The Pontificators

to continue with the sex theme, this one’s alternately titled Who I Did on my Summer Vacation (joking. sorta.).

An instance of repeating

when the world is only beginning

Strong coffee in the evening and a walk through the bookshelf of a stranger. He is too young for his grey hair, and he has been to Prague, and this Kundera, he’s Czech, isn’t he? We have already dreamed aloud together, and every step taken on common ground must surely bring us closer. I take the book home with me: heavy, even in its unbearable, unbeatable lightness.

Despite or because of the globe’s spinning, I am through the novel in moments like repeated prayer, like the movement of air into and out from lungs. I copy down carefully a single metaphor can give birth to love and leave it in the book for him to find when I return it.

In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera says: If eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can stand out against it in all their splendid lightness.

The grey hairs spread into a stripe of silver over the next year and a half. We understand this to be my doing. We fall, like leaves or pieces of paper, into place more easily and beautifully than I could have wished or planned.

But leaves lose their grip on trees in the wind, and actually, life is never what you plan. Sometimes things fall together, and sometimes they fall apart.

dissolution

1 : the act or process of dissolving : as a : separation into component parts b (1) : DECAY, DISINTEGRATION (2) : DEATH c : termination or destruction by breaking down, disrupting, or dispersing <the dissolution of the republic> d : the dissolving of an assembly or organization e : LIQUEFACTION

when it is getting warm

With the writer in those first days: he is attentive and well-read and distracting, with dark hair free of grey. He asks me to recommend a book, which I take as a challenge. I don’t give him Kundera – he’s already read it, which pleases me. I give him my favorite Joan Didion novel, telling him the magic is in her use of repetition. For his benefit I have underlined I’m driving Sunset and I’m staying in the left lane because I can see the New Havana Ballroom and I’m going to turn left at the New Havana Ballroom. I have also written yes at the end of chapter fifty-two. He returns the book two days later.

I say I’m impressed you read it so fast.

He says I’m impressed with your taste.

At home I look between the pages for a bookmark, a note, a clue – but of course there’s none. It doesn’t really matter, though. I have already decided that I will be leaving someone behind.

liquefaction

You are free to do whatever you want, I tell the man with grey hairs.

You are too, he says. My eyes, closed. The evening light.

OK, I say.

OK, he says.

repetition

1 a : the act or an instance of repeating or being repeated b : a motion or exercise (as a push-up) that is repeated and usually counted

when the leaves are new

With a tall man in the woods; he says he’s just picked up something Czech – starts with a K, he thinks. It’s a good one, I tell him. He says hm, smiles. He, too, has a few grey hairs. We understand them to be my doing, but we don’t really understand each other.

His grey hairs start multiplying like buds on trees, and I try not to over-explain my fascination and alarm. Life is not a cycle; it is a series of events. The repetition means something different every single time.

Kundera says: In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.

We will walk into summer together, but not out of it.

disintegration

The tall man reads the Joan Didion. He is eager to talk about it in the sun, saying “I’ve never read anything like this before” while I think about the night before, moving furniture with the writer, each of us saying it is time for a change and hoping this is a metaphor for something else, and it is: this is a metaphor and the earth was turning very quickly last night, all night, and today.

When I get quiet in the car later the tall man says I can tell you have something to say, but if you don’t want to talk about it I guess that’s fine.

Yes, but I need to, I say.

He waits for me to finish the words: “and I’m going to give this a chance.”

OK, he says.

We each look at our own hands on our own knees, in the car, not touching.

decay

I don’t have any sense of intimacy with you I tell the writer, when it is already too late.

That’s kind of part of my personality, he says. I think about how he would move away from me in the night.

I just don’t see why two people who don’t make each other that happy should stay together any longer, I say.

OK, he says.

Later we shake hands. Well that was very adult, he says.

When he leaves I call the man with grey hair. Things are already shifting. Summer is ending and the world seems to be turning right-side-up again, without our asking or effort.

But actually, life is never what you plan. Sometimes things fall together, and sometimes they fall apart. And sometimes when they could fall apart they don’t, instead – sometimes instead they hold together because you have at your disposal some very strong glue and a very strong wish to try, let’s try this again, let’s give this thing another chance and see what happens.

when it is getting cold again

Kundera says: Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.

I feel like we should still be so happy, I tell the man with grey hairs over pancakes and applesauce.

I’m happy, he says. Aren’t you?

I’m fine, I say.

He is looking at me, so I look out the window. The bank says it’s fifty-three degrees.

I hope this isn’t like last time, he says.

I tell him I will absolutely not make any promises either way about that and think about how there are no easy answers and about how the world will only grow colder again in the coming months and about Joan Didion and how she wrote I have this problem with as it was.

when the leaves have fallen

Going through my shelves, offering new books to the tall man, who I am trying to make a friend. “This is what she’ll do to you,” I warn him, reading aloud from Carole Maso: I was hoping to tame my terror with sex or language. He says mm, nods. I tell him that the repetition means something different every single time. He nods and I can never tell how much he knows. I think to myself: he could have learned, he could have learned. But I know that I, too, have trouble with as it was.

The repetition means something different, every single time. Life is not a cycle; it is a series of events.

lightness

Sometimes things fall apart. Sometimes they also fall back together, like how the leaves always end up back on the trees. Give it time: it will get warm again; we will live again. Making choices and keeping secrets and fighting or falling in to the occasional (constant) trickle of memory every time I close my eyes. Saying we don’t need to tell anyone about this, saying he doesn’t need to hear about this. Sometimes good writers make confusing lovers, and sometimes tall men organize their kitchens in impossible ways. But sometimes arms are just like you remember, and sometimes they are better. Sometimes a man with grey hair loves you when you leave and come back, and leave and come back again. Sometimes I think: I am not changing. I have not changed. I still sit quiet in the kitchen, watching the Fahrenheit move between 32 and 33 degrees, imagining puddles thawing and seizing up again, and again. Sometimes you can see right through me and sometimes (I recognize) the sighs go too deep to see to the bottom. Sometimes you think that perhaps finally everything is just as it was, but this is never the truth.

Tags: 4 tha bookiez, book lust

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 22nd, 2009 at 1:10 pm and is filed under Essay, Lucy, Nonfiction, Personal History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.