080131

"Oh, by the way," she said, before hanging up the phone, "everyone commented on how beautiful you are. Brian (Graham) was asking who that woman was who came in first."

That first woman entering Knoll showroom for his lecture this morning was me. I thanked her, and hung up the phone.

Instead of feeling flattered, my mood turned sour. Instead of being delighted to hear such comments at last in my thirties, I fought back the tears. I went to the restroom and stared at myself in the mirror. The longer I looked, the stronger I desired to smash the mirror reflecting my image. When I came back to my workstation, I plugged both my ears with Chopin.

Without his gaze upon me, I no longer feel confident and beautiful...just awkward and exposed.

When my mother dreams

On the eve of my mother's birthday, my family gathered at my new apartment to celebrate. After the meal as we shared the dessert and coffee, my mother began to talk about a dream that she recently had. She was much younger in this dream of hers, early thirties perhaps. She was walking somewhere, holding my sister's hand and carrying me on her back. After a while, she realized that she lost me. She looked everywhere, but I was not to be found.

My mother never dreams. Other than the three "pregnancy dreams" that she's had (and subsequently giving birth to three daughters), she only spoke of one other dream--a chillingly prophetic dream that she had twenty-five years ago. In that dream, she came walking down a mountain--she was part of a funeral procession that had just buried my father. We would not find out about his fatal illness for another year afterwards.

cubicularis

On my bed there are two pillows. I sleep on the left pillow--on the one to my right, my companion changes with frequency. Most all are men, though I have on occasions invited women. Some are young, some are old, they come from different backgrounds and speak various languages. There are those who tell stories of love and tenderness while others speak of violence and vulgarity. I am teased, caressed, sometimes shaken and thrown around, while I hope and pray that this is that rare one, the one who can penetrate so deep inside to finally touch me, move me, awaken me.... Then, when the end--or boredom--finds me, I leave him aside and seek out another to accompany my nights. And thus my intimate rendezvous repeats each and every night, before I meet my dearest in the Neverland.

Tonight I face choices--a Jewish-Bohemian from Prague, or a former janitor from Washington. On second thought, why not ménage à trois. Unlike my previous bedmate to whom I bid farewell this very day, they both have long been dead--Franz Kafka before the second World War, and Raymond Carver of lung cancer in 1988.

080126

I cooked all evening. Chopping, mincing, sauteeing, and simmering, I kept busy in the kitchen non stop for three hours. Each note of Messiaen and each drop of rain intermingled, and I could not at times distinguish which was the background for which. I chopped more onions than was necessary--it was a perfect excuse to let my tears flow.

Aloof

Christina Georgina Rossetti

The irresponsive silence of the land,

The irresponsive sounding of the sea,

Speak both one message of one sense to me:--

Aloof, aloof, we stand aloof, so stand

Thou too aloof, bound with the flawless band

Of inner solitude; we bind not thee;

But who from thy self-chain shall set thee free?

What heart shall touch thy heart? What hand thy hand?

And I am sometimes proud and sometimes meek,

And sometimes I remember days of old

When fellowship seem'd not so far to seek,

And all the world and I seem'd much less cold,

And at the rainbow's foot lay surely gold,

And hope felt strong, and life itself not weak.