How terrified she must feel facing a prognosis of cancer?
The same might be said for our former temporary boss.
When I first heard about her diagnosis the Monday following
his announcement, I was extremely skeptical. I thought she was lying for some
reason – an idea a few weeks later seems absurd, especially when I considered just
how shocked both of them must have felt.
GA, the all-knowing Hometown blogger, knew she was not lying
and had suggested months ago she had a medical problem. GA had gleaned the
information from two Hometown attorneys our poet had apparently dated, one or
more of whom – like our former temporary boss – had contracted this variety of contagious
cancer.
As said, I had a cynical opinion at first – perhaps because I
felt she had no use for me and I felt spurned.
Since then, I’ve come to my senses. Why on earth would
anybody falsely report they contracted cancer?
Since then, I’ve come to realize just how horrible she must
feel, facing her mortality, not from the vantage of a roof top, but at the edge
of a medical examination table, the prospect of slow death filled with doubt,
not merely as to what her future might bring, but whether or not she would have
a future at all – a similar situation for our former temporary boss, whose
ambition is to become a bestselling novelist.
I was also skeptical of the juice thing, a radial cure that
first struck me as snake oil.
But my friend, a founder of the cancer victim’s resource
center in Newark, told me other people had used the technique successfully.
“Anything that works is fine,” she told me. “Sometimes, the
most outlandish things can make a difference.”
Although I still have my doubts, I also sincerely hope the
program works for our poet, who even recommended it to our former temporary
boss – he chose the more conventional therapy: surgery, chemo, and radiation,
from which he may well find a cure.
Still, facing one’s mortality is never easy. Ultimately, our
former temporary boss has it better than our poet.He has his wife at his side, while our poet
must (with the exception of her mother, brother, father etc.) largely face this
all alone.
In reality, no matter who we have around us, we are ultimately
facing death alone.
For her, it’s even worse. There is someone who might bring
her a measure of comfort, someone who remains distant at a time when she could
use his arms around her and have him whisper: “It’s all going to be all right.”
Whether or not it will be, she needs to hear it – from him.
Simon & Garfunkel sing "I am a rock," and I think of you, books and poetry to protect you, or as you said "Irony" is your constant companion, when you clearly would rather have a warm body pressed against you, the scent of a man still fresh, not something lingering in a memory you are too scared you might forget, giving up more than just meat for lent, a memory that rubs you raw or want relied on for comfort you can no longer rely on, and must give up kneeling beside the wide waters for a familiar river where the cool breeze might relieve you of it all, leaving you time to heal, though clearly hearing was what you thought you had already done, giving up much more than you have to give, like blood from a stone, in the end, you are still alone with yourself, aching for something you can't have.
How can I be jealous of a man I don’t know and don’t even
know if exists, except through the biased lens of her poetry.
Jealousy is the wrong word.
Envy fits better as I feel the intensity of her feelings for
him yet can't put a face to someone she clearly loves.
At least with my former temporary boss and our owner I knew
who I was jealous of their virtues and their flaws.
I'm not even sure I like the men she professes to love,
trusting her to admire someone worthy of her even though at the same time he
seems to cause her great pain.
I previously painted a picture of the kind of man I believe
she might be attracted to though after so many months of reading her lust love
and eventually anguish poems I can't claim that picture to as valid and when
she posts a poem, I see a blank where the face of this man should be.
For all of her flaws she has always been a practical gal, focusing
her attention on some end result she would like to attain even if she sometimes
comes up short, I'm far beyond asking the question of whether he is worthy of
her she clearly believes he is and so she Pines away for what could have been
should have been and perhaps hopes will still be.
It is a classic love game we all have fallen into at some
point in our lives where after the bloom of romance fades, we still conspire to
get it back thinking to ourselves if we say the right thing do something other
than what we have done we might get back to that place where the bloom rekindles,
and we can continue what we thought was lost.
I could fill in the blank face with a number of familiar
faces and yet none seem to live up to the high rhetoric her poems convey. My
list of suspects would not be a list of the worthy but of those who don't
deserve her the opportunists and cads who use relatively naive women like her
like tissue to be used and discarded this man if her poems are to be believed
is not like that caught up in his own conflicts a wife perhaps or at least some
other woman in his life he cannot or will not give up to be with her a man who
does not realize just how lucky he is to have her attention and how foolish he
is for giving her up.
Still, I envy him at the same time pity him for being such a
fool
The owner gave the key to our auxillary office to a new
writer, the writer then asked me for the code to my computer.
I rigged the computer yesterday just to see if anyone would
notice and report it to the owner.
I promptly got a call from the owner when someone did.
The owner has been doing odd things in regard to me since
last summer when he checked my computers at both offices to see what kind of things,
I had in regard to her (our former writer and now PR gal for the Virgin Mayor).
