"Goodbye Montreal" Rough Book Manuscript...
If anybody reads this, I would love your thoughts!
Here Goes:
Take Her Away from Me Forever
So, it has finally come to pass that I have given up on my marriage.
After over nine years together, six of which we were married, I have finally given up any possibility of a reconciliation with the adulteress that was my wife.
She loved another man for close to two years, and when I confronted her, challenged her to give him up in favor of our marriage and everything it represented, she refused. And for the last three months, she has maintained her lover, while vacillating back and forth between divorce and near divorce.
I have offered what I could. I answered her first request for reconciliation by communicating a desire to take it slow. This was answered a week later with a change of field and a return to her desire to be single.
In the end, I travel alone to Spain to sort out my thoughts and my feelings. To face my failures in the handling of this marriage, my plain poor choices in the woman I chose and my weaknesses of character.
This morning, she told me it wasn't because she didn't love me, indeed she wants to have a positive connection and date me later. I told her that would be impossible after her actions-which she took responsibility for only two nights ago, but has since absolved herself of. She also has forgotten the moment in bed three weeks ago when she apologized and told me that she knew she did me wrong. This she doesn't remember.
Two months ago, she refused to put aside her lover while trying to work on our marriage. Then she said she wouldn't see him for a period and that in the meantime, we would see a therapist. A day later, she bought an airplane ticket to meet up with him in Mexico.
Prior to that, as we separated for two weeks to clear our heads, she booked a string of hotel rooms with her lover. With our charge card. I know this because the company called about the hotel charges and asked if I knew what was going on. That's customer service.
And she says it isn't about the other man. She says she just doesn't want to be married, that we can date later, be friends. She says she loves me. What kind of love is it that What kind of love do you have for a living thing as you choke it to death?
And yet I love her. I still wish it was different. I have been willing to extend myself, my love, across the divide to be turned away and told, “I still love you. I want to have a positive connection with you, be friends, maybe date later. I just do not want to be married anymore.”
She loves another man. She cannot face her infidelity and her inability to stick to her commitments. She is an egomaniac who I must get away from now; I must let her go for my own sake. And for that, I am weak-again. Selfish and controlling.
God, please free me from this marriage to that hateful, blind woman. Let me go; eject me from the purgatory of her company and my commitment to her. It has been so long since I have tasted real affection and love. I have done all that I could. I have tried. Please grant me peace and success in my quest for future happiness. Please, God, please. Take my love for her away from me. Remove her from my world as soon as possible. Spare me the sight of her. Take her away from me forever.
Overwhelmed
I'm not sure what to say. I am overwhelmed. On the way into town, I listened to “Roller Coaster Ride” by Belle and Sebastian. The song played melancholy as the road through the forest rose up and down along with the waves of feelings flowing out of my body.
On the long drive from New York, I talked to many of my siblings and it always came back to my dad and his fantastic recovery from serious illness then relapse into his various painful (not old-age related) behaviors. What a drag. I am ready to give up. But that's today. Another round of trouble---separate--and I'll then be ready again; like we were taught to be. The family esprit de corps. But, until then…
The ride in to Belle and Co. was fantastic and bittersweet, slow and careful. Too close to risk a deer accident. I realize now that the last several times I've been back, Martina has joined me. Ha! But now I kick it alone, and feel that grinding sadness that will be worn down by the friction of moving into the inevitable future. It always seems so new: the pain, the realization; the everything, the dating, the river, the stars, the sounds of the geese and ducks echoing across the water and off the houses. All this. Another shooting star in a sky AWASH with stars. Were they always this good? Did I forget since the last time I was here in this season? Or is it a special time, some amazing secret night? Both, I suppose.
A moth the size of a bat just flew by. Wait. Okay, it is a moth. I'd bet a bat would really like to eat that moth. That thing's the size of an Australian grub worm. I'm sure almost as meaty.
So I think of Australia and my friends there and I worry that I haven't heard about things. It's up to me to make the connection again. It's always up to me. But, I'm getting vibes, energy. There's always the thing waiting. The big thing, then other big things. And we keep waiting. Hoping to somehow avoid the inevitable. Ha, ha. What a life we all lead until we die!
I caught the big moth and put him onto the porch. Then he flew right back in. Then I caught him (her?) again and took her further away, re-released onto the porch where I'm sure I'll find the thing dead in a day or two's time.
The sky is miraculous and the forest and river sing the sleeping songs of swans, geese, ducks. I'm here now for a while. And to any of you thinking of me, I too am thinking of you. From here to where you are right now. If only you could see these stars. Here tonight.
Granada Update
Well, I stayed up all night and watched the Super Bowl! Yay! Broadcast here in Granada with no commercials-in Spanish even, though they left the Rolling Stones alone. Watching Mick Jagger running up and down the stage was pretty funny. Ballsy guy, but still ridiculous. I watched until the fourth quarter when it seemed the Steelers had it locked up. It felt ridiculous, staying up until 4 a.m. to watch American football in Spain, but that's what I did.
The excitement (and the jet lag) were such that I didn't fall asleep, and at 6:15, I geared up and began the pre-dawn walk to the Alhambra. Word was to expect long lines, get there early, by 7 a.m. The walk was steep but short, and I found myself at the right place before 7 a.m., more than 1 1/2 hours before they opened, and froze my ass off waiting for the sweepers, then the guards, then the gate keepers, etc.
Once inside, it was lovely. The main palace is the most spectacular ruin I've ever seen. Steelar! (Wait that's the super bowl again). I meant STELLAR! The decorative workmanship, the gardens, the fountains-and these were just ruins-it was amazing. I admit that I am in a sensitive emotional state and the beauty of it made me cry.
From a parapet, I looked down on the chilly Darro and saw the plaza from which I spied the castle two evenings previous.
Another highlight was at the Generalife-the smaller, more casual palace further up the hill from the main structure. In one of the gardens, the place where you would put your hands was instead being employed by a fantastic and ancient aqueduct system. Too much to explain, I suppose, suffice it to say that the Alhambra is worth the trouble to visit. I brought along a travel copy of Washington Irving's “Tales of the Alhambra,” a English copy printed in Madrid. Red leather. I read it front of a fireplace while I laid on my couch in St. Paul, MN, several years ago. My dog sleeping beside me and a small glass of brandy on the table. A different life ago.
On the Americans:
I have encountered very few Americans. I think they have all been students. And all girls. Actually, I am surrounded by a gaggle of them right now at this pub I am sitting, writing in. They are kids, sloppy, dumb, smoking, talking about where they are going tonight and classes tomorrow. If I talk to any of them, I'll have to ask where the teachers are hanging out.
To my close friend Jim R.:
I had a dream that I was hanging out with you and your brother. We were waiting at the police station for him to check in or be interviewed or something. Then he ran off and you, exasperated, but not surprised, followed, knowing that the cops weren't interested anyway. Your brother was an updated version of his childhood self, running wild and we followed him around, humoring the poor fellow. He was clearly going to get into trouble. The question was whether he would do it when we were around or not.
Anyway, we wound up at my (unique, dream) place. While we talked, your brother darted into another room inexplicably loaded with comic book memorabilia. Plugged into the wall was a dangerous mess of cords and wires, dollar bills intertwined in the works. You said we had better check on him, he might grab some of the bills and mess up the tenuous electrical balance.
We entered the second room and he was nowhere to be seen. As we looked and called, I saw movement near the cord area. He was hiding, waiting for us to find him. Then he pushed through the cable mess, smiling, but unhappy. The cords seemed okay and I knew it was time for us to get out of my place.
That's the dream.
Student Update:
Two American female students are having a serious talk. The pretty one is explaining to the less pretty one that she likes her and appreciates the use of her computer, but that she doesn't really want to be friends. How they are both too mature to have communication problems.
Now they are talking about skiing. Damn, I was supposed to ski with Angela. I had a place booked with view of the Sierra Nevada. My heart aches that I wouldn't be able to get there, to be in the mountains, on this trip. That battle is for another trip, another time, another version of me.
And finally…
Obviously, I am feeling better about my dying marriage. I have extended myself to a great degree, I have tried to make improvements in myself, I have discovered a vast wealth of love for my spouse that surprised her and myself. And that love hung there as an offer that was accepted, rejected, accepted and finally rejected. I have to give up. I am here until it is over. I look forward to the future.
I'll be heartbroken and crying later tonight, of course, but I definitely feel well-founded. Angela is a woman who lives on shifting ground. It is her way to live in vague shades of gray. She is welcome to her life and her choices. They are no longer my concern.
I am trying to get to the Iberia office to make my return trip arrangements. As cheap as food is, my deluxe hotel (chosen for good make-up possibilities) is expensive and my reservation is semi-rigid. If I wind up staying much longer I will move to cheaper accommodations, but I would like to get home this week anyway, get back to dating, and sorting the nuts and bolts of my divorce.
In the Woods
Kicking it from my cabin at 1 a.m. Wednesday morning. It's hot out here and Leopold and I just had a midnight jog. I thought it best to bring him along after all the wildlife I saw today. Plus there was that bear incident last summer. So, here's a list of the interesting animals I spotted today:
1. Bald Eagle
2. Dead Turkey (Eagle was eating Turkey)
3. River otter. Very cute, but very close to my dock, etc.
4. Fox
5. Possum
6. Deer
7. Weird decaying, fossil-like, frog carcass on my screen porch.
That's about it for the critters. Anyway, Leopold accompanied me on two runs today for a total of about 3.25 miles. He's 11, but kept up well and I am very proud of the old mutt. He's looking at me right now from his cushion. I think he misses his pal, Izzy.
