A wonderful poem about keeping expectations real

[I've deliberately omitted the title, as its connotations are no longer the same as when the poem was written.]

She had thought the studio would keep itself;
no dust upon the furniture of love.
Half heresy, to wish the taps less vocal,
the panes relieved of grime. A plate of pears,
a piano with a Persian shawl, a cat
stalking the picturesque amusing mouse
had risen at his urging.
Not that at five each separate stair would writhe
under the milkman's tramp; that morning light
so coldly would delineate the scraps
of last night's cheese and three sepulchral bottles;
that on the kitchen shelf among the saucers
a pair of beetle-eyes would fix her own---
envoy from some village in the moldings . . .
Meanwhile, he, with a yawn,
sounded a dozen notes upon the keyboard,
declared it out of tune, shrugged at the mirror,
rubbed at his beard, went out for cigarettes;
while she, jeered by the minor demons,
pulled back the sheets and made the bed and found
a towel to dust the table-top,
and let the coffee-pot boil over on the stove.
By evening she was back in love again,
though not so wholly but throughout the night
she woke sometimes to feel the daylight coming
like a relentless milkman up the stairs.

--Adrienne Rich

Diving into the Wreck

by Adrienne Rich

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

______________________________________________

I was thinking through feelings and thoughts, sorting through what I want to say, but find I can't really add much to what Rich has already so eloquently said. I keep fruitlessly working at it. Somehow it helps. The wreck and not the story of the wreck. Not sure how. It just does.

Writer

What IS a "Normal Life"?

Sittin’ here just thinkin,’ taking a few moments break from work (OK, I DID get out earlier for an…interesting ski with my husky across sleet…), I’m struck by how many times I’ve heard the words over the years, in a wide variety of contexts, “Well, I need to get my life in order first.”

Just whose life IS “in order”? What does that even mean? Someone with no problems? Someone with no entanglements? Someone whose life moves everyday perfectly synched to some cosmic schedule? Who ARE these people?

Well, they don’t exist, of course. I’m all for continual self-improvement and striving for the best, but to wait for that before truly living is sad, and perhaps dysfunctional, if understandably so. We’ll all die first!

Nowhere is this more prevalent than in new relationships, and it’s rooted in pride. I’m as guilty as anyone--I do alone very well, I don’t need anyone, I’ve got other life issues to address, and so on. I certainly have my share of pride, too. But despite our individual culture--and this is not to ignore the many benefits of valuing each of us as individuals--it’s flawed at best.

Simply considering our biology dictates man was meant to live with woman, and woman with man. Sure, its more than that--which is why sex with someone loved on multiple levels and for multiple reasons is wonderful, not just a biological act. But to pretend this is apart from our nature is silly.

Perfection doesn’t come easily, if it comes at all. So here’s to imperfect relationships and abnormal lives--in all their messy, individualistic, problem-soaked and vastly interesting living-life-to-its-fullest glory.

Writer

A Hard Year’s Beginning

I’ve got to learn to stop getting into long distance relationships. Or I’d like to. Thing is, I keep meeting interesting women who don’t live next door. So I’ll probably keep doing it.

In particular, I find there’s a process:

1) complain there are no good men
2) meet good man
3) get interested
4) get serious about man
5) get very happy
6) think of every possible scenario about what could go wrong
7) sabotage relationship so that none of those things can happen
8) be sad
9) complain there are no good men

Long distance makes it impossible to go get coffee and talk, so we add hiding behind the keyboard or turning off the cell phone to further complicate the issue.

I guess I don’t understand.

I’m a “let’s take what’s good and work from there” kinda guy. Look for things wrong, and you’ll always find them (doesn’t anyone read “Young Goodman Brown” anymore?).

But, a relationship of any kind takes the decisions of two people.

Seems I’m back at square one.

I don’t like it.

Writer

Where to Meet Single Men

While I struggle with finishing the school term, and while I’ve briefly started other posts, I thought I’d fire off this one.

Meeting people in the course of our busy lives has become preposterously difficult. The fear of sexual harassment accusations, for example, has bizarrely overshadowed fear of STDs, eliminating (or at least complicating) all those work place alliances—with work where we spend most of our time.