The whole thing has a lot more to do with the telephones
than with the computers, although some glitch has made it impossible to use the
phones unless the computers are on – something nobody seemed to take heed to
until now.
The owner is getting more and more suspicious of what I do,
and I can’t tell if it has to do with the job and politics or his supposedly
still seeing our poet friend.
All this comes ahead of the owner’s annual trip to Michigan
to see his inlaws.
I can only imagine what might be going on in his head with
our poet friend here and inaccessible to him.
How much texting will he do with her just to keep tabs on
her, she is reassuring him or protesting to him or whatever else she needs to
do to keep him in line.
All this is my imagination going haywire, and more than a
little jealous of the owner if any of it is remotely true.
Just what she has planned – if anything – remains a mystery.
But all of this comes at a particularly painful time since town
hall is overshadowed by the upcoming trial, and the main question is whether or
not the Virgin Mayor will give up his son in order to stay out of jail himself.
If he survives, he might well become even more powerful, and
she can ride his coattails.
If he doesn’t survive, she might well end up back where she
started: jobless.
This comes at a particularly painful time for her, a broken
romance, and a report of cancer. I feel sorry for her, but I think she wouldn’t
believe that if I told her.
She seems to have stopped posting poems, possibly someone
asked her to stop. More likely her life has become so chaotic, she doesn’t have
time or energy – or perhaps even, she hasn’t anything to say.
This has made me cease checking, seeing it as just a waste
of time.
But then, my web check shows that she hasn’t been checking
my blog either. Neither has the owner.
If I was the owner in this situation, I would be scared of
losing her.
I also think he would like nothing better than to get rid of
me – possibly to please her. Who knows?
He really needs evidence to use against me and my challenge
is to keep from giving it to him. Don’t provoke him, and if she is using him,
don’t provoke her either.
But I’m resigned anyway, believing what whatever happens
happens, and I can’t stop it.
Wishing for something she can’t have is a common theme in
many of her poems.
But seems most poignant since the start of the year when she
lusted after, won the heart of, and then lost the man of her dreams -- something
she continues to pine over
What she wants is like a tease, lingering out on the edge of
her perception and only by giving into the illusion of it can it be attained --
a lot like the enchanted mirror from the
Harry Potter movies in which she sees what she most desires yet cannot achieve
it, something she seemed to articulate best in a poem posted last month.
While wrote about this poem before, it takes on a new
meaning when taken into context with several other poems she's written since and
some earlier, about how she lives her life others only perceive on the surface
and how she manages to pick up on things others reveal.
Several of her more recent poems talk about her need to let
go of something she cannot get anyway.
This poem suggests that happiness and things she wanted most
linger on the edges of her perception while unattainable, a wisp of ripple of
something glittering and attractive then far away from the transient dance.
What happiness she gets is always temporary and as in the
hermit crab shell poem what all this is is merely a glance, a weary and gifted
image of life that is not hers
She gets to see other people finding happiness, but it is
not a life she can lead and while she alludes to her lovers claim that life is
complicated, she is also saying that her lot in life is not to have the kind of
happiness most other people have.
Life is not complicated but a kind of maze of circumstances
and circles keeping her from attaining the treasure inside.
life is full of moments, pleasurable and some not so
pleasurable, abrupt often disturbing, sometimes a surprise, full of moments
when she comes closer to that ideal of happiness only it is a kind of deception.
A glittering jewel in the corner of her eye dancing
teasingly around her, alluding back to that poem in which she mentioned her
clever and elusive Sprite.
As temporary as all this is some moments still fill her with
awe, moments when she needs to let it be, when she needs to forget the details
and as the 1960s jargon go with the flow, appreciating that she they are alive,
an uncomplicated moment in which they can forget all else and cling to those
moments while they last and appreciate the fact that -- as George Harrison once
pointed out -- all things good, bad or otherwise eventually pass and she needs
to appreciate these while they last, knowing that in her life they are a
promise of something she will never be able to hold on to anyway-
Paulie once spoke about the concept of synchronicity,
coincidence that is more than just a coincidence, perhaps tied to Young's idea
of the collective unconscious.
We are all tied together by this common central
consciousness and that we sometimes evoke it by accident when we begin to peel
away the layers.
Paulie was constantly trying to get down deep into this
psychological limbo.
Over the last two weeks or so I have stumbled over the edge
into it twice, once when wandering around
Passaic only to discover the band she played for all those
long years ago was playing there in one of the parks.
I had no reason to be in that place at that time or to see
that sign posted near one of the local schools --other than my trying to kill
time during the drying cycle of my laundry.
