October 11, 2004 - 9:55 PM

Oh Columbus Day

On the way home from work today (and it was a blessedly low-traffic day today, the result of it being Columbus Day. I didn't even realize that it was Columbus Day until someone at work offhandedly mentioned it. I had done a couple runs in my car to various places and noted how unusually easy it was to zip over the highways, and once he mentioned that it was a holiday, it all became clear...and then fuzzy...

Columbus Day. My brain stirred, and I did some counting. It's been exactly 8 years this holiday weekend since I had my heart first, and most rendingly, broken. And really, that's the only time that I've had such heartbreak, mostly because I haven't allowed my heart to be placed in such a precarious situation since then. It took me a long time to get through that, to get past it. I've slowly mended...and yet, several times I thought I had resolved it, but then the memories trickled down from the leaky attic where I keep that stuff in storage, at the back of my head.

Speaking of the back of my head, I noticed this weekend that I have a strange flat area at the rear of my skull. I was running my hand through my hair, all "eek" while watching the playoff baseball games (some real nail biters going on, huh?), and my fingers found their way across the dent. It's where, if my head were a square box (uh...do you mean a cube?), the top and the back planes would form an edge. Now imagine that someone approached that edge and thought it would be nice to slice off that edge at a 45 degree angle; you'd be left with a slanted top/backside to the cube and a free piece that was an isoceles right triangle, right? That is my skull. Well, not that pronounced, but it is there.

I hadn't felt it before, or maybe I had, and I forgot, but I was alarmed. How did that happen? Did someone unbeknownst to me stick a large plank of wood on my previously rounded skull and slam a sledgehammer on it, causing it to flatten out? Had I been doing too many headstands where I tried to imitate the Leaning Tower of Pisa? Why was I such a hideously deformed freak now? I wonder how it would look it I shaved my head?

I've been massaging the slope ever since, a bit freaked by the freakiness of it. Ooooh.

Uhh...oh yeah, Columbus Day, and all the sadness it brings. Short story: After my first year at Amherst College, I stuck around and worked on campus. Through a friend, I met a girl who lived in the area. We went out on a couple dates, became friends, and then she went off to Syracuse U for her first year. We kept up email, then I went out to Syracuse over Columbus Day weekend with the friend who had introduced us and realized, only when that friend told me, that the girl was dating her R.A. She hadn't told me in our emails because she didn't know how to without hurting me. *sigh* So I hurted for a good long time. The first time I put my sensitive little heart on the line and allowed hope to run free, it's so very difficult to recover from that.

I saw her a few times again after that; I even stopped by Syracuse while on my 10 week road trip in '97. The last time was in '98, when i stopped by Amherst right before I started at Berklee in Boston. I kept up a pretense of friendly emails, hoping of course to recapture whatever might have been, but not realistically expecting anything. For a handful of years after, I would always feel a warm infusion of melancholy at the beginning of October because I would remember what happened. There's a line in a Susan Werner song called "Much at All", a song that's about trying to convince yourself that you don't miss a certain someone "much at all." As the song progresses, the justifications for being alone deteriorate, and the lyrics become more longing and wistful. The verse that killed me everytime I heard it (and seriously, I'd get choked up whenever she played it in concert) is this: "I guess I missed the changing of the seasons, I've seen enough New England in the Fall, I've seen enough of anywhere we were together, I guess that I don't miss you much at all." That was me.

I'd say it wasn't until 2, maybe 3 years ago that I could say that that chapter of my life was finished. The wounds have mostly healed, although they aren't fully scabbed over. Isn't that the way it is with first love? The cuts may not be fresh, and they certainly aren't wide open, but every so often, you go back and lick them. Maybe it's to help clean them out and move along the healing process, maybe it's just to get that familiar acidic tang on your tongue, to feel that surprising masochistic sting. But at least, for me, it's past history. Something catalogued and shelved in the memory banks, only to be recalled alongside the strange days and forgotten holidays.)

Holy crap, that was a long parenthetical interjection. So, on my way home on some pretty swiftly moving highways thanks to the "fake" holiday (I even made it from Glendale, where I work, across the Valley to the 405, and down the 405 to Century City at 5:30 PM in, like, 30 minutes. In normal rush hour traffic, that would be an hour and a half hike. Then, after that drop-off, I made it home in less than 30. Woohoo!), there was a car in front of me, a white, two-door japanese-made coupe. Sputtered across the back, all around the license plate, were bumper stickers advocating various animal-friendly causes. "Go Vegan" proclaimd one while another admonished "Don't Allow Slavery, Boycott Circuses". There was one advising parents to not give their kids milk. And then there was the sticker that stated "Animals should be free: If it has legs, let it run; if it has fins, let it swim; if it has wings, let it fly." Awww. I hope you don't have pets, cuz you're keeping them in chains, and they should be emancipated, baby! And what about all those dead dinosaurs? Don't they deserve some sort of activist representation? Shouldn't their fossils and other remains be respected? Aren't you hurting both current animalia and long-dead ones by burning oil/gasoline in that sporty little car of yours? Planet killer. And who's going to speak up for the flora?

Now Listening To : Sinead O'Connor-Best of
Random Thought : Finally watched The Triplets of Belleville. I wish I had a grandma like that one. So cute!

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