2002
11 November 2002
I have started to resume this online journal about 4 different times since I've been here in California, and each time I delete what I had begun and start over. I've been wanting to write, both here and in my private journals, but I seem to be in one of those moments of paralysis when I just cannot make myself sit down and commit words to paper, or cyberspace, or any place beyond my fleeting memory. Who knows why that is; maybe it's just plain old procrastination. It occurred to me this weekend, though, that I really have been having some extraordinary experiences since I've been here and though I'm starting late to the game I figured one way for me to take stock and make a record of this experience was to just say what I've been doing, virtually none of which I could be doing were I still in Santa Fe, which I steadfastly and stubbornly still consider to be my home.
I have been here nearly 3 months; so far I have heard Paul Auster read the smuttiest part of his new book to an audience of shocked yuppies and their children at a small bookstore in a neighboring town (but missed Dorothy Allison reading with Jewelle Gomez just this past Saturday--ack!); I've seen the papery-thin disintegrating Lucybelle Crater mask encased at a gallery in San Francisco along with a full suite of those Ralph Eugene Meatyard photographs, which I'd never seen before; I've participated in an anti-war march where I saw the Radical Cheerleaders and walked alongside thousands of people who think, at least politically, like me; I've had three friends visit, including my ex and one dear one I hadn't seen in 8 years; I've been bored by a Meshell Ndegéocello concert in San Francisco but the next day inspired by an Ani DiFranco one in Santa Cruz that kept me buzzing for days; I've walked along the beach, watching seals lounge in the sun and crabs scuttle along sideways in the shallows; I've gone to a spa to celebrate my sister's birthday; I've chatted on the phone with an Oscar winner (and one nominee); I've celebrated my birthday at Chez Panisse (finally!); been stirred to action by the radical old-school politics of Amiri Baraka; I've met someone who actually met Maudelle; I've ridden my bike, and yes, it's true that you never forget how but you can sure get rusty; gone to a green festival in San Francisco where I blew my budget doing the right thing; rejoined and fallen off of Weight Watchers; gone to a dinner party; learned to endure daily buffet lunches (it's the buffet thing that I would have sworn I'd never do); I went to a bluegrass festival and became addicted to kettle corn; I've consistently found parking, mostly for free and very near the front doors of my destinations, in San Francisco; I've continued to go to San Francisco, something else I would have sworn I wouldn't do; gotten a parking ticket in San Jose; I've been photographed by a legendary photographer; I've laid around watching television and felt no guilt or shame; I've bought more clothes and accessories than I have in the past several years, trying to reclaim something that was once very important to me; I broke down and got a cell phone (but don't yet know how to use it, still resisting becoming one of those people); I've barely spoken with my mother, which is and isn't a good thing; I've memorized the way to San Jose; I've made friends. I've been inspired.
I know I'm forgetting something.
Tune in next week.
29 July 2002
I have been traveling a lot this summer, mostly promoting my book and doing research, and I have reached a sobering though not entirely depressing realization—I am passé. The kind of research and writing I do about the body and identity and race and gender and all of that stuff—minus the theory, which I never understand and in which I don't traffic—is no longer what's being talked about in the "academy" (and it was never talked about anywhere else, either). I'm kind of bothered by it and kind of not. A big part of me figures I do what I do and it will cycle around again like everything does and that this is a good time in which to just focus and get work done. Another part of me wishes I could consistently earn a living at what I do. Doing this I can't have much of an ego, that's for sure. Deb and I had a booksigning at the National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta this past weekend (again, thanks to everyone who showed up to support us) and we were set up at a table with David Driskell. Now, admittedly, in terms of drawing power I'm no Driskell or Willis, but more than one person who came up to the table looked me straight in the face and said, "Who are you?" One guy thought I was just sitting there to sign for Deb when she was otherwise occupied. No joke. Good thing I'm not sensitive.
