a prelude for march

Saying farewell to February always feels simultaneously momentous and premature. February is winter's last best chance at making its fingers felt in the world, but March is a month fraught with uncertainty, where winter and spring vie for supremacy. Maybe it's fitting, then, that the theme for March will be "trust." March is a month of few certainties, and when the world is chaotic sometimes there is nothing left to do but trust. It's terrifying and weird and beautiful all at once--to trust is to surrender to the uncertainty that surrounds us.

When I was younger, one of the phrases that always stuck with me was "the people in these songs should have names." I found myself thinking about that this month, and I realized that, though I know the names of all of these people who are telling stories, you do not. I imagined that maybe it would be an interesting endeavor to work out who was telling which story, but I think I was mistaken in this. So from now on I will give them names. Or rather, I will reveal their names--they've had these names since long before I started writing this. Furthermore, I've given them names in the stories I've already published--perhaps you should go back and reacquaint yourself with them?

It is my hope that these stories will build as the year wears--there will be new context and new perspectives, and it's only four months until we start reaching counterpoints. Four months! It seems so far from now, but also so very close. Time seldom follows the rules we tell it to, and it never really fits in the stories we give it.

isolation, pt. 5

Alex.
This was never really my strong suit. She was the only person I was ever really close with for a long time, you know? I didn't need people. That was sort of my thing. So I was used to being alone. The world's a big place, and most of it's shitty. You learn to deal with it. One of the things she was always telling me is how nobody's self-perception is any good. I just always figured I had mine figured. She was right, though. Somehow I came to rely on her being there. I'm not sure which part I regret more: that I needed her, or that I didn't realize it until she was gone.

But the point is I didn't realize it, so I didn't think I'd care if I drove her off. The things I used to find charming--the restlessness, the uncertainty, that weird eternal calm--started to bug the shit out of me, and eventually I started calling her on it. We'd fight, we'd make up. But we were both young and dumb. I didn't so much want her gone as I wanted her to be less . . . her.

It felt like every day I was saying "I'm tired of your bullshit," and every day she'd come back with something snide that I'd ignore, because life's too short, you know? I thought I'd seen the worst she could offer. Then I said it one day and she snapped. I'd never seen anyone so angry. I didn't know anyone could be so angry, especially her--she'd lose her temper for a minute or two, which mostly meant she'd raise her voice a little and say something sarcastic and dismissive, then she'd calm back down and go back to that weird calm of hers. It never lasted. This was different. This was someone expressing all the frustration that she'd been quietly trying to ignore for--it must have been years at that point.

I fled because I needed to get away. Then I realized I had nowhere I could go. I'd driven away the only person who would be willing to help. I drove around the city for hours, just looking for something that could feel sort of like a home.

isolation, pt. 4

Eris.
Of course, every story that says "in retrospect" is a lie. For instance:

In retrospect, I guess we must have met on Valentine's day. I didn't think of it at the time because, you know, we'd just met, and I was single and not really thinking about it at all. I just remember it being one of those Seattle winters that wasn't really a winter, and my sister calling me to tell me she couldn't pick me up after class today, so I thought something like "fuck it, I'm going to walk." Though I guess it's hard to imagine high school-aged me saying "fuck it."

Then about halfway there (it's always halfway when you're walking) I sat down on some random doorstep to tie my shoes and eat some Valentine's candy I'd gotten, and then the girl that lived there came out on the porch and sat next to me. And that was profoundly weird, and I don't think she learned my name for months (she called me Porch Girl until she stopped finding that amusing, which took a while). The rest of that week I walked home from school, hoping she might wait outside for me like she promised she would. And every day there was no one there. Just me and the clang of the city, in this neighborhood I didn't really know. 

Sometimes I still tell people that this was the moment that made me realize that there is this whole world out there, and none of it cares about me, but that's probably not true. I think I always knew that, even as a self-absorbed teen: the world is big and unfriendly. So after I passed her house I thought about what would happen if I took a wrong turn and got lost somehow, and became convinced that nobody would care. Naturally this meant that in my mind, she was inextricable from isolation and loneliness. My only mistake was thinking that she was a shelter from an indifferent world.

isolation, pt. 3

Eleutheria.
I used to be so afraid of isolation. I think that's what drove me. Somehow I'd become convinced that being introverted was a vice, so I forced myself to go out, burying myself in plans, interacting with people I didn't really like, because some anti-Imperial activist once said "be the change you want to see in this world" and I decided I wanted to be like all of these happy extroverts that interacted with all these people I didn't like and seemed to enjoy themselves. Worse, I managed to get a job writing about the awful culture I'd sunk myself into. So even if it were possible for me to enjoy it (which it wasn't), now it was about work.