Well, I had to say “No, no, no…” to friendship with my last girlfriend today. That sucked, but something about the proposition seemed false and though I don't have a complaint against her, I am pissed off at the way I wasn't surprised by the way things unfolded, plus a few other various and sundry small hurts, etc. Nothing major, just the usual. It's tough finding people you like well enough to spend time with, so that's the real issue: you hate to give that up. But people get different things out of relationships and friendship isn't something I'm interested in. Better to just drop it completely and move on.
Okay, animals, post-break-up news. What else?
I did visit with another ex yesterday. It was pretty good to see her. It brought back many memories and she's a very supportive, though not often talked with, friend. Seeing her was weirdly reaffirming and it gave me some juice for the continued headlong flight into my future.
Beyond that, one of my brothers is flying into Montana tomorrow. He's taking my mom and her sister on a helicopter tour of the neighborhood where the girls were brought up. What a fun time they will have, I'm sure.
So, that's it. Living in a hazy summer sadness. Adjusting to a long stay here and falling into the necessary patterns to make it a successful one. Feeling pretty lonely and trying to get out of the self-pity zone I'm currently bogged down in.
A Little Knot
A little knot of feelings had stolen the joy out of everything for a moment and the idea of sleeping evaporated like fog in the sun. Just before retiring, a close friend called and thanked me for the dinner I had made his visiting family. “I just want you to know, they really had a good time. It was a very sweet thing to do.” I didn't want to talk, so I thanked him for thanking me-thus completing the thanking chain-and trundled to bed where I would lay in a vain attempt to make it an early night.
His parents were older and on the verge of being completely unhappy with each other. The father was fat from drinking, which was necessary to cover up the pain and shame of whatever troubles he had, mistakes he had made. His wife held the moral high ground. “We've been married too long,” she said before his sister short-stopped, “Not this again,” and veered the conversation back to shallower waters. At this point, my friend's woman decided to leave and that marked the end of the night. It was peaceful on the whole and I could watch and listen to people who don't get listened to much anymore. They took full advantage of my open ears and spun tales of family histories, spirits guiding the old woman's writing and interests, rabid wolves at the door of her baby grandmother's shack in the wilderness butted up to the tiniest banalities. I knew they were comfortable if they could share such things and skirt right up to the edge of telling me why they should get divorced and the other people they once loved.
It all left me feeling exhausted and bittersweet. But the notion of family, even someone else's, was a nice and listening to the parents talk to their son and daughter about happy (and sad) old memories was worth something. They had lost the ability to direct their children anymore and everyone knew it and was sad for the time that had passed. They liked his girlfriend and I couldn't help but think my friend and his girlfriend would be married soon and that the moment was a very special one.
The last person I accidentally fell in love with filled my thoughts. I knew I would see her the following evening after two months apart after eight months together. The idea depressed me. I knew she would re-affirm the necessary “over-ness” of the situation, making it undeniably final. Which was okay with me. But it hurt. It had to be this way. I fell but she didn't. Well she did, but for some guy in Japan.
And the bittersweet family feeling and my friend and his girlfriend and the hopelessness of marriage and relationships and the desire for love, intimacy, surprise and hope. Everything had evaporated like my desire to sleep, so I put my clothes on and walked to the park.
Plus I was falling apart. When I woke up the morning previous, my foot was aching from a muscle strained by the previous day's long and wonderful run through the summer evening. What a great run. It felt so good and I was running like a fine machine. But the morning turned the power to pain and I found I could barely walk.
My thumb had also been filleted for a drunken “blood-brother” bonding ritual with the same friend whose parents and company would later be my guests. One may have a hard time cutting his own hand, so we cut each other's and he went deep and cut a vessel in my thumb which had pumped out blood which I flung around the apartment and the bar afterwards. With throbbing pain at two ends of my four limbs, I cleaned up the blood spots that had appeared in amazing places throughout the apartment. I had really gotten around. In the laundry bin there was one bloody pair of jeans and a shirt that would have to be dealt with later. It was all so absurd.
But thinking on everything was driving me crazy so I got up and went out the door onto the stairs (since the elevator was broken) with my incredibly sore toe and lose thumb-tip and emerged into the humid New York night. I stayed clear of the bar whose interior I spackled the previous evening and went towards the river with the city park between the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges as my destination.
It was midnight and many people and dogs were about and everybody seemed to be talking to someone else. Even the homeless guy was chatting up a young woman. It was all so preposterous. Everything that had happened forever added up to this and it turned out to just be an ongoing gyration with, quite possibly, no point whatsoever.
But the night was still and the air full. Dogs stared at me from the fronts of bars where their masters drank beer after beer. Some Cholos were drinking beer and watching a movie that was being shot in the next park over. The state park, which figures into 5 million movies, was again called into service. They had been shooting movies and TV shows all over the place the past few weeks. I had to run around three good-looking (in a dumb way) party chicks on the aforementioned jog vying for the attention of some low-level Abercrombie-type models at the famous local pizza parlor. Yikes.
The movie-watching, beer drinking homies were just chilling and gave me an easy pass. Everything was completely cool tonight. Everyone was okay, in some groove. Still, energy crackled and I wondered where the wild card lay. I thought maybe celebrity was afoot.
A guy took a nighttime shot of his girlfriend with the Brooklyn Bridge and the big movie lights in the background. He was really fat and she was cute and fit. Another couple was laying on the grass making out passionately. The guy looked up at me as I scoped his woman's splayed ass. Funny. Someone whistled at someone else and I looked over. The photo couple had rejoined another couple. A couple of couples.
Then another boy/girl love-team appeared. The girl was surrounded by the boy, who pumped gently then took her hand and put it in the dick area. She was into it. By the time I made it around the corner and looked back, her legs were spread-still dressed-and he had moved into the central, missionary position.
I wanted to tell somebody, but the guys smoking cigars on the benches were engaged in a discussion about Arnold Schwartzenegger's immunity to health concerns. I thought he might be around and looked over at the big lights. It was too far away to see anything and who cared besides?
By now, the sex couple was just a blob in the grass behind me. I couldn't believe they would fuck on the grass in the middle of all those people in the park. It was perverted or maybe wonderful.
The point is that I was watching it. I saw it. Everything was of a piece. And when I cracked the lock of my apartment's door, I felt a little bit better and was able to get back into my lonely bed and fall right off to sleep.
Goodbye Montreal
It's raining and gray today. I've been staying in an area called “The Plateau,” that is renowned for being “edgy, trendy, & hip.” There's a grocery store across the street, a SAC, where you can buy good wine, nearby, even a coffee shop downstairs. It's prime Montreal, but I just want to leave.
I came here last Sunday to attempt to move a fledgling relationship forward. It had been six months of long-distance talking; one meeting in Europe and this would be my fourth trip here. The woman in question is young and beautiful, dark, complicated, provincial. Because of a past indiscretion, she wouldn't be allowed into America until 2010. The waiting, the constant need for travel on my part, caused friction and difficulty from the start. So too, differences in language, attitude. But despite the fact that each time we were together we had to have a big fight before we could get along, love grew even though the situation was difficult and huge.
The first conversations covered issues like living all over, Berlin mostly, New York, other places. And these conversations became the bedrock lifestyle idea that we both dreamed about. But after a few months, it became clear that not only was the blockage into America a factor, but so were the needs of her career in Montreal.
For those of you who know me, you know I can be a handful on my own, especially if drinking. But you also know I am not afraid of complicated women and situations. And the problems associated with this, as well as the one-week per month trips to Montreal, to see her, kept me busy and began wearing me out. I started going back and forth between realizing the situation was untenable and feeling like getting through it would be an almost religious exercise. I could see being together and growing old, kids. I could see the future, her face, going to my cabin. But then, we would talk and fight and I would swing the other way and realize that it was virtually impossible. More trips to Montreal, hope, time, money, would she ever really be able to join me anywhere outside of Montreal?
And what of Montreal? Her family as here, and she swung from being estranged to wanting them back. I met some of them and they were nice people. Smart. But who can know what goes on between family members? All the history. There were stories she wouldn't tell me, but it wasn't my business. All I eventually gathered was that her feelings toward family and friends could be extreme and brittle.
She is smart and talented, lovely, angry, quiet, alone, hurt so many times.
I know I hurt her again. I came here to try to make this go forward. I made arrangements to have some of my own space while visiting this city. Days before I left, she said it was bad timing. She was tired and feeling something else. Flashbacks to bad experiences, more relationships fading into and out of view. I arrived at her apartment; she was tired, and beautiful. Within 24 hours, I was alone in the next neighborhood over, the Plateau, and I would never see her again.
I don't know exactly what happened. She was tired, got ill and asked me to leave. It's more personal and complicated than that, but I wound up here, sleeping alone; the woman I passionately love, across town, alone too. And sick. I was frozen out. It was really a stunning feeling. And Montreal did its part, lending a freezing cold couplet of blizzard days that made it obvious why February is the top month for suicides in this town. After the travel, three months apart, to be alone felt more than wrong. It was like a kick to my soul and spirit. The air was sucked out of the space I protected for this relationship. In the morning, I asked how she was, she was still ill. When pressed, she snapped. And I snapped. And all of the negative pressure of everything else came back and it ended. Over the internet, while we were only five miles apart.