So this is it. I leave Santa Fe August 9. Maybe I'll be back. Maybe I'll finally get that house at the beach where I can just write. Maybe I will fall in love again. Maybe I'll just be seduced. Maybe I'll write a bestseller. Maybe I'll become an in-demand ghostwriter up to my ears in gloriously second-rate Hollywood gossip. This year has certainly reminded me how life can turn on a dime, how nothing is guaranteed. It's a life lesson that we have to keep getting reminded of, I think, because we so stubbornly prefer the familiar even when it isn't all that great. Maybe I've left behind for good my pattern of excrutiatingly unrequited crushes. Maybe I'll finally lose all the weight I've gained in the past 10 years. Maybe, hopefully, the spontaneous crying will finally cease. Maybe I'll get everything I've ever wished for. It's good enough for now to just be standing on the threshold of possibilities, of the unknown where anything is possible, good and bad. Every time I face a finite period of time, I have to remember how quickly it goes by and how no matter what I anticipate it will bring I will blink and it will be behind me and I'll hardly remember what I expected it would be.
Maybe I'm feeling introspective because I'm facing a very real life change in less than 2 weeks when I move to California. I still cannot quite comprehend that, at least for a year, I don't have to get up each morning and work at a job from 9 - 5. I'm extremely excited for the opportunity and to be back in my home state, especially in a part of it in which I've never lived, yet I'm still more than a little sad at leaving behind a life I really thought would last. (Though mostly I'm anxious to move on.) I still toy with the thought of dropping this site and selling all my art books and starting over as something new, but I essentially like what I do and I feel like, for the first time, I finally have a clear view in mind of what I want to do coupled with a strong belief that I can get there. So though these entries have been sporadic this will be the last one before I resettle. I hope to be more regular with them next year.
30 April 2002
Sunday night I went to hear Marlena Shaw sing here in Santa Fe. I can't believe she came to Santa Fe, and I was thrilled. She's one of my favorite jazz vocialists and she was just fantastic. For her encore, she sang one of my favorite songs, which I knew from Shirley Horn—"Here's to Life." See, "Here's to Life" was going to be the first song to which I danced with my husband. I had it all planned.
I was never one of those women who dreamed of her wedding. I could never even envision a wedding, getting married, falling in love. I figured it wasn't for me. (How true that was). But there was a moment in my life, when I still believed that I like men, when I put together the whole picture. I was living in Los Angeles, living with my grandmother who was increasingly cruel to me, working in Santa Monica. I'd left a position as a curator in New York to be a part-time office assistant back at the Getty. Talk about humbling. I had been desperate to get out of New York. I suppose I was fairly unhappy—well, I was glad to be out of New York, but I hadn't returned to the most ideal situation. I had to drive a lot to and from work and I started listening to KLON, a jazz station. It was soothing, good for nerves that had to endure traffic. Anyway, during this period I developed a crush on a man at work. I ain't gonna name names—it can't much matter (and he's still in the arts). He was beautiful, or so I thought—deep brown skin, mesmerizing voice, and he'd gone to a "good" school, which at the time I was weirdly convinced was essential—I thought we were a match made in heaven. He became the sweet embodiment of Cassandra Wilson's version of "Tupelo Honey," a song I love and would later sing along to using the feminine pronouns about no one in particular. I used to try to time it so we could ride the elevator together; I worked on the 7th floor. KLON began playing Shirley Horn's "Here's to Life," a kind of bittersweet, melancholy song that I felt summed up my understanding of love and relationships, scant though my information was at that point. I began to fantasize and soon I had it all worked out. Well, not all. Some. I would wear a mud-colored gown by Lola Faturoti: a simple, slip-style, floor length dress with a sheer, long-sleeved dress over it. Mud. I loved the earthiness of it, even though the picture I had torn out of Essence magazine (and which I still have someplace) was in black-and-white. I couldn't reconcile the perfect shoe, though, and in keeping with the earth theme I figured I'd go barefoot. And my husband and I would dance to our song, and I would be radiant.
I got up the nerve one day to ask him to lunch, to my then-favorite place. As we sat there eating the magic slowly ebbed away; reality began to set in. He certainly didn't feel the same about me (and I later found out he had been interested in a gorgeous woman who would later become my friend but who dismissed his affections like a nuisance.) He was a noisy eater, too, he smacked, and I think that was the writing on the proverbial wall. So much for wedding fantasies and happily ever after. Within a year I realized that I was gay and I never fantasized about marrying men again. I still love the song, though, and I rather love the image I had created for myself, however misguided.
