Sitting in a Mission Bay Cafe
Thinking about the ways you can frame things. It was an impulse to post this list of vapid brevity:
Rode a bike along Pacific Beach this morning, early. When the sea still levitates out of itself and blends with the air and all the surfers bob in the hands of the ocean like birds.
Now I sit in a breezy purple cafe in a little bohemian bungalow. Breakfast burrito in my belly, drinking more coffee and trying to work.
Next, it’s back on the bike, down the street for a morning of unusually upbeat yoga.
These are the snapshots I could show you of this day.
But it wouldn’t tell you a thing, really.
Not what I’m thinking about. About our conversations on a long drive home from the desert last night. He predicts I’ll meet someone and settle down….though not as quickly as I would if I really wanted kids because that would rush me to settle. I won’t settle, he says. I agree - but what I really mean is that I don’t see It happening at all right now.
He’ll stay single, probably. Like everywhere I go, he echoes: He’s not sure he sees a compelling reason for the Simple Life. And he is right - he’s not good at a woman in his bed too long. In his bed at all. Domestic patterns make him itchy. And to a disturbingly large degree I understand. I am itchier now myself, more protective of time alone. Even after such a legendary day together, I am feverishly eager to escape to the bath with my book. And he ducks off to bed early, without a word - because after so long, we can’t expect any more of each other than that kind of honesty.
I should tell you that I still don’t understand this life. The finite qualities or flaws that draw us so irresistibly to someone we ought not be with. And force us from good people we can’t make ourselves love. The fates and forces that toss us together and clutch us back apart in unsatisfactory, unrelenting roles of the die. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Right?
We drove back from sinking desert seas and squatting compounds at dusk; Switched seats at the Golden Acorn Casino. He leaned back in his seat, bossed my driving and we talked about how rare it all is - that balance of wanting to be there and being wanted and being satisfied and challenged and not smothered. And how-on-earth-does-it-ever-happen-successfully? Do our friends have it? Did our parents ever?
I tell you this, it is a damn miracle.
So this time is an oasis. For both of us, for different reasons. I almost said pit stop, but I don’t like that - I mean a comforting and disorienting rest on the journey. An Arabian night or two amongst old friends.
Old Leonard asked us if we’d seen the movie Into The Wild. “No,” we answered in unison, “but I read the book.”
By our very nature we can find no way but to ebb and flow at paces that seem destined not to coincide. Which is nearly comical now and to which I have become resigned. Love it for what it is, and even for what it isn’t, then let it be. Just for once, just be, I advise myself like the wise grandmother I don’t have anymore.
I described my ideal man to my therapist the other day, at her prodding, and she said, “It sounds like you want to fall in love with God.”
And that made me laugh and sigh a little because it is probably true no matter where you put the emphasis in that sentence. No matter how you read and understand it.
I want him to be larger than life, in love with this world, to have an insatiable need to find and consume it. I want him to have adventure in his very marrow, to be keen, to still have so much life left in him he can barely sleep. I want him to be independent yet present. Wise and complicated and strong and kind. Insatiable. Insatiable. Insatiable.
Writing this makes me smile, turn and look out the window at the palm trees that spoon telephone poles. I think I am tired of looking, but it’s still good to know that you haven’t found it rather than forcing and distorting the nearest fellow to conform.
It is still good.
2 months ago