No more word, no more life. A ton of hope sucked away, turned quickly around in stunning irony. A week ago, I was counting the days before I got here, now I am counting the hours until I leave.
After holing up here in someone else's apartment for four days alone, I did manage to meet a couple of writers and a singer while going out, trying to function like a human being. They all said it was good that it ended. My friends, over the phone, have said the same. They said, “Come back home.” But I had to wait. The apartment swappers are in my Brooklyn place until tomorrow, my flight is tomorrow. I'll be gone from here tomorrow.
I decided yesterday to have my tarot cards read. My vibe was on fire, I felt so bad about wrecking this wonderful, impossible thing. The card for her was “The Hangman,” and the theory was that, “At best this person has drug use issues, and at worst you will be trying to change someone who isn't ready.” It went on, “If you are very patient and persistent, with time, there is a chance.” It was funny, how accurate the whole reading was. She said she couldn't be herself around me. I realized, very late, that I had been wishing her into someone more perfect for me, instead of accepting her for who she was. I kept waiting for situation to change, to magically improve. One great problem with not seeing someone you love is that you can project qualities onto him or her that your subconscious needs or wants to air out. You idealize them, or the other way around. You want to overlook the difficult parts that you don't like. But it doesn't mean that those things go away. Instead, they get more pressurized.
After I finish sorting through this mess of feelings, the wrecked passion, I will awake back in my life in New York, in the middle of three projects. But her face is burned in my mind. She was so beautiful when she opened the door to let me in, just five days ago. The love surging through me was so intense, I was almost overwhelmed. So much passion and intensity. Then to be asked to leave. Even lovingly, after all this time part. And to never see her again. Wow.
So, it rains in Montreal. The people don't care; the weather doesn't care. I said goodbye on Monday night. I haven't really been here since then. But I will say it another time. One last time. Goodbye Sara, Goodbye Montreal. I don't think I will see either of you again.
My Day in Tokyo
Hi Mom! I'm still in Tokyo! I don't know too many people and everyone here works until 8 or 9 p.m. so I get the days to myself. Yesterday, I went to the Roppongi Art Center in the fashionable neighborhood of the same name. I was very excited to see some new work, especially Japanese Modern Art. On the way, I noticed signs for an overview of the Turner Prize, which is English, but still pretty good.
At first, I couldn't find the museum, so I wandered around in search of coffee and something to eat. Soon enough, I was at the residential edge of the village and had to turn around. I did, however, manage to find some small cakes and espresso, plus directions to the art center. Oh, I forgot to mention the cab fare was about $27. Things are expensive here.
Ah, the museum! Was closed. The new show wasn't up yet, so I turned around and headed into the Roppongi Hills shopping center. I should mention that I bought a Paul Smith shirt the day before for about $170 US. That's about 30% more than in NYC. But I had to have it. The person I was with thought it looked good and all my clothes were getting a type of dirty that I would have to describe as “hyper-molecular.” La, la, la…I meandered around, ate a hamburger and looked at clothes. I found a raw cotton shirt for $35 and thought about buying it. It was also pink and since pink is the thing for this spring I considered it. Then I realized it was $350. Shopping in New York suddenly seemed like the thing to do, even for me, so I closed my desire and moved on.
Most of the shopping center was being renovated so I decided to try and find the other museum I was looking for. I found a map, but there was a curious tunnel involved in the journey, so I decided to walk around the greater neighborhood instead. Roppongi opened up before me as I walked past shops selling fake fashions and the big stores selling everything you can image-from food to costumes (mostly school girl outfits).
Speaking of girls, they are mostly pretty and all wear black stockings, which are very sexy. But everyone is wearing them, so it dilutes the sexiness level. There are noticeably less plastic surgery victims here, which is nice, though women in Korea from afar appear to be much more stunning. I would say the denizens of Tokyo have more style though. Much more cosmopolitan.
As I walked about, I began to notice things familiar to me, things which made me feel warm and cozy inside-a Hard Rock Café store, for instance. McDonald's and Starbucks! Home at last! Yay! “These will make nice photos for the folks back home,” I thought. Check out the pictures I made, you will see. I would have also taken a picture of me at TGI Friday's but my fingers were sticky from the “Rib Ticklers” I enjoyed within.
I kept walking and saw a Volvo dealership. Volvo is owned by Ford now, so I decided it was American enough to walk by and check out. One car inside was $88,000! But it had a V-8. I coulda had a V8! Then I passed the used lot and saw an S60, much like the one I had when married a few years back. That brought back pleasant memories. Geez. Then it started to rain and I thought about the Korean woman I met in New York named Rain and how mean she was. Then I thought about marriage again.
I rounded the corner towards what I thought would be my eventual way home. I thought about heading into an Iranian restaurant, but worried about possible abduction, so I kept moving. I saw a Poodle puppy in the window. Very cute! The dog was $2200. Which is expensive for something that could be eaten. I took a picture and had warm thoughts.
Eventualy, I arrived in Tokyo Mid-town, which is a pretty ritzy area. I traipsed into a fancy mall and pretended to have more money than I actually do. It was really expensive. I did find a reasonably priced glass off (Australian) D'Arenberg Shiraz, at an American wine bar, which I enjoyed next to a lazy, rich, drunk, American housewife and two pudgy American white boys growing old fast. I was depressed! I left after one glass without letting on my nationality. The woman was kind of cute though also a plastic surgery survivor. Her face was stretched into a painful-looking smile that worked against her angsty drunkenness. She was waiting for her dog to be groomed in a shop down the hall.
I had passed a chocolate shop and decided I would buy some for myself and my friend Tomoko who likes chocolate and who I would be seeing later on for dinner. Four pieces of chocolate: $32. The Japanese clerk behind the counter told me it was the most expensive chocolate IN THE WORLD. I had to try it.
I was still starving and light-headed since I had a long run earlier in the day. So, I caught a cab and was back in the comfy confines of my hotel-which is much like a blue-collar prison with an okay view-took a nap and waited for dinner time.
Eventually, I heard from Tomoko who said she would be ready at 11. Which is pretty late for dinner, so we decided to skip it. I wound up eating some snacks and going to bed early. I had seen three of the four movies already and just wasn't ready for the 24 hour porn block. The fourth of the “regular” movies was a Steven Segal adventure movie. Segal was okay up until he put out that blues record. That's where I draw the line. I wish he would have worked with Bruce Willis, that would have been a barn-burner, but solo? No way, Segal!
Do, do, do….I started getting bored. And hungry again. So I surfed the web, in search of a fun bar that would be open and not too sleazy. Ahhh…The Park Hyatt Hotel Bar! This is the one that was in “Lost in Translation,” not my hotel, the Hyatt Regency Tokyo. My place is a wedding hotel, not so hip. The bar here is populated with businessmen in black suits drinking hard liquor and smoking cigars. Live jazz at the Park Hyatt. And just around the corner. I did take a cab since it was raining, and soon enough I was pulling up to the hotel I wanted to stay in, but wasn't. Lots of good-looking people waited for cars and I hoped I wasn't too late to join the party.
It took an eon to figure out the way to the 52nd Floor. A series of elevators+walking is necessary if you want to scale the heights and pay the $20 cover of the Manhattan Bar. I practically live in the real Manhattan, so this would be perfect. The view was insane and I watched the rain fall outside, over the city which laid out vast and wonderful before me. Red lights twinkled on the little buildings below, way below, so planes could see the roofs in foggy, grey weather like this.
The acoustics were horrible. The only attractive single women were all at one table whose other occupants I couldn't see due to an obstructed view. I drank 4 glasses of Cline Zinfandel and enjoyed Duck Fat French Fries and Marlboro Reds. I was pretty sad my dinner plans collapsed and determined to (try to, anyway) have a good time. I took in the view a little extra, to mark it. The band was okay, what I could hear. The girls left with two small sumo wrestlers (two girls for each), then it was last call, then my bill for $110 was paid, then to the bathroom, where, for the first time, I tried the bidet-that was something! Gee, that water is hot! I smiled in a cleanly manner, took the series of elevators back down, got another cab, through the rain, and in moments, I was back here. 12.30, not tired, barely drunk, no plans and rain forecast for the next day.
I went to bed and woke u this morningp, and it's still raining, so I decided to skip my day trip. Besides, everyone works until like midnight, so traveling more alone doesn't do much for me. Soaked, cold, on a train to someplace I'm not too sure of. Tomoko is out of the scene now too, I think her boyfriend is back in the picture, so until tomorrow, it's just me, kicking it solo. Maybe I'll head to another museum, there's one here in Shinjuko. Yep, that's what I'll do. Then I will work out ($21) at the gym here. Oh yeah, I now have clean clothes. I had some things laundered ($63).
Arm in Arm
Sunny, Spring
The dogwoods popping out in Soho
People: tourists, mostly.
I rush up to feeling that hole where a person used to live inside of me
Dead now
Though I see her on the other side of the street
Arm in arm with something else
A living ghost, a vampire
Fed off the life of my memories
So much taken away, given up, died away
Or maybe I loved a ghost
Died away into that apparition
Across the street
Arm in arm
With something else.
Easter
These last few days I've been musing on the past. What started it all off was talking to my sister back in Montana a few days ago; she caught me up on the basic goings-on and I reported back from my East Coast outpost. At conversation's end, she wished me a “Happy Easter,” that, to my shame, surprised me suddenly. I hadn't really thought about Easter for a while and that disconnection had me feeling like a traitor to my childhood.
