or:
where have you been all my life?
"And this is the simple truth - that to live is to feel oneself lost. He who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look around for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce."
- Soren Kierkegaard.
&&&
The Left Handed Captain, miraculously, comes to town on an Easter Sunday overwhelmed by dying bodies & disordered lives. He brings 18 perfect brown eggs & two bottles of champagne and, while I change out of my scrubs and into a pretty dress, whips up a midnight brunch so sublime, so glorious, I almost cry from disbelief. On the front porch we eat by candlelight, talking about this and that - Flannery O'Connor, giving up the search, lakes in Africa, the queer ability of low-fi audio recordings to pluck at our heart strings like the Holy Spirit. I tell him about my day and he says You are a good woman, Kate. He is handsome & charming, his hollandaise sauce is perfect salt & light. But my faith is so anemic, I tell him. When we talk of the people we've hurt and loved, he says Most days I wonder if I haven't made a huge mistake. We shiver as Easter Sunday fades into the start of another long week, already stacked against us. So incarnate are we -- unable to help ourselves to anything else besides more food - and yet...
(We live in this and yet... This is where we find our home)
...and yet, the early spring dew lands on our heads like a benediction; searching, feasting, together, our communion is blessed.
&&&
I lay awake these nights, deep in the dark, thinking of a man who told me once he loved me, and then told me again, and then again and then, finally, after all was said and done, once more again. In the middle of the night I would wake him, wake him just so he would say Oh Love, it's okay. Go to sleep, Kate, go to sleep. And I would. And just like that, I would.
I lay awake these nights, deep in my own mind, the knowing coursing thru my heart like blood, that love is not enough. Oh Love, it's okay. Oh Love! It's not enough! But love and sleep and passage beyond the bounds of one's own mind - is that enough? A lifetime of sleep, of love. Is that enough? Is okay enough?
&&&
I stop at the corner of 7th Street and Massachusetts Avenue and wait for the light to change. In the basket of my bike I have a bottle of Burgundy, purple grapes, dark chocolate gelato. It is Bastille Day and what I really want to bring with me (Regardez ce que j'ai apporté pour vous, mon amour!) is a gypsy man with an accordion and a wrought iron window basket exploding with red geraniums. But I am 29 now, slightly more practical, slightly less stupid, about these things (Peut-être que ce n'est pas vrai, ma chérie...).
A girl rides up next to me and startles my reverie. She is a little flushed, charmingly disheveled, with short dark hair, pink shoes, a green bike. Am I anywhere near Peregrine coffee shop? she asks and, then, before I can answer, Do I look ok? I'm going to meet a boy! I tell her, truly, that she looks lovely, that she is very close, only a few blocks away. Before she can answer I tell her that I, too, am going to meet someone. Well, you look very pretty, too! Good luck! she says and then pedals off to the place where we left off, il et moi, once upon a time. The light changes and I continue on my way, toward the guillotine, the Hall of Mirrors, an ancient stone wall, a bottle of Burgundy -- qui peut savoir, mon amour?
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