ghosts and dreams

I'm never sure if it's a dream or a ghost that slips away from in the mornings. Sometimes they linger for a few hours, laughing, leaning on you drunkenly as you wander through the shapeless landscape of dreams back to your home. Then it's falling into bed, and she kisses you sloppily and then as you wrap your arms around her waist the doorbell rings and jars you awake and you stumble out of bed and let the repairman in, and then you make a cup of tea and sit down to read a book, when suddenly you realize she's gone and she was never there, or there's no trace of her anywhere, and you never went out and you weren't drinking and she's in California, anyway, and you're miles away and you haven't seen or spoken to her in months and those times have past.

ghosts on a rain-slick freeway

Business took me to Spokane in the fall, so I drove over, and stopped in at some familiar places along the way, including a stop at the Valley Mall to purchase a gift for my girlfriend--as if the trip merited a souvenir--and see a high school classmate who lived in the area. It was cloudy, and getting to be about twilight or so by the time I got out to my car. About halfway there, it started raining.

"It's really starting to come down," he said, and I shrugged like it didn't really bother me. "Well, hey, take care of yourself. Good seeing you again."

"Yeah." My girlfriend's gift was just a CD she'd been looking for. I got in the car and turned on the windshield wipers and waited for the fog on the windows to clear. I cracked the window. "See you around," I said, and pulled out of the parking lot.

By the time I found the freeway it was pouring rain, and the sky was dark and the streetlights made a blinding glare on the freeway. The mist from the cars and falling rain made little ghostly shapes. I drove through them, but it was cold and sometimes I wondered, as I tried to find the lanes, if they weren't my ghosts I was driving through.

the other side

This summer I had lunch with a ghost. I didn't know it at first. We met on the bus from New York and we talked and decided to stop by the diner by South Station, to continue the conversation. It'd been cloudy and rainy all day, but the sun was starting to come out.

She was from Seattle originally, and moved out here a year or so before I did. We'd probably passed each other at our favorite hangouts multiple times and not realized it--or, well, maybe. We had coffee and kept talking--I don't even remember what it was about anymore. But I remember the clouds broke and it was right at sunset and the sun was coming through the window in such a way and I looked back over and she was already fading, still laughing at whatever had just been said--then she was gone. And the waiter didn't seem to understand that I had an entirely different reason to be upset.

things have never been the same

I still think back to the year everything changed, when I found myself in the city, away from the small, familiar town I'd come to know when I was younger. I always call it the year where everything went wrong, when all my plans got derailed, when nothing went right, but really, since then, things have just been getting better and better. I'm going places, meeting new people, happy, successful, directed. I was purposeless before. I lived in a ghost town before. Everyone around me is perfectly real now.

But I still feel that painful nostalgia, for the fields of sage and tumbleweed, the ugly buildings, the flat, featureless expanse, the sickly green of the lake. The hot, dry, unrelenting summers, the long winters. For a girl with brown eyes and the kind of smile you write a thousand poems trying to describe and never coming close. I left all that behind, packed my things into a car, and got on the freeway and drove away, into my future. I can never go home. I've changed, and so has it. But still, I feel like something's missing, or like I've missed something--like I should go back and live there as an outsider.

staring

I have a friend I watch movies with every Thursday night. She usually picks, since I'm indecisive and easy to please. Sometimes she picks something good, sometimes less so, sometimes she picks bad movies to make fun of. Lately I've seen a lot of the movies she picks, so I've just been watching her while she watches them. She's engrossed in the story, but at the same time the emotions one displays during a movie are subdued. She gives the occasional start, the occasional laugh or smile or smirk. Sometimes she almost cries, but not quite. Not enough to be noticed when the show's over.

Then we'll talk about the movie after, and there's animation to her expression that is just gone while the movie's happening. I know I must be the same way. I'm only assigning emotion to it when it's already over, when my mind's had time to filter through and create a story of its own.

drive me there

I used to go out driving when I was upset, and the general freedom of the roads in Moses Lake was comforting. I never did here in Seattle, where there's too many lights and too much traffic and the city stretches on forever--the roads aren't free like they were. Still, I'd go out walking--fog, rain, whatever. I'd explore little things you can't see from a car. It was nice.