Easter. David Sedaris' account of all things American Easter to his French class came right to mind later when a French friend laughed at me and mangled her English wishing me rabbits and eggs and telling me she wouldn't make it over for our little party. But that was later, first I had to recount what made Easter important to me and muse on its current value.
Of course, the most colorful memories are tied to my childhood-dressing up nicely for church on promising spring mornings, the egg hunt just ahead. Catholic church is more fun at Easter time, more pageantry, getting out of school for Ash Wednesday, the big feasts, early spring football games played in forgotten parks with family and friends.
You know, thinking back, the egg hunt was pretty weak. Maybe because there were so many older kids in my family, the hiding was haphazard and the rewards questionable. And besides, you give up on the preposterous Easter Bunny pretty fast and that loss of innocence is the gateway to the impending loss of Santa and the grotesque pains of early adolescence. What's there to love about that crap? I might as well make a holiday of the time I dented my head on a doorknob at the old house in Bloomington - every year, I could rub salve on the scar's remnants and recall my first feelings of true pain. Oh boy.
I guess pain figures into most Easter memories.
Another meaningful Easter was spent crying and writing letters to a terrible old girlfriend. We had broken up for the zillionth painful time and I was, once again, promising some vague repentance in an ultimately successful attempt to win the bruising shrew back. I had recently finished Mallory's “Le Morte de Arthur” and was moved by the fantastic mythology of the lone knights searching through a bizarre purgatory for the valued grail - the cup from which Jesus took his last drink. What a job! Anyway, after enduring all sorts of various painful and creative situations, the remaining Knights of the Round Table returned home to celebrate Easter. Back in Camelot, they got to eat, rest, worship and tell stories of their fights and wonder where and how their lost comrades were felled.
From this type of material, I fashioned a winning letter, filled with tears and promises of calmer times to come. The winter was over and it was time for us to rest, then renew, with open hearts, the quest for our elusive love. I remember the big, blue sky overhead with an oak tree blowing beautifully in the wind, buds in mid-sprout. Easter's inspiration through Mallory will forever be trapped inside of me as a time to drop the miseries of winter's struggles and look favorably, with renewed joy, to the Spring, Summer and Fall ahead. And don't forget to thank God a little for helping you to, yet again, make it through January's gray jaws.
Those are the thoughts of Easter that my heart holds in a special chamber. The more modern religious aspects of the holiday do not resonate so much in me. I respect religion, in general, as a useful device for the organization of society. Even as a great means to connect to our (I think, inherent) spirituality. Who can argue with the Ten Commandments or the Golden Rule - these are handy guides. My fear is the desire of various religions to profit as the gatekeeper between man and man's essential spirituality/God. I fear “believers” who batter “non-believers” with randomly-interpreted snippets of the bible and hold Jesus out as a guy who would cast you into the worst possible existence if you don't give your life to “Him” - i.e. your choice of Christianity's (approved-by-man) branches.
God is love, that's where I am at. And as I sat around my place last night, considering the friendly people who attended the dinner party and the wonderful conversations we had concerning these topics and several others, I gave thanks for my good life and the ability to continue through the seemingly never-ending piles of garbage winter threw in my path. And I treasured the clarity and peace I felt, the dishes done, the guests comfortably loaded up with leftovers and gone, my new girlfriend playing guitar and a nice bottle of wine on the table. And all the memories of lovely Easter's past and my friends and family, wherever they may be.
Old Country
I am back in the old country hoping to rediscover my own mainland which I departed from nine years ago in search of the new world. The native turned hostile and I had to leave that new country or lose myself completely. She offered perversions and sadness, subjugation and despair in exchange for her body and what company she would afford.
I broke somewhere out there and just now came to, here in the land of the old Catholics, looking past domes and down on multitudes of old squares, the sun burning through misty winter clouds.
It is cold and I am alone. The language, the place, everything is foreign to me. Everyone is paired off in front of me, complete circuits walking on the smooth stone streets while I look for airborne internet access and a connection to whoever is out there, listening to me. But, it will not be her. The native is far away, back on her own island, waiting for discovery by someone, something new. I am back in my old country-this time, a tourist.
Montreal Reject
I'm sorry I freaked out. This isn't what I wanted.
But when you got sick, I realize now, that I felt your body was rejecting me. Then, when you asked me to leave and insisted that you needed me to go in order to get better--while I was actually here, in Montreal--that felt like another rejection. The following afternoon, when I sent the text about how you being sick and us not being together was having a negative impact on the relationship, you sent a text back that said, "Fuck You."
Then I flipped out. I felt like I couldn't tell you how I was feeling about the whole thing.
But I was on auto-pilot then. I didn't really know what I was doing.
Anyway, it's for the best that this is over, I guess. I really did love you and thought you were the one. But our personalities clash too much.
My feelings were so intense that my reaction was too. That's how I am. And I think you are the same.
So, know I really did love you. Your face is burned into my mind and I've been sad and crying all day. I wish we fit better. You don't know how much passion I had for you.
Too much, I think.
I hope you got feeling better. I'm sick now with sadness. I really need to get home.
On the Pain of Breaking Up
I can offer this bit of advice about healing:
As soon as you realize your spouse was the complete asshole you always worried that they might be and you probably should have never dated them, let alone married them, and you were blind and foolish for doing so, then you can begin to heal! I know this from experience. You have to take the blame for making a mistake that you should have been able to avoid. Once you take responsibility, then you are free to realize that your spouse was simply the wrong person, on maybe even, “a” wrong person.
When I think of that long-term affair going on even as we spent time with each other's families, our friends and when the three of us played music together, how she defended his drunken inability to perform on stage, all off these things-I come to a brutal realization that the whole thing was an exercise in bitter futility. I mean, anyone willing to construct and manage such a complete secret life with a mutual friend IS NOT good wife material. I wish I could have known earlier. Then the bedraggled monster of a marriage could have been kicked into its grave that much sooner.
But see? Once you accept the facts, you can fill in the holes in your memory where the questions used to be. Your spouse was terrible. There's no other way to see it. From there, the healing gets easier.
More healing!! Healing now!
Granada Day Two
Day two of Granada has, so far, brought me back into the world of the living, out of the despairing place I arrived to. The iron-clad reality of my marriage's end had me feeling incredibly lonely and vulnerable as I passed through the evening streets. It is a lovers' city, Granada, everyone is holding hands or looking desperately for someone to hold hands with. Last night, my hands were stuck in my own pockets as I searched the nearby streets in hopes of acclimation for today.
Granada itself is wonderful. Sort of a cross between Madrid and Toledo, meaning, lots of old Moorish streets, twisting around the city’s lower reaches. These small walkways open into larger roads that lead out to still wider roads and the nearby suburbs.
What it lacks in art and museums, it makes up for with its general beauty and the Alhambra, which overlooks the old town. I have yet to make up to see the famous castle on the hill. I think that's for Monday morning, when the mostly Spanish tourists have gone back to work. I did have a look at its flank, perched high above the River Darro, which rambled on and on for over 100 meters.
The river itself seems tiny, but flowing vitally. As I bent over the stone wall to have a look at it, deep in its own small valley, I wondered if it might have run stronger 300 years ago. Surely it did, its banks tell of a deep history. As it runs now, I can't imagine anyone fighting over it, trying to protect it. But rivers in Spain seem to be a precious commodity.
My hotel room was once part of a monastery, so I did a lot of praying last night. I prayed that the idea of my wife and the marriage would fade as quickly as possible. I prayed that I would encounter her as little as possible in the future and if I did see her or hear of her, that I wouldn't care whether she was happy or sad, or alone or with someone. She already is with someone, she was never without.
Tomorrow I will cross the spit of a river and storm the old fortress.
Spring Missive
Twice this past week, the little telephone in my pocket buzzed to life, alerting me to some fantastic situation happening hundreds of secret miles away. Okay, it wasn't that fantastic. But when I picked up and heard the robot on the other end, “The City of St. Paul has declared a snow emergency…” I did feel something like a tingling in the root of transplanted heart. It was good to hear from my old hometown. Good to know that order was being kept in spite of the snowstorms that hovered overhead for the days previous.
Other messages were also transmitted from home. Friends alive, some sad, others okay. Just living, going on. Steady steps one after another. Mom is getting surgery, a friend's son turned one, a band played a show at a bar, talk of summer gatherings has begun.
Out here, in New York, I feel special. I feel the yoke of my shattered marriage has slipped off and has landed somewhere back there. I saw my ex-wife, a thin bag of leaves, sauntering down a Chelsea hallway like a shell shocked battle survivor with only a general destination in mind. I was flustered a little, then-just nothing. I looked at her a second, made a little greeting, touched her shoulder. She felt like clay. No sparks passed, no electricity, just a dull feeling of earth beneath my hand.
I kept walking past the gallery we had in common, reached the hallway's end, called a friend I was to meet and joined him upstairs in another room, to look at other things.
When I returned to the space in question, my ex was gone, but I knew that already.
The next afternoon, as I made my way to the subway, my little phone again buzzed, I fumbled for it, pressed the button and the City of St. Paul was, again, on the line to tell me of its latest decision to declare another snow emergency. “Man, they're really getting it,” I said to myself. Then, “Thanks, St. Paul, for the call.” And as I clicked the button and put the phone back in pocket, I looked up at a clear blue sky and walked into the early spring wind under the gathering warmth of the sun.