This is a story I'd end up telling my sister's old lover; then I wrote about telling that story as the last thing I ever wrote for my little culture blog. It was one of those parties I was always going to, where I met this kid who was shy and adorable and took forever to finally actually kiss me no matter how many hints I dropped. We spent the evening kissing on the floor, and the whole time all I could think about was the guy sleeping on the couch three feet away, and how we must have been keeping him awake and how uncomfortable that must have been for him.

Naturally even once we'd finished I spent the evening lying awake and wondering if this would forever color his perception of me, if this altogether weird evening had managed to alienate someone who was actually pretty cool (a rarity in this world I lived in now). I felt a sense of loss, and in retrospect I think it was about then that I realized why I always felt so lonely.

I met a good friend for coffee the next morning and told him about my revelation. It went something like: "It's like, I thought the cure for loneliness was to just meet as many people as possible, you know? And I'd always come home and feel even worse."

"Hangover notwithstanding?"

"Hangover notwithstanding."

Of course he made fun of me for living to please a version of me that never existed, and of course I fell into the same trap again a few days later, but I went home and filled my head with stories and really, truly, basked in my isolation.

isolation, pt. 2

Melissa.
You want to know what isolation is? Isolation is coming home from a beautiful vacation with a head full of hope and landing in the airport late at night and exhausted and happy and realizing the person who promised to pick you up at the airport isn't there and won't be coming at all. It's waiting at the baggage claim and watching as everyone else slowly filters out with their families and loved ones. It's not having the money for a cab, and being too late to take public transit, and trying to sleep on your luggage until the buses start running again in the morning.

I think I had twenty dollars to my name that night. I had the evening planned out. We'd go to that 24-hour place we used to go to, and drink too much coffee and eat too much greasy food and and stay up until we were delirious. It would be a beautiful thing--except you weren't there. Instead I tried to use my carry-on as a pillow and ended up staring at the carousel for hours, far too uncomfortable to sleep--and even if I wasn't uncomfortable, how could anyone sleep when they returned to the real world and found that they had finally burned all their bridges? How could anyone sleep when they are so utterly alone?

Because I made another realization that night: this was all my own doing. I'd driven you away. I'd driven everyone away. There was no one to blame but me. In my deepest solitude, I could not even turn to myself for comfort. That's what stung most, I think. That's why I could never really forgive you.

I caught a bus in the morning and spent the last of my money on groceries. I didn't speak to another living soul for a week.

isolation, pt. 1

Nicholas.
The other night I was waiting for the bus, which isn't so unusual, but then I realized it was, you know, that bus stop. This was probably 1 or 2 am, after a show on the Hill, and there was this weird misty drizzle and this thick fog, and it was a weeknight so everything was pretty quiet, and with the fog it seemed like I was just on this island of reality in the middle of this fucked up world we live in. I felt powerful. I felt alive.

That's something I've learned since last we spoke. Isolation is a powerful thing. I remember once you said something about hating the thought of being left alone with your thoughts. That night it filled me with a strange energy--that nobility of mind the Prince of Denmark spoke of. That night I could endure anything, and I could endure it alone.

It reminded me of that time I'd watched you walk off into the snow, leaving me alone at that same bus stop, all those years ago. (I still have your scarf, by the way.) I didn't understand the feeling then, but I felt the same strength fill me then. I didn't recognize it at the time, but I do now, and this time I'm determined to hang onto it. Except here you still are, haunting my thoughts, refusing to be exorcised by my words. Even in my deepest solitude you undermine me.

a prelude for february

It's always hard to believe that a whole month has passed since we put another year behind us, but that's the thing about time: it doesn't care.

The stories in February are stories about isolation, because February is a month where you hide from the world. You've endured two months of winter and there's still at least one to go, and all the winter festivals to help keep you warm and human are behind you. February is a month to be endured alone.

There were five stories in January, which were told to me by five people, and which I've told here before. They're five people who know each other, and they're often stories about each other, and there will be stories from each of them every month. And every story will have a counterpoint, six months later: while January's stories were about hope, July's will be about regret.

But we're a long ways from the warmth of the July sun, or even the brilliant colors of May. It's still the winter, with all the winter's problems, and somehow the shortest month of the year is always one of the longest.

hope, pt. 5

Nicholas.
Telling you that you bugged the shit out of me is probably not going to come as a great surprise, since I'm pretty sure you did it on purpose. But there was still something compelling about you, even if I couldn't figure it out. I remember sometimes you'd ask me why I even liked you, which was a fair question, and I'd always say something like "I don't know; you're a mystery, I guess."

