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I wrote this over a few days in the fall of '97. I could do nothing else.
Most of the people I've shown it to have liked it very much, but a majority of my colleagues didn't think I should even admit to having written these words, let alone share them with others.
I don't know what I think.
I made these small scenes for paper, not the web. But. I've lost my control over time.
[1]
I was out shopping today. Someone reminded me of you.
Oblivious to me and the crowds, she walked slowly along, spending time at each of the store windows. It wasn't the way that she looked, but the way that she looked. The way in which she would slightly tilt her head, and carefully examine each display, focusing her attention on an umbrella handpainted with tumbling cats and dogs, then a turtle with a clock for its a shell, its head bobbing with each passing second. It was if she wouldn't have to bring these things home, because she was enjoying them then and there.
She never touched the glass between herself and what she admired, as if the barrier wasn't there.
[2]
I picked up one of those novelty alarm clocks a few weeks ago - this one looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck. I'm not exactly sure what ducks have to do with getting up in the morning, but I suppose that's why I bought a duck alarm clock, and not a duck.
Morning. Getting up, putting on the coffee, showering, getting dressed, then sitting down to read the paper. It's a good routine, one that I can look forward to. It's the one time of the day when everything is just so.
But as much as I like my mornings, I like them less than I used to. Because while the paper may contain word of faraway famines, and distant wars, and the business successes that I know I'll never achieve, it never has news of you.
It's then that you seem so far away, further still than all of these things.
[3]
I've been spending more and more time at the office, trying to keep myself busy. But then I think about me, sitting in my office chair, swiveling from computer keyboard to filing cabinet. It often seems like I'm someone different.
Sometimes, the person at the desk across the corridor will get a call, and it'll ring with that double ring - an outside call. She'll let it ring a few extra times, while she clears her desk of the day's clutter - out will go the half-eaten croissant, the empty styrofoam cup, the bent paper clips. And then she'll pick up the phone, and her tone will drop, and she'll cradle the receiver, as if nuzzling against it will bring him near.
I'm often mesmerized by these hushed conversations, punctuated with laughter and a smile she doesn't smile at any other time. She'll glance at me every once in a while, but I'm usually able to look away, pretending to work. Today she caught me. "Do you need something?" she asked. "No," I said, not sure what else I could answer.
[4]
Restaurants have a way of making you feel alone. "Will it only be one tonight?" the headwaiter asked me, when I arrived. It's so much better when the counter person asks you "Do you want fries with that?" If it's a choice between me or my cheeseburger being lonely, I'll take the burger, thank you.
But there I was, ordering soup and salad. I brought a book to keep me company, but when you're eating alone you can't help but overhear other people's conversations.
"I don't understand," the man at the table behind me kept saying, and then his companion would laugh, and start over again, explaining some finer point of macroeconomic theory that I didn't understand, either. "I don't understand," he would say, again and again, and I imagined it was a way of saying "I love you" in a secret code that only the two of them shared.
I like to think that if I were to begin writing to you in a secret language, that you wouldn't need a decoder ring. Because that, whatever the words, it's you who intuitively understands what it is I'm trying to say.
[5]
On the way home last Tuesday, I bought a TV dinner tray at a yard sale. It cost 25 cents, but I bargained down to 10. "Who wants to buy a TV tray?" I asked a man in his '50s, leaving aside the obvious fact that I wanted to buy one. And it really did cost 10 cents, because no one ever collects sales tax at a yard sale.
The tray's a faded yellow, with a flower pattern around the edges. I bought a frozen dinner to go along with it - not one of those haute cuisine frozen dinners in the plastic airline trays that you zap in the microwave, but a real, honest-to-goodness frozen dinner. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and peas, with apple pie for desert, in a foil tray.
I set up in front of the TV. Mary Tyler Moore was on. It was funny, too. Murry and Mr. Grant said all sorts of mean things about Ted! Ha! It was almost perfect.
I'll keep an eye out for another TV tray.
[6]
It's raining today.
There are people in their yellow overcoats, and people with their briefcase-sized black umbrellas, and people with their blue sky and clouds cane umbrellas from the art museum gift shop, and people that cover their heads with the local newspaper, and people that take up the whole sidewalk with their oversized doorman umbrellas. You can tell something about each person by the type of rain gear he or she selects, but I don't know what that something is.
On rainy days, people with fluffy hair have not-so-fluffy hair, and cats stare out of windows, at once fascinated and repulsed by everything wet.
If you were here, I'd make hot chocolate and we'd sip it by an imaginary fire.
Wish you were here.
[7]
Sometimes, you just crave something. A bagel with cream cheese, cookie dough ice cream, crumb cakes, a raspberry danish.
Today it was red licorice.
I like going to the corner store and standing in front of the candy rack, knowing that I can buy whatever I like. When I was small, the planets would have to be in the proper alignment for me to get what I wanted. The adult I was with would have to be in a pleasant mood, and lunch or dinner couldn't be too soon, and - most importantly - I'd have to have been good. Now all I need is a dollar to get just about anything from that candy rack. I usually have a dollar.
But then, there are those things that you desire that you can't get at the corner store. That sometimes still seem out of reach.
Such as you. I desire you.
[8]
I couldn't sleep last night. Thinking of you.
My mind was racing, so I decided to go for a walk. I dressed and went outside, heading nowhere in particular. It was brisk out, and I coughed from the cold.
I came to the park where we would meet sometimes for lunch. The benches and grass were wet, and I thought of writing your name in the dew, when I saw a patch of movement through the corner of my eye. I turned. And there was a rabbit.
It froze, looking at me, wiggling its nose as if to shake my smell. Each of us kept still as we stared at the other. "Hello," I finally said, softly, to break the silence, and he lay flat his ears, turned, and scampered away.
Later, after I had returned home and gone to sleep, I dreamt of you, whispering in my ear what I might say to the rabbit, so that he wouldn't be scared.
But now, I can't remember what it was that I was supposed to say.
[9]
Yesterday, my watch stopped working. It just stopped. I hope to get it fixed, but it looks as if I'll have to go without it, for a while.
I used to think that when I find something that I really like, I should always get two, so when the first one's lost or broken, I'd have another. Shirts, shoes, letter openers, toaster ovens.
But then I realized that you really have to fear losing something in order to appreciate it. If you always have a backup or a spare, there's no reason to cherish what you already have. Some things really are irreplaceable.
Also, it could get very expensive.
So I have a new rule: whenever I find something that really matters to me, I take care of it, as best I can, so that it'll still be there, when it would mean the most.
I don't always follow my rule, but I try.
[10]
I found a note you sent me, from when we first met. Even though I would see you almost every day, there would still be words written for me, waiting in my mailbox. From you.
I would take your postcard from my mailbox, and I'd try to hide it from myself - I'd keep it under that day's stack of bills and junk mail. And then I'd leave the pile on the kitchen table, and try to forget about it, so I could discover it later, and wonder how I missed it the first time. But that would never work, and I'd always end up reading it right away. Thank you for those.
You know that even when I don't write, you're in my thoughts. So often, I see things through your eyes, as I try to remember the details for the stories that I hope share with you, later.
We share a connection. A connection that remains constant whether or not we can touch, or hear one another's voices, or read the words of the other.
You exist for me.
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