My Heel Broke in a Traffic Jam en Route to the DMV -- so I Killed Myself.

Sorry, children, about the long pause. I tried a couple times, but it was difficult to think of utterly content-free things to write. (I do realize I come close, very close, at times, but it is a talent that cannot be fully harnessed; it comes when it wills.) And that wouldn't have been the solution, anyway: people who wish to can read volumes from the selection of a semicolon over a period. It doesn't mean they are correct in doing so; nor, however, does this latter truth dissuade them from undertaking the exercise for their own reasons. Despite my silence in this venue, however, I remain very much alive, not to mention sentient and ambulatory. And having rather a good time of it over the holidays, circumscribed culinary choices notwithstanding.

'Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy, if I could say how much.' Much Ado, II, 1

That has nothing to do with it, though, actually. This does:

A former boyfriend succeeded in making me partially insane and fully uncomfortable by noting, taking to heart, and doing some long-range, possibly trigonometric, extrapolating from, aspects of this blog that in an ideal world would escape every reader's attention. I then wrote the Reader's Guide in hopes of making my intentions for this encyclopedic rant clear as an unmuddied lake.

But allow me to backtrack.

Since the demise of this relationship, I have had little (very little) contact with this person. He writes the occasional ingratiating, or condescending, or cloyingly/disturbingly reminiscent email, and I respond politely yet tersely. I answer his questions (that's the polite bit), but I answer them in as brief a manner as possible (so as not to engage him further). I strive to be ladylike, in other words, whilst neither providing details, meeting his nostalgia with some of my (depleted, frankly) own in return, nor asking him any questions. The letters end with 'Hope you are well,' which I should think would be read as something quite distinct from 'Tell me all about your work,' or 'Who are you dating?' or 'What's new with you?'

But the State of Things being what it is.

Politeness, it seems, can, in its rarity, be mistaken for Friendliness or, perhaps, as it seems in this case, a Desperate Plea for Help. A cri du coeur the nature of which I am still at a loss to discern. Had I wished for reengagement with this party I assuredly would have supplemented his proffered reminiscences with a few breathless sighs of 'Ah, yes, those were indeed the salad days' of my own and some rose-hued specifics to make my argument. But I would not likely have answered his (misty, watercolored) Memories with silence.

But One Cannot Wear Kid Gloves in the Ring.

And although my amateur pugilist days are well behind me, a friend convinced me that however little I was saying I was clearly saying it wrong, even if 'saying it wrong' meant I was merely saying it politely. And that this drain on my psyche was draining my blog, and that that was wrong.

And while I agree, I thought I had sounded rather more austere than previously in my last return email. On the other hand, I still couldn't think of things to write, other than merely reprinting the Gettysburg Address or the Creation Story a few times -- things of my own, that is, into which nothing at all could be read that wasn't solely of a cheery and uplifting nature. Nothing, in other words, to indicate that we live in a world in which we sometimes stub our toes, eat mediocre food, get stuck in traffic, wake up too late, wake up too early -- or kill our cousins, or kill our brothers, now that I come to reconsider my arbitrary choices above.

Moreover, I couldn't even figure out when I was supposed to 'publish' these cheery entries, as a recent missive from this individual indicated that he was paying close heed to the (again, arbitrary, but no matter) timestamp and reckoning from it the course of my days. (And not in the most flattering of lights, I assure you, but more of the sort of thing about which scores of country singers have had much to say through the decades. Except for the latenight online Scrabble dig, which, to my knowledge, has yet to feature in the lyrics even of Dwight Yoakum, literate, postmodern, and good with words though he may be.)

'Certainly a woman's thought runs before her actions.' As You Like It, IV, 1

So I thought about it a bit but remained stuck. I would like this blog to be a way to keep in touch with people, to entertain them a bit, and to be a place where I can, if I wish, vent my spleen. I like puppydogs and minigoats. Tremendously, in fact, and puffy clouds, and saltwater taffy, and veiled chameleons, and broderie anglaise, and maribou slippers, and birdsong in the summer in a field under the sun amongst frolicking animals and wildflowers by a waterfall, too. I like painting my nails, and going to the ballet, and eating Drumsticks, and making perfumes. But I also get stuck in traffic, I also get lost in parking garages, I abhor going to the DMV, I put off the Post Office and UPS for as many months as I can, and I sometimes sit around reading and writing by myself and letting my nail polish dry. And why any of it, or the writing of it, or the patent exaggeration of my angst surrounding it should cause someone to pity me eludes me.