And it's true. You were really the only thing I cared about, and it was as inexplicable as you were, and it was spiraling out of control and I had no idea how to stop it, and everything I did just made things worse. Then, without any sort of warning, you disappeared. You'd gone off to London, according to the letter I got weeks later. And you seemed almost apologetic.

You needn't have been. You needn't have worried about anything. I was relieved, at first, and then the future seemed brighter, like a cloud had been lifted from my life. There was nothing left to worry about. I could conquer the world, just then.

The feeling didn't last, of course, but that's the thing about hope, isn't it? It never does.

hope, pt. 4

Melissa.
I've never been easy to get along with, and I've never been good at actually dealing with the problems that causes. That's life, I guess. I always believed that it would all work out somehow, which maybe is why I never got good at dealing with it. It always worked out without my help, so why bother, right?

So that's why I disappeared without telling anyone. I was angry and confused and afraid, and I made some mistakes. We both made mistakes, I think. For a few months I didn't have to worry about that. I could focus on enjoying myself, seeing the sights--I never told you about that trip, did I? I brought back all these stories and I never got to share them.

Finally I bought a return ticket, and the first thing I did is I called you and I asked if you could pick me up at the airport. I was elated that you said yes. We hadn't left on good terms, and you probably had every right to be angry at me for disappearing. And you didn't ask where I'd been or why I'd left without saying goodbye or anything. You just asked when and where.

I also never got to thank you for that. For the last week of my vacation I felt utterly serene, convinced that I had changed, that the world had changed, all of it for the better. There was nothing at all to fear about anything. I loved you for that.

hope, pt. 3

Alex.
I guess I was pretty depressed for a while after it all went down, but I never paid attention to that sort of thing. There's too much life going on to worry about feeling sad, you know? That was her problem, really. We weren't so different, but instead of soldiering on she'd just spend all her time worrying about it, like worrying ever did anything. The best cure is to just pretend nothing's wrong.

It was the weirdest thing, though. Suddenly I come home from work and she's just waiting for me like nothing changed, and I felt like . . . like feeling the first raindrops after months of nothing but sunshine. I'd been in this long stagnant period and suddenly things were alive again. I guess I was afraid, too, because what the fuck did she even want? But it was like getting a second chance.

That's the thing about hope. When it's strong enough, when it's real, it makes you ignore everything else, especially when you're someone like me, who says "fuck it" to all the second-guessing bullshit. Because I realized right then that life was shit when she wasn't around, and I was just lying to myself. And all these visions of a beautiful future started dancing through my head. And for a little while, I really believed it.

hope, pt. 2

Eleutheria.
For the longest time, I thought that plans would be a good replacement for hope. Plans and projects and other things I'd sink my energy into, because all my life I'd been told that's what you had to do in order to get somewhere. It never really agreed with my temperament, but I always thought I could bring my temperament in check. I just needed to work harder, do more.

Then--well, some shit went down, and at some point as I was trying to deal with it all the idea came to me to just let it all go. I quit my job and told my landlord I'd be leaving, packed up, and left. Then I sat down in my living room and turned all the lights out and lay there on the couch staring at the ceiling.

Usually when I tell this story, this part goes at the end. It's strange putting it at the beginning of something. This is the point where everything turned around, the point where I realized that the only person I needed to make happy was myself. I remember then thinking that for once I didn't need to have grand aspirations. All I needed to do was exist.

And of course this has to go at the end of the story, doesn't it? It's a logical end point: a key change, the promise of happiness in the future. That's how stories work. And I'll take stories over the real world any day.

hope, pt. 1

Eris.
One of the most vivid memories I have from the day my entire life quite literally burned down is this: suddenly I felt free. Of course there were all these other emotions going through my head--I still have all the lists I made from the time, all the coincidences. How ridiculously unlikely it all was--not just this, but everything, everything, everything. I still have this whole thing I wrote about how there's really no such thing as coincidence or even probability. Either something happened or it didn't.

My mind, my sense of being, my sense of self, were completely shattered. And yet I remember, somewhere between the panic, this beautiful sense that now I could go anywhere. I could do anything. For once I felt empowered. I didn't care that buying a bus ticket east was a terrible decision. I fucking did it. The consequences didn't matter anymore because there were none left.

And I remember so clearly the feeling that anything could happen. I could make everything right again, all the things I'd fucked up so many years before. My house being destroyed, everything I own being destroyed--I felt this sense of purpose. For a few brief hours, sitting on a bus full of strangers--that was the happiest I'd been in my life.

