As If You Aren't Headed There, Too Story

when i was little i used to understand the rain and when it fell it would make me feel like i wasn't alone. then i got older and i realized we were all alone and it was harder for me to be nice. when i was walking on the sidewalk yesterday, things came to me with a new relish, as if i had just awaken from a dream. i began to see that although all human beings are innocent, some are uglier than others. meaning... it is hard to be fair when you see a man with a nice hat kick his dog while watering his plants early in the morning. and that my grandmother still lives in a different dimension than the rest of the world for me, so that even when she is too self-concerned to go to my aunt's funeral, I can't get mad.

Let me explain.

You talk a lot about old people. It becomes funny that someone is old. as if they didn't come from being young. as if you're not headed there, too. lola, well, she's afraid to be alone. she's afraid to fall down the stairs because she did once, and she broke her leg. she's so afraid that when her son lost his wife to cancer, she didn't climb up or down the stairs at all. she didn't go to the funeral. he forgave her. that's what dimension she lives in.

maybe i need to slow down.

if life is about loss, then we're all right. but it's not about that.

let's think about this

nobody sits and contemplates how happy he is his wife came home after work last night. wife comes home one night, then another night. It's probably all right with husband that she comes home, but no reason to jump up and down. Unless you are one of the lucky people.

my friend megan's parents used to hold hands in the minivan when they gave us rides to the movie theater. i was in the sixth grade and had never seen two parents do that. it confused me really. mostly because megan's dad looked just like our science teacher, mr. merkle. but secondly, i didn't understand what they were so happy about.

i say love is disgruntled. i say love is when my mom wakes up at four a.m. and yells at my dad to get a move on and packs all of his shirts and irons them. i say love is when my dad walks ahead of my mom on the sidewalk and she gives up trying to catch up to him because she's so small. i say love is mailbox. a toaster. counting backwards. the in-between.

i say new love isn't love. it's the top of a downhill slope. in the beginning it's easy to want to do things for each other. loneliness will save up all sorts of generous impulses, and then you find someone you think is all right or at least better than the last one, and you've been alone for so long, you can't stop buying records, or making t-shirts, or bringing donuts, or writing songs. and then times passes, and what you have left is a shortage of generosity. and it goes back again. and you start again. and you get tired. and you leave yourself for awhile. and you're at the bottom of the uphill again and you need to lose the other person if your'e ever going to make it back up there.

but handholding for thirty years isn't love either. it's luck. it's miraculous and divine. it's a geiser. it's a blue insect. it's twilight. it's something else. it's not love.

love is dad making the waitress uncomfortable so his kids can laugh and eventually get sick of it and laugh anyway. love is a long train ride home. love is a shortage of a changing list of things. love is trampling on someone's backyard and screaming.

handholding is too sane for love.

love isn't rain. i had once understood rain. i only know what love isn't.

we can talk about it like it's funny. the way we talk about old people. like love didn't come from all the things that have happened to us. to anyone. like we're not headed there, too.