Even that was unusual since I most often do laundry on
Sundays in Secaucus but decided that week to go back to the old digs in Passaic
instead
Last week we were planning a trip to Asbury Park. we go
there about once a month on Fridays, though next week for Columbus Day weekend,
we will be taking our annual trip to Cape May instead , so won’t know if she
once again visited Asbury again.
I had to cancel the trip to Asbury last week because of the
Menendez indictment and thus managed to avoid an encounter with her as she
visited the beach resort with her mother.
This second bit of coincidence has me a little concerned no
doubt invoked by my posting old journals something I am tempted now to stop, if
only not to stir up old ghosts but leaving the question if I continue as to
what fate has in store next.
In a “ships that pass in the night” situation, I learned
today that she took er mother to Asbury park on Friday, and only a last minute
issue at home kept us from possibly encountering her there, since we had scheduled
a trip to the same place for the same day, as part of a weekly Magical Mystery
Tour.
We don't go to Asbury park every Friday, but usually make our
pilgrimage there once or twice a month, sometimes staying overnight if there
are good bands playing in one of the clubs.
The fact that she made this trip all the way up from where
she lives surprised me, though the incident proves just how small a world it is
we live in, and how sometimes people end up in the same place at the same time,
purely by accident, such as those trips we took to Woodstock that just happened
to correspond with her living there back in 2009.
I should not have been surprised by this most recent trip
since I already knew she had gone to Asbury in the past, and in of her stay
fact, that painful summer, how jealous I was when she posted a picture of her
stay at the Majestic in the neighboring town, and whether or not she had gone
there with my boss.
Coincidence is nothing new, and perhaps because I've been
posting old journals, this was inevitable – a touching upon Jung's collective
unconscious, so as to cause us to be in the same place at the same time,
regardless of whether we intended to do so.
Oddly enough, she wore the same hat (or one very much like
it) that I had so admired back when we first started seeing each other – now
more than a decade again-- which made seeing the image of her dancing on the
beach that much more stunning.
At 44, she has lost none of her magic, and seemed like a sea
sprite dancing around a wooden poll in the sand, as if she had just risen from
the sea.
I can’t imagine what I would have felt if we had actually
met, though it is possible we would have passed each other unnoticed.
Our routine is to park and then walk from the casino up the
boardwalk to the arcade, pausing at Madam Marie's where there is a bench for Springsteen’s
sax play, Clarence – itself an ironic concept as if we thought of Clarence as
an angle from “It's a wonderful Life” and needed to get his blessing before we
continued to make our tour, coffee, then a walk through town.
I guess I feel a little saddened that we did not go and did
not see her, even though if I'd seen her soon enough and she did not see me, I
would have tried to avoid the encounter.
I still remember the last time I was accurately in the same
place with her, as some school named after Bob Menendez, and how sad she looked
and lost, sitting high up in the auditorium with her camera in her lap.
This is one more bit of irony, too, since the reason I could
not go to Asbury was because I had to cover the indictment of Menendez.
One more sad bit in a long sad story, though she looked so
joyful dancing on the sand, I expect she has finally escaped the madness this
county's politics inspires and may actually be happy somewhere.
Her trip to New Jersey raises unanswered questions from a
decade ago, as to whom she is with, and what kind of life she leads.
Since she has not, to my knowledge, posted any poems in a
decade, I lack even that venue to determine her current status, and I'm left to
guess from the images she posts about how she is getting on.
The sea side has always been a magical place for her, where
she can let painful things go, and so, it was good to see her there, even if
I'm not.
It is unlikely she'll make that same trip anytime soon, and
so, I can feel safe going there next time, though one can't quite trust fate,
since who knew she would venture there at a time I was also going to be there.
I've convinced myself over the last ten years that we would
never see each other again
Perhaps, fate has other plans. Only time will tell-- even at
my age as time runs out.
Looking back at a poem posted a year ago June and how
strange it seems in retrospect or perhaps not strange at all.
Like later poems which talk about her being an accidental
thief or perhaps more fitting her life living in the shell of other lives, she
seems to see her life as one of impermanence, flirting in and out of lives like
a census check, touching upon being touched without the possibility of anything
permanent
No long term relationship to cushion her against the
troubles of the world.
The impression I got when I first read this poem is that she
liked her life to be like that.
Now, a whole year later after the parade of love poems to a
man who she clearly wants and needs as a permanent cushion, I realize even then
she wanted something more but just could not find it among the limited choices.
She seems to understand that it is better to be lonely alone
than lonely and trapped in a relationship that she does not want or need.
She lived most of her life in the chaos and unpredictability
of days, never certain as to what to expect next, unscheduled scheduled becoming
routine, a daily dive into the unknown, raising the fundamental question as to
what she has to surrender to find a permanent figure to love in her life,
perhaps learning over the course of years how painful it becomes to see what
she most desires and not able to finally get it or if she gets it, hold on to
it
And her life then is about being true to herself, if only by
default, as she says
Only in the middle of this mess, when offered to be part of “we”
rather than simply “I” she hesitated, and this may have caused her to lose her
opportunity to find some measure of permanence
Yet at what cost?