Here Goes:
Take Her Away from Me Forever
So, it has finally come to pass that I have given up on my marriage.
After over nine years together, six of which we were married, I have finally given up any possibility of a reconciliation with the adulteress that was my wife.
She loved another man for close to two years, and when I confronted her, challenged her to give him up in favor of our marriage and everything it represented, she refused. And for the last three months, she has maintained her lover, while vacillating back and forth between divorce and near divorce.
I have offered what I could. I answered her first request for reconciliation by communicating a desire to take it slow. This was answered a week later with a change of field and a return to her desire to be single.
In the end, I travel alone to Spain to sort out my thoughts and my feelings. To face my failures in the handling of this marriage, my plain poor choices in the woman I chose and my weaknesses of character.
This morning, she told me it wasn't because she didn't love me, indeed she wants to have a positive connection and date me later. I told her that would be impossible after her actions-which she took responsibility for only two nights ago, but has since absolved herself of. She also has forgotten the moment in bed three weeks ago when she apologized and told me that she knew she did me wrong. This she doesn't remember.
Two months ago, she refused to put aside her lover while trying to work on our marriage. Then she said she wouldn't see him for a period and that in the meantime, we would see a therapist. A day later, she bought an airplane ticket to meet up with him in Mexico.
Prior to that, as we separated for two weeks to clear our heads, she booked a string of hotel rooms with her lover. With our charge card. I know this because the company called about the hotel charges and asked if I knew what was going on. That's customer service.
And she says it isn't about the other man. She says she just doesn't want to be married, that we can date later, be friends. She says she loves me. What kind of love is it that What kind of love do you have for a living thing as you choke it to death?
And yet I love her. I still wish it was different. I have been willing to extend myself, my love, across the divide to be turned away and told, “I still love you. I want to have a positive connection with you, be friends, maybe date later. I just do not want to be married anymore.”
She loves another man. She cannot face her infidelity and her inability to stick to her commitments. She is an egomaniac who I must get away from now; I must let her go for my own sake. And for that, I am weak-again. Selfish and controlling.
God, please free me from this marriage to that hateful, blind woman. Let me go; eject me from the purgatory of her company and my commitment to her. It has been so long since I have tasted real affection and love. I have done all that I could. I have tried. Please grant me peace and success in my quest for future happiness. Please, God, please. Take my love for her away from me. Remove her from my world as soon as possible. Spare me the sight of her. Take her away from me forever.
Overwhelmed
I'm not sure what to say. I am overwhelmed. On the way into town, I listened to “Roller Coaster Ride” by Belle and Sebastian. The song played melancholy as the road through the forest rose up and down along with the waves of feelings flowing out of my body.
On the long drive from New York, I talked to many of my siblings and it always came back to my dad and his fantastic recovery from serious illness then relapse into his various painful (not old-age related) behaviors. What a drag. I am ready to give up. But that's today. Another round of trouble---separate--and I'll then be ready again; like we were taught to be. The family esprit de corps. But, until then…
The ride in to Belle and Co. was fantastic and bittersweet, slow and careful. Too close to risk a deer accident. I realize now that the last several times I've been back, Martina has joined me. Ha! But now I kick it alone, and feel that grinding sadness that will be worn down by the friction of moving into the inevitable future. It always seems so new: the pain, the realization; the everything, the dating, the river, the stars, the sounds of the geese and ducks echoing across the water and off the houses. All this. Another shooting star in a sky AWASH with stars. Were they always this good? Did I forget since the last time I was here in this season? Or is it a special time, some amazing secret night? Both, I suppose.
A moth the size of a bat just flew by. Wait. Okay, it is a moth. I'd bet a bat would really like to eat that moth. That thing's the size of an Australian grub worm. I'm sure almost as meaty.
So I think of Australia and my friends there and I worry that I haven't heard about things. It's up to me to make the connection again. It's always up to me. But, I'm getting vibes, energy. There's always the thing waiting. The big thing, then other big things. And we keep waiting. Hoping to somehow avoid the inevitable. Ha, ha. What a life we all lead until we die!
I caught the big moth and put him onto the porch. Then he flew right back in. Then I caught him (her?) again and took her further away, re-released onto the porch where I'm sure I'll find the thing dead in a day or two's time.
The sky is miraculous and the forest and river sing the sleeping songs of swans, geese, ducks. I'm here now for a while. And to any of you thinking of me, I too am thinking of you. From here to where you are right now. If only you could see these stars. Here tonight.
Granada Update
Well, I stayed up all night and watched the Super Bowl! Yay! Broadcast here in Granada with no commercials-in Spanish even, though they left the Rolling Stones alone. Watching Mick Jagger running up and down the stage was pretty funny. Ballsy guy, but still ridiculous. I watched until the fourth quarter when it seemed the Steelers had it locked up. It felt ridiculous, staying up until 4 a.m. to watch American football in Spain, but that's what I did.
The excitement (and the jet lag) were such that I didn't fall asleep, and at 6:15, I geared up and began the pre-dawn walk to the Alhambra. Word was to expect long lines, get there early, by 7 a.m. The walk was steep but short, and I found myself at the right place before 7 a.m., more than 1 1/2 hours before they opened, and froze my ass off waiting for the sweepers, then the guards, then the gate keepers, etc.
Once inside, it was lovely. The main palace is the most spectacular ruin I've ever seen. Steelar! (Wait that's the super bowl again). I meant STELLAR! The decorative workmanship, the gardens, the fountains-and these were just ruins-it was amazing. I admit that I am in a sensitive emotional state and the beauty of it made me cry.
From a parapet, I looked down on the chilly Darro and saw the plaza from which I spied the castle two evenings previous.
Another highlight was at the Generalife-the smaller, more casual palace further up the hill from the main structure. In one of the gardens, the place where you would put your hands was instead being employed by a fantastic and ancient aqueduct system. Too much to explain, I suppose, suffice it to say that the Alhambra is worth the trouble to visit. I brought along a travel copy of Washington Irving's “Tales of the Alhambra,” a English copy printed in Madrid. Red leather. I read it front of a fireplace while I laid on my couch in St. Paul, MN, several years ago. My dog sleeping beside me and a small glass of brandy on the table. A different life ago.
On the Americans:
I have encountered very few Americans. I think they have all been students. And all girls. Actually, I am surrounded by a gaggle of them right now at this pub I am sitting, writing in. They are kids, sloppy, dumb, smoking, talking about where they are going tonight and classes tomorrow. If I talk to any of them, I'll have to ask where the teachers are hanging out.
To my close friend Jim R.:
I had a dream that I was hanging out with you and your brother. We were waiting at the police station for him to check in or be interviewed or something. Then he ran off and you, exasperated, but not surprised, followed, knowing that the cops weren't interested anyway. Your brother was an updated version of his childhood self, running wild and we followed him around, humoring the poor fellow. He was clearly going to get into trouble. The question was whether he would do it when we were around or not.
Anyway, we wound up at my (unique, dream) place. While we talked, your brother darted into another room inexplicably loaded with comic book memorabilia. Plugged into the wall was a dangerous mess of cords and wires, dollar bills intertwined in the works. You said we had better check on him, he might grab some of the bills and mess up the tenuous electrical balance.
We entered the second room and he was nowhere to be seen. As we looked and called, I saw movement near the cord area. He was hiding, waiting for us to find him. Then he pushed through the cable mess, smiling, but unhappy. The cords seemed okay and I knew it was time for us to get out of my place.
That's the dream.
Student Update:
Two American female students are having a serious talk. The pretty one is explaining to the less pretty one that she likes her and appreciates the use of her computer, but that she doesn't really want to be friends. How they are both too mature to have communication problems.
Now they are talking about skiing. Damn, I was supposed to ski with Angela. I had a place booked with view of the Sierra Nevada. My heart aches that I wouldn't be able to get there, to be in the mountains, on this trip. That battle is for another trip, another time, another version of me.
And finally…
Obviously, I am feeling better about my dying marriage. I have extended myself to a great degree, I have tried to make improvements in myself, I have discovered a vast wealth of love for my spouse that surprised her and myself. And that love hung there as an offer that was accepted, rejected, accepted and finally rejected. I have to give up. I am here until it is over. I look forward to the future.
I'll be heartbroken and crying later tonight, of course, but I definitely feel well-founded. Angela is a woman who lives on shifting ground. It is her way to live in vague shades of gray. She is welcome to her life and her choices. They are no longer my concern.
I am trying to get to the Iberia office to make my return trip arrangements. As cheap as food is, my deluxe hotel (chosen for good make-up possibilities) is expensive and my reservation is semi-rigid. If I wind up staying much longer I will move to cheaper accommodations, but I would like to get home this week anyway, get back to dating, and sorting the nuts and bolts of my divorce.
In the Woods
Kicking it from my cabin at 1 a.m. Wednesday morning. It's hot out here and Leopold and I just had a midnight jog. I thought it best to bring him along after all the wildlife I saw today. Plus there was that bear incident last summer. So, here's a list of the interesting animals I spotted today:
1. Bald Eagle
2. Dead Turkey (Eagle was eating Turkey)
3. River otter. Very cute, but very close to my dock, etc.
4. Fox
5. Possum
6. Deer
7. Weird decaying, fossil-like, frog carcass on my screen porch.
That's about it for the critters. Anyway, Leopold accompanied me on two runs today for a total of about 3.25 miles. He's 11, but kept up well and I am very proud of the old mutt. He's looking at me right now from his cushion. I think he misses his pal, Izzy.
