I am in a good mood after another family basketball party with our neighbor friends. Plus the Giants just won the first game of the second half of the season. I found a bunch of beautiful and rare pieces of seaglass (red, yellow and orange), which I photographed and posted on my site Seaglass.
I also did a little photo essay about an old mill she and I visited last summer and how that connects with a discarded bag I spotted yesterday in my neighborhood as well as Dylan's preoccupation with pigeons in a three-part series for my other photo site Sidewalk Images.
Now it's time to write here about what I am thinking and feeling tonight. As my colleagues at work know, I love websites that let me personalize a home page. (I think I'm a closet designer at heart.) At My Yahoo, I keep lots of information, about stocks, sports, news, weather. One of my weather nodes is Biloxi.
I checked it late this afternoon and it was hot -- "feels like 96" -- reported My Yahoo. I just checked it again now, and though the thermometer has fallen to 84, it "feels like 92." It's a silly thing, I know, but it makes me feel closer to her to read those weather reports, knowing how much she loves the heat, as the southern California girl she always will be.
At times like these, I wish I was so powerful I could send my thoughts and feelings up into the soft breeze that is now sweeping over San Francisco this evening. It is a lovely night here, warm and dark. Outside for a while, I felt fine in my short sleeved shirt. I wish I could puff up my cheeks and blow that soft breeze all the way from here to Biloxi, from my house to her little room on the balcony of the church on Pass Road where she sleeps.
If I had that much power, the breeze would reach her tonight, and sweep away any concerns she might have. It would caress her sleeping body, comforting her, wrapping her with the spirits of our ancestors, who watch us and keep us safe from danger.
By now this post is probably sounding like recidivism. David, didn't you break up with her a week ago, let her go, and move on? Didn't you withdraw your proposal?
Yes, yes, yes, and yes.
But if I am to speak my honest feelings, there continues to be a deep reservoir of loyalty and love inside my heart for this woman now so lost from me; this person who danced away, never to return to me. I cannot stop caring for her, remembering all the things she did that were so special to me, for me, and with me, and how much I valued every single moment I got to spend with her.
I always knew, on some level, it could not last. It's hard to make the good things last. My sense of how fragile our relationship was meant I never took her for granted, even on the few occasions she thought I did. She was never far from my mind or my heart, and there never was room for another as long as she rocked my universe.
I'm not sure why, on this night, my instincts are triggered that somehow it is a night I should send her a love letter. I cannot do it openly any longer; it is no longer appropriate, and the few times I tried after she left she truly got angry with me. So I won't make that mistake again.
But I can do this. I can say that the other day, when the kids and I lost an orange balloon, I kept watching long after they forgot about it as it drifted ever higher on its voyage to the east. I wished on that balloon. I wished it would travel on the jetstream all the way to southern Mississippi and land softly on a peppercorn-colored Mini parked in a church lot on Pass Road.
Just land there and sit there quietly in the still of the southern night, and greet her in the morning, when another day beckons to her. How magic would it be to find an orange balloon on your car one morning?
I can't do any of the things I used to do for her. I cannot touch her in my special ways or bring her small surprises. I cannot do anything at all, except wish that the laws of physics would make the impossible happen, by reaching across from where, according to My Yahoo, it "feels like 57" to where she dreams her unknown dreams and remembers what she wishes to remember and feels whatever she feels, all mysteries to me, but it "feels like 92."
This song still is for you, only for you, baby.
2 comments:
I think you should continue to write about everything and whatever is going on. Even though this particular post is reminiscent of former lamenting, there's a distinct difference. It's not as sad. It's less painful and more reflective. Oh sure, the clear and very difficult feelings are up and running. But it's not desperate like the ones that appeared last month or before. I would trust your instincts. Even the picture of your hands together is a larger view of that photo than the last time, isn't it? I believe there's more showing. When we first begin to back away from something/someone, we still see them because we're still facing them. As we keep stepping backwards, we see more and the distance grows. When the time is right, and not before, we turn around and still hold them behind ourselves but face new vistas. When we do turn to peek again, the distance creates a much larger view and more is clear. Persective creeps in eventually and we finally realize we have both them and ourselves and present time.
Yes, this photo is one of two we took our last night in NYC together. Inadvertantly, a page of The New Yorker was included in this shot, raising the question "Who's Who?" In any event, with posts such as this one, I rely on a sixth sense that maybe I wasn't the only one of us who needed to hear thses sentiments expressed. Breaking up is hard for everyone involved, even the witnesses...
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