Tonight my friend called me up and said she just wanted to drive, and picked me up, and we drove around, first downtown, then taking the roads and ending up in Wallingford and Fremont, stoplights and city lights and everything. And she'd just talk and drive and as I watched, I started feeling caged in. No destination in mind, no end in sight. The skyline is beautiful but it's wild, and moving past too quickly, and there's no place for the restless. I said this, actually. "There's no place for the restless here."

We were at a stoplight somewhere on Wallingford Ave. She looked over at me. "Well, no, but that's what restlessness is about, isn't it? There's no place for you anywhere."

I wanted to disagree. I'm still not sure I think she's right. But I can't explain why she's wrong, which is happening to me a lot lately.

ghost in the window

There's a diner on the way to the T, which closes in the early afternoon--usually well before I'm heading out for the evening. Today as I was walking past there was a little girl standing inside, staring out the window. At first I glanced at her and kept walking, but something compelled me to keep looking at her. She was definitely looking back at me. I didn't see anyone else in there. She was alone, and while there were no other pedestrians I'm not sure why I should have drawn her attention.

She looked real enough, but I'm not convinced she wasn't a ghost. Dining cars in New England have history--who's to say this one isn't bloody, or tragic? Maybe they close early for a reason. And the thing is my mind wandered down this track on its own. This little ghost in the window, an utterly unremarkable thing, is nevertheless compelling. So I'm writing about it now, because I'm not sure where else to go from here.

hazy recollection

I'm not sure where the past few days have gone, but it's been going by fast and not really in the good way. It seems like everything is falling apart around me and all I can do is sleep, but I can't even do that--wake up early with a headache and a wish that it were several hours later, that I'd gotten more rest, that I wouldn't regret it later--so it's just passing time, letting my mind wander. I dream about all the things I've been doing wrong, all the things I wish had gone better. In my dreams I get mocked for it. Sometimes it's more violent, more hateful--I have a hard time talking about it.

I've been trying to find meaning for it, but to no avail. It doesn't coincide with any timing, as much as I'd love to find a narrative. It's just happening. My girlfriend's noticed I'm going through more cigarettes lately. I told her it's just to kill time before I can go back to sleep, and we both laughed the sort of laugh you can only do when you're not joking.

wreckage

The day was starting to get to me. I didn't sleep very well, I had a desk full of work, I was tired and frustrated and nothing was going right at all. I stood up and walked over to the office window to look down at the streets. There was a car with its hazard lights on, parked on one of the side roads off Mass Ave. Outside, a woman was moving jerkily around the car--I couldn't tell what she was doing, but I figure she must have been inspecting it. Then she walked quickly and ducked into a building next to Bank of America, where I think she made a phone call.

I watched as another car drove up, as she explained what happened, as they looked at it and couldn't figure it out, as the tow company arrived and she explained again, looking cold. Then the car went away and so did they, leaving no evidence it had ever happened, which made me think of the one accident where there was evidence--they knocked out a crosswalk sign--and even then it was back by the next day.

I cleaned out my desk and called up a friend I hadn't spoken to for years, and we went out for a cup of coffee and I never once mentioned my day.

maintaining the illusion

My girlfriend has long professed her love of winter, especially when it's snowing or the middle of summer. When the snow has been sitting in blackened heaps on the corners of busy intersections and making sidewalks impassable, treacherous, or disgusting, she spends most of her time complaining about having to walk in the sludge. Which I do, too.

So it snowed again today, not much, but enough that she's back to talking about how wonderful things are. We made hot chocolate and watched it fall well into the night, not talking, just enjoying the moment, like it would be beautiful like this all year round, like it wasn't just going to be inconvenient later. Maybe that's even the beautiful part--it's so ephemeral, so hard to find time to celebrate, so prone to inciting spontaneous celebration. Each flake dampens all sound and makes the world quiet and whispers quietly that you might as well live for today, you don't know when the world will be this wonderful again.

All the ruined travel plans, the car accidents, the cold, lonely, wet walks to public transit, it's all worth it for this quiet moment, maintaining the illusion we're happy and everything will be okay.

canvas

By midday the snow had turned to rain, and by the evening the streets were a mess. I wasn't planning on going anywhere. Life has a tendency not to do what I ask, even if I ask nicely.

Canvas sneakers and a leather jacket don't do justice to the wet or the cold of a New England winter but it's all I have--and you were four hours away by train and of course, I'd do anything for you. I'll be there as soon as I can, I said, and maybe it even helped.

