All I Can Say

X365, week 1

I’m posting two subjects for X365 today, and from here on I will post a week’s worth on Fridays. Uh, for 51 more weeks. I just think they will be more interesting to read in a batch, in a context, rather than scattered throughout this blog. I am also going to attempt to put a year next to the name, as best I can, to give some sense of time. I'm not going to lie to you: there will be some days when I will write 3 or 4 of them, and other days when I won’t write any. But I'm thinking about people who have passed through my life all the time now, and that's the whole point, isn't it? The people who are coming up right away are all minor players, I think because they are easy to sketch out in four sentences. I can’t get it wrong. It will be more difficult to write about husband, children, parents, siblings, old loves, and anyone who is currently in my life — this will be delicate work.

I find it fascinating what I remember about people, what sorts of things I notice. So far I haven’t written about anyone I’ve laid eyes on in less than 15 years, and still these old ghosts endure in my consciousness. I have to wonder what sorts of things people remember about me.

7|365
Rhiannon, 1990
You were driving cross-country with your mother in your Dodge Caravan the summer my roommate Liz and I were doing the same thing. We met you in the campground on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and put it together that we were all from Boston. Rhiannon was the name of a Fleetwood Mac song my friend Barb played and sang constantly in college. You were about ten years old and seemed starved for the attentions of someone other than your mother.

8|365
Mrs. Carere, 1976
You were my sixth grade P.E. teacher and you came into the classroom on the first day of school to meet us. You talked about the P.E. uniform and how we would have to wear proper socks — tube socks, you said — and athletic shoes. Every time you said the word socks it sent shivers up my spine. You kind of swallowed the ‘o’ and the cks at the end sounded like a tiny spark igniting.

X365

X365 is an exercise that I am going to attempt to stick with, god help me, for the next year. It's the brainchild of Dan, who decided to ring in his 40th year by writing every day 40 words about someone he had known in his life, someone whose name he could recall. It's an intriguing idea I simply cannot resist, and so I too will be remembering people in my life — in completely random order — and see how many days/weeks/months I can do it before the well of my memory runs dry. Also, instead of holding myself to 40 words, I will be writing 4 sentences about each. Yeah, I’m a rule bender from way back.

To get started, I'm posting the first six in batch mode.

1|365
Eric
You lived across the street from me growing up. We watched your house being built and were excited to see that kids were moving into the neighborhood. You were the middle child, with buck teeth and large feet that pigeoned in. Once you offered me two oatmeal cookies and after I ate one you told me you had farted on them.

2|365
Heddy
You were the family’s crotchety old house cleaner and babysitter whenever my parents went on vacations. One night you were staying with us you came to tuck my sister and I in bed. But instead of getting ready, we had been horsing around and had jumped into our beds naked when we heard you on the stairs. You knew something was not right the minute you looked at us and flung back the covers with fury in your eyes at our nakedness.

3|365
Hugh
My whole family switched to your dental practice when our old dentist proved to be an incompetent hack. I had always had my cavities (and I had many) filled without Novocain and insisted that I didn’t need any now. Five minutes into the procedure you put down your drill and gently blotted the tears streaming down my cheeks. Then we did it your way.

4|365
Dona
You were my high-achiever boss when I worked in investment banking. Fifteen years older than me, your career had been your priority and you had married late and adopted two children in your late thirties/early forties. You were a big runner and were always talking about how far you had gone that morning. I always felt like such an unsophisticated slacker next to you, and maybe that was why you liked me.

5|365
Jennifer
You were a loner and the most unattractive girl in my school. My friend Stephanie and I convinced you to come over to my house one day so that we could give you a makeover. We put you in one of my dresses, smudged my mother’s rouge on your pale, sunken cheeks, and brushed your dirty hair back into a ponytail. You made quick excuses to leave and avoided us ever after.

6|365
Chris
I first met you in French during freshman year, but we never had another class together. You had the cutest smile and longish hair. You were a geology major from Seattle and I had a secret crush on you. Actually, not much of a secret — and not reciprocated, either.

Shall we hit the links?

Some things you should see:

What struck me about this was how many faces I recognized visually but could not put a name to. Even the faces in transition looked familiar, faces of women who don't even exist...

Making fun of this may be akin to shooting fish in a barrel, but Jake still has some fresh and funny thoughts up his sleeve about mocha grande lattes, blah blah blah. Does he not remind you of a male Ellen Degeneres?

If you are suffering from feelings of guilt (and who isn't?), then here's a way you can clear your conscience. Confession is not just for Sundays anymore. (Warning: do not click if you need to pee.)

#108: Comeback

I remember quite clearly the day of my last post. It was a hot July day and N was away at camp (away, away) and G was at day camp. I was trimming the bushes in front of our house, sculpting them into the tidy round things that I wanted flanking my front door. I was listening to my iPod and heard that Modest Mouse song (post below), that really got to me. I listened to it over and over again, at a volume that could only have been damaging to my already declining hearing. And that was more than three months ago.

Even then I was not keeping up with my blog and was feeling like it was a moving train I had disembarked from and could not re-board. I rationalized at the time that the blog was somehow seasonal — that spring and summer were not for introspective writing and were not, in fact, for introspection of any kind. I stopped reading other blogs, and haven’t been back here to check on things in months.

I thought come September, when school re-opened, I would be motivated and inspired to write, just as I was last September when I began this blog, but for a variety of reasons that didn’t happen. The truth is I haven’t even been thinking about things lately. My internal life has been barren, and I have felt isolated — from myself and therefore, by extension, from everyone. This is not how I am meant to live. But the other truth is that this blog was taking up too much of my internal life, and frankly too much of my time. I enjoyed what I was producing but somehow it felt inadequate. There was a pressure to write something every day, which kept me writing regularly but which was also rather crushing at times.

I want to come back here, and I want to cultivate my nonexistent inner life again because it’s essential to my wellbeing. Yet I don’t want to take any of it too seriously; there is nothing in my life (perhaps all life) that can’t in the end be laughed at.

Hey, the blog is alive again, so please do come back.