What the Hell is This?

Well, I didn’t get the personal assistant job I really wanted, working for a socially conscious author who’s written a book about how businesses can be more sustainable and incorporate charitable giving. I had had high hopes that this might be my escape route (toward more income, and away from “trouble”). And now the political campaign I’ve been working on (which I’d been considering doing full-time in the new year, if all else failed) is seriously considering cutting its paid phone bank fundraisers entirely, and going with volunteers.

I thought I had at least one emergency hatch at the ready. Not so, apparently.

**

I could launch, in detail, into all that has come up for me lately because of my feelings for Dan: about my history of feeling like the least important person in the universe, the one perennially expected to sacrifice and keep a low profile and not complain about going without — essentially invisible — the Good Little Girl, who never harms a fly, or even upsets anyone. As Hamlet said, But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue. One finds oneself with powerful, taboo desires that disturb absolutely everyone, and they all say My god, keep that monstrous business to yourself! For heaven’s sake!

But say one imagines oneself on one’s deathbed, or bleeding to death in the street, in five years or forty, one never knows. And the regrets come flooding in: Why did I tiptoe through life, fretting at every moment that the very act of my breathing might offend somebody, taking a poll before deciding what to have for breakfast? It has recently become very apparent to me that the cacophany of conflicting thoughts that fill my head about the best course of action, or what my priorities should be, nearly always arise in someone else’s voice, evoking the terror of What Everyone Might Think Of Me. The tireless local activist, shaming me for not being more selflessly involved in causes, for even thinking about my personal desires and dreams. The well-meaning friend, concerned about my underemployment, commanding me to dispatch a flood of resumes in every direction. The fearful buddy, certain catastrophe lurks just around the corner if I say or do the “wrong” thing. My frowning mother, whose shadow always hovers, even from two thousand miles away.

In the end, I decide and do very little; I am passive, immobilized by social pushes and pulls in every direction. None of which, I find, I can honestly own as mine. I live to please. And if not to please, to avoid offense.

Which is no way to live at all.

**

But I don’t feel like talking more about it, because that will only invite discussion and exacerbate things. Instead I thought I’d be lazy, and go back to Wallace Stevens, on whom I’ve riffed in the past — stealing once more from his “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” It’s been done a million times, but I liked the way the post title sounded.

I did mimic Stevens’ stanzas and language to some extent, wherever possible, sometimes (hopefully) to comic effect, in case anyone wants to compare the two. It’s no great work of poesy, but like I said, I don’t feel much like talking. And sometimes a poem is worth a thousand words.

**

 

I

 

Among twenty single men,

The only moving thing

Was the married one.

 

II

 

I was of three minds,

And two of them

Were not of the mind at all.

 

III

 

The whorls of hair sweeping over his ear

Catch and dizzy me in the eddying.

 

IV

 

A man and his wife

Are one.

A man and his wife and his coworker

Are not.

 

V

 

I do not know which to attend,

The joy of proximity

Or the pain of departure,

The hand on the shoulder

Or just after.

 

VI

 

Ice streaks the sidewalks

With dangerous glass.

The shadows were longer

Before, when he came.

I knew

On that hot summer day

There’d be trouble.

 

VII

 

O ex-cons of The Fund,

Why do you imagine I can’t perform?

Do you not see how I flush,

Dropping my gaze to the feet

Of your buddy beside you?

 

VIII

 

I know the inflections

And the processes of fundraising;

But I know, too,

That a poverty

Creeps into my voice.

 

IX

 

When my friend walks out of sight,

It marks the end

And the beginning of my life.

 

X

 

At the sight of this big man

Grinning, beaming like a lamp

Even the sternest lesbians

Relent and are charmed.

 

XI

 

They flew to Chicago

On a Thursday morning.

Once relieved of that piercing

Reminder, I took

A total in afternoon pledges of

Sixteen hundred.

 

XII

 

The clouds are flowing.

My friend must be breathing.

 

XIII

 

It was evening all afternoon.

It was snowing

And it was going to snow.

Alone was more alone

Than alone was before.