So I thought about it a bit more, but just a bit, because short on the heels of the above conversation came the New Year's Wishes missive. And I couldn't take it. Relative to the others it was, frankly, innocuous, save for a rhetorical device I can't be bothered to go into here. But it was enough, if due only to the cumulative effect of the whole series and of my frustrated, impuissant, polite and indirect efforts to discourage further contact.

Thus was I impolite in my response. And thus one hopes was he disabused of the misguided impression that we are, owing to the persistence of the aforementioned watercolored memories, Friends. It's a shame, though, that it had to come to that; except maybe for Kant, reading is only as hard as you make it.

The Parkgarage at the End of the Universe

Which is not to say that last night was not deeply traumatic in its own right. I was done with work, it was early and, better yet, it was a Monday. Monday, the day when if we can predict nothing else, we can predict that the art world is closed and the bridge and tunnel set stay safely ensconced in suburbia, Tivoing and chamomile tea-ing away the weekend's Home Depot and white sale excesses.

The sun was still out, the water was lovely, the air was softly moist, and I was brave and strong and filled with desire for a Douro. A wine bar was the thing to slake my wine lust and validate my courageousness. And, I had a book with me, so there would be no need to run up against any predatory alcohol-sodden flirtatious nonsense. I would park, I would swap the Driving Shoes for one of the pairs of nice ones just waiting in the passenger seat for such an opportunity to fulfill their destiny, and I would walk up the hill and have a nice glass of wine.

I found a parking garage that abutted the street I like to use to go home from downtown, in order to avoid the freeway and all thoughts of fifth gear. I changed the shoes, grabbed the (oddly heavy, even when empty) leather bag with the book and a notebook, fixed the lipstick, took the tiny purse, and headed for the exit.

Then I headed for the exit that way. Then I walked around in several concentric circles for thirty or forty minutes, coming upon nothing but private elevators which would have taken
me to the street, but only under condition that I were possessed of the secret code. Which, despite my good looks, keen attitude, and zest for the true, the blushful Hippocrene, I was not.

My back hurt. My feet hurt. The nailbeds in my fingertips hurt, and the membrane that handily keeps the brain away from the skull hurt, and I felt sad that I should have to live out my remaining decades stuck in a poorly-lit parking garage with the scent of kelpy air taunting me at every breath. I failed even to spot my own car save for once in all my increasingly hopeless wandering.

Then, finally, a street exit. I crouched under the gate and I was free! Free for Douro, or Barolo, or anything else my flagging whimsy fancied. I confidently marched up the hill, enthusiasm and bravery returning with each step of my buckle-embellished mules. I had nearly caught a joie de vivre when I had a vague feeling about keys. It wasn't anything more than that. Just 'keys.' Once I thought to think of what such a vague thought might mean, it became far less vague. I didn't remember doing anything with my keys. I remembered getting out of the car, and I certainly remembered getting lost, but I always immediately put my keys into whatever tiny purse I have that day, and I didn't remember doing that. Or even having uncharacteristically put them into the big bag, which would be the sort of thing that would stick in the mind for all its uncharacteristicality.

Just to confirm that, despite not recalling anything, I did indeed have them, I checked in both the tiny purse (hard to miss anything in there, most particularly a gigantic collection of largely orphan keys tied up together with a huge red carabiner) and in the mostly empty big bag. And they were in neither. Leaving all thoughts of dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth behind, I hurried back to the car. This in fact amounted to hurrying back to the parkgarage, which was easy enough to find, and then wandering for fifteen or so minutes in search of the car. When I found it, the keys weren't in it. They weren't on it, and they weren't under it. And while that would be more entertainingly put in Turkish, I wasn't thinking of that at the time, because I didn't have my keys, and I had no idea where they could possibly be. Certainly they were not at the counter in the wine bar next to the lecherous Rioja-swilling Hair-Club-for-Men member -- since I hadn't managed to get that far.