It was a very different experience of the song Sunday, though it still brought tears to my eyes. I know now that Carolyn has a crush on someone, her new "friend" 13 years her junior with whom she's been spending much of her spare time. A woman she tried to get me to befriend about a week before she dumped me. I saw them together Friday night, tortured myself through "happy hour" with them, and Carolyn beamed when she looked at her in a way I haven't seen in a long while. So now the hurt is resurfacing. She denied it about as weakly as she could, I guess because at this stage it apparently isn't reciprocated, claiming not to know what "having a crush" means and saying only that this woman was too young, but never that she wasn't interested, and also saying "what can I do?" as though she had no control. I was doing very well but wow, this hurts. Sigh. Crying at work again. Humiliating. I never anticipated this but then I guess no one does.
22 April 2002
This weekend I did something I never imagined I would do; I went to my 20th-year high school reunion (and I'm not the only one who couldn't imagine it—someone wrote me in as least likely to ever return for a reunion.) When I got the e-mail telling me about it my immediate thought, much to my surprise, was, I'll go. I've finally figured out that that there is no such thing as perfect or ideal and no one really cares what you weigh or who was foolish enough to leave you and just being here is reason to celebrate, especially when you're healthy. Maybe I needed the comfort of familiarity, even 20-year old familiarity, but I did not hesitate. In part it was my need to start fresh, to begin anew with my life, even by revisiting the past. I'm not even really a sentimental person. But everyone to whom I'd mentioned it said they'd been to theirs and had fun. I ended up having a lot of fun, too. Never say never.
Saturday morning I sat in the hotel half-watching a Valerie Bertinelli movie and trying to get up the courage to just get in the car and go. I did, and it was the oddest thing. First (and not especially odd), I immediately recognized everyone from my class—these women have aged gracefully and beautifully and I guess I knew more of them than I thought. They made me feel proud to be among them. Second, and perhaps a bit odd, I recognized and remembered little or nothing about the place itself. I remembered it was white and brick, but I could not remember an instructor's name, the location of any classroom, nothing. Touring it didn't bring anything back—no memories, no recollection, nothing to connect me to it; it was as though I hadn't gone there at all. In twenty years what will I remember?
I will remember their loss.
The two whose husbands had died suddenly and young, a heart stopped and a brain ravaged; the young mother of two who showed photographs of her beautiful family and explained that she and her husband were separated and she said everything was fine and yet moments later she muttered that she didn't have to ask him what he thought any more, as though she were finally free and could say it; the maid of honor who drifted away within a year of standing up for you on the happiest day of your life and no longer wanted to stay in touch; the one who didn't come but who wanted the one who did to tells the others how much they had hurt her and she hadn't forgotten; sad head-shaking rumors of heroin addiction and prostitution and Shellie was right, after twenty years we even out, we equalize; everyone has a life story now and everyone has triumphed and suffered.
I connected with the loss as I am still struggling with mine. I might have imagined going back to my reunion single but I don't guess I ever thought I would be newly single. Why does that make such a difference, feel like such a failure? And I paid special attention to the lengths of time, made note of how many of their relationships were the same age as mine, though mine now had a termination date. No one asked so I didn't tell. I have taken to wearing decorative rings on my ring finger because I was so used to feeling it there and it is clear that carved blue lucite isn't a lasting band.
Some were very much the same and I thought I was not, couldn't even remember that girl with the big hair on the video, but in moments I am, I was, disconnected, anonymous, me again. Unlike twenty years ago, though, it doesn't matter, for I am still this me, of my own construction, as we all are now, our own women.
I will also remember the power of friendship to rekindle after twenty years and how fabulous everyone looked as a testament to taking care of one's self. Take care. My pithy advice for life would be, belatedly, love yourself, make peace, and have no regrets. I think I am there.