The first half of the journey was wet. The snow was blocking the drains so the streets were flooded and I was stepping in pools of icy water well past the ankle. Then it was icy, with water on top so it was slick and nobody bothered salting the walks because hey, it was just rain. The rain kept falling meanwhile. Eventually I made it to the subway station, rain-soaked and cold, and still with four hours to go. As I step onto the car, my shoes slosh, and I realize just how ill-equipped I am for the weather.

rooftop liaisons

While I was in New York, I met one of my friends from back home. She had moved east to work in media, and managed to become successful and, moreover, looked like one of the locals. We had drinks (on her) and some late dinner (which I bought because I was feeling guilty) and walked back to my hostel, still a little tipsy but not too much, and because it was nice we went onto the rooftop and watched the city. I'm from places where the traffic doesn't exist at night, but here everything was alive all night.

And we just talked. She said she didn't feel homesick very often, she was doing so well here. I wondered if there was something wrong with her, or if it was my problem--missing home so often, with the realization I can't really go home for a long time.

Eventually the sun came up and she went home leaving me thinking something I probably should have considered before: it takes a special type of person to wonder if someone who is happy and successful has something wrong with her because of that.

disarming

I've never felt so out of place as I did in New York. I've explored a number of cities now, lived in a few, and always felt, more or less, like I could pass as a native. But in New York my scruffy leather jacket, the days-old facial hair, the t-shirt, tattered jeans and old tennis shoes (in a town where I noticed at least six shoe stores, no less) made me feel like a vagrant--which perhaps I was. Everyone was wearing nice clothes, new clothes, well cut, trendy, fashionable. The clubs I went to were upscale, the restaurants were nice. I didn't see anything which looked old or run-down or traditional.

I found myself smiling at everyone, exceedingly friendly with the locals, feeling vaguely overwhelmed. I wonder if I can try harder next time, or if I should simply look harder for people like me, the haunts I'm familiar with, if I was just in the wrong part of town.

cigarettes and isolation

The last night we ever spoke, we shared a cigarette--the last one either of us had on us, and somehow it seemed appropriate. She was smoking Parliaments.

We promised we'd keep in touch, but of course that never happens the way it's planned. We exchanged a few emails--hi, I'm here safely, thinking of you, glad you got in okay, how are you liking the new place?--but we didn't call, because neither of us likes phones, and she never gets on IM so we never talked there, and soon the emails got slower and then what could we say, anyway?

I knew it was coming, of course. It was a foggy night when I left. My plane emerged from a sea of clouds at street-level, illuminated with little blue and yellow patches, but obscuring all of the buildings entirely. My favorite part about flying has always been looking at the buildings, especially at night, seeing the night's skyline. Coming home I was always ecstatic to see my home and all the familiar buildings--leaving it was one last chance to let the memories crystallize, one last wistful glance. Lot's wife in the Bible, glancing back at her home before it got destroyed by a vengeful God--that's me. But this time my home was shrouded in fog. It was beautiful and foreign, and all I had to remember the city by was a shared Parliament cigarette.

If home is where the heart is, I have to assume mine stayed with her, there in Seattle, watching her take the last drag from our cigarette and then tossing it to the ground, grinding it out, and giving me a smoky embrace. "I'll talk to you soon," she promises, though we both know we never will.

seattle fog

The city's been shrouded in fog lately. Sometimes it's a thin mist, making the skyline indistinct, hiding the mountains. Sometimes it's a dense fog, making driving hazardous. The city shrinks to about a hundred feet in every direction. And then sometimes, like tonight, when I'm taking the bus downtown with a friend I haven't seen in years, there's this rolling patchy fog over the city. Something about it looks dirty. The Space Needle is barely visible--just the top sticking out over a rolling dark cloud. Then we take the Denny Way exit and we're in the fog, and she's talking about how it's so weird. "It's been like this for . . . God, it feels like months now," I say.

We get off and walk to a bar several blocks away. It's fairly quiet and we have a few drinks, chat with the bartender, then walk out into the night. The fog-shrouded city is ours. It's so quiet, so private. We walk up to Gasworks Park. It's a long walk and we sit down on the concrete and stare out at the fog as it conceals the skyline we both fell in love with years ago. We talk for hours until the fog encapsulates us again.

non smoking rooms

An alarm started going off in the parking lot just after she walked into my hotel room. It was fairly unobtrusive as far as alarms go, just a quiet, steady chirping sound in the background. I was lying on the bed, reading a mediocre whodunit by some British author. My sister sent it to me in the mail. I didn't look up. She sat down next to me and lit a cigarette.

