Notes from the Summer of ’04
Skippy sits in a wheelchair on the front porch. His mother says they’re used to getting up early since he had to go to the clinic when he was a boy. That was after his daddy left them and she had to find a full time job. WIth no training she got one at Southern Baptist [After I went back to SF, Charlie evicted them to claim one room in back for his own].
Skippy paints birdhouses with his feet because “he’s got to do something” his mother says. He also can do one side of a Rubic cube, which is difficult since he has no hands.
L says for the last 5 years that P has been restless. She says she married too young and now she’s trying to find herself and finds herself stuck in a marriage that she wants and doesn’t want. Last summer when she left for Innsbruck she said she would leave him when she returned so L prepared but it didn’t happen. This year she bought a house before she left and says she is going to try a trial separation but she sends him emails about walking in their favorite market in Austria and missing him. He wants the marriage. He says he would never marry another younger woman. She has told him she is no longer physically attracted to him. She feels trapped. I said I feel for both of you.
I do, I welp up just thinking about them.
L and I are at playdate and Parker rolls on her back and bares her vulnerable underbelly as Renny and Henry climb on top of her. I say, “Poor girl, but she looks like she’s enjoying it.” And L narrates “She loved bad boys… But she did not want to marry one so instead she married well and had two affairs with bad boys.”
Is that a stereotype? I ask.
W’s laughter was on my mind this morning. Made me smile and miss him.
Saw S not going into Cabrini’s lot when I arrived at playdate – asked what’s wrong. She said she was waiting for someone else to come because there has been a pack of wild dogs roaming the neighborhood.
N’s first email is – “When I put them [her parents] in the cab for the airport it was bittersweet, esepcially since I don’t think they’ll see Madrid again, then at the opening party I read a beautiful paragraph by Hemingway which states, ‘It makes you feel very badly, all question of immortality aside, to know that you will have to die and never see Madrid again.’ So when I read that, there I was welping up in the front of a room full of strangers as the Academic Director of the Program and whatyagonnado?”
Feral desire – inexplicable, insatiable, unmanageable – feels like I’m going insane.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m having heart palpitations.”
Playdate: L says he hates Norah Jones and I agree. Told him I think I hate Diana Krall too. Told him about Besame Mucho – how she could take a song that tingles my spine and make it commonplace. Told L about the waiter in Mexico who asked me what I wanted to hear and I said “Besame” and he sang it and the tingle was there. L sings out loud “BESAME, BESAME MUUUUCHO.” And I laugh.
Book Idea – Boy Girl Entanglement
Chapter One: [over wine] when I was 6 my father took me to another woman’s house.
Chapter Two: [on sofa] Hard to know your rhythm (short fast breaths).
Chapter Three: [outside] Mexico.
Dreams: I organized a drawing contest even though admittedly I am not talented in visual arts. When I got there KF told me there wasn’t enough room for me, that she would have to leave if I stayed, and so I insisted on staying because I had organized it and said it wasn’t about the hit (winning the prize for the best drawing) as I knew I would never win that over K’s natural talent – it was about wanting it and bringing it together and I refused to just let it go. As I sat alone drawing I saw another K and said, was I wrong? She said you don’t want me to answer that. “But” I started to say and she said “you know.” And I woke realizing clearly I was wrong but still feeling a sense of wanting it to be right.
S is in a funk – does not know what to do about work. I suggested opening a taco stand but he wasn’t amused.
N phoned “I’m cancelling boy’s weekend because V got held up.”
Camus wrote: “Mother died today. Or was it yesterday?”
Mind teaming – what to do that I don’t undo – place pulling me in too many directions.
Skippy loves Renny to lick his face and for Dakota to also. Dakota, the slick black lab, always shows up around the same time, and runs up on the porch and gives Skippy big, sloppy licks. We all want to be touched. [Footnote: Dakota died after I left. Ran under a car on the bayou.]
Spoke with L, V’s mom, yesterday evening to get tips for dealing with P while she visited. Heard Wade running around in background and my stomach tightened.
Cried like a baby last night – so overwhelmed by thoughts that have no outward expression.
Last night, the neighbor, Oscar, started shoveling in the backyard around 10:30. I peered out the window and saw him mixing concrete. I fell asleep to the incessant shoveling – wondering – a hole? This morning saw no hole, no fresh concrete. Did I imagine this?
I am plagued by not saying no and now having to deal with P. I require vast space right now so that I can continue to be in my dreamy state of mind, so I can get over the longing that vexes me in a familiar pattern of warmth snaking through my blood, impetuous thoughts, renunciation, whole hog, horniness, mental eclipse – how many states can you flutter from within a 24 hour period?
One question keeps running through my head – am I alone or really a cliche?
S had three weddings to do and the cake decorator wound up in jail.
L said C gave the best blow jobs because she wasn’t just a bobber. Told him I’d heard men don’t differentiate between blow jobs and he said that’s wrong, Rachel, dead wrong.
P counts the stools. “Three,” she says cheerfully.
S wasn’t feeling well this morning – L said she’s diabetic – these things are always ominous to me.
J called to tell me to quit sending emails to JY – I said, “You’re talking to the wrong person. I didn’t initiate the emails and no sonofabitch is going to speak to me that way.”
In the end it is all about renunciation.
Alarm goes off at 5AM and I must smile at the little boy who pushed the green button at some point last night when he was here.
Did the bugs grow? “They’re HUGE,” N says.
P writes me an email – I had forgotten about her – she says she misses me and when am I coming home to go on hikes in September with her. I feel the first pang of something to return to.
O still waiting on INS – old Russian saying, “hope dies last.”
J: Notice: All instant messages sent to and from this employee are recorded, archived, and monitored.
J: hi Rachel…the mkt competition and price erosion on insurance…is that unique? or known on the street already. I know you mentioned it as an area to watch last time, but nothing had moved then
danger: the street moved the sector down because of interest rates and price waning – we have seen prices waning but the difference this time is the attitude of the brokers where they are saying – that’s it, it’s over, soft market is coming – so we’re unique in that our marketplace check says it’s done but the stocks already took their punishment so we’re not material to them here which is why I rated a number 3.
J: ok…thanks
J: hey is steve around this weekend….going to have a little barbecue and would invite him if available?
Danger: btw-I don’t like not talking to you for stretches of time and then having to have a conversation about something like Jeffrey when we do talk – I apologize for being so feral on the phone yesterday with you – Steve headed here this weekend, his mission is to rescue me from my feral self
danger: but otherwise I’m sure he would have loved to come
J: you and I need to catch up…i feel like we are drifting too far apart…i like our more frequent conversations…i feel like i’m more in tune with you then
danger: I agree
danger: my rhythm (I’m told) is not easy to follow but it can be learned
J: anything like a moth?
danger: mothlike
J: okay…i’ll try and be like a bat
J: we’ll meet
danger: we’re definitely headed towards the nocturnal here
J: maybe we can catch up at least with a phone conversation later today…how’s the day look…later better
danger: let’s do that – around 5ish my time – okay?
J: ok
J: on insurance…you think there is further downside to stocks if it’s over?
danger: guy I was talking to yesterday-actually Steve’s father said there’s no way he’d be in these stocks right now even though reinsurers can probably jump in at these rates and ride the downside for at least 12 more months – so depends on who wants to what – a shorter might see opportunities but an investor would stay clear
Time off or time between time will help calm my nerves