open wide

“For my part, I prefer my heart to be broken. It is so lovely, dawn-kaleidoscopic within the crack.” 

— D.H. Lawrence, Birds, Beasts and Flowers

I had a revelation recently, a revelation that served as insulation, a bubble-wrapped moment of understanding that will no doubt sound pathetic on the page-ish, but which I think I might cling to for a while to see where it takes me, and that was this: Maybe there are people who are really good at being brokenhearted. By which I mean, maybe I am one of those people. There is a madness in love and I went at it full-throated and wide when I first caught the scent. It sped me up and gave me purpose. Loving - not being loved - was the thing that sustained me. Being loved back was much more difficult, and if I'm entirely honest, I'm not sure it ever really fit. I chafed under it. And when, after eight years, the one guy who had ever claimed to love me left in a pretty ugly way, there was a part of me that said, Of course. 

In the two years since, I've pinned my heart to others in a very misguided fashion, sort of blithely, gleefully saying, Oh hey, there's a cliff, go throw yourself off of it. I've made all the choices I shouldn't make. It's not a reckless affection I give to others, and it is terribly rare, but when it comes it is so intense, so consuming, and, for me, truly, so joyful. It feels so wonderful to give love. AND SO AWFUL. All at once! And I am so very, very good at it! If it were an Olympic sport, my mixtapes and love letters would win gold. So full of feeling, the Russians would say, daubing their eyes. What if, rather than resisting this, rather than becoming small and safe or opening only to something lasting, something reciprocal, I just kept. fucking. loving. Loving everything in my path. Friends and books and pie and all the wrong men. Right through the pain and the loneliness and the ache. Let the dawn-kaleidoscopic cracks open wide. What if loving, despite everything, is the bravest work of my life? 

I have these two cats. They're perfect. I've told you about them. It's round two of fostering. They're being adopted by a vet in Long Island. I have loved four cats now who weren't mine. They weren't mine, and I loved them anyway. There. That is the best thing I've ever done. 

i only care about me

So, remember that time I wrote that thing? I thought it might be an interesting experiment to say the thing I'm most ashamed to say. I thought it might be brave? I also thought - hoped - that it would invite discussion. Hey ho, it did. I feel very grateful for that, and also like I want to make a large pot of noodles and then dump then on my face and walk down the street, just to try out a different kind of humiliation.

The most pointed criticism, I think, is "Why are we supposed to care about this?" How could I imagine I have anything useful or interesting to say? It's the concern that plagues all personal essays - if there is no universal question at the heart of the work, why does it deserve to exist? I don't even begin to imagine that my tiny thoughts have any relevance to anyone - they often cease to be relevant to me as soon as I've had them - but creative nonfiction, essaying, memoir, all involves that very measure of grandiosity. It's a very vulnerable kernel: the audacity to believe that there might be one other neuron in the world that will spark the way yours did, even if only for a second. And then you have to capitalize on that small glow and try and feed it (with wine, with Honey Nut Cheerios out of a mug) in order to sustain 1500 words of whim and folly and then you have to have the gall to actually throw it askew on a proverbial wall and then, most horrifying of all, you have to stand under it, beaming, asking someone to come in and tell you what they think. (See also: OH HEY LOOK I HAVE A BLOG.)

It was a good morning to read this: The Shrinking Boundaries of Being a (Certain Kind of) Twentysomething. I have a uselessly heteronormative crush on Richard Lawson, but man, he got a little MEAN. Still, I nodded sagely - because yes! how deeply self-involved to imagine anyone else could be interested in what you have to say, especially when what you have to say is nothing more than a deeply self-involved rumination on the minute segment of the population in which you happen to live - and then I went and clicked over to my article to refresh the comments for the 75th time.

(Please note that the first comment on Lawson's article is: "Oh shut up already and go have an actual life.")

In case I didn't make myself clear: I am so lucky. I want to bake everyone who has ever read any word I have ever written a very large muffin of your choosing. I want to give back your time in baked goods. I want to take you down to Chick-fil-A so we can eat those muffins and make out, if you are a girl. Let's all do something wild and good together.

in defense of

"The tattoo is primal parent to the visual arts. Beginning as abstract maps of spiritual visions, records of the 'other' world, tattoos were originally icons of power and mystery designating realms beyond normal land-dwellers' experience.

The extra-ordinary qualities of the tattoo's magic-religious origin remain constant even today, transferring to the bearer some sense of existing outside the conventions of normal society."

Empire of the Senseless, Kathy Acker

lessons from Nora

While watching Heartburn, I realized I want to be the kind of woman who can have a man over to her apartment and, when we get hungry at 4am, duck into the kitchen only to come back with an impeccable plate of spaghetti puttanesca, all briny and saucy and messy, all wild in a large bowl, that we eat together in bed.

*Edited to say I care much less about having a man than I do about having the ability to cook that spaghetti.

random act of bravery

a diptych:

From Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, Letter #9: "And as for the rest, let life happen to you. Believe me, life is in the right, always."

random act of bravery

Everything happens in black and white with short hair. It's European, or something. 

two things

These artist studios on Fogo Island, off the coast of Newfoundland.

This essay, about greatness, and the Pulitzer mishap of 2012.

mirror

MICHELANGELO PISTOLETTO, LÂETRUSCO (1973–1976) 

(FROM: H. FRIEDEL, ED., DER TRAUM DES ORPHEUS, [1984] 24). 

Here. 

Thinking about what we see today. What we choose to see, what we choose not to. Willful blindness. People who may not ever stop to look themselves in the face, direct hit, more than cursory, inside.

random act of bravery

two things

This song, on repeat, since Glen Hansard did it at his epic jam session last week at Le Poisson Rouge. He had a tiny mandolin and a tumbler of whiskey. He also had every heart in that room for every minute of those three hours.

The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done. 

This article, and the mystical South of France residency where everyone loves each other and you get a boyfriend just for showing up.