Mexican Train
When you’re too tired to think, it’s best not to. L called about K fucking T again – he doesn’t know how he should feel about it. Told him he laid the groundwork for that one having told her over and over that he was going to continue to date and possibly sleep around. But he said the difference is that she loves T, and she lost the General, and her roommate moved so she is vulnerable and that is what gets him the most. He told me he wants me to tell him to give her up, to tell him that she is too goddamn young for him – I said call someone else. He said he can’t stand wanting her, her being with T, and all of it being undercover. Thinks that T might suspect L since K put a photo of L up shortly after her first visit and it’s possible T saw it. Would that be providing the fervor at which he is going back to try to win her heart?
Last night P said he had moved back to Texas to get some land, build a house, find a blonde haired babe and spit out some kids. I asked him if he wanted to play Mexican Train and he flinched, a touch of fear in his eyes. I casually explained I had no designs on him but was simply referring to a game. But back to the plan of moving back to Texas – I just don’t understand that kind of planning – this follows this follows this – I mean look at reality – it seldom works out in a tight knit of what we plan and if it does we tire of the plan sooner or later so sometimes its best not to make any plans at all. For godsakes just look at this whole moving back to New Orleans plan that started six months ago… Arlington is a long ways from home. The SF plan appeared to be a sound plan when it was formed and yet that was cut down at the knees. Plans – who needs them?
Up late a couple of nights in a row makes me feel as if I boarded the wild train while my own is being held in abeyance – day and night conversations are not registering well and simply don’t know where or whether to mentally file bits and pieces away or not. I keep thinking I can tap the Muse to summon clarity when I awake sober or to finish a thought or conversation that stalled somewhere the day or days before, but there is always a scattering of this and that and it is difficult to collect it all and put it back together in a cogent form and spit it back out. P said he went to a boarding school here in Texas. N used the word uptight. I thought we were talking about something else so I disagreed. S said the H’s missed the beauty of New Orleans and now will never see it and I almost screamed in the phone – what? Today he said he got it – why I reacted that way but had been influenced by the darkness at the party the night before. Then in the first light of morning I realize uptight is the correct description, and P would do well to find his blonde and start a Mexican Train, and I might not ever be able to finish each thought, conversation, observation, feeling, emotion, desire, and wrap it up neatly in a bow. And that there are some things that are not getting clearer and some things that are bizarrely transparent.
It’s all coming in extremes – uptight, organic, natural disasters, suburbia, negative town.
L called back and said T coming on with full court press to K, L said why do you think? And I said because he is a man. And L said T is a courtly lover and revising courtship round two by bringing out the whole arsenal. T now is rewriting history telling K he had difficulty declaring the relationship because of the age difference between them. I keep wondering why all of this has so many ultimatums – K’s father told her that she shouldn’t chose either man, but should just enjoy herself – sound advice – and I keep reiterating that fact to L. And at the end of the conversation L circles around to where he was the last time we talked about it. At the end of it he needs K in his life right now – even if it makes sense for him to renounce K, so T and K can get it on, and so L and T can salvage a 30-year relationship, and L says that makes the most sense and he envisions a scenario where he pushes K out of his life and back into T’s arms and then he goes to visit T and there they sit, the happy couple, T and K coupled, and L sits across from them and smiles and that it is all tolerable.
It is so not tolerable. None of what you could put down on paper leaps off the page, instead you are left with innuendoes, double entendres, conversations begun but not ended, thoughts flung hither and yon, emotions dampened by lack of expression.
S dreams of floods, N dreams of big houses, I have not been able to recall a dream but remain haunted by the bayou and how beautiful and blessed each day began there.
It’s possible sleep is underrated.
S cried for three hours today watching the 9/11 commemoration – her daughter is almost as tall as her. In Arlington, we opted out of the commemorative celebration and went to the stockyard and N got boots, and W got outfitted in holster, guns, shirt and black Bart Stetson.
Today is 14 days since our exile and the desire to return home is bordering on a dream-like quality that lingers in the waking hours and supposes itself into a moment when you forget where you are. At the stockyard, in the booth, I forgot we were in exile for one second and it was so delightful that I stopped to hold it in my thoughts for as long as I could.
My friends and colleagues have been sending care packages of love – these outward expressions humble me.
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Others send encouragement across the miles:
65 and sunny here today
ate banana pancakes and figs for breakfast while sipping DAMN good coffee
rain shower this morning, danced in the puddles at the zoo
got attacked by a band of wild parakeets… Mattie sang “no birdies, NO more birdies!!!”
work will follow you…….
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It’s always this and that.