Jan. 30th, 2010 at 5:45 PM
Everything was on hold while I both carefully followed directions of things to do … and quietly froze to death. -27°F with the wind chill yesterday … it’s impossible to attract anyone (much less a soul mate) while you’re blue, your teeth are chattering uncontrollably and your sexiest evening wear is the classic layered look of two heavy flannel nightgowns, two hooded sweatshirts, socks and bunny slippers because your heating system isn’t working properly and maintenance hadn’t shown up yet. Unless the soon to be arriving gentleman was an Inuit engineer from the Arctic Circle Observatory in northern Canada who appreciated the sensual qualities of heavy flannel, I’m guessing I once again wasn’t quite ready for the arrival of … whatzizname. Preparation. That’s the big assignment.
The Italian journal had arrived from Journaling.com wrapped tightly in bubble wrap and was – as advertised – gorgeous. Made in Florence. An embossed heart on the cover, gilt-edged pages, fleur du lis tooling on the outside edges, acanthus leaf tooling on the inside, a gold satin ribbon between its pages … made to look like something you'd find in, say, Francis Bacon's personal library ... if Francis Bacon lived in Florence and was enamored of bubble wrap which I'm certain, like most of us, he would have been. There isn't a soul alive who isn't enchanted by the aesthetically rewarding sensation of popping bubble wrap ... knowing that every time you've pressed your thumb against one of those little bubbles and heard the resulting "POP!", you're personally responsible for freeing a trapped bubble of air that had been imprisoned for months, maybe years, forced to travel long distances away from home ... and was now free to roam the earth unencumbered, creating gentle breezes and brisk ocean winds ... and hurricanes, tornados and typhoons. The Journal. I couldn’t wait to start writing in it. The pen had not yet arrived.
Ah, my beautiful Visconti pen ...
There is an entire generation of people so used to e-mail and texting and tweeting to the exclusion of all other means of communication that they will never know the sensation of sliding a timeless, silky and exquisitely pleasurable Italian fountain pen out of its leather sheath, sliding their fingers contemplatively up and down its elegant shaft, feeling its weight, its perfection, the smooth, sensuous curves; breathlessly anticipating the moment when they gracefully and gently press its fine golden nib to creamy, thickened and expectant paper … (long pause for deep breath, lighting cigarette, exhaling loudly) … sorry, mind wandered there for a moment … bottom line: it’s an unparalleled erotic experience none of them will ever know. So, while I wait for the pen to be engraved …
It was time to address the next of those killer questions: Are you psychologically and physically in your best condition to meet your soul mate?
Best Psychological Condition?
See? I KNEW there was a catch! I wasn’t even sure what being "psychologically in your best condition" meant. By whose standards? Mine? His? My mother’s? A certified psychotherapist’s? Is anybody psychologically in their "best" condition? Does being in your best condition mean you’re at the point where there’s no room for improvement? If that were the criteria, I doubt anybody would ever find anybody.
At some point you have to say, "Well, I don’t have a split personality ("Yes I do! No I don’t!") and I’m pretty sure that if I were psychotic, manic-depressive, schizophrenic, delusional or paranoid somebody would have probably mentioned it to me by now … but I do have a flying phobia. So maybe I need to cure the phobia first, although ... isn't having at least one phobia a normal part of being human? Or did I need to fly to Europe and back six times without hyperventilating before he shows up?
I remembered some Law & Order episodes where people said perfectly ordinary things which were later held up as examples of their evident guilt while on trial for murder, and so asked a few of my co-workers recently for examples of things I’d said that might be later misconstrued in a court of law – thank goodness, most of them couldn’t think of anything, but two did:
I have said, on occasion, "He/she should be taken out in the back yard and shot", and may I never go on trial for shooting anyone because I say this all the time, inevitably when someone does something inexcusably dumb that I think warrants their immediate removal from the global gene pool. Why I assume I’m in any position to monitor the global gene pool I have no idea (ah! delusions of grandeur!), but I do. Standard response when I hear of someone doing something stupid? "Oh, please. He needs to be taken out in the back yard and shot." Usually directed at politicians for any number of reasons. Have no idea why I fixate on my own back yard as opposed to something less likely to have me standing in that court of law – like the Massachusetts legislature’s back yard - so maybe I ought to reconsider where I have people shot for stupidity.
The other one I’m so well know for that co-workers have taken to quoting it back at me when the tables are turned: This is my standard, instantaneous response to, "Hey, can I ask you a question?"
"I wasn’t there, I didn’t do it, I wasn’t even in the country at the time." Plausible deniability. You can never have too much of it, IMHO. One of my co-workers thought I should have that one engraved on my tombstone, which - given the sappy typical stuff carved into gravestones - I thought was a great idea. Okay, so maybe I am just a little bit warped.
On the other hand, when I was younger, I freaked my parents out – so they tell me, I have no memory of this – by informing them that I could hear trees screaming.
I actually made use of this early episode in a required creative writing class at the University of Michigan, in which we were required to format the text to match the short story’s contents. I took liberal amounts of creative license with this episode: we didn’t go to a farm, we went to a suburban church parking lot in Cincinnati, Ohio; and my parents didn't look at me and drive quietly off to Sears; as they relayed this to me later, they discussed whether or not to assume I was "going through a phase" that blessed me with an overactive imagination. I will say they eventually did buy a metallic tree, but it took a while. In addition, this version fails to take into account younger brother Jim, running in and out and around a somewhat dangerous lot full of unsecured trees with fearless self-destructiveness, and younger sister Barbie, squawking in a stroller, while all this was going on. But the rest of it is true.
The Christmas Tree
Every year, after Thanksgiving, they would visit a local farm to buy a Christmas tree. At the age of two, she whimpered as they neared the farm, and when they arrived screamed and was hurried home, to regain what composure children of that age possess. At three, she knotted her face into folds as they neared, breathing heavily, covering her ears, weeping silently and at four, she remembered the sound of keening in her ears, and not knowing what she was hearing, complained of the pain in her head although nothing was noted but the normal childhood vagaries. When she was five, she now knew what she was hearing. She stayed silent and still, not breathing, trying not to listen. When asked if she were ill, she shook her head and unexpectedly vomited noisily in the back seat of the car. When she was six, when told she was to be taken to buy a Christmas tree, she said, "No." Asked to explain herself, she finally found the words and in her six year old voice, said something that explained
The
sound of
the cries she
could hear, had
always heard, they're
crying, she said, they hurt,
she said. They're dying, she said.
They can't breathe. They've been cut
in half, they're bleeding, they're screaming,
they're screaming, the trees are screaming, I
can hear them, I can feel them, I can't help them, she
said. Their feet are chopped off, their stumps are bleeding,
their stumps are bleeding,
The trees,
Mommy!
The trees,
Daddy!
Can't you
hear them?
Can't you
hear them?
Can't
you?
Her mother and father looked at each other for a long moment and without another word ushered her into the car. They drove to Sears, and picked out a silver metallic tree-effigy dusted in chemical snow, crinkling and tinkling like a silver bell and sparkling with ice-jewels. Which she loved with all her heart, for its silence and its stillness,
And its heavenly peace.
So … if my earlier experiences with Christmas trees is any indication, I’d probably not want to hook up with a lumber jack. Lest it turn out I’m not psychologically in my best condition, and take him out into the backyard and … you know, shoot him. Do I still hear trees screaming? No. Do I still cringe and feel slightly sickened watching a tree being cut down? Yup. So I probably still carry a vestige of that around with me, even though I can’t remember it.
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