In one of my poetry notebook entries, I talked about the
genie in the jar and how letting the genie out comes with unintended and
unwanted consequences and how impossible it is to push the genie back into the
jar, damage done, love let loose, raising those questions as to whether she
felt better off with the impermanence than in the throes of love she cannot
control or for that matter cannot keep.
What is worse: not finding someone to provide the cushion of
a long term relationship or not being able to hold on to it once she found it
Or worse having the one she wants not want her, and perhaps
in the end, she may be better off wearing out appointment books with temporary
relationships able to control when they start and more importantly when they
end
Sometimes I suspect she might be happier if she could simply
have someone spend the night with her and worry less about someone with whom to
spend a lifetime.
But as the old cliche goes, that's water under the bridge
and what she concluded a year ago as the routine of impermanence may well have
vanished leaving her with the unyielding chain on her heart`.
This is the theme continued in the poem she posted today,
and once again suggests that she is in what the Marx Brothers made famous in
the duck soup.
In the duck soup is jargon from the 1920s that suggests someone
is overwhelmed with the side effects of a love relationship, often in a
relatively negative way.
This poem seems to continue the painful circumstance, if not
unrequited love, then love that has gone south for the winter and will not be
returning in the spring.
Unlike some of her recent poems, this one takes a broader
look at her life and her situation, and her need to retain the love she so much
aches for.
She is alluding to a number of other ongoing issues,
including I suspect her cancer, when she claims there are only so many things
she can withdraw from, in particular, the love of this man that has helped her
get through many of the other things.
She described him as a “beautiful miracle string” that held
her life together, a perception he apparently shared about her as well.
And when life seemed to turn around for her, everything went
gray again, and too bright, like a constant headache and a pain her stomach
that shoots to her heart.
She doesn’t want to forget him; she doesn’t want to stop
thinking about him with her eyes open or closed, or when she breathes in or
out.
“I’m tired of going without,” she writes, suggesting that
what they had together they really didn’t have in the first place – perhaps meaning
the marriage he’s already involved in, and their stealth life together that kept
his regular life from falling apart.
Again, I am assuming that the love poems that started with
her contemplating her seducing him are all relating to the same man and how
things failed to materialize in a way she had first hoped.
She seeing this as ironic, and that Irony was her only life
companion, and wishes from this nagging ironic voice take a nap, so she can heal
from healing from all thing things inside her that hurts.
The depth of pain in this poem is obvious. She has been
saddled with a number of issues, anyone of which would have crippled another
human being, but her one ally in this, the man she truly loves, is not beside
her to help her cope as he had been in the past, and she is stuck living with
the twists fate has given her, and needs time and space to resolve all those
things, not least of all, her love of this man, who clearly is no longer in her
life.
One of the many unanswered questions about this whole scene
at our office and our poet’s relationship to the owner is the question of
drugs.
Our poet uses alcohol moderately, and yet her mood swings
and paranoia remind me of those I witnessed when I dated Peggy all those long
years ago – and Peggy was a hard core cocaine addict.
I have no evidence our poet uses it, although Peggy also
struggled with keeping her weight under control, mostly because she drank far
too much in association with her drug use.
My friend Burger King John – a cocaine addict himself – said
alcohol and cocaine go together better than love and marriage or a horse and
carriage.
“Alcohol is like a gear shift that puts everything into high
gear,” he once told me during one of the many times he was on the wagon.
I’ve often suspected our male owner of being a coke head.
But our poet always seemed too intelligent to get too deeply
involved with coke, even though with her life on the road with the band, she more
than likely indulged.
Cocaine also goes hand in hand with intense sexual
experiences, which may be another reason why I suspect she might still getting
a taste – supplied perhaps by RR and others, including our owner.
Cocaine also has another scarry side effect. It makes people
feel successful, even when they’re not, an illusion of power that wears off
with the drug and usually leads to heavy depression.
Thoughts of suicide are a common side effect of cocaine.
Peggy, who was the second love of my life, killed herself as
a result of her addiction.
But while our owner might use cocaine to supplement his sex
life, I saw no indication of drug use in our poet’s apartment – though like
Peggy, she might have hidden the implements and her stash. Unlike Peggy, who
often suggested I buy cocaine for mutual use, our poet never dropped such hints,
leading me to believe that she is a casual user if at all, and that her depression
comes from something else in her mental makeup, although her paranoia might
suggest otherwise.
