Modern Love 2

It's lonely, being in love. 

Modern Love

There is a paw at my cheek, nudging before the meowing begins. My eye mask pulls away and takes me from night to dawns early light in a snap. She meows. Persistent and yet, pleased I get up creaky and slowly thinking "I'm 30" as I pat her head and reach for a tshirt. My girl is 12 years old now. She came in the night in the form of a frantic phone call from a friend. "I got a kitten but I'm in DC and can't come home; will you go check on it?" I went, at 17, and broke into my friends house to see about this cat. Tiny and mewing and underweight, my friend had put out hard cat food not even thinking that she was just still too little for it. I scooped her up and she just cried and I knew she would be mine forever. Now, so many years later, I look at her and I just feel better. I'm the single woman with a cat. I'm ok with that. 

Stroll

Your smell is in my hair, smoky and male. Red beard red mouth. It was ok, right? I like what we did, what we talked about. Sitting in a dark park freezing cold and reclined. You remind me of someone, I don't know who but you seem familiar. I don't think you'll call, I don't know. I can't tell if you thought anything about me, what you made of me. You were taller than I expected. I could see you with someone quieter, waifish. You may be too smart for me or me too stupid for you. I can calculate the return on your investment but I wonder what you could do to me. Jangling nerves and then getting excited about talking or telling something. I kept looking behind me because I kept feeling snuck up on. I was thinking about your face. My hair smells of books and musk and leather and that must be what you are. Gentleman. 

Dear

Rebecca,

Oh the fun you've had! The giggles that rang out and leaped from ear to ear, heads turning to see. You hands poised up over your head and body ready to grab the moon and hold on for dear life. You are doing really great. You look great and you feel better and sure, some days are gray and some are pink but there are all mostly positive. It's hard to remember the day to day craft of keeping one's self happy but it isn't like you haven't the time to figure it out. There might be white noise that is stifling at times but there is golden girl and valentine and that helps so much. You are almost to the "safe" point in this Utah journey. It's never too late and you are doing such a good job considering the mess that it could have all been. 

Bold moves

Thirty. Thirty, flirty and fabulous. Pulling out the thickest marker I own and scrawling it across everything; underline, cross out and redefine. Travel and try and be and go and meet and see and do everything I wouldn't have before. Flirt more, smile more, make eye contact more. I smiled at so many men today and they smiled back and said hi or made eye contact in a nice way. I was nice. I told that guy I liked his Jeep and he loved that. The guy in the grocery store, actually, the guys in the grocery store tonight. Saying hi to strangers on the street. Getting coffee at 7:30pm and not caring. Cutting paper and pastel drawing. I don't know I guess I just have been living on a straight line for the most part and now it's time I get a little messy. Shake my hair up, wear wild clothes and purple lipstick, go in to the men's room and say "oops" and giggle on my way out. Go on dates and leave the city. 

Write a bunch

Write a bunch and try to care. Work at it and then give up until I see something or hear something that reenergizes me into giving it another go, living. Being alive, getting older feels more and more up hill. Staggering like the bronze sculpture projected to show me its texture; I am not emaciated so we aren't that similar I guess. 

My cat is there for me, even though I am starting to think she is the reason for the creeping hysteria. 

I love children's literature so much it hurts; unfortunately a few of my classmates are feeble minded in a way that causes me physical pain. These are people who haven't travelled, haven't experienced art and architecture and culture outside of comic-con and the Vape store. These are the kinds of people that want to infer ideas upon your children. Don't be afraid but for heavens sake read whatever you let your children read. I enjoy talking about the context and artistic approach. I'm almost terrified that I am becoming the shut in bourgeois  that I always dreamed I would be. I am Auntie Mame, I am the tragic and the party and the sparkle and the ash. 

I like math because I have to. I'm almost to that next step, if I can defeat the evil math and save the princess (me). In math, you have to save yourself. 

I still want to live in Berlin. I still want to go to Iceland. I still want to marry foreign and gypsy caravan across Asia and Europe down to Africa. I still want kittens and flowers and babies and frilly aprons. A whole team of people to love all the way. I should have been mormon. God I would have made such a good mormon pioneer woman. Is there such a thing as reincarnation? We can never know that. To know is to see it all and to see it all is to cease searching and once you stop searching your human condition is cured and there is nothing left for you in this life or the next or the last or anywhere in time.