Porch. Beer. Ex-girlfriend.

--"So if I absorb my environment, what do I want to be absorbing?"

My response: Last weekend, I rode with a friend down to the Red Hook Brewery. As we rode past urban sprawl, construction sites, through the tunnels, it opened up suddenly into the marshy farmland surrounding the Sammamish River. We stopped on the side of the trail to talk about it.
"Would you ever live down here? Farm? Horses? Vineyards?"
"Yeah. I would."
It was a response precluded by a heavy sigh and a look into the distance, into the tall ornamental grasses on the bank of this rushing, clear river.

"Me too. I've thought about it. I'd love some place outside the city. Close enough to go back to the city, but far enough that it's this quiet, this incredible."

At the brewery, we sat down with a beer, there were babies. An abundance of babies, toddlers. We sat there, half-paying attention to the pints, absorbed in these novel interactions between fleshy fat alien babies.

"You think they know? Look how everything is new. Everything is amazing and honest."

"Organic. They touch each other like it's the first time they've ever experienced anything. It's pure joy. Honest joy and discovery. Color and form, touch and feel."

"Don't you think everything is like that anyway? The first time you fall in love, the first time you touch someone intimately? The first time you read Kerouac, the first time you learn about crayons or clay?"

A glance in each other's direction. Honest.

This is my response to absorption. Making love to every moment. Realizing that death is an invitation to live. I have to remind myself not to be rote, and to open my eyes, acknowledge what i'm doing, what i'm touching.


--"Is it enough to just be loved by someone? If I am who I think I am, then I think it's got to be sad for [someone else to know this about me]. This is the man who got an open-ended date tattooed on his body - the day we got married and an empty spot for the day I leave or the day I die if I go first. What does that mean to enter a committed relationship with such an eye towards finality? Is that the ultimate realist or does he really understand that I might not be here forever?"

My response: Finality. I knew from the beginning that my marriage had an end date. I saw it happening. There was a tattoo on him with the foreboding warning, "caveat emptor." I didn't know then that i took what i couldn't handle.
An empty spot filled with room for the sadness that a final breath brings. That final kiss that disappears into thin air when you shut the door, falling on silent lips. Is life or death really relevant at that point?
I see it not so much as finality, but as an open-ended question.
I have this irrational fear. This terrifying fear that I'll be left standing, dead eyes welling with confusing, burning tears.


--"A friend of mine said I needed to find out who I was without a man in my life. What does that mean? I asked him. I don't mean that you need to be alone forever, but that you need to know who you are on your own, he replied."

My response: I spent my whole life alone. So did you. Man or not. This alone-ness in our heads becomes an obsessive full-time job. Reeling over these chest-rattling sobs, these uncertainties. Who exactly are any of us without each other? This isn't Walden Pond and we are unhappily attracted to people who willingly give attention, but what are we without homes? How do we know where to go? So we go where our food bowls are, as far as our chains will stretch and bend instead of finally putting out a hand and finally admitting that you can't run anymore. That you're so tired. I don't necessarily agree with "alone." I run in circles alone. Mama raised an independent woman. She also raised a woman who never trusted anyone else to help her up.
Yesterday, I was taking a CPR course. There was a point when we had to lie on the floor with our partners, putting each other on our sides into an appropriate position so we didn't choke on our own vomit. After it was over, I was lying on the floor, ready with my palms placed by my side to hoist myself up, and there "ES" was, bending over me with a hand out to help me up. I wondered why he did that.
Then i remembered what I'd said, "you're the first person I've not walked in front of or behind, but truly beside."
We've been alone in our own heads so long, having these conversations in our heads, lips barely moving, the words are dying to escape.

--"At the same time, I don't know if I could live the life in my mind if I was on my own. But would I have that without him? Could I love myself without seeing myself through his eyes?"


My response: Again, my marriage was an error in judgement. Pun intended. We judged each other unfairly. He watched everything i did and followed, in suit. I hated myself for it, for being weak. I hated him more for being weak. I always saw myself through his eyes.
I was never allowed the life I wanted, the only way was without him. I planned for it. For years, I thought about it. I thought about what my life really was. I was a woman stuck in a little-girl body, stuck with little-girl thoughts because I knew he'd take care of everything. I knew he'd bail me out. I had to learn how to bail myself out again.
The other day, lying on the bed, I realized something I'd never believed before. I didn't even recognize the words, the voice that was confident in who I was because I knew who I was in ES's eyes. There was no judgement there. There was no weakness or fear.

--"Over the years I've resolved that if this didn't work out, I would likely never marry again. If anything long-term arose, I would consider long term commitments, but not marriage. It's something I should have learned early, though my husband has said that if I hadn't wanted to marry him, he would have ended things. He needs that traditional form of commitment and I, now more than ever, know I don't. Granted, I enjoy the security and soft-landing of my marriage. In fact, the fact that I never had anything secure and stable in my life, let alone someone to love me and push me to be free, is precisely why it's so hard to think about walking away. It's an addiction. It's too easy. I doubt that if left to my own devices I would actually be able to follow through on the things I speak about for a life of my own: Can I live alone? Not the being alone, but the day to day practicalities of living...could I do that?"

My response: Is it not easy because it's right? Why walk alone when you have someone to willingly give you that cushion with no strings attached? With nothing but a beaming pride that you're his? Or are you? Are any of us when we give ourselves, emotionally to others? It's not physical contact, a quick fuck with another woman that I fear. I fear exactly what I gave to other men when I was married--what I should have been sharing with husband, I gave to them. I gave myself to everything else. I was allowed to, but there were terms. There was no feather-pillow, marshmallow landing. The mundane practicalities, we all struggle with, our kind, our generation of etherial attention-span-less-ness.

--"What he wants out of living life is different than what I want. Regardless of any deep psycho-emotional connection and understanding and love we have...this is the realization I am coming to and it makes me ill...I don't want this to be the truth...I want the other life...but I want him to be in that life, too. I think."

My response: I'm leaning over my computer with my hands covering my face thinking about what to say to this. I've never had this. I've never walked hand-in-hand with someone down the same road, with the same objectives, the same goals, the same life, looking at each other, completely content, completely without words.