If she was so engaged in the past as part of her party girl
life in local bars, this may have come to an end with her diagnosis of cancer, launching
her into a healthier way of living, and may well save her life, and could go
along way to curing her night fears and her fear of gaining weight.
As with Peggy, our poet constantly fights against weigh gain,
a strange phenomenon since the only thing I’ve seen her gobble up were oysters,
and those likely as an aphrodisiac.
The scary thing about all of this supposition is just how
little I know about her really, despite knowing her history going all the way
back to her apparent affair with the arts professor in high school.
As with the Roy Orbison song, “She’s a mystery to me,” and
most likely always will be.
I keep thinking of the old movie, "The Deer Hunter" and the concept of sudden death, spinning the cylinders with the desperate hope one does not click onto a chamber with a live round in it.
We all face off against our inevitable demise each day we breathe and somehow manage to keep breathing, taking on life one empty chamber at a time, sometimes just barely missing the shot to our brain, though not all of this is sudden death. Sometimes, we get it coming at us, slowly, in a bad pap smearer or even a broken heart.
Sometimes, we spin the revolver's chambers knowing all of them save one are full, amazed when the click come and we're still living.
From her poems, there is no way to tell who is the subject
of her intense regret, someone who has become – at least for the moment – the love
of her life.
Yet, it becomes clear just how much pain she is in, a combination
of love lost and the diagnosis of cancer, on top of which, and not to be
ignored threat that she might lost her job if the Virgin mayor fails in court.
It is no wonder she wakes up early each morning in a panic.
While her announcement of her cancer came on the same
weekend as the one announced by our former temporary boss, she apparently struggled
with questionable medical tests for several years, the angle of death hovering
over here along with all the other troubles she’s had.
On top of all this, she must feel really guilty about the possibility
she might have given our former temporary boss his disease, with the potential
to have it destroy his marriage (although he is clever enough to lay blame on
some other woman from long ago – while she remarkably has been very careful
even with her most recent lover not to destroy other people’s lives – even mine,
something she threatened but also seemed to hold back on in my case).
From her poem, I can’t even tell if the man causing her the
most heart break is the same man from all the people she’s posted since the start
of the year. I am simply assuming as much, since it is in improbable for her to
feel this level of intense love for more than one man in such a short time
frame. I can’t even rule out RR as the subject of this romance, though I
suspect not, though clearly the man she loves id growing more distant and she
more frustrated by his lack of or lessening of attention. In her most recent
poems, she deals with the idea that she might let the whole thing go, let the
night breeze or sea waves take this love from her so she can feel free again,
though still forced to deal with her jar and her growing sense of morality.
Even when you believe what the jar contains will heal you
Is it love we release when we remove this lid and all the complexity love brings, if not three wishes, then a wish for a wish, often for things we cannot have, and realizing this, can we push it all back and get back to where we started, wishing for no wishes, since no wish really come true.
How do you stuff the Genie back when he offers all we could ever wish for and more?
Must we take -- as they say -- the good with the bad, when the bad is worse than the good could ever make up for?
Can we wish to have never opened the jar in the first place, the temptation of love too overpowering?
Not to be too jealous a whole year later, I’m intrigued by
our poet’s attachment to our former Temporary boss – raising the question as to
whether or not she is less manipulative than naïve.
This comes at a time when Elizabeth, the woman who had taken
reigns as boss at the alternative office, has fallen for him as well.
And they are not the only women taken with him.
I naturally assumed the worst last year that our poet friend
was grooving up to him only because he had come into a position of power.
Now, I’m wondering if she – like the other women – found him
attractive for other reasons, even though he is married and can’t possibly
serve her as anything more than a temporary jaunt.
I don’t always believe everything he says, since he tends to
exaggerate his legend – such as the reason behind the troubles he had when he originally
worked as a writer.
He claims he was removed because of his position on social
justice, and how he stood up for the blacks during the riots, when in fact it
seems management relocated him because he managed to offend local arts
leadership with some of the comments he put into print regarding their productions.
Still, he spins a good yarn, even in the book he published,
in which his main character did things he as writer never really did.
What makes him attractive isn’t what he tells people, but
some innate ability to handle some of the women in the office, a wannabe upper westside
liberal who somehow got stuck living on this side of the Hudson.
Like most people who end up at our office, he seems to have
come to a graveyard for aging talent, something our poet did not seem tor recognize
when she made her move, using him as a stepping stone to get someplace higher
up in the food chain – only to discover there is no place higher up.
But I suspect there is more to it than just her using him,
something that has other women in our office attracted to him as well.
Sometimes, he can be a brute – as he was with our poet early on – but for some
reason, this only makes him more attractive, a quality I’m envious over, since
I do not have the tenderness balances his brutality.
And no doubt, this allows him to remain our poet’s friend,
even when it appears they shared more than just a bed during their romance,
something both need to be treated for.