Now, clearly, the thing to do at such a point is to Retrace One's Steps. This becomes tricky, however, when the One whose Steps are to be Retraced has no idea either where she is now, how she got there, or where she was before. Which steps? I didn't know where I had gone or where I hadn't gone. But I did my best, and I left the heavy bag in the car that time, which was the smart thing I accomplished yesterday.

After giving up on the garage, I went upstairs to the concierge for the building. No one had turned in keys, but she assured me that hers was the desk where keys would be turned in, at least on those occasions in which such a turning-in took place. Now was not one of those occasions. Nor was it such at the parking office, either.

Now I was even sadder than before. Not only would I have to live in a parking garage because it was an unnavigable maze of a thing, but I would have to do so incommunicado, since my lack of keys would preclude charging my cell phone. I walked around a bit inside again and found the exit, and with no hope remaining in me but not wishing to dwell on the negative, I retraced my few outdoor steps again. At some point before the destroyed eye makeup obscured my vision entirely, I called The Boyfriend.

Not, I hasten to aver, to ask for help, nor even with the intention of admitting that anything of any sort other than the most dulcet of Douros had befallen me. I was already on the right street for a taxi, the appointment for the locksmith was set for 9 AM the next day, and I was going to go home and bang on a neighbor's door and beg for a bed. But, perceptive and not-hard-of-hearing as he is, he heard the cracks and chinks and quavers in what was left of the audible range of my voice. And, weak as I am when confronted with a direct question (and sometimes the hint of a question when I am completely at wits' end), I spilled it. He said he would come over and help me find them. I knew it was futile to look further, and he lives so horribly far away that it seemed inhumane because it was now not so early as it had been two hours previous or even forty-five minutes, and also I already had the appointment with the long-winded locksmith to get a key made.

I needed Closure, not solutions.

But he came, and we reexamined my car with the assistance of a flashlight. The keys remained obstinately unthere. After the search of car and environs and a feebly-uttered and marginally coherent brief recapitulation of my barely-remembered 'timeline,' we retraced my steps outside, which were easy as they were few. No keys. We went back to the garage and retraced any and all steps by any person capable of making steps on my level of the garage, since I was of no assistance in suggesting what steps I might or might not have made. I was unapologetically and tiresomely apologetic and made repeated vows to repay him in whatever way most pleasing to him, so long as it didn't involve money, because that was all going to the locksmith and the wine cellar I was going to start building next week so as to prevent this sort of thing happening in future. And my feet hurt. My feet, my shoulders, my back, and it was starting to become that horrible sort of tired where you walk like you've still got training wheels on your legs and they are likely at any moment to come out from under you and wouldn't it just be better anyway if I lay down right here and no it won't take but a couple hours they can drive around me no I'm sure the concrete will be more than comfortable.

And then, in a weird little alcove that only housed a few cars and in which I had been when I was on foot or at least one very similar to it in near uselessness and seeming unusually after-thoughtish for a parking garage, there they were right by a post and a little ugly wall. All ninety-seven of them and the red carabiner, as well. I would have been overjoyed, but that would have required being conscious or sensate, neither of which I have any reason to believe I was at that point. I did, however, manage many more profuse apologies and gratitudes, but the lack of muscle control precluded smiling.

I made it home. I drank a beer. I apologized and thanked in email and on phone forty-three more times and vowed to myself to have copies made of house and car keys, and stick them on the car and in the planters of dying flowers outside my door. And passed out and slept the sort of sleep you can only sleep when you imagined the end of the world but it was really only the end of the two-for-one sale on vegetarian items down at the Indian place.

'If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.'

And if Mr. Amis is right, then the following, though it violates several of my personal rules of conduct, has a point and a justification for having been written. Also, God willing, enough of this sort of thing and the monkey will find a new home. I just pray he does not take the neighbor's cat with him -- although he can have the 'pet chaise' as a sop if that will help speed the move.

Right, then: the Reckoning. As I said, once one gets past that, does the necessary math, weighs all variables accurately, and accepts due responsibility for whatever share of idiocy and misjudgment is his own, then the final stage of dealing with the loss is complete, dispassion has been achieved, and forgetting has commenced. And the harsher, or more honest and complete, the accounting, the quicker and more effortless is the business of getting on with things. Additionally, as I intimated earlier, having previously experienced and addressed genuine grief, loss, and tumult in one's life gives one invaluable perspective as to the actual magnitude of loss on future occasions.

