The last day

The street was exploding. This street, the street I have walked every morning while here, with no destination only direction is now, at this early hour, filled with flowers. People setting up stands – long rows of pure summer colors and smells. I stop, not being able t help myself. Here you do not touch. Point and they hold it up. Yes, I want those. Perfect new potatoes with skin as delicate and transparent as a new born. I have no kitchen here, no stove, and no way to cook them. But I get them anyway and slip them into my bag with the large headed sunflowers from my childhood. Heads as big as my own. I’ve always felt like a sunflower. Fringes with color that draws the eye away from the inside. But I you did look, it wouldn’t just be a slick black swirl, but a complicated spiral indicating the trajectory of life.
The chef at the café I’ve been frequenting is beside me.
“What would you fancy for breakfast this morning?” His emphasis on this in his lightly accented English which dances over the display of dusty hued fruit. I reach into my bag and pull out a perfect new potato, round and still wrapped in a light dusting of soil like a receiving blanked protecting its delicate skin. He turns and his green eyes look just like leaves in spring, newly furled and unprotected.
“Perfect.”
A half hour and two cups of tea later, a plate of lemon ricotta pancakes, faces as big as the yellow fringes ones poking out of my bag, arrives with a side of fried new potatoes and some sort of spicy smelling sausage. The chef brought it all himself pointing out all of the ingredients he bought at the market that morning.
“The lemon made me think of your sunshine” He said pointing to my hair and then to the flowers. The pancakes are good. Lemon and ricotta not heavy but rather like the ocean. Smooth waves of flavor complemented by the tea and fruit. The potatoes and spicy sausage do not go with this meal, but he knew I wanted them. The crisp potatoes have a flavor I can’t quite put my finger on. Something like the taste of a warm kiss but more salty. Maybe something of the earth, perhaps they were grown near the ocean. I think of them growing in that dark secret place I have never been and envy the silence they grew up in.
Other people are here now. Drawn, perhaps, by my breakfast. Highlighted so perfectly in the window. I think to myself, “This is my best time. I am the most perfect self I will ever be.” Radian, redolent. Full of summer fruit and love for myself, yet the oily black swirl is still inside. It cannot be drowned out by the brilliant yellow fringe.
Pink Floyd is playing and I think for a moment that it is inside my head.

And all that you are
And all that you miss
And all that you love
And all that you kiss

Those are probably not the words, but that is what I hear along with the "ahhh" of the back up singers raising like mist off of pine trees. It is not in my head, but all around us. Voices lifted over our breakfasts. Each of us eating, consumed as we consume and now pressed by the weight of the just-too-loud music out lives and the future near and empty plate, far an empty life.
Anyone who knows me and read this will wonder – really? Pink Floyd? Yes. It is one of those surreal moments. The ones you look back on and think “Ah, it was then that the direction changed.”

A City That is not my own

Being in a city foreign to your own is so odd. Even this one – one I have visted before – but before is so long ago – I can barely remember what I was like then much less what this city was like.

I went to dinner and had churros con chocolate for dessert – I loved to order it, loved to dip the sweet hot cinnamon pastry into the thick dark chocolate. You know it is good when the pastry stands up in the chocolate – at least that is what the guide book says.

I saw a movie too – it was sweet and made me cry a little

Walking back to the hotel I was asked for change 4 times and then a man followed me when I ignored his plea. I had borrowed a large umbrella from the hotel and was carrying it. After three blocks I stopped and waited for him to catch up and told him if he followed me any farther I w0ould have him killed. It was stated like a fact.

He stopped following – I wasn’t scared – I didn’t think he would really do anything – but I certainly scared him. He held up his hands “I jus thought you were pretty” or some such thing – it was hard to understand his accent – esp. with all of the alcohol. Not mine of course, his.

I looked at myself in the hotel mirror for a long time when I got in. I am so much older then I was. I don’t really think I look like I do, but of course this is me, how I am how people see me. Wrinkles. White hair coming in – There are so many things that could have been different. What if I had had children – would I be a different person – have a different life. What if I move to this city – learn this culture – what would I do if that man had followed me in my city?

We all make choices, even the ones that are seemingly made for us. What will my choices be? How will I decide who I am to be from now on?

I'm not sure I trust - but it probably doesn't matter

So I decided a few days ago to post here again - but then I read a few of my earlier posts and almost deleted the whole thing.

