'm not going to write about it all here. I will say this: in the two hours or so that I spent just sitting by the grave and providing a feast for the stealthiest, weirdest looking mosquitoes I've ever seen, there was a time when I couldn't help but hope for another word, without even knowing what the question was that needed a response other than the pain in my chest that I didn't and still do not fully understand. When I wondered about the ribcage tightness, that sternum knot, I did perceive a word (that's the best way I can put it), yet I think it came from inside, more from within my ribcage, less a resonance that settled into my brain from I don't know where.
Open.
Open? Is open an adjective or a verb, a state of being? Open what? What's open? Open how? Fuck.
...as in, I'm actually amused by the oracular nature of the little voices in my
At a standstill and not sure what the hell was going on in my mind, I did what any sensible person would do. I pulled up a chair under the tree in front of Moshe's grave, sat down, took my book out of my bag, and began reading. When I truly love someone, I find immense peace if not bliss in sharing space in silence.
There is something about reading all this Latin American fiction in preparation for the class I'll be teaching this fall that's been at once amazingly soothing and amazingly provocative. No pornography could turn me on like these stories and novels do. I mean, ddddaaaaaamn; the amount of passion the writers and their characters express in all sorts of ways takes my breath away.
These are the things I thought about sitting across from Moshe's grave, reading my book. I wondered how come so many people often shut down or shut themselves in or let doubt supersede passion when they see what was once imagined suddenly appear before them—sometimes, in the form of someone whose only desire is to live passionately (my tendency is the opposite—I believe only too willingly that an imagined possibility can become reality), how come many if not most people don't do everything they can to create magical realism in their lives. Because it ain't just for fictional characters, people; we can render our lives possibly magical, too. I truly believe this. I think we get bogged down by having to pay bills, by scrutinizing shit and trying to do the healthy, logical thing rather than say Fuck You to ol' logic and do whatever the fuck we're passionate about. And the saddest thing is probably people's losing touch with their own passions.
And that, my friends, is why I wouldn't blame anyone for dreaming.
Not even myself.
I pondered all this some more, sitting there, reading yet another fervent story by a Latina. I was calmer, but the chest pain was still kind of there. I had an idea. I got up, traced Moshe's name engraved on the tombstone onto the two blank pages at the end of my book with a pencil, sat back down. It occurred to me that living passionately comes at the cost of heartbreak. Sometimes I hurt, sometimes I get hurt, and most of the time, the two happen simultaneously. And you know what? If I wasn't before, I am OK with that now.
I could indulge all those should haves and could haves, but fuck, sister, what's the point? What I've said and done could have been no other way. My wordy emails, my lengthy explanations as well as my silences, my keeping secrets (maybe even from myself), my rushing into things as well as my taking things too slow…my mistakes: they're all perfect in their imperfections. We get to fuck up; we get to make mistakes. It's a privilege we have. And rather than resent it, I choose to embrace my fortune.
Today, despite all the things I am still confused about, despite my realization that I know very little right now, I think I understand what "So live" means a bit better. It's about acceptance and making peace with myself. It's about tending to a broken heart with compassion whether it is mine or someone else's. It's about writing this hippy dip shit out without editing too much. It's about opening up without being afraid of what or whom I might lose if I do, realizing the most valuable things I could lose are my honesty with myself, my integrity, me.
It's about not being afraid to have enduring faith in honest, unabashed love. Doesn't it always begin in our imagination?
And that, my friends, is why I wouldn't blame anyone for dreaming.
Not even myself.
(I feel more ready for NYC now.)
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