Yet behind all his bravado, our former temporary boss is
also needy, a weakness our poet seemed to have exploited. He needs to be
needed, and needs to feel important, something else he shares with our poet,
whose own ambition hangs heavy on her every time she makes a move.
She read his need and exploited it, but as one of her poems
points out, she is an accidental thief, something who steals small things
others may not be aware they are giving up.
And for all the ruthlessness, she tries live up to as a
street savvy soul, she seems to have a tender heart, even for those who had
hurt her deeply – such as myself, and her former chef, who stalks her, and yet
she still seems sentimental over.
Our owners don’t like our former Temporary boss, perhaps
because they are aware of his relationship to her, even though he does most of
the real boss’ work.
He is rather weak, while pretending to be strong. While he’s
scared about losing his marriage, he still retains contact with the poet, who
he clearly loves as well.
Our poet once wrote – in a poem she has since removed from
her blog – that men tend to run away from her or cling to her.
Our temporary boss appears to be one of a stable of characters
who cling to her, but wise enough not to make it so obvious as to have her
severe connection with them.
Her twitter following reads like an appointment book of
former clients, people who keep their fingers in the pie, perhaps hoping she
will turn her attention back to them and rekindle the warmth they shared with
her when she first encountered them.
She being kind in this regard never shoos them away, but
lets them believe they might still get her attention someday, when as she
pointed out more than once, once she’s moved on, she never looks back.
I suppose this is the same for our former temporary boss,
who must have incredibly mixed feelings when it comes to her, knowing he likely
contracted his cancer by making love to her, itself a mixed blessing since if
he had to do it again knowing what he knows now, he would likely do it again.
Early on, during those few days when things went well between
the poet and myself, I said I knew the whole thing would end up in pain, but
the highs more than justified the lows, and if I had it to do over, I would,
although I would not make many of the mistakes I made, and learn from our
former Temporary boss about accepting the inevitable gracefully.
Yet even he is not immune and I recall the pain I heard in
his voice over the telephone last October when he informed me she had resigned.
He was losing more than just someone he had mentored, but unlike me, managed to
somehow pull himself together and to embrace the more distant friendship his
association with him offered, something I will never attain, something I regret
deeply now that I know a little more about how she ticks.
The intensity of her sadness grows with each new poem she
posts, stirring up melancholy even in those of us remote from her world.
The poem she posted today – which I will no doubt revisit
again later – continues the painful journey through heart break I would not
have expected from her a year ago, but which has been brewing in her since the
beginning of the year.
I’m not certain that all these love poems (if sad also)
reflect a relationship with one man, although I suspect they do.
But the mood suggests she has become lost in the aftermath
of what appears to have been over for quite some time.
In this poem, she seems to be reflecting on how her past may
influence her future, again caught up in these thoughts during the night, as
the air twists into her mind through her “childhood senses,” remembered quietly,
and “sideways” since she can’t be sure where she is headed any more, the future
lost in some kind of fog, “soft and gray like mist.”
There is a certain relief in that, a reprieve from her usual
anxiety, an “emptiness that sooths” the over-fullness of her past, -- past
repeated several times as if passing judgement while at the same time seeking
to escape it.
Then in a strange phrasing, she addresses someone, perhaps
herself, how she didn’t think she’d be where she is when all of this started, again
resorting to the plural “we” suggesting she may also be speaking to her estranged
lover, life always taking strange twists of fate (to quote Boy Dylan) and her
need to reflect on how she – they – got to this place by looking back to when
it all began.
But how far she goes back is hard to tell, perhaps comparing
what transpires today with what happened since her childhood.
“I sit and squeeze my eyes shut and wrap around the smell,”
she said, echoing a previous poem about how his scent lingers around her when
she lies in bed.
She clearly doesn’t want to be thinking about how it
started, perhaps because of the high hopes she had – if this is about the same
person she thought about seducing early this year – when she began, and the ultimate question of “why”
– as to why it happened at all or why it ended up as it has, and how as she
sits in the night, the breeze brings these thoughts into her mind, then out
again, fading away perhaps.
It is hard to tell if she is relieved or saddened or both by
the experience, and by the loss. The poem, however, continues the theme of regret
and exudes a sense of pain she is not articulating, but only hinting at, as
well as resignation that – as Zepplin might say – what should but perhaps should
never be.
Like several previous poems, she is struggling to let go of
this thing, yet clearly knows she has to, partly because the person of her
desire appears to have moved on without her anyway.
This is not about the politics of her life so much as a
personal reflection, some passing of judgement on herself and her life, yet not
so full of guilt as full of tender mercies, and reading this poem, you have to
wonder if she would do it all again knowing how it all would come out in the
end.
