Cross Section 4.19.25
On my couch again, feeling congested in the sense that it's been too long since I’ve written anything down so it feels congealed inside of me, like it’ll only come out in green little globs.
Last night, I found myself unable to do anything except wash all my dishes, take out my trash, prepare some spicy ramen (with an egg to make it fashion; ignoring the remarkable amount of sodium, my family history of high blood pressure, the fact that I have not gone to a physician in three years because it is simply inconvenient and I feel well; the unsubstantiated and also never truly out-of-the-question notion that I could have some sort of horrible disease growing inside of me even now), and watch a reality TV show about a charming French family of realtors, the beautiful homes, the ever-present sunshine, the inexplicable trap music soundtrack.
When the episode ends, I poke around on YouTube, land on a video called “SARA’S FIVE DAY TRANSFORMATION”. A white woman walks into a hair salon, hugs her stylist. She has been afraid to come in. It has been eight months. Her hair has been under a hat. She has been in her home, afraid to come out, unsure what to do.
This week started with an earthquake. I was back from jail, punching in the code on the door that opens up to our office suite on the eleventh floor when I had the vague sense that the numbers were jumping around, that there was a little disruption to the horizon, vertiginous and slight, like drunkenness. I was prepared to ignore it, write it off as dehydration. But then I heard the groaning of the building’s metal structure, the sound of wind. A coworker standing in her doorway asking did you feel that? did you feel that?
Afterwards, I went for a walk outside, and all over downtown San Diego, gathered in clumps at the base of each skyscraper, white men in button down shirts and suit pants, staring at the sky.
Lately I have this profound inability to retain important information about the ones I love. Profound secrets, deep pains and longings. I’ll lean in and listen to the telling, feel the requisite feelings in the moment, truly love, and then forget.
Perhaps because my day to day survival depends on forgetting terrible things instantly? Which feels dramatic to say but look:
Some time ago I enter a jail, take off my shoes, show my ID, fill out forms, wait between sets of metal doors before a familiar deep buzz alerts me to push the next one open, present my stamped hand to the blue light, toss my ID into a stainless steel slot as behind the one-way glass an officer queries, What floor? I answer, Seven!
The buzzing, the funereal clang of the doors behind us. On floor seven, he’s waiting, his back to me. Tan jumpsuit. He’s surprised to see me again but stands to shake my hand. He has a kind face, gentle voice, was honest about his life the last time I saw him. Told me he’d been arrested while on the run. They’d taken the trouble to bust down his doors in Mexico and bring him back to the states to be tried for a murder. I didn’t ask him whether he had done it, just asked him about his work in construction, the most famous buildings he’d had a hand in building. He’d smiled and listed them out. The carpeting in the Chase building. The stadium bathroom flooring. The new courthouse.
I’m here to tell you something difficult, I begin. There’s no good way to tell you this. Your sister died last night. A brief pause, then a rush of all the air leaving his body. I repeat it. She died, and the family wanted you to know, and I didn’t want to just send you a letter—the sobs, my realization that the least I could have done was remember to bring some tissues. His tears and mucus smeared on his tan jumpsuit collar, his eyes distant. I am a trespasser in a holy place. I stand to leave, push the button to be released. Thank you he says as I go.
///
I will forget this immediately as I return to my desk to find that the juvenile criminal records of another client have finally arrived, detailing the brutal sexual abuse he endured, the way he then brutally abused a child even younger than him when he was just a teenager.
///
I will forget this by the afternoon as I wait at the bus stop, chatting with my mother about her day, refreshing the One Bus Away app. Seven minutes away. Four minutes away.
This is the Saturday of the in between. Things are bad here and it is nice to say so. Good Friday yesterday, the cathartic keening and soberness of the church service. My friend Aziza sobbing as she read a poem of lament. I looked around at the others in the room, drove home thinking I am driving in a car, down a highway in California, it is night time, anything could happen to me, to anyone.
Louise Gluck writes in her poem “Celestial Music”,
I have a friend who still believes in heaven.
Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to god,
she thinks someone listens in heaven. . .
This morning I make myself cry as I sing to myself. I am wide eyed, at the very center of things. (heart like an elephant screaming/ at the bones of its dead;/heart like the lady on the bus dressed head to toe in gold).
Louise Gluck continues,
. . . In my dreams, my friend reproaches me. We're walking
on the same road, except it's winter now;
she's telling me that when you love the world you hear celestial music:
look up, she says. When I look up, nothing.
Only clouds, snow, a white business in the trees
like brides leaping to a great height–
Then I'm afraid for her; I see her
caught in a net deliberately cast over the earth–
In the days before he died, Jesus was chattier than usual, trying to squeeze it all in, urgent:
I have more to say to you, more than you can now bear. . .On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. Men will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world. . . If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes.
Amen.
xoxo,
LKM
You're so good at this!
I am wide-eyed, at the very center of things