So much has happened since this blog started I start to get sad just thinking about it. Not the actual things that happened but the time - the long long years and how they went so fast and how things that happened in those year seem not to matter that much.

I asked the Robot to stop reading this blog and to stop looking at my MySpace

www.myspace.com/edrie
www.myspace.com/armyoftoys

So I have to trust he will do that, though I know, in my heart – that he will probably look at everything I post publicly because he is that kind of person – someday he will search the internet for me because of something inside of him that makes him wish to tie up loose ends (like the T girl who will never talk to him again)

I will be a loose end and he will search and I will be easy for him to find. Though I know I will never find him online if he doesn’t want me too (beaker?) Though I don’t need too since I keep getting not so mysterious emails from someone giving me updates… Who could that be I wonder…

So I am going to stop wondering about others, do things that make me happy in whatever way I can be.

I made a resolution to myself this morning - to make thing matter more. To try not to do any throw away things or things that other people want me to do or I feel I have to do unless I want to do them, unless (for some reason) it is the right thing to do for me. I have never been selfish and never really protected myself in that way - I have always felt obligated to others. I was brought up to care more for others then for myself and to not account for my own feelings in a situation before I account for how I might be making others feel.

This is, in essence, why the Robot ran away. I think I was very good for him for a time. He was good for me too, in way I will write about some day, but when he realized that I would always make him feel - and he didn't want to feel those things anymore - he went with a person who made him feel like when we first met. Which was wonderful for the most part, but also bad in some ways. I loved those days, but not more then I loved getting to know what our future would be - could have been.

The funny thing is hindsight - as it always is, you see things that you don't see while you are going through it. In the movies and books I can always guess what I am supposed to be paying attention to and can guess what will happen to those characters because of it, but in my life, my real life, I can never see those things or guess them. I see them for others - all of the time and want to tell them to not do things because I know how it will turn out - but I found out early that is not a good way to keep friends...

So anyway - the thing I should have paid attention to - which in a move or book would have been very clear to me and even cliché... was a report on NPR that I heard while The Robot was sleeping in the car on our drive to Boston (as he almost always did)

It was a report on the fact that out of everyone who got divorced (and that is over 50% of people) 90% of those divorces are within the first 5 years. Coming up fast on our 5-year anniversary. This made my ears prick up. I had no indication we would not be together in just a few weeks. That my whole world would be suddenly and cruelly changed - but he did - he knew - somewhere in the sleepy recesses he was already gone. I just didn't know. I told him of the report and he took too much of an interested. An interest in the way he always took when something was bothering him, but I didn't notice, I thought it was something else, something about work, something about the collective or the band...

But that, as most things, does not matter anymore.

Other things that don’t matter anymore…

All people who have relationships have things they have to work out. I always did more house work then the Robot – I felt bad, he felt guilty, but nothing much came if it, not for lack of trying though – I made a list of chores, he made a list – we tried – it didn’t matter

Look at this

TIME FRAME DATE DATE DATE

Fri 7-9
Sat 11-1
Sun 12-2
Mon 7-9

CHORES
Basement
Vacuumed
Cat Liter
Sun Room Sweep
Dust Table
Wash Floor
Hallway Dust Table
Sweep
Wash Floor
Living Room Vacuumed Rug
Sweep
Wash Floor
Dining Room Dust Table
Sweep
Wash Floor
Kitchen Clean out Fridge
Clean off Counters
Clean Stove
Sweep
Wash Floor
Dishes/dishwasher
Shake out rugs
Laundry Room Shake out rugs
Clean Surfaces
Clean Toilet
Sweep
Wash Floor
Stairs Up Sweep
Wash
Hallway Sweep
Wash
Master Bedroom Dust
Vacuumed
Spare Bedroom Dust
Vacuumed
Bathroom Shake out rugs
Sweep
Wash Floor
Clean Surfaces
Clean Toilet
Clean Bathtub



It is a crazy list – and something I would do almost every week – the idea of writing it out was to get him to help – we even put timeframes there because we were going to do the chores “together” it never happened – to my recollection we did a few of the things a few of the times and then went back to our old ways. And now – the house is for sale, our life is not ours and I never do the chores unless the real-estate agent says she needs to come over.

See how much we do that doesn’t really matter? Things can be messy – they will be cleaned – relax, don’t worry about what time he goes to bed, just worry about yourself and being happy


Post where you want – consequences are in consequential