Well, I had to say “No, no, no…” to friendship with my last girlfriend today. That sucked, but something about the proposition seemed false and though I don't have a complaint against her, I am pissed off at the way I wasn't surprised by the way things unfolded, plus a few other various and sundry small hurts, etc. Nothing major, just the usual. It's tough finding people you like well enough to spend time with, so that's the real issue: you hate to give that up. But people get different things out of relationships and friendship isn't something I'm interested in. Better to just drop it completely and move on.
Okay, animals, post-break-up news. What else?
I did visit with another ex yesterday. It was pretty good to see her. It brought back many memories and she's a very supportive, though not often talked with, friend. Seeing her was weirdly reaffirming and it gave me some juice for the continued headlong flight into my future.
Beyond that, one of my brothers is flying into Montana tomorrow. He's taking my mom and her sister on a helicopter tour of the neighborhood where the girls were brought up. What a fun time they will have, I'm sure.
So, that's it. Living in a hazy summer sadness. Adjusting to a long stay here and falling into the necessary patterns to make it a successful one. Feeling pretty lonely and trying to get out of the self-pity zone I'm currently bogged down in.
A Little Knot
A little knot of feelings had stolen the joy out of everything for a moment and the idea of sleeping evaporated like fog in the sun. Just before retiring, a close friend called and thanked me for the dinner I had made his visiting family. “I just want you to know, they really had a good time. It was a very sweet thing to do.” I didn't want to talk, so I thanked him for thanking me-thus completing the thanking chain-and trundled to bed where I would lay in a vain attempt to make it an early night.
His parents were older and on the verge of being completely unhappy with each other. The father was fat from drinking, which was necessary to cover up the pain and shame of whatever troubles he had, mistakes he had made. His wife held the moral high ground. “We've been married too long,” she said before his sister short-stopped, “Not this again,” and veered the conversation back to shallower waters. At this point, my friend's woman decided to leave and that marked the end of the night. It was peaceful on the whole and I could watch and listen to people who don't get listened to much anymore. They took full advantage of my open ears and spun tales of family histories, spirits guiding the old woman's writing and interests, rabid wolves at the door of her baby grandmother's shack in the wilderness butted up to the tiniest banalities. I knew they were comfortable if they could share such things and skirt right up to the edge of telling me why they should get divorced and the other people they once loved.
It all left me feeling exhausted and bittersweet. But the notion of family, even someone else's, was a nice and listening to the parents talk to their son and daughter about happy (and sad) old memories was worth something. They had lost the ability to direct their children anymore and everyone knew it and was sad for the time that had passed. They liked his girlfriend and I couldn't help but think my friend and his girlfriend would be married soon and that the moment was a very special one.
The last person I accidentally fell in love with filled my thoughts. I knew I would see her the following evening after two months apart after eight months together. The idea depressed me. I knew she would re-affirm the necessary “over-ness” of the situation, making it undeniably final. Which was okay with me. But it hurt. It had to be this way. I fell but she didn't. Well she did, but for some guy in Japan.
And the bittersweet family feeling and my friend and his girlfriend and the hopelessness of marriage and relationships and the desire for love, intimacy, surprise and hope. Everything had evaporated like my desire to sleep, so I put my clothes on and walked to the park.
Plus I was falling apart. When I woke up the morning previous, my foot was aching from a muscle strained by the previous day's long and wonderful run through the summer evening. What a great run. It felt so good and I was running like a fine machine. But the morning turned the power to pain and I found I could barely walk.
My thumb had also been filleted for a drunken “blood-brother” bonding ritual with the same friend whose parents and company would later be my guests. One may have a hard time cutting his own hand, so we cut each other's and he went deep and cut a vessel in my thumb which had pumped out blood which I flung around the apartment and the bar afterwards. With throbbing pain at two ends of my four limbs, I cleaned up the blood spots that had appeared in amazing places throughout the apartment. I had really gotten around. In the laundry bin there was one bloody pair of jeans and a shirt that would have to be dealt with later. It was all so absurd.
But thinking on everything was driving me crazy so I got up and went out the door onto the stairs (since the elevator was broken) with my incredibly sore toe and lose thumb-tip and emerged into the humid New York night. I stayed clear of the bar whose interior I spackled the previous evening and went towards the river with the city park between the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges as my destination.
It was midnight and many people and dogs were about and everybody seemed to be talking to someone else. Even the homeless guy was chatting up a young woman. It was all so preposterous. Everything that had happened forever added up to this and it turned out to just be an ongoing gyration with, quite possibly, no point whatsoever.
But the night was still and the air full. Dogs stared at me from the fronts of bars where their masters drank beer after beer. Some Cholos were drinking beer and watching a movie that was being shot in the next park over. The state park, which figures into 5 million movies, was again called into service. They had been shooting movies and TV shows all over the place the past few weeks. I had to run around three good-looking (in a dumb way) party chicks on the aforementioned jog vying for the attention of some low-level Abercrombie-type models at the famous local pizza parlor. Yikes.
The movie-watching, beer drinking homies were just chilling and gave me an easy pass. Everything was completely cool tonight. Everyone was okay, in some groove. Still, energy crackled and I wondered where the wild card lay. I thought maybe celebrity was afoot.
A guy took a nighttime shot of his girlfriend with the Brooklyn Bridge and the big movie lights in the background. He was really fat and she was cute and fit. Another couple was laying on the grass making out passionately. The guy looked up at me as I scoped his woman's splayed ass. Funny. Someone whistled at someone else and I looked over. The photo couple had rejoined another couple. A couple of couples.
Then another boy/girl love-team appeared. The girl was surrounded by the boy, who pumped gently then took her hand and put it in the dick area. She was into it. By the time I made it around the corner and looked back, her legs were spread-still dressed-and he had moved into the central, missionary position.
I wanted to tell somebody, but the guys smoking cigars on the benches were engaged in a discussion about Arnold Schwartzenegger's immunity to health concerns. I thought he might be around and looked over at the big lights. It was too far away to see anything and who cared besides?
By now, the sex couple was just a blob in the grass behind me. I couldn't believe they would fuck on the grass in the middle of all those people in the park. It was perverted or maybe wonderful.
The point is that I was watching it. I saw it. Everything was of a piece. And when I cracked the lock of my apartment's door, I felt a little bit better and was able to get back into my lonely bed and fall right off to sleep.
Goodbye Montreal
It's raining and gray today. I've been staying in an area called “The Plateau,” that is renowned for being “edgy, trendy, & hip.” There's a grocery store across the street, a SAC, where you can buy good wine, nearby, even a coffee shop downstairs. It's prime Montreal, but I just want to leave.
I came here last Sunday to attempt to move a fledgling relationship forward. It had been six months of long-distance talking; one meeting in Europe and this would be my fourth trip here. The woman in question is young and beautiful, dark, complicated, provincial. Because of a past indiscretion, she wouldn't be allowed into America until 2010. The waiting, the constant need for travel on my part, caused friction and difficulty from the start. So too, differences in language, attitude. But despite the fact that each time we were together we had to have a big fight before we could get along, love grew even though the situation was difficult and huge.
The first conversations covered issues like living all over, Berlin mostly, New York, other places. And these conversations became the bedrock lifestyle idea that we both dreamed about. But after a few months, it became clear that not only was the blockage into America a factor, but so were the needs of her career in Montreal.
For those of you who know me, you know I can be a handful on my own, especially if drinking. But you also know I am not afraid of complicated women and situations. And the problems associated with this, as well as the one-week per month trips to Montreal, to see her, kept me busy and began wearing me out. I started going back and forth between realizing the situation was untenable and feeling like getting through it would be an almost religious exercise. I could see being together and growing old, kids. I could see the future, her face, going to my cabin. But then, we would talk and fight and I would swing the other way and realize that it was virtually impossible. More trips to Montreal, hope, time, money, would she ever really be able to join me anywhere outside of Montreal?
And what of Montreal? Her family as here, and she swung from being estranged to wanting them back. I met some of them and they were nice people. Smart. But who can know what goes on between family members? All the history. There were stories she wouldn't tell me, but it wasn't my business. All I eventually gathered was that her feelings toward family and friends could be extreme and brittle.
She is smart and talented, lovely, angry, quiet, alone, hurt so many times.
I know I hurt her again. I came here to try to make this go forward. I made arrangements to have some of my own space while visiting this city. Days before I left, she said it was bad timing. She was tired and feeling something else. Flashbacks to bad experiences, more relationships fading into and out of view. I arrived at her apartment; she was tired, and beautiful. Within 24 hours, I was alone in the next neighborhood over, the Plateau, and I would never see her again.
I don't know exactly what happened. She was tired, got ill and asked me to leave. It's more personal and complicated than that, but I wound up here, sleeping alone; the woman I passionately love, across town, alone too. And sick. I was frozen out. It was really a stunning feeling. And Montreal did its part, lending a freezing cold couplet of blizzard days that made it obvious why February is the top month for suicides in this town. After the travel, three months apart, to be alone felt more than wrong. It was like a kick to my soul and spirit. The air was sucked out of the space I protected for this relationship. In the morning, I asked how she was, she was still ill. When pressed, she snapped. And I snapped. And all of the negative pressure of everything else came back and it ended. Over the internet, while we were only five miles apart.