I feel sorry for everybody involved in this
trickle up game, not just the so called victims (we walk intothese things with
our eyes open and are taken advantage of only because we have our own lusts we
can’t control), but also our poet, who knows no other way of life, and must
abide by the rules of a game she finds herself stuck in – and must do what she
needs to do in order to retain any sense of self-worth.
This is what she is, and this is what she must do.
But even at her worst, her poetry suggests she is hardly the
rascal the congressman’s PR person makes her out to be. She plays the hand of cards
she gets dealt.
She sometimes misreads the deck, such as assuming that her
chef friend in New York was competent, when he was anything else but that. She
also leaped onto the bandwagon when it came to our former temporary boss,
assuming he could do more for her than it turns out he could, his temporary condition
making him of little more use than a stepping stone.
She misread me as well, thinking I was more powerful than I
was, and better put together, when in fact I was (maybe still am) less together
than others on her climb to the top.
She also found herself stuck in a job without any real place
to climb, while the former temporary boss and I were relative innocents,
succumbing to our petty lusts, once she got to the owner, she found he was
hardly innocent, willing to use her and throw her away, as he apparently did
when the Small Man convinced her to resign, even though our owner apparently
kept in touch with her, still dated her, still brought her out to dinner (as
one of our former employees reported when seeing them together at an upscale
restaurant up county from here.)
She also misread the scene, unaware of how many other
powerful players she had to compete against, some less savvy than she is,
others far more brutal, lacking the ethics she secretly retains while
pretending to be tough and street smart.
She can’t ever let on how vulnerable she really is and seems
to need to put on a front of toughness in order to ward off predators when in
fact she may not be nearly as tough, and it is the fiction of her savvy survival
that keeps her from being consumed.
Yes, she trickles up, making her way up the power ladder in each
institution. But in the past, her conquests have always been in small
environments against people who are like me and our former temporary boss, hardly
competition to a woman as smart, pretty and ruthless as she is.
This is not to say she is immune. All of this eats her up
inside, and she is waiting for a time when she sheds all the shells and lives
her life openly.
On top of all this, she has fallen in love with someone who has
already put distance between them, and she doesn’t know how to bring him back, her
situation almost as desperate as those she herself has abandoned in a life time
of moving out of one shell and into another.
Where all this ends up, I have no clue.
After months of reading deeply her poetry, I’ve come to
sympathize with her, a fatal flaw on my part since there will never be anything
between us ever again, and I may never actually see him person to person before
I die.
Our former temporary boss got through surgery okay, his wife
told me via email,
I resisted the urge to have her call our poet to let her
know the good news, since our poet would no doubt be worried as well, though I
don’t know exactly what the relationship is, and perhaps such a thing might be
better left in the hand of D, our hometown reporter, since he seems as attracted
to our poet as our former temporary boss is.
I think both of them managed to avoid my fatal flaw, realizing
they will never have exclusive rights to our poet and will settle for some fun
early on, and then life in the back seat watching someone else drive.
But I also suspect those attached to her will go along with
whatever she wants, just to keep in good graces, even if they suspect she might
be manipulating them.
Some questions still remain such as the role James, the
political operative, plays in his relationship with us, and the third ticket,
and A, who will become the PR person for the third ticket, even though she is
secretly working for R’s campaign.
And what is the relationship between all of these people in
regard to GA, the Hometown blogger, who has been exposing them all. James hates
GA with a passion.
It may be only coincidence that our poet began to seduce our
former temporary boss at about the time when all of this started to heat up
last year – since he sent then hometown writer to go after GA.
As with all puzzles, some pieces seem to fit when after looking
at them closely you realize they don’t.
I don’t think her seduction of our former temporary boss has
anything to do with Hometown politics, though I do believe her attempt to seduce
the Hometown democratic chairman does.
And I do believe she would like to jump the sinking ship she’s
on for one sailing in Hometown. Even if the virgin mayor. Even as the private secretary,
she really has no place to go. Joey D – with whom she is also likely involved –
has been looking to get her work elsewhere, including in the town I cover where
he is rumored to be taking on the role of campaign manager for the challenging
candidate. I’m told he’s asked the possible future mayor to find her a job.
In some ways, she leaped from one sinking ship to another,
from our office to the virgin mayor, and found out too late how little a future
there is, though in truth A – who appears to be willing to do anything, sleep
with anyone, to get the job done, has more sway in the Hometown election than
our poet does.
Our poet seems to have a conscience, most of the other plays
lack. This is why she sometimes has trouble sleeping at night. It is one thing
to trickle up (her targets get something in return) and quite another to simply
sell your soul to the devil the way A has.
Our poet – if I read the tea leaves right – will do anything
to advance herself but does her best not to leave a trail of tattered human
remains behind. She even spoke kindly of her former chef, and he was stalking
her.
