Resilience is not Overrated
N and I went from 0 to 60 in a matter of two hours – sitting on the back of a pick up truck outside of Markey’s we watched the parade start – led by the elderly man using a walker. After the parade he came by in the walker seeking a smooch from the girls. A man brought me a rose and a kiss and another a green boa. We caught some beads and had a good time. Then we went over to Vaughns where I realized I had had too many cocktails and N had to take over the driving part of the evening, which didn’t thrill her at all.
Later in the evening in the hall walking the Bean down for a final pee, H and T were coming up the elevator and H held out a green feather and said, “I knew this belonged to you” – I smiled and held the wall up with my boa still in one hand.
Advertising is seeking to find out what makes people happy – and it’s been determined resilient people are happy. I’ve been relying on my resiliance to get me through but this morning when I went to walk at some ungodly Saturday morning hour along the bayou I mistakenly wore a tank top – got downstairs and nearly froze so ran back up to grab my fleece and wanted a scarf but nothing heavy so I grabbed the orange bandana on my desk and tied it around my neck. I walked along the bayou and a man passed me who was so utterly gorgeous I thought he was a phantom and when he smiled and said hi I started laughing – obviously still had a little rum circulating my system.
Which meanwhile L called from his golf trip last night before I went out and said something to be funny and I laughed thinly and he told me if I didn’t lose this laugh that he would never speak to me again – he has been ragging me about this closed mouth laugh he said I have developed since N – as if I have no reason to laugh out loud anymore – but he’s wrong – I do laugh out loud – but that kind of closed mouth laugh is my that’s funny, but not that funny laugh – and I can tell you that I was holding my mouth completely shut when that stone fox guy said hi because I almost laughed out loud in front of his cute face.
So I went by the LaLa and went upstairs again into my soon to be office. I don’t know how much longer this house is going to take but I know I can’t take much longer – the not knowing what is coming next money wise is enough to send me over the edge. And nothing seems to work like it is supposed to. It’s all mind numbing. And the flipside is that the office seems like it will be a great place to hang out in – it is not at all what I pictured which shows you how I cannot read a plan to save my life because the space looks nothing like I envisioned – that bathroom was somewhere else entirely. But having worked in a closet, a bedroom, a basement the last 15 years I look forward to having a real place to work.
Meanwhile, I got home from walking the Bean – and not thinking I took off the bandana and for some reason bunched it up and brought it up to my nose before I knew what I was doing and it smelled as if N had just taken it off his head and my knees grew weak and I almost got a little weepy – but instead I smiled – sweet memories and nothing more.
All the things I wanted to do and didn’t
took so long.
It was years of not doing.
You can make an allusion here to Penelope,
if you want.
See her up there in that high room undoing her art?
But enough about what she didn’t do —
not doing
was what she did. Plucking out
the thread of intimacy in the frame.
If I got to
know you that would be
— something. So let’s make a toast to the long art
of lingering.
We say the cake is done,
but what exactly did the cake do?
The things undid
in the land of undone call to us
in the flames. What I didn’t do took
an eternity —
and it wasn’t for lack of trying.
Lee Upton
New England Review
Volume 27, Number 1 / 2006