jolie laide

jolie laide

I started this when I lived in Brooklyn and struggled for grace in a city that grants moments of beauty and ugliness breathtakingly close to one another. Now I live in a place where things are a different kind of ugly and the beauty is pedestrian. I struggle with that.

2.28.2008

You could say I'm a little overwhelmed. Or as I said to one of my colleagues here, "I'm surprised all the time." What is probably the most obvious surprise to me is how much brain space I need to process everything I see in a day and distill it down to one or three important bits. I want to be over my systemic shock, but I am not sure that I am, but anyway, here is something that has sat on my writing pad for six weeks:

This morning he says "I'm in love with you" and it's in the context of something else and the conversation spins off to a corner of the room and while he is looking into a box the words are still lying in my lap.

There is a difference between loving someone and being in love with them. I know this, and I know he loves me. He says it easily and often. And one could say that just the invitation to be here, never mind I am sitting in this new house, with my new car in the garage, that is the proof. But this man lets his responsibilities weigh on him considerably and I would not want to mistake what could be the gestures of accepted obligation for something much more precious. And even though I know I am on the bottom steps of this escalator myself, I don't think I have said that I am in love with him.

9 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Where, m'dear, are you? In CA somewhere now? What absolute culture shock coming from NYC. I am heading up to San Fran in about an hour, but CA in general is such a monumental distance in ways of life from what us East Coasters are accustomed to.

Someone said hello to me today on the street and my impulse was to deck him. And I'm considered friendly for the East Coast!

3:38 PM  
Blogger ttractor said...

Hoo! I'm in the Bay area. You can email me through my profile on this site and we can do lunch or whatever, if you got the time.

I'm super-polite for New York, and just downright rude for here. That's disconcerting.

9:33 PM  
Blogger slickaphonic said...

Ha! Dudes, welcome to California.

11:35 PM  
Blogger ttractor said...

What a welcome! So far it's been; power outage; food poisoning; allergies; cold; allergies; power outage; cold. Jesus Jumping Christmas, I haven't been this physically uncomfortable in a majorly long ass time. (and another reason why writing has not been real prolific)

Slick, I am wishing you weren't half a coastline away. That's maddeningly close/far.

12:40 AM  
Blogger slickaphonic said...

i think i may be able to grab a quick visit to SF around my spring break in march--will you still be in the bay area, m'dear?

3:41 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I didn't have time! It was a short trip, and by the time I got your message I was already on my way home. To snow.

3:39 AM  
Blogger Dr. S said...

Hey, welcome back! I was just thinking this morning, "I wonder if we've lost Ttractor forever." Glad we haven't.

7:18 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Good to se you writing again... I hope the evil other coast is being kind to you. And that impulse to be rude to them is probably well-founded.

11:18 PM  
Blogger ttractor said...

thank you everyone, for hanging in with me. I don't want to be one of those people who disappears when they get what they want. In some ways it appalls me that I write to be loved, and now that I am, I am not wanting a larger audience. I just don't have that consumptive ego. In going back over some things I have written I get great pleasure, and that has to be the reason I do this, despite my affection for all of you. Is that offensive? I surely hope not.

1:44 AM  

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