I said, "You know these rooms are non smoking, right?" She lay down, putting her face next to mine, and said, "Yeah, and?"

I could have said anything just then. I could have said that she wasn't worth the fees they'd charge me for smoking in the room. I could have made a quip about it, something clever about health--the sort of thing smokers hate to hear. Instead I just shrugged and closed the book. The alarm chirped in the distance. I shut my eyes. It only made the smell of smoke stronger.

There was silence for a while, some dirty looks exchanged, some words I've still got my whole life to start regretting, then it was hours later and she was walking back out into the fog that had settled over Seattle since I'd gotten into town, cigarette in her hand, trailing smoke, breath hanging in the air. I watched her from my balcony but ducked out of sight by the time she looked back.

The alarm was still chirping in the distance, and I told myself that's why I couldn't sleep.

what i've written

Yesterday I watched a movie that matched in near-perfect detail the story I've been working on for years. I tried telling the host, a dear friend of mine who has been reading as I write, about it, and she laughed at me. The themes are different, she said. The wrong character is moving. There's too much infidelity in the movie, it's more about connection than disconnect--but I continued to insist it was the same story. And, worse, I became convinced that my story only really works as a movie. On paper it is lacking, the pacing is wrong, you can't convey a lot of it.

But it loses everything in the conversion. The theme changes, the characters change places, the story becomes more about connection than disconnect. It was a brilliant film and it was my story, but there was nothing left of the original story there. I still can't quite explain. I'm still writing, of course, especially now that I know how it ends.

ice, reprise

I spent most of the day hiding indoors after my girlfriend of three years broke up with me this morning--there was really nothing in the outside world that inspired me to head out. All of yesterday, the weather was what the weatherman called a "wintry mix," which meant it was freezing rain last night, turning the snow into sheets of ice. This morning it was forty degrees and sunny, and as I sat on the couch staring into the middle distance, sheets of ice kept falling from the roof, making loud crashing sounds all around me.

I knew what it was and that it was not going to harm me, but it left me rattled regardless. Even the weather is collapsing all around me. I'd never had a winter like this before, and I never thought it would end like it did--everything falling all at once, leaving me cold and frightened and confused.

certain types of madness

Today I had a friend tell me she thinks I get depressed around the holidays. This made no sense to me. I have a wonderful time during the holidays. I love seeing my family again, my nephews and nieces so excited about their Christmas presents, filled with that focused enthusiasm. I love celebrating the new year with my friends, raising a glass of champagne to happier times, talking about auld lang syne, preparing to make new memories for the next year. I told her I was perfectly happy during the holidays.

Then I started thinking about it. This was the first year she had known me for the holiday season. Maybe it wasn't seasonal at all but something could still be bothering me. But what? Have my other friends noticed it? Have I been unusually surly, more quiet than usual, more prone to sarcasm and cynicism?

I was restless by the time I got home. I prepared a cup of tea and drank it as calmly as I could, then got up and started to pace furiously. Now my mind was in gear I kept thinking of times I was uncharacteristically short, times I said something I wouldn't have otherwise. They seemed innumerable. It seemed impossible that I should have missed them all. My friends were saints for even enduring it--and they did so without a word of complaint!

Then I wondered if I had missed them at all. Perhaps they were normal, all in the course of a day. Was this indicative of a prevailing mood? Was something even the matter with me? Was she just mad herself, or projecting her own feelings onto me? Was she trying to force me into a fit of introspection, to ruin the positive feelings I had about the new year?

It did not occur to me until much later that it was daft to even be worried about it.

photographic memory

I've started taking photos of things and then never looking at the pictures. It's not intentional, I don't think, but it's something that sort of worries me. I'll see something and capture it in photo--the place where the plow just drove down our useless little side road, just as a car is driving through; some interesting items in a store; some signs that caught my eye at Harvard Square. It's not something I look at later for my own enjoyment. I usually just delete them all when the camera is full. But I always remember the picture. It stays with me. Sometimes I tell stories about how I took a picture of it later, like somehow that makes it more real.