The Internet and the local paper, in theory, with their dating service opportunities, should help, right? However, people offer only a line or two of information in their quest for a match (?????), and, well—people lie.

Many, many books purport to address and solve this conundrum, but they’re rarely even remotely helpful. [Most book sales, incidentally, are for self-help books—and only 5% of those books get read.]

But if you want to meet responsible single guys, go to the laundromat Sunday morning. I’m quite serious.

No moms struggling alone with screaming kids. No partiers hungover from Saturday night. Just guys getting things done.

And you can tell a lot about a guy. Does he needlessly park across three spaces like an asshole? Does he hold doors to help out others? Does he help keep the machines clean, throw out his trash?

I’ve heard that guys should take aerobic classes and women should take karate classes to meet members of their opposite gender. Those approaches all are pricey, however, and further, pretending to have interests you don’t really have doesn’t much help. I’ve heard talk of the grocery store, too—but doesn’t that just seem a little creepy? [Hey, nice melons! Or hey, nice beans!] Or hang out at a church—where mostly couples and their children participate (and a definite problem for atheists). Other organizations can be prohibitive for other reasons—hiking clubs typically ban dogs, for example, a problem for dog owners who would never hike without their dogs.

Sunday morning laundry. Trust me.

Write

Reelin' in the Tears

On the way to do laundry, finding talk radio at the moment vapid, I hit “scan” on my car radio, and caught the beginning of Steely Dan’s “Reelin’ in the Years.”

For years I’ve loved this song—first, Steely Dan is an awesomely talented and original pair of composers/performers, and second, they collaborate with monsters (music slang for incredibly gifted performers), in this case, that awesome guitar solo, an exemplar of both construction and delivery.

I’ve long know the lyrics, of course, although they’ve always been secondary to my interests as a musician, but today, for some reason, they caught my ear:

Are you reelin’ in the years,
Storin’ away the time;
Are you gatherin’ up the tears,
Have you had enough of mine?

Well, quite a few years have passed since I felt quite that way, but I started thinking about my last few relationships.

Sure, years ago, I flatly messed things up. I was young, stupid, clueless. It happens. But more recently, past decade or so, I’ve entered carefully calculated relationships, a step at a time, planting gardens instead of rushing in, sword blazing. And the results were wonderful! Passionate partnerships built on common interests, engaging conversations, intersecting life goals, and so forth.

And yet these relationships went belly-up. Why? No reason. Nothing bad happened. That, in fact, seems to be the problem—with no negative developments, the relationship seemed to be promising enough to call for a long commitment, making it a real threat. One partner decided to strive to control me and force issues she knew would never work. Another decided she’d worry 24/7 that I was seeing other people on the side (I’ve NEVER cheated on a partner—when I told one of my best friends about her assessment, he could only repeat, “What?!” His wife agreed.) More recently, one woman invented such bizarre stories to get ME to be the one to end the relationship that my dad pointed out “You’ve got lots of material for a great novel there.”

Sigh.

Everyone has issues. That’s fine. But I’m tired of people taking a pound of my flesh in attempts to satisfy their own psychoses.

Taking your bat and ball and going home alone is easy. Partnerships take more effort than that—you’d think mature people could get a grip on that. But apparently not. Many relationships seem to be forged youthfully, when idealism clouds any sense of reality.

When Tracy Chapman asks, “Why if there’re so many of us, are people still alone?"--it’s often because they choose—whether they’ll admit it or not—to be alone.

Just take responsibility for such a decision, rather than spending years of other people’s lives when they could be building a life instead of wasting one. Cry your own tears--and be clear about the reason.

I'm reminded of the pilot for "Mad about You." Our couple meets by accident, and are about to part forever, despite obvious sparks (well, this IS television...). Then our hero turns to this vision and says somthing like, "One day, you'll be with your friends, drinking margarettas, complaining 'Why can't I just meet a nice guy?' Well, you DID meet a nice guy--and you let him walk away." He turns. Pause. She says, "Wait! -- you swear you're a nice guy?" And so we have a television series.

That's what people want. Television. Internet romances. Emotion at a distiance.

Writer