One Fine Spring Day

...Spring days pass by
listlessly

Petals fall and scatter
in the wind,

Like my beautiful love
who cannot remain...

080526

Summing up my Memorial Day weekend:

• Great dinner and conversations with my dear friend M
• New additions to my CD collection - John Adams' Naive and Sentimental Music, Gustav Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde, Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf conducted by Kent Nagano and narrated by Patrick Stewart
• Terry Riley organ recital at Walt Disney Concert Hall
• A lengthy, late night conversation over wine and tapas with a friend and her child prodigy husband about my new short story idea and more
• Another great dinner and conversation with some friends and a retired musicology professor who had personal acquaintance with Jascha Heifetz and once taught Deborah Voigt
• A phone call affirming new...possibilities

old acquaintance - Kim So-wol

옛낯 - 김소월
생각의 끝에는 졸음이 오고
그리움의 끝에는 잊음이 오나니,
그대여, 말을 말아라, 이 후부터
우리는 옛낯없는 설움을 모르리.

At the end of a thought falls somnolence And at the end of longing follows oblivion, Dearest, do not speak, from henceforth We know not the sorrow of old acquaintance past.
translated by: smy, aka diaphanus

080522

At first I didn't realize it. Then I tried to ignore it. But eventually, I could not help but admit to my addiction. The substance of abuse came programmed in my new smartphone. It's called Solitaire.

I spent most of my waking moments at home (yet strangely never anywhere else) playing this mindless and repetitive game. From Friday nights to Monday mornings I never left the couch, except maybe to go to the bathroom. I scavenged through the cupboards and refrigerator to find food that took least amount of effort to be consumed. Dishes started piling up then around the sink. Junk mails were scattered everywhere. On nights when I was fortunate enough to find my way to the room in my half sleep, I slept on one side of the bed while the other half of my comforter was weighed down by clothes I had shed off. I knew through it all that this addiction to Solitaire was only a symptom to a bigger and a lot more serious problem--yet another bout of severe depression. I knew, because I played through the half of the games in tears. I knew, too, because I was staring at fluoxetine bottle again.

When she returned my call this evening, I was again sitting on my couch playing Solitaire, holding the phone in one hand and the stylus in the other. Rain was turning into a pour. Suddenly her number--still speed dial #7--popped up in the middle of a three card draw. I tucked the stylus away and answered.

"Hey," I said.

"Hey," she said back.

* * * * *

E and I were sitting on the floor of the living room, talking. Television was on for a background noise. We were having yet another conversation about T.

The story about T is complicated and quite stupid. I met him at the tail end of my three year relationship and had introduced him to E, a high school friend of mine. But quite unexpectedly and belatedly, T and I discovered our mutual attraction for each other. First thing I did was to tell E, to come clean before anything got serious. She said she wouldn't see him any more, that she wasn't that attracted to him anyway. I ended my relationship not to be with T but because it had obviously run its course. T and I, well, we never got together. As mutual as our attraction was, so was our incompatibility. At the end of the whole debacle, E and I were roommates.

I was still hung up on T. And because E was the only person who had seen it all, she was the only person I confided in. And that evening, I was doing another spiel of "what if" when she interrupted me.

There's something important to tell me, she said, then confessed that she and T had continued dating for some time afterwards and through our move-in as roommates. I told her that she could have saved me many months of my sanity. With that, I cleared any residue I had left in my mind of T and E and everything involving them. At the end of the lease, E and I parted ways and never saw each other again.

* * * * *

She asked how I was doing and I said I was okay. That wasn't too convincing, she said. I'm not really trying, I replied. We talked on the phone until she got home, mostly about gossip and work. And somewhere in that gossip came my moment of clarity.

"Oh, I wish you would have told me this sooner--I'd been so angry for the last few weeks."

"But it would've made you even more angry," she answers.

"No," I said, "it would have made it burn off faster."

Before getting off the phone, she said, "hey, chin up."

"Thanks," I said with a smile, whether she could see it or not.

The rain, by then, stopped. After getting off the phone, I continued my Solitaire game. I'm not going to quit my addiction in a losing streak, I thought. After a few games, I won. Deal again? it prompted me. With the stylus I clicked No.

I played Mozart's The Magic Flute in my iPod and went about the apartment, cleaning. I took the trash out (all five bags of them), put away all the laundry I left out to hang dry, replacing the empty toilet paper roll with a half a roll that's been sitting on the ledge. The best I saved for last--the dishes. There is something meditative about hand washing the dishes, the very platform onto which we place our food for all its implied significance.

During the two hours or so of clean up I realized--finally, after five months since moving into this place--I could really use some artwork on the walls. Maybe I'll finally frame the John Baldessari poster I have been saving. I could use more color in life. Really.

mirror

Dense fog rolled into my nights.
Dreams dissipated into white noise.
Gone, too, are the little sparks in my eyes.

[diary] 080506

"Take an emotional risk and meet me half way," he wrote. I scoffed and deleted his email. In response to my silence, he wrote me one last time to call me "human igloo."

I could easily be in a relationship right this minute--for all the wrong reasons. But I don't believe in bad start transforming into something good as Hollywood loves to have us fantasize. I'm a skeptic--I've been married before.

Severe cramps had me handicapped all evening. I could not find acetaminophen in my medicine box so I opened a bottle of Glenfiddich instead. It turns out, Scotch works better than Vicodin.

The Scarlet Woman

Fenton Johnson (1888-1958)

Once I was good like the Virgin Mary and the Minister's wife.
My father worked for Mr. Pullman and white people's tips; but he died two days after his insurance expired.
I had nothing, so I had to go to work.
All the stock I had was a white girl's education and a face that enchanted the men of both races.
Starvation danced with me.
So when Big Lizzie, who kept a house for white men, came to me with tales of fortune that I could reap from the sale of my virtue I bowed my head to Vice.
Now I can drink more gin than any man for miles around.
Gin is better than all the water in Lethe.

* * * * *

Since reading this poem for the first time, I often--too often--recite the last verse of this poem to myself. Work is my gin. But I'm growing tired of drinking my gin.

[diary] 080503

Deja vu.

I woke up to my usual morning alarm. 6:30AM, set for every morning. My body ached and eyes felt dry. I undraped the fleece blanket off of me and got up from the sofa. Stumbling toward the bedroom I turned off the kitchen lights and let myself flop on the bed before silencing the alarm. Dark silence enveloped my consciousness again.

I was awakened a couple hours later. I lay there staring at the ceiling. This routine has become too familiar, too often repeated.

Deja vu.

The word hung over my head stubbornly.

[diary] 080501

My rosemary is dead. Negligence, I find, is a superb talent of mine.