Hooks

I’ve said that I write for an outlet, as a means to release the brewing pressures and fusions of my insides. But that’s not really the case. Maybe it’s more often about attention or affirmation or the hope that people will read something that ive written, and that they’ll be able to feel like there’s someone else who knows. Maybe it’s because I know that hair dies and skin sags but text, even if never read, will be there. But this is of the “outlet” variety, an attempt to evade crying on someone’s shoulder because of my weak legs, or saying things that I mean but will be unable to substantiate through action. This is the option that isn’t the option for the more brave.

There are things that I write late at night with wine and The National playing and the lights off, and those things should be reread in the morning. The things that I write on those nights, on tonights, should be left in a journal or emailed to an X girlfriend. But I won’t. And I’m not sure why. Tomorrow I will be embarrassed. People will say that they loved my post or bullshit about my honesty and I won’t believe them. I know that it will be read selfishly and with scrutiny—you’ll decide whether you “liked” or “didn’t like” what you read…you’ll evaluate the grammar and the content and you’ll create hypotheses regarding my motives and authenticity. I hate that I know that which will happen and I equally hate that I do the same. Why when I read can I not leave the text to “just be”. Why do I sift it through preconceived notions and calculations? And already, as I reread what’s already been written I cringe and clinch. I affirm the things about me that I argue are untrue. I overestimate the richness of my own feelings, I shout for approval, and even my claims of brokenness stem from a pride in my own awareness of my own depravity. It would be better if I would make self-deprecating jokes while telling sensational stories, but some things are too big for stories and jokes and must instead just be told.  

Tonight I looked through a computer screen at my mom and dad, my sister, her son, and her pregnant belly, my little brother, who I thought was 8, but is actually 17, and my best friend, who is so intimately my friend that he’s also my family’s. The pixelated and fragmented screen, freezing and jumping, showed one of the worlds that I love, all connected and eating my favorite dessert around my kitchen table. I read messages and emails from other worlds too. I was loved by the friends who are getting married and by the family that reads my letters and by the guy who suggested that book and by the buddy who wrote me a note and by the girl that made jokes in class and by the teacher that said something I did was “good” and by the hosts who made meals and provided couches and by the author of this book or of that one and by the fog that connected the ocean to the mountains, making it seem as if both sprang from the middle, one falling and the other rising, and by the hail that fell on my arms while I walked, and by my dog, and by a song, and I wish that I could forget all of it. I wish that none of it were a part of me. Taking me.

A woman in a book tells her husband that it’s “a shame that life is so precious. It makes us worry so much”. And that’s where I am. The love of The Beauty cannot be withheld and yet we’re damned for it. Our guts are strings, hooked to people, places, and moments in strongly bound knots. We go to this school before that school and hold hands with this girl and then that one and love this person and then that one and all of these outreaching hooks, stemming from ourselves and remaining taught until they reach The Beauty, pull away from their origin and destination with equal force. Loving The Beauty means damning the beauty. It means seeing life in my sister’s belly before I lay my hand on it, and merely thinking of my brother when he gets home from dates, and saying “thanks” and “it’s so much fun” to my parents instead of doing dishes or watching black and white movies in the early morning. It means that the plans and futures of the people I’m with now will one day be far stretching hooks and strings to old memories. What I’m trying to say is that there’s too much. I neglect The Beauty because The Beauty is in everyone and everywhere and I can’t reel all the strings at once. I mean that I can’t live a long life because time means more beauty and more beauty means knowing that I’m not loving this beauty or that beauty as much as I need to—and I already have too many strings.

I hate this post. There isn’t background or explanation. It’s ambiguous and my minute skill with my supposed craft leaves it appearing to be an attempt at something abstract. It’s not. I mean to be simple. I went on a 4 day walk this spring break and I lustily gathered the burdens, hopes, and secrets of the new friends who walked with me. Tonight I got home to the friends who went elsewhere and I had to be by myself so that I wouldn’t say mean things. I knew I would say mean things because I was overwhelmed with a terrifying amount feeling for them. We’ll all say goodbye in 2 months. Another goodbye. Another transition and tearing and stretching.  

I don’t have the capacity to send the amount of letters I want to send and I don’t have the memory to keep all the fog and sunsets. Over and over again I lose the things that I love. In Spain I’ve lost all that isn’t here, in Northwest Spain I’ve lost all that isn’t there, and then when I return to some of what I love in America I’ll have lost all that is here. No wonder we’re all crazy. What a disaster it is that everyone we love isn’t in the same place, at the same time. I know that this is true of everyone, and yet I don’t suspect that any of this is “landing”. If I try to explain I’ll just repeat, and if I don’t share then I’m a liar, and so Ill wrap it up: I think that I’m terrified all of the time. I call lying in bed “sleeping” because a reel of The Beauty plays through my mind and I want to slam my head through the window for each portion of The Beauty in my life that goes seemingly unacknowledged. I want to curl up in my sister’s stomach and tell her baby that I’ll “love it forever” and “like it for always”. I want to tattoo, with the longest needles, the outline of my hand onto my back for once leaving the same red outline on my brother’s. I want to tell the people from Field Day in elementary school, the MCC fair in middle school, youth group in high school, college, kamp (no typo), the road trip, Spain, sports teams, DUI class, family and strangers that I love them--and not when I’m saying goodbye to them, but on ordinary Tuesdays and in the middle of conversations about chewing gum and sports.

I love The Beauty, and I suppose that living is synonymous with The Beauty, but being so incapable of dealing with it, having desire exceed my abilities of execution by this great a margin is a difficult daily failure to swallow. Tomorrow someone that I love won’t have any proof.