In a game of power, people pretend to be things they are not
in fact, where as if anything, despite her borrowed lives living in somebody else’s
shell, she seems to be the most honest, even when she’s not, and lives by her
own code of ethics, even when she no longer believes in fair and unfair, good
or bad.There are things she will not do,
and for that, she deserves some credit.
A mentioned yesterday, there is more going on in regard to her latest poem than just the content.
Again, we come to the possibility that our posts are somehow some kind of secret communication, wishful thinking on my part, of course, because I know she really hates me.
I suspect I am deluding myself with hopeful thinking that she has maintained this one thin thread of communication between us, though this poem adds increasing evidence to that illusion – since I posted a poem that in some respects foreshadowed the one she posted this week.
My poem included a video of me wandering a small beach in Jersey City near Liberty State Park, and was intended as a response to even earlier poem about borrowed lives.
The poem goes
I find no path among these river stones, so I make my own, turning this way then that, side steps that lead me nowhere, then back, my life made up of clumps like these small eddies filled with seaweed and people I need, but never see again when I move on, each step through this unpredictable maze brings me closer to some destination I cannot see, yet through all these amazing twists and turns, the one true thing always the same is me.
The fact that she used the same geography for her poem may be pure coincidence, though I want to think otherwise.
Although not attached to her poem, she also posted a picture of herself walking along the waterfront, perhaps in response to pictures and video I also posted from the waterfront earlier.
Her poem opens with the frame of her seeking solace from the river that runs through many of my nature poems, but the river for her is more than just a symbol of hope, it also her life, since much of her manipulation over the years has focused on those she claims to have loved, whose hearts she fills and unfills, and then fills again, perhaps their essence to be found up and down this shore line, ships that once sailed in the same direction, but can no longer do so.
Coming to the river, she finds new life from the breezes and ripples in the water that breaking – break having multiple means, such as lucky break or because she follows this up with words like torn bones, a negative broken bones and break down of nerve, and hot raw Nevers.
She comes here when she is full to spilling, and image that suggested when she can take any more emotional baggage, bullshit, suggesting in the terms leak and waste. But also, can’t afford to use up the energy she needs to survive on emotional turmoil.
There is an odd, maybe unintentional sexual imagery with spiling over, leaking and waste – and perhaps I’m reading into this, but there is a sense that she wants something more out of it, if not marriage or babies, then something else. This may well also connect with the series of love poems she has posted since the start of the year, and something she has clearly decided to let go of.
As pointed out in the other journal entry, she refers to the last few years as particularly rough, alluding to life upstream as well as downstream, me as well as those who came before, and possibly since.
She remains strong, but is tired sometimes, and the ships that make this trip up or down (and the metaphor of her life) make her soul ache because she is alone.
She can see a certain face in the water reflected, someone – as I surmised previously – like her, who perhaps might have loved her, but she must let him go.
Again, I suspect many of these poems are connected and this is the man who she wanted months ago, and has since fallen away from, someone who she wants to share her bed and her life but comes infrequently if at all.
I'll go into the possible inspiration later for this poem she posted today for now she is once more delving into the concept of a row isolation and the struggle to retain strength during several years of adversity
her geography is located next to a river named after Henry Hudson as she draws on an important metaphor for life as she lives it similar to an earlier poem that had her kneeling beside the sea in order to let things go, she can no longer retain in her life
the wide Hudson with its never ending ripples sits on her doorstep a safe place she goes to breathe new life into her war worn bones and hot raw nerves she goes to the river side to keep from bursting what she is full to spilling and to avoid leaking out and wasting the essence of survival she cannot afford to lose
the last few years she says have been truly deep and rough like the storms that rip across the river at times I'm strong she writes but sometimes I'm tired on the shore she watches the ships that sail side by side on the river alluding to them as if they might be lovers holding hands or each other making her once more conscious of how much alone she is
these visions of passing ships sometimes make or sole lake she appears to be thinking of a particular person whose face she sees is reflected in the water the face could be her own but more likely however the face is a person about whom and two cool she has been writing following a similar theme as raised in her book seated beside the sea and letting go of something she clearly cares deeply about yet must release or at best cannot keep hold of
she sees his eyes and they become one and then she lets go ending something at least in her mind at least for the moment and a kind of ceremony in which takes the place on the shores of what to her seems to have become a holy place of river upon which life continues to flow and there is a feeling that she watches a part of her life passing moving away from her like the ships only instead of two ships sailing together she implies each one now must go his her or own way
The Who or why are not revealed but this all comes at a time when her world is shaking the virgin mayors looming trial and perhaps even more significant the cancer that plagues her as well as the man, she may have given it to as well and she settles besides the river looking for redemption rebirth and perhaps healing
