The Cheeseball Stands Alone
Twice today I cracked myself up while everyone around me remained stony-faced. First, after agreeing to review “99 Homes,” I bellowed “AND A BITCH AIN’T ONE. ” (Crickets.) Then, while discussing a financial issue, I bellowed, “MO MONEY, MO PROBLEMS.” (More crickets.) Perhaps the latter statement seemed too pathetically fantastical to be funny, given that I am notoriously un-moneyed. Perhaps a blond middle-aged lady barking rap lyrics was simply too problematic to be funny in any context. Either way, it is a good thing I am very confident that I am an absolutely highlarious human being or else I’d be developing a complex right about now.
I’m kind of joking (again) but it’s true that even when people don’t find me funny–which, quixotically,
happens all the time— I tend to amuse myself. This may be an essential quality if you’re going to live alone, an argument for why ladies like me are best left to our own devices, or a genuinely radical act. I’m wondering if it’s all three. After all, given that most women are taught to titter at guys’ witticisms rather than attempt any of their own–given that most women are trained not to take up space, period–it’s an enormous transgression to say, “Fuck it, man. I’m just going to bust out these jokes regardless of whether you laugh.” And on that note, if none else, I am serious as a heart attack.
Februa, Again
February begins, and we feel the stillness of the Earth, our gardens, our streets, ourselves. We are awaiting germination and do that best by keeping still. Not unconscious but subconscious, latent, receptive. Quiet. I used to hate this month but now embrace it as the gentlest lesson in faith. There are no more festival of lights planned, no bracing rituals to keep the wolves at bay. Rather, it is time to take long, solitary walks and to cook slow, root-laden meals. To trust rather than test. To listen rather than list. To sleep and to dream but not to dance on anyone’s grave. Not for nothing does Imbolc, the Gaelic festival that literally means “In the belly,” fall on February 2. This is the time to honor fertile seeds still buried deep. We must believe that this bare ground, this stony silence, can grow everything we’ll need or else it never will. I think of Philip Larkin’s words and am once again grateful for his guidance through life’s necessary seclusions:
Uncontradicting solitude
Supports me on its giant palm;
And like a sea-anemone
Or simple snail, there cautiously
Unfolds, emerges, what I am.
When Time and I Collide
With my Sunday supper bubbling in the oven, I guess it’s time to call it: I crashed into walls the entire weekend. Yesterday I wrote and read and forgot everything I remembered. On the way to dinner, I ran into two different friends and couldn’t recall their names or even how I knew them. Today I went to Meg to fetch a pair of pants I’d specially ordered and realized they simply weren’t for me. I ran for the ferry only to arrive as it was pulling away from the dock. I left my bag at the 1st Avenue L stop, and dashed back from Brooklyn just in time to catch two guys rifling through it across the platform. “Gentlemen!” I called across the divide. “Do you mind watching my bag until I can get back to your side?” They pointedly looked away when I arrived in front of them, red-faced and panting with my hand outstretched, but handed it over.
It didn’t matter, any of it. I got home in time to make the lasagna I’d planned. I eventually remembered who my friends were. And my bag still contained the purple scarf I made the winter I couldn’t stop knitting, the long fingerless gloves that make me feel like Jo March, the notes from today’s session with brilliant astrologer and general wise lady Virginia Bell. Continue Reading →