No more word, no more life. A ton of hope sucked away, turned quickly around in stunning irony. A week ago, I was counting the days before I got here, now I am counting the hours until I leave.
After holing up here in someone else's apartment for four days alone, I did manage to meet a couple of writers and a singer while going out, trying to function like a human being. They all said it was good that it ended. My friends, over the phone, have said the same. They said, “Come back home.” But I had to wait. The apartment swappers are in my Brooklyn place until tomorrow, my flight is tomorrow. I'll be gone from here tomorrow.
I decided yesterday to have my tarot cards read. My vibe was on fire, I felt so bad about wrecking this wonderful, impossible thing. The card for her was “The Hangman,” and the theory was that, “At best this person has drug use issues, and at worst you will be trying to change someone who isn't ready.” It went on, “If you are very patient and persistent, with time, there is a chance.” It was funny, how accurate the whole reading was. She said she couldn't be herself around me. I realized, very late, that I had been wishing her into someone more perfect for me, instead of accepting her for who she was. I kept waiting for situation to change, to magically improve. One great problem with not seeing someone you love is that you can project qualities onto him or her that your subconscious needs or wants to air out. You idealize them, or the other way around. You want to overlook the difficult parts that you don't like. But it doesn't mean that those things go away. Instead, they get more pressurized.
After I finish sorting through this mess of feelings, the wrecked passion, I will awake back in my life in New York, in the middle of three projects. But her face is burned in my mind. She was so beautiful when she opened the door to let me in, just five days ago. The love surging through me was so intense, I was almost overwhelmed. So much passion and intensity. Then to be asked to leave. Even lovingly, after all this time part. And to never see her again. Wow.
So, it rains in Montreal. The people don't care; the weather doesn't care. I said goodbye on Monday night. I haven't really been here since then. But I will say it another time. One last time. Goodbye Sara, Goodbye Montreal. I don't think I will see either of you again.
My Day in Tokyo
Hi Mom! I'm still in Tokyo! I don't know too many people and everyone here works until 8 or 9 p.m. so I get the days to myself. Yesterday, I went to the Roppongi Art Center in the fashionable neighborhood of the same name. I was very excited to see some new work, especially Japanese Modern Art. On the way, I noticed signs for an overview of the Turner Prize, which is English, but still pretty good.
At first, I couldn't find the museum, so I wandered around in search of coffee and something to eat. Soon enough, I was at the residential edge of the village and had to turn around. I did, however, manage to find some small cakes and espresso, plus directions to the art center. Oh, I forgot to mention the cab fare was about $27. Things are expensive here.
Ah, the museum! Was closed. The new show wasn't up yet, so I turned around and headed into the Roppongi Hills shopping center. I should mention that I bought a Paul Smith shirt the day before for about $170 US. That's about 30% more than in NYC. But I had to have it. The person I was with thought it looked good and all my clothes were getting a type of dirty that I would have to describe as “hyper-molecular.” La, la, la…I meandered around, ate a hamburger and looked at clothes. I found a raw cotton shirt for $35 and thought about buying it. It was also pink and since pink is the thing for this spring I considered it. Then I realized it was $350. Shopping in New York suddenly seemed like the thing to do, even for me, so I closed my desire and moved on.
Most of the shopping center was being renovated so I decided to try and find the other museum I was looking for. I found a map, but there was a curious tunnel involved in the journey, so I decided to walk around the greater neighborhood instead. Roppongi opened up before me as I walked past shops selling fake fashions and the big stores selling everything you can image-from food to costumes (mostly school girl outfits).
Speaking of girls, they are mostly pretty and all wear black stockings, which are very sexy. But everyone is wearing them, so it dilutes the sexiness level. There are noticeably less plastic surgery victims here, which is nice, though women in Korea from afar appear to be much more stunning. I would say the denizens of Tokyo have more style though. Much more cosmopolitan.
As I walked about, I began to notice things familiar to me, things which made me feel warm and cozy inside-a Hard Rock Café store, for instance. McDonald's and Starbucks! Home at last! Yay! “These will make nice photos for the folks back home,” I thought. Check out the pictures I made, you will see. I would have also taken a picture of me at TGI Friday's but my fingers were sticky from the “Rib Ticklers” I enjoyed within.
I kept walking and saw a Volvo dealership. Volvo is owned by Ford now, so I decided it was American enough to walk by and check out. One car inside was $88,000! But it had a V-8. I coulda had a V8! Then I passed the used lot and saw an S60, much like the one I had when married a few years back. That brought back pleasant memories. Geez. Then it started to rain and I thought about the Korean woman I met in New York named Rain and how mean she was. Then I thought about marriage again.
I rounded the corner towards what I thought would be my eventual way home. I thought about heading into an Iranian restaurant, but worried about possible abduction, so I kept moving. I saw a Poodle puppy in the window. Very cute! The dog was $2200. Which is expensive for something that could be eaten. I took a picture and had warm thoughts.
Eventualy, I arrived in Tokyo Mid-town, which is a pretty ritzy area. I traipsed into a fancy mall and pretended to have more money than I actually do. It was really expensive. I did find a reasonably priced glass off (Australian) D'Arenberg Shiraz, at an American wine bar, which I enjoyed next to a lazy, rich, drunk, American housewife and two pudgy American white boys growing old fast. I was depressed! I left after one glass without letting on my nationality. The woman was kind of cute though also a plastic surgery survivor. Her face was stretched into a painful-looking smile that worked against her angsty drunkenness. She was waiting for her dog to be groomed in a shop down the hall.
I had passed a chocolate shop and decided I would buy some for myself and my friend Tomoko who likes chocolate and who I would be seeing later on for dinner. Four pieces of chocolate: $32. The Japanese clerk behind the counter told me it was the most expensive chocolate IN THE WORLD. I had to try it.
I was still starving and light-headed since I had a long run earlier in the day. So, I caught a cab and was back in the comfy confines of my hotel-which is much like a blue-collar prison with an okay view-took a nap and waited for dinner time.
Eventually, I heard from Tomoko who said she would be ready at 11. Which is pretty late for dinner, so we decided to skip it. I wound up eating some snacks and going to bed early. I had seen three of the four movies already and just wasn't ready for the 24 hour porn block. The fourth of the “regular” movies was a Steven Segal adventure movie. Segal was okay up until he put out that blues record. That's where I draw the line. I wish he would have worked with Bruce Willis, that would have been a barn-burner, but solo? No way, Segal!
Do, do, do….I started getting bored. And hungry again. So I surfed the web, in search of a fun bar that would be open and not too sleazy. Ahhh…The Park Hyatt Hotel Bar! This is the one that was in “Lost in Translation,” not my hotel, the Hyatt Regency Tokyo. My place is a wedding hotel, not so hip. The bar here is populated with businessmen in black suits drinking hard liquor and smoking cigars. Live jazz at the Park Hyatt. And just around the corner. I did take a cab since it was raining, and soon enough I was pulling up to the hotel I wanted to stay in, but wasn't. Lots of good-looking people waited for cars and I hoped I wasn't too late to join the party.
It took an eon to figure out the way to the 52nd Floor. A series of elevators+walking is necessary if you want to scale the heights and pay the $20 cover of the Manhattan Bar. I practically live in the real Manhattan, so this would be perfect. The view was insane and I watched the rain fall outside, over the city which laid out vast and wonderful before me. Red lights twinkled on the little buildings below, way below, so planes could see the roofs in foggy, grey weather like this.
The acoustics were horrible. The only attractive single women were all at one table whose other occupants I couldn't see due to an obstructed view. I drank 4 glasses of Cline Zinfandel and enjoyed Duck Fat French Fries and Marlboro Reds. I was pretty sad my dinner plans collapsed and determined to (try to, anyway) have a good time. I took in the view a little extra, to mark it. The band was okay, what I could hear. The girls left with two small sumo wrestlers (two girls for each), then it was last call, then my bill for $110 was paid, then to the bathroom, where, for the first time, I tried the bidet-that was something! Gee, that water is hot! I smiled in a cleanly manner, took the series of elevators back down, got another cab, through the rain, and in moments, I was back here. 12.30, not tired, barely drunk, no plans and rain forecast for the next day.
I went to bed and woke u this morningp, and it's still raining, so I decided to skip my day trip. Besides, everyone works until like midnight, so traveling more alone doesn't do much for me. Soaked, cold, on a train to someplace I'm not too sure of. Tomoko is out of the scene now too, I think her boyfriend is back in the picture, so until tomorrow, it's just me, kicking it solo. Maybe I'll head to another museum, there's one here in Shinjuko. Yep, that's what I'll do. Then I will work out ($21) at the gym here. Oh yeah, I now have clean clothes. I had some things laundered ($63).
Arm in Arm
Sunny, Spring
The dogwoods popping out in Soho
People: tourists, mostly.
I rush up to feeling that hole where a person used to live inside of me
Dead now
Though I see her on the other side of the street
Arm in arm with something else
A living ghost, a vampire
Fed off the life of my memories
So much taken away, given up, died away
Or maybe I loved a ghost
Died away into that apparition
Across the street
Arm in arm
With something else.
Easter
These last few days I've been musing on the past. What started it all off was talking to my sister back in Montana a few days ago; she caught me up on the basic goings-on and I reported back from my East Coast outpost. At conversation's end, she wished me a “Happy Easter,” that, to my shame, surprised me suddenly. I hadn't really thought about Easter for a while and that disconnection had me feeling like a traitor to my childhood.
