the heather garden

Someone wrote the other day (or I heard, somewhere) something like, “Intimacy is where truth meets love.” I can’t credit the thought, or say it just as I read or heard it. But I’m grateful for it. So here it is to share. Thank you, Anonymous.

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When I fell for one of Ben Lerner’s recommendations in New Yorker Magazine’s The Best Books of 2013, Part 2,  Geoffrey G. O’Brien’s poetry volume “People on Sunday,” it was partly because I haven’t read poetry for two months, and partly because Lerner wrote he and O’Brien “argue over every line of each other’s poetry.”

But O’Brien’s book isn’t available as an ebook yet. And for poetry, I like the almost-weightless experience of ebooks, of being able to step easily into one volume, then step easily into another.

It’s not that I’m fickle. It’s just poetry seems a profoundly natural thing, something like wind, always there and ever-varying, something I experience best when sheltered by a veil of twilight, reading shyly, respectfully, taking the words in small doses, then letting time and life hold my hands as I assimilate the work. Carrying a few printed books around feels too anchored, too discrete, too obvious, to me.

So, for now, “People on Sunday” is on a wishlist and I’ve asked that Amazon ask the publisher to offer it as an ebook. Buying it in printed form would almost dictate I wouldn’t read it, something that surprised me, the reaction strong enough not to be knocked down by a hunger to read new poems.

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Thomas Hardy girl-woman, spiritual sailor, seasoned hunter. That’s me. But I won’t tell you this. When I was a kid, a parent blew the magic away from an improvisation in a chair. That taught me to keep my stories to myself. You will think you know me, but you’ll misinterpret me in any number of ways. The visible surface of my life has been edited leanly. You’re welcome to reclothe it from your imagination. You can think of me as a paper doll or some such. Unless you have heart, curiosity and much patience, that is. Most people summon one or two of these characteristics, but it’s only the rare person who is all three. So pretty much, my secret’s safe with me.

You want to know anyway? Without taking tests or accepting challenges, without putting the work in? Well, here’s a brief rundown: There are “done” facts: I’m a Mom. I draw and paint. Then there are “would’ve” facts: I would have liked to dance, and be a doctor — a psychiatrist. And then there are “now” facts: I do tech and design things to make money. The rest is nobody’s business.

Do I have “if” facts? Yes I do. Those I can detail, because they don’t belong to me yet. If I had the time, for pleasure I’d be a beach girl. I more than like the ocean: I can’t live far away from it. I can accept an inland ocean — remnants of seas that rose up as plateaus, and folded into mountains that weathered away, leaving limestone strata riddled with caves, filtering rainwater into underground aquifers, the water pressurized, tasting sweet from dissolved minerals, welling up from springs that pockmark worn-down slopes dressed in blue-green meadows decorated with stands of ancient tannic-barked trees, the old fissures softened to valleys hidden in the mornings by ever-present mists: old oceans like New York’s Saratoga County, Kentucky’s Bluegrass Region. Near a living sea, or upon an old one, I’d dance, and have a horse and a couple of dogs. Maybe two horses.

And that’s it. Except: when I’m coldest is when I’m not. When I’m quiet, something’s boiling inside. And when I’m noisy, I’m feinting. For what, and why? It’ll take you years to figure out why, not to mention what’s involved. Just like everyone, I’m an imperfect mess (sic) of contradictions.

Lord, have mercy on us. Ameen.

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She was smart, lost and afraid of being both. Hunting for allies. she tried to catch me by leaning against a doorway to chat for a quarter-hour every day. “Come, sit,” I’d say. When she would came in, she’d pick up my son’s photo, a basket of pebbles, a dish, a pen, anything not connected with work, examine the object, replace it, then bend close enough to whisper, ruffling my hair with her breath. She didn’t talk about either of us. It was all gossip. She wanted to hear and make noise, to distract herself. I felt a sisterly concern for her. That should have been a warning.

Brought into the firm by the CEO, she was not as protected as she thought. Seemingly oblivious of this, she’d do restaurant lunches people earning four times her salary wouldn’t do, come back late, throw up in the bathroom, then walk around visiting, letting her work slide, trailing a tequila sharpness, or a rum fug that reminded me of slow-burning sugar. She projected fragile enmity, a paradox that made others feel superior. Out of shame and compassion, they wanted to love her. You could see them trying. I tried too.

I was an urban cowgirl.  Most of us in the firm were like that — city cowboys and cowgirls, independent, hard working, in debt to no one — tech workers, very much in demand. We were building a new industry in New York, though we didn’t realize it then. We each had a particular style of dressing — the same only in that we were all different. As pioneers, you see, we were making things our own way. Because I had used to design clothing, and our company produced software for the fashion industry, I dressed with deliberate wit, sending messages through textures, fibers, cuts and colors. My style drew others to me, yet also made a little barrier, a test — could people get past my packaging and figure me out? It was arrogance. Nothing ominous. I used it to keep the evil eye away so I could focus on my life and job.

I can see now how this must have maddened her. I was questions, mysteries, while she was hungry for answers. I must have seemed like a challenge to her at first.

She tried. But nothing she did could engage me the way she wanted to. I didn’t care about her beach weekends with the CEO and his boyfriend. I love Fire Island, but weekends are mine. Her boozy casual dinners for large groups made me shudder. I like eating alone. I like tangled walks through the city night with a boyfriend, after supper and beers.

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