Love, I will forever maintain, is transformative. Its positive effects racinate into all other areas of our lives. When we are in love, we see the world differently, and we walk differently in it. With regard solely to the object of this Love, however, one of its effects is a loss of objectivity, a willingness always to focus on the good, an abundance of forgiveness and an overflowing empathy. And I believe all that is necessary, salutary, and good; without it one couldn't arrive at, or maintain, genuine Love. Without it there would be no substantive difference between romantic committed relationships and pleasant casual friendships.

But when there is a fissure in the emotion, when something big enough has transpired to rend that beautiful gauzy veil, then the Lover can most definitely address the situation, and the other person, with the same logic and dispassion as he can any other individual or set of circumstances. This, too, I think, is necessary and constructive: if one's spouse has gambled away all the retirement funds, being able to acknowledge that and to take steps to address that and the relationship as it now is cannot but be preferable to blithely ignoring what is clearly a grave reality.

It is a bit nasty and embarrassing, though, even if it only transpires within the privacy of one's head. One's judgment, or even sanity, can be called into question as one reflects upon the various things glossed over in deference to the continuance of the Love-state.

And this is the part where I violate my ethics in hopes that doing so will banish the monkey.

When I got to that point, after a bit of crying and missing having someone to do special things for, I then had to endure feeling like an idiot on a number of counts. That, my dears, hurts more than anything. I do strongly believe we should all be idiots in love, or 'childlike' if that makes you feel better about things, but at the point where it seems as though the idiocy was 'for nothing,' one is necessarily inclined a bit more toward self-flagellation than is normally the case. In some sense -- if there was Love, at any rate, or at least one believed there to be -- one has to find the relationship to have been senseless and inherently flawed in order to be able enthusiastically or even calmly to accept its demise. The practical problem with this is that by devaluing or fully invalidating the relationship, one does the same to one's investment of time, ardour, kindness, openness, and boundless empathy.

And by God does that sting. The specifics of the thing stick in the mouth like ammonia from Dutch licorice (Hello, Andy!). One has to address the horror of multiple versions of 'I was in love with someone who __________!' The things that leave the most enduring bad tastes vary from person to person, clearly, but that is, for some of us, at least, the worst stage of the grieving.

In other words, I might be able get on just fine knowing that I accidentally dated a bank robber or married a serial philanderer. You might well be able to integrate seamlessly having been briefly engaged to an expert on artificial bovine insemination into your self-concept, or never regret for a moment the dalliance with the writer of how-to Morris Dancing books. But you may well experience a lasting difficulty with rectifying your posture after coming to terms with the psychic scars of having plighted your troth to a Scientologist, Nikken distributor, or collector of porcelain cat figurines.

This is where it really gets tawdry. And, again, I apologize, but it's all to a good cause.

In my case, the following. And let me preface it all by admitting that I believed myself to be 'in love.' I said those words, I felt that glowy feeling, I had caritas and agape and eros and the rest radiating ceaselessly from my ever-dilated pupils. My voice was soft, my gestures were kind, my thoughts were noble, and my emotions true. So it's me, not him, that was the problem.

So.

1) A thesaurus is not a dictionary. A synonym relationship is neither an equal sign nor a copula. I myself have never owned nor sought recourse to a thesaurus, and I freely admit my relationship to words has never been typical. Still, however, even if we postulate they might possibly have their place, sometimes and for some people, thesauruses are extremely limited in their usefulness and MUST, as any sixth-grade teacher or history professor despairingly red-lining term papers will insist, be used with extreme caution, if not outright fear.

Why? See above. But also because not only does one not get an actual denotation, as with a dictionary, one does not get context. 'Blue' or 'tawdry' can 'mean,' according to a thesaurus, 'dirty,' but the neighbor's cat, although he sometimes comes in with sticks and burrs stuck to his coat, never returns from his tours looking either of the above.

Sometimes the words in a thesaurus entry can indeed be said to be part of the same cognitive category. Fiery, hot, steamy, sultry, sweltering, feverish. Fine. But none of those words equals the other. I didn't just pull a sultry loaf of pumpernickel out of the oven. I know I didn't. And the sixth-grade teacher in me bristles at this sort of thing every time. Thesaurus abuse doesn't make anyone sound smarter; reading, and absorbing the content, and noting grammatical nuances one wishes to remember, do.

