the haze

feeling through instead of around

beginning to write and hoping something sticks.

i go through these phases. this is nothing new, these stretches of time, where i forget my words and they fall off the hanger into the back of my closet. i know they’re there, i know they’re under the bag of costumes and the pile of boots. they sit there and gather dust, which i think my room has a lot of because i have been sneezing a lot lately, and i think sheepishly about them. my words gather dust and i’ve never been good at dusting, usually i wipe the film off my dresser with my palm and hope for the best. i’ll need to clean my fan out before the temperature ticks up.

there is so much to say, to be said, left unsaid, that i find myself oscillating between waxing upon largeness and combing through the smallest morsel of thought. neither feel right. i can try both.

last evening ally and i took a walk around the neighborhood, which is the salve for living a life, and the sun set around us into platonic ideals of pink and white. we both wore jeans big enough to hold cans of soda in the front pockets. we passed the loquat tree on the corner by the green house, the one i always use as a litmus test for ripeness. it’s well manicured, and the dense clusters of fruit sit deep into the branches, hidden from the world, overfuzzed. i point out orange and yellow and green and then a man from inside the house comes out with his two dogs and asks me if i’ve had them before.

overexcited, i replied ‘yes, i have, they’re my favorite, is this your tree?’ he said yes, and then offered me some, and went to get a ladder. ally and i stood there idly for a few minutes while he grabbed the ladder, and his two dogs took turns approaching the gate, barking. one large german shepherd and one smaller one, the latter with short little legs and a big head. less graceful, more excitable than the former, yipping in fits and starts instead of firm, powerful barks. they worked well together.

we stood there waiting and i wondered if i was asking too much of this man, if i was overstepping, if i was forcing him to speak to me or give something to me or bend over backwards for me. he didn’t owe me anything, he didn’t know me, i didn’t want to be a bother. he passed again. ‘no worries if not!’ i said, or something like that, and he faltered for a moment, half confused. ‘its just right here. it’s not a bother.’

he came out with a tall ladder and scaled it, sifting through leaves. 'these ones? these look good.’ he sawed with a little blade he procured and handed me a full bunch of fruit, tucked together like honeycomb. giddy with pleasure and awed at his kindness, i went to shake his hand, exchange names. mauricio was mild as i thanked him profusely. ‘people come all the time to take some. i’m happy to help. i have no problem with it.’

i want to make things easy for everyone, i want to give and not take, i don’t want anyone to suffer because of things i do or say. i want to make people happy, not sad.

theres the small bit- zooming out now.

i seek and find profundity in most things- i aspire to it, i cherish it, i squirrel it away in my pocket as a reminder of what life is, what it is meant to be, how it can be found everywhere. this is a learned practice, not intrinsic, and i taught it to myself as a tool to combat apathy, coldness, hollowness. there is suffering and there is sadness, but there will always be flowers, there will always be the feeling of grass on your feet.

the practice has served me well and continues to, but i find myself hitting a wall with it lately, at a time in my life and in the world where that aspiration, no matter how hard i try, falls short. the front door sits open, the churning glittering brightness of the world right before me, but instead of leaving i watch a fly flick against the window, so close to escape but ping ponging against the glass instead.

where do i go when i am not profound? who am i when i am not in awe? what can i offer if not wonder? what can i possibly offer that matters?

i am a high functioning depressed person! i know what to do to unfurl a warmth inside of me, what will temporarily rouse me from the proverbial dark night of the soul. i am easy to please- any mote of beauty is an easy enough excuse to remind myself of happiness. the dinner will get made and it will be enjoyed. so where have i gone amidst it all? have i been stunned into silence? where are my words?

because of this practice i have granted myself, i have lost the art of sadness. i don’t like to wallow, i hate stirring the dregs. pour the cup out and rinse it out, refill it. i’ve always liked efficiency- trim the fat, keep things tight, why waste time on feeling that deep pit from the navel when you can skip that step? everything will be okay, why can’t it be okay now?

then something happened, some paradigm shift that i’ll let sit in my body alone for a bit longer, and i realized that i couldn’t skip that step. when grief enters your life it’s like grit from the beach you can’t quite shower off. it’s something in your eye you can’t blink away, floating in the periphery.

the profundity is still there, just a different color. there is profound sadness. and yet, amidst that new shade of profundity, i walk in the waning evening and take note of the lantanas, the sour flowers, the loquats. they are still there.

i am trying something that sounds incredibly simple but feels like pulling myself in two different directions. maybe you have known this all along, maybe you know more than me. i hope you do. i am holding many truths in the same breath and trying to feel them at once. let me try an example.

i walk to visit daisy, a yellow lab who lives a few streets down from me, a dog who is not named daisy but who ili and i named daisy a few months ago. i worry about the day i discover her real name and it’s something awful like CHOMP or SPIKE, and how that will shatter the magic of daisy. that day is not today. she sleeps in the front yard and knows my voice at this point, heaves her rotund little body up and toward the gate, where she presses her face between the bars to kiss my chin.

i scratch her chest and she is beautiful, and she reminds me of my first dog elliott, same breed, same baleful eyes, same slow unfocused tongue on the wrist. i smile because she is beautiful and simple, and i cry because i am sad, and because i have been thinking about death so much lately that it sits as a tangled mass of roots in my stomach, creeping into my throat once i forget for a moment or two. i remember my elliott, the way his hips got bad near the end, and how i got into the car from the bus stop in third grade when i found out he was put down.

he was my dad’s first dog of his own, and i felt sad for him in third grade and i do now, and i feel sad for myself. i remember grief again, the scale of it, oscillating between waxing upon largeness of the thing and combing through the smallest morsel of it. there go my words again. where is the profundity in this?

when i was little and my mom would leave town for a few weeks at a time to perform in regional theatre, my dad would hold me up to the window and wave my little hand at the car as it pulled away. i would cry and cry, and he would say “bye mommy, love you! look at her going away. say bye, say love you!” he wanted me to see her go to teach me that when people who love you leave, they come back. so it’s not so sad when they go.

i stand to leave daisy and she preempts me, trots to the other side of the yard, where the fence meets the sidewalk. i follow her and pet her some more. i forget what i was sad about for a moment when she hands me her paw. i remember the sadness a moment later, dizzyingly, and i am crying again, and i am scared daisy’s owners are finally going to come out and say ‘are you the freak who keeps coming to pet our dog while crying?’ and i will say yes, i am, sorry but also thank you.

i usually don’t like to look at daisy while i walk away, her expression confused and sad as i shrink into the distance. today i cross the street and turn around again to wave, watching her little lonely head peek through the fence. one day she will not be in that yard and i will not be there to walk past and check. that day is not tomorrow, probably not the next day.

i’ll see her again soon, it’s not so sad when i go.

the sky is nearly dark and you can smell the jasmine in the air. if my sadness is sticky stagnation on my skin, the flowers are a cool shower in the evening. you will overheat again but for now the water trickles down your back.