1 April 2002
Why can't I relinquish hope? She does not want a relationship with me she does not want to try she has told me in no uncertain terms and I have verbally accepted this, so why can't I let go in my heart? I know it has hardly been any time and that time heals all of this kind of stuff but I'm not terribly patient. I did turn to my paper, private journal, so that it could be with me any and everywhere I go and when I get overwhelmed and start to break down I can turn that into something other than convulsive tears. Oh, sometimes those entries end up here or somewhere else. It's amazing what a comfort writing can be, how expressing yourself can be a purging and cleansing and all that necessary stuff. I'm an inconsistent journal keeper, both electronic and paper. Mostly I just like buying nice-looking blank books. I must have about 20 now, only one of them was ever finished. It was one that a dear friend gave me, and she had gone through and pasted words and phrases and images and various intervals and I'll be damned if, as I wrote in it over the course of several years, her choices weren't absolutely prescient of the words I would eventually write on each of those pages. It is my favorite. I recommend journals. Record your thoughts; at times you will need them again and they're all but impossible to recall in memory. Re-reading the entries I made when I was at low points over the last couple of years I guess I could see that our relationship had serious problems, but I thought they were all normal and transcendable. It's embarrassing and painful at times to read how, just a few months ago, even, I believed I was totally cherished, loved unconditionally, and that was my whole foundation for dealing with everything else. Did I really think that was true? Did I misread everything? It's fairly stunning how far off I often was, how utterly clueless. All the while she was disintegrating, my so-called rock was crumbling. I'm clueless now, though, in a different way—I'm now no longer privy to any information to help me figure things out.
So I have my moments when I look forward with anticipation to all of life's possibilities and all of the wonderful things that are happening right now in my life and in the next blink I remember my life before her, when my journal was filled with longing and loneliness and a crippling shyness that precluded me from meeting anyone. Is that still me? Is that still there? I can see so many ways in which I have changed and yet I feel that person very present in me, the one who loathes, more than anything, to eat dinner alone and yet does, must, night after night, phoning very dear friends who have to eventually grow tired of listening. I'm thirty-six now, no longer as young as I once was when I sat wondering, endlessly, if I would live my life without a partner. The thing that is so hard, so difficult to accept is the loss of love, of shared hopes and plans for a future. They're simply gone, and it's virtually impossible to get one's mind around, how what was so central to one's life is just suddenly not there and not going to be there again. Life's so different than it is in your dreams.
27 March 2002
Well, what a difference four months can make, huh? I haven't written an entry in a long time. Maybe I had nothing to say. I do today. I need a release, I guess. My relationship of six years is over. Poof. About three weeks ago my now-ex-partner, Carolyn, finished school (she had been going full-time plus working full-time for two years, nearly the whole time we've lived in Santa Fe), turned 40 the next day, and our relationship fell apart. I'm stunned, sad, devastated, hurt, mad, depleted. I love this woman. She was my life.
I think both things are true--you never really know people and people change. I think that everyone thought that if either one of us flaked it would be me, but in truth if there was an anchor in the relationship it was me. You know, it's the black woman's curse, but we are strong. I am strong. Perhaps too strong? Did I just overbear her to death? I don't know; she won't talk about it. All of our friends thought we'd be a couple who endured. Hell, I thought so. Well, I finally gave up. I can't keep falsely hoping, so I told her I love her more than anything and I gave her my ring back. She said that she just gave everything, all of herself, and now she feels like she doesn't know herself and has nothing of herself to give to a relationship. I wish we'd known sooner that this was happening to her, before it got hopeless. It's funny--until last month she had never done a single thing in this relationship without me because she wouldn't or didn't want to. I used to tell her all the time that she should and she just never did. I think this contributed to her now not having a sense of herself-- she didn't maintain enough of her independence. Maybe one day she'll decide she wants me and this relationship, but I can't pretend we're going to fix things, because she is not trying to do that right now. What's so hard is that I think the fundamental reasons we were together have either remained the same or evolved together but she is just totally shut down right now. No matter how much you love someone you do reach a limit when it isn't being fully reciprocated and you just get tired. For months while she was busy finishing school and I was feeling thoroughly neglected I just kept telling myself, 'wait, when all of this external tension is eliminated then we can refocus on us' but just the opposite was happening with her and her feelings were just going numb.
So I'm reading my Iyanla Vanzant and starting with a therapist tomorrow because I don't want to repeat the mistakes I made. Wow again. I'm alone. I have a very broken heart. And I probably should be keeping this journal privately but I'm not, I'm keeping it here. Maybe it will help me, maybe it will help someone else. I'm not much of an advice-giver, but if I can give any it's this: Communicate. Constantly. Don't ever let that lapse in a relationship. Sometimes it can't be recovered.