2) Nor does mispronouncing fancy words help one's case when trying to impress others with one's erudition. (And we are leaving to the side for the moment the issue of why anyone should wish to do that.) (But stick around: there's always tomorrow.) (Which I think, in terms of my dating of these posts, is actually yesterday.) Again, the dictionary can be a great resource. Good dictionaries, as well, can assist with some of the clarificatory context issues that thesauruses can't, and thus demonstrate the sorts of things that, unlike pumpernickel, can at times accurately be described as 'sultry,' for example.

On this note, I sometimes used to refer to my last apartment as 'the seraglio' jokingly in print. It had a great many pillows, a low bed, little furniture, many textures and prints, and even a narghile a friend had given me in acknowledgment of my deranged decorating 'style.' Not everything said in print is worth saying aloud and vice versa, and when speaking I called the same residence 'my apartment.' This habit was cemented into law when the exboyfriend insisted on using the former label when speaking, and pronouncing it in such a way as to make every sinew in me twitch in pain.

I don't correct people. Especially as regards language. My idiolect is my own, and my reading and study have been far broader than most people's, so I know I use words many other people don't. Sometimes they are in the active-use pile from one discipline or language, and because they are there, they might come into my head for quite different contexts than originally learned. But just as I can't be expected to discourse rationally about mathematics, I don't expect anyone to have precisely my reading, educational, or cross-cultural background.

However.

It is always ill-advised to use a word you don't understand or to say a word you don't know how to pronounce. This is trickier in English than any other language, because we have adopted words from so very many different languages, and there is no consistency as to the level to which we have Anglicized the various adoptees. To avoid buffoonery one must have knowledge, not merely confidence, on one's side. Seraglio in English cleaves to its Italianate past, as does intaglio. One doesn't sound well traveled or educated by summoning a waiter with 'garkin!' nor by describing the day's events as having been largely 'comb ill fought.' At the same time, it is past the bounds of both common sense and decency to subject a dear friend to snapshots of one's vacation in 'Paree.'

I am not perfect, but when I want to say something was ghastly, and I can't quite come to quite the right word to describe the precise way in which it was as ghastly as it was, I am more than happy to stick with what is at hand and describe the various ways in which the ghastliness manifested itself. The fact is, context often determines whether the same word will be pejorative or praising, and no thesaurus can give that insight. Even 'tepid' can be a good thing under certain circumstances, and 'righteous' can be downright slanderous.

The point is, I cared about someone who engaged in this sort of behavior. It's not as though I was deaf or illiterate while we were dating, but I chose not to focus on the less appealing aspects of his personality. Then, once graver unappealing characteristics emerged and I divested myself of the thing, all those nasty bits came to the forefront of my consciousness. At that point, I did what math I could manage, figured there must have been some rationale not immediately perceptible that would ultimately vindicate my unswerving belief in my own sanity, and went on with things. A bit less trusting of my powers of discernment, perhaps, but confident in my ability to hone them should it appear necessary that I do so.

But then the thesaurus came out again and, having already gone through the dispassionate charts-and-diagrams phase, I no longer had the willpower or motivation not to look with wide-open eyes. Or to be other than horrified by what I saw. Consequently, I had to revisit the self-flagellation stage, but with no vestigial gauzy glow at all. No, now it was 'I was in love with someone who _________ and whom I have unwittingly given license to continue to do it!' Why, in other words, would he have thought I found it charming then, and (of far more consequence and spine-chilling potential) in what way am I complicit in his assuming I will still find it charming now? And why, oh why, oh why, is he noting the timestamp?

As you know from numerous posts, I am hung up on the idea of adulthood. And I think the greater part of embracing adulthood consists in accepting responsibility. Indeed, welcoming, cherishing, that responsibility. It is a harder course, yes, but far more rewarding. (Also tremendously less annoying to others.) So at this stage it is of no consequence to me that the thing is over, or why it is over: that pugnacious primate pulling at my hair is ME, demanding of myself that I please explain to me why I did whatever it was that I did to make him feel that flirting with me, reminiscing to me, and attempting to charm me with stolen, inapposite adjectives or insult me with inaccurate barbs is polite, permissible, quirkily winsome, or anything other than base and futile.