Easter. David Sedaris' account of all things American Easter to his French class came right to mind later when a French friend laughed at me and mangled her English wishing me rabbits and eggs and telling me she wouldn't make it over for our little party. But that was later, first I had to recount what made Easter important to me and muse on its current value.
Of course, the most colorful memories are tied to my childhood-dressing up nicely for church on promising spring mornings, the egg hunt just ahead. Catholic church is more fun at Easter time, more pageantry, getting out of school for Ash Wednesday, the big feasts, early spring football games played in forgotten parks with family and friends.
You know, thinking back, the egg hunt was pretty weak. Maybe because there were so many older kids in my family, the hiding was haphazard and the rewards questionable. And besides, you give up on the preposterous Easter Bunny pretty fast and that loss of innocence is the gateway to the impending loss of Santa and the grotesque pains of early adolescence. What's there to love about that crap? I might as well make a holiday of the time I dented my head on a doorknob at the old house in Bloomington - every year, I could rub salve on the scar's remnants and recall my first feelings of true pain. Oh boy.
I guess pain figures into most Easter memories.
Another meaningful Easter was spent crying and writing letters to a terrible old girlfriend. We had broken up for the zillionth painful time and I was, once again, promising some vague repentance in an ultimately successful attempt to win the bruising shrew back. I had recently finished Mallory's “Le Morte de Arthur” and was moved by the fantastic mythology of the lone knights searching through a bizarre purgatory for the valued grail - the cup from which Jesus took his last drink. What a job! Anyway, after enduring all sorts of various painful and creative situations, the remaining Knights of the Round Table returned home to celebrate Easter. Back in Camelot, they got to eat, rest, worship and tell stories of their fights and wonder where and how their lost comrades were felled.
From this type of material, I fashioned a winning letter, filled with tears and promises of calmer times to come. The winter was over and it was time for us to rest, then renew, with open hearts, the quest for our elusive love. I remember the big, blue sky overhead with an oak tree blowing beautifully in the wind, buds in mid-sprout. Easter's inspiration through Mallory will forever be trapped inside of me as a time to drop the miseries of winter's struggles and look favorably, with renewed joy, to the Spring, Summer and Fall ahead. And don't forget to thank God a little for helping you to, yet again, make it through January's gray jaws.
Those are the thoughts of Easter that my heart holds in a special chamber. The more modern religious aspects of the holiday do not resonate so much in me. I respect religion, in general, as a useful device for the organization of society. Even as a great means to connect to our (I think, inherent) spirituality. Who can argue with the Ten Commandments or the Golden Rule - these are handy guides. My fear is the desire of various religions to profit as the gatekeeper between man and man's essential spirituality/God. I fear “believers” who batter “non-believers” with randomly-interpreted snippets of the bible and hold Jesus out as a guy who would cast you into the worst possible existence if you don't give your life to “Him” - i.e. your choice of Christianity's (approved-by-man) branches.
God is love, that's where I am at. And as I sat around my place last night, considering the friendly people who attended the dinner party and the wonderful conversations we had concerning these topics and several others, I gave thanks for my good life and the ability to continue through the seemingly never-ending piles of garbage winter threw in my path. And I treasured the clarity and peace I felt, the dishes done, the guests comfortably loaded up with leftovers and gone, my new girlfriend playing guitar and a nice bottle of wine on the table. And all the memories of lovely Easter's past and my friends and family, wherever they may be.
Old Country
I am back in the old country hoping to rediscover my own mainland which I departed from nine years ago in search of the new world. The native turned hostile and I had to leave that new country or lose myself completely. She offered perversions and sadness, subjugation and despair in exchange for her body and what company she would afford.
I broke somewhere out there and just now came to, here in the land of the old Catholics, looking past domes and down on multitudes of old squares, the sun burning through misty winter clouds.
It is cold and I am alone. The language, the place, everything is foreign to me. Everyone is paired off in front of me, complete circuits walking on the smooth stone streets while I look for airborne internet access and a connection to whoever is out there, listening to me. But, it will not be her. The native is far away, back on her own island, waiting for discovery by someone, something new. I am back in my old country-this time, a tourist.
Montreal Reject
I'm sorry I freaked out. This isn't what I wanted.
But when you got sick, I realize now, that I felt your body was rejecting me. Then, when you asked me to leave and insisted that you needed me to go in order to get better--while I was actually here, in Montreal--that felt like another rejection. The following afternoon, when I sent the text about how you being sick and us not being together was having a negative impact on the relationship, you sent a text back that said, "Fuck You."
Then I flipped out. I felt like I couldn't tell you how I was feeling about the whole thing.
But I was on auto-pilot then. I didn't really know what I was doing.
Anyway, it's for the best that this is over, I guess. I really did love you and thought you were the one. But our personalities clash too much.
My feelings were so intense that my reaction was too. That's how I am. And I think you are the same.
So, know I really did love you. Your face is burned into my mind and I've been sad and crying all day. I wish we fit better. You don't know how much passion I had for you.
Too much, I think.
I hope you got feeling better. I'm sick now with sadness. I really need to get home.
On the Pain of Breaking Up
I can offer this bit of advice about healing:
As soon as you realize your spouse was the complete asshole you always worried that they might be and you probably should have never dated them, let alone married them, and you were blind and foolish for doing so, then you can begin to heal! I know this from experience. You have to take the blame for making a mistake that you should have been able to avoid. Once you take responsibility, then you are free to realize that your spouse was simply the wrong person, on maybe even, “a” wrong person.
When I think of that long-term affair going on even as we spent time with each other's families, our friends and when the three of us played music together, how she defended his drunken inability to perform on stage, all off these things-I come to a brutal realization that the whole thing was an exercise in bitter futility. I mean, anyone willing to construct and manage such a complete secret life with a mutual friend IS NOT good wife material. I wish I could have known earlier. Then the bedraggled monster of a marriage could have been kicked into its grave that much sooner.
But see? Once you accept the facts, you can fill in the holes in your memory where the questions used to be. Your spouse was terrible. There's no other way to see it. From there, the healing gets easier.
More healing!! Healing now!
Granada Day Two
Day two of Granada has, so far, brought me back into the world of the living, out of the despairing place I arrived to. The iron-clad reality of my marriage's end had me feeling incredibly lonely and vulnerable as I passed through the evening streets. It is a lovers' city, Granada, everyone is holding hands or looking desperately for someone to hold hands with. Last night, my hands were stuck in my own pockets as I searched the nearby streets in hopes of acclimation for today.
Granada itself is wonderful. Sort of a cross between Madrid and Toledo, meaning, lots of old Moorish streets, twisting around the city’s lower reaches. These small walkways open into larger roads that lead out to still wider roads and the nearby suburbs.
What it lacks in art and museums, it makes up for with its general beauty and the Alhambra, which overlooks the old town. I have yet to make up to see the famous castle on the hill. I think that's for Monday morning, when the mostly Spanish tourists have gone back to work. I did have a look at its flank, perched high above the River Darro, which rambled on and on for over 100 meters.
The river itself seems tiny, but flowing vitally. As I bent over the stone wall to have a look at it, deep in its own small valley, I wondered if it might have run stronger 300 years ago. Surely it did, its banks tell of a deep history. As it runs now, I can't imagine anyone fighting over it, trying to protect it. But rivers in Spain seem to be a precious commodity.
My hotel room was once part of a monastery, so I did a lot of praying last night. I prayed that the idea of my wife and the marriage would fade as quickly as possible. I prayed that I would encounter her as little as possible in the future and if I did see her or hear of her, that I wouldn't care whether she was happy or sad, or alone or with someone. She already is with someone, she was never without.
Tomorrow I will cross the spit of a river and storm the old fortress.
Spring Missive
Twice this past week, the little telephone in my pocket buzzed to life, alerting me to some fantastic situation happening hundreds of secret miles away. Okay, it wasn't that fantastic. But when I picked up and heard the robot on the other end, “The City of St. Paul has declared a snow emergency…” I did feel something like a tingling in the root of transplanted heart. It was good to hear from my old hometown. Good to know that order was being kept in spite of the snowstorms that hovered overhead for the days previous.
Other messages were also transmitted from home. Friends alive, some sad, others okay. Just living, going on. Steady steps one after another. Mom is getting surgery, a friend's son turned one, a band played a show at a bar, talk of summer gatherings has begun.
Out here, in New York, I feel special. I feel the yoke of my shattered marriage has slipped off and has landed somewhere back there. I saw my ex-wife, a thin bag of leaves, sauntering down a Chelsea hallway like a shell shocked battle survivor with only a general destination in mind. I was flustered a little, then-just nothing. I looked at her a second, made a little greeting, touched her shoulder. She felt like clay. No sparks passed, no electricity, just a dull feeling of earth beneath my hand.
I kept walking past the gallery we had in common, reached the hallway's end, called a friend I was to meet and joined him upstairs in another room, to look at other things.
When I returned to the space in question, my ex was gone, but I knew that already.
The next afternoon, as I made my way to the subway, my little phone again buzzed, I fumbled for it, pressed the button and the City of St. Paul was, again, on the line to tell me of its latest decision to declare another snow emergency. “Man, they're really getting it,” I said to myself. Then, “Thanks, St. Paul, for the call.” And as I clicked the button and put the phone back in pocket, I looked up at a clear blue sky and walked into the early spring wind under the gathering warmth of the sun.
posted by Leo Kelbs at 5:26 PM
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