I don't think I ever told anyone that. I didn't know where it fit in the story. I guess I still don't, but somehow it seems important now. Maybe someone else can make more sense of it than I can.

programming note

First of all: happy 2013. I hope it's a good one.

I've always had a certain affinity for the new year; certainly I've written about it here a few times. Of course, the years all run together eventually, and did that really happen more than two years ago now? and so on and so on. Maybe that's why I think it's important to periodically stop and take inventory.

We're coming up on two weeks into the new year, and I've been putting off this project I've been planning for a while, for reasons which are unconvincing and unimportant. It came from a casual suggestion sometime in November, I think, when I was telling someone about my ghost stories. "Oh, do you do that for every month?"

And I said, "I do now." Not ghost stories, of course, though there are ghosts in all my stories. I tried a bit in November and December but I didn't have the direction I wanted. Then I remembered another project I wanted to do, which is ultimately inspired by Jason Webley's excellent Counterpoint album ("Twelve songs in twelve keys, with recurring themes and each song written with a balancing counterpart," according to the website.)

There are twelve months in the year, and we're starting with the first one. January is a month about hope--there will be plenty of time for regrets later.

Finally, I'm still writing Vaudeville Ghosts, which is different from the things I put up here, and probably a little bit weird, but I'd like it if you would read it all the same. Who knows? You might even enjoy it.

So, I shall leave you with a belated New Year's benediction. We didn't do anything to earn this shiny new year we've been given, but by whatever you hold sacred, I hope you get some damn good use out of it before you have to trade it in. Twelve whole months! Let's build some regrets together.

Ever yours, ever truly,
RM

two zero one two

I. This is more than I ever could have hoped for, and sometimes I wonder if it's more than I deserve.

II. Waiting out the weather.

III. A kiss to remember me by. A strange, fevered evening, watching the world through wormwood. This all has to end soon, and I don't know how to express how perfect it's been. Or maybe I'm just not able to.

IV. We get an actual spring, and it gives way into an endless summer.

V. Irreconcilable differences.

VI. A wedding that actually makes sense, when there are so few things that I understand anymore.

VII. The ivory tower is truly no longer my home. You have shown me this much, and for that I owe you my thanks.

VIII. Music that tears itself apart.

IX. No, really.

X. Escaped, and none too soon.

XI. I wish you would understand: I am not hiding from you. I am hiding from everybody.

XII. Reconciliation after all.

XIII. We keep talking about this. I feel like there is something I need to say, or that you need me to say, and I don't know what it is.

XIV. The storm has let up, I think.

a catalog of regrets, pt. 3

There was a time I was meant to lead my people out of the darkness. Maybe I still am--I don't know. There's a lot of things that seemed certain that have become strangely nebulous in the recent weeks.

It went like this:

The sky was clear, for once. After weeks of what seemed like perpetual darkness and endless cloud cover, the night sky shone cold and bright on the earth. I had spent several weeks without the guidance of the stars, so that night I dropped everything and went out into the garden to contemplate. A crescent moon hung in the sky, and the stars burned brightly. And every single one of them was wrong.

This was not the sky I had left behind weeks before, the sky that told of a golden age for my people. I could not read this one at all. These stars were simply not mine. So, for the first time since I could remember, I found myself feeling doubt. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps everything was wrong.

I had thought myself alone in the garden, but as I stared into these foreign stars I noticed that there was someone else there. He told me that there was another way. He indulged my questions. He convinced me that the life I had been preparing for for so long--the world I had been born into--did not need to be the future. I could be myself, happy and free, untroubled by these stars.

In my weakness, I said yes. In my heart, I hoped to have both worlds.

Not one of my followers heard this exchange, but there must have been some change within me. Over the following days they all left me, one by one. My words no longer held the sway they once did. Ultimately I found myself alone. And the man I had spoken to spoke the truth: in my solitude I found myself free. And freedom was a thing more beautiful and more dreadful than I could possibly have imagined.

a catalog of regrets, pt. 2

The evening was winding down and found us on the porch with a bottle of whiskey to keep us warm as we watched the rain come. Our conversations always took a turn for the philosophical (her influence, not mine), and I mentioned a project I was hesitate to work on because I didn't want to bother anyone. She looked at me with a drunken intensity. "Man, don't be such a fucking coward. The only things I regret are the things I didn't do."

We'd known each other for years. Sometimes I thought of it as more of an alliance of mutual convenience than a friendship--we'd decided to be there for each other because nobody else would. So I was the one she told all of her secrets, just like she was the one who got to see the darkness I tried to hide from the world. We kept each other in check.

I've always felt that anyone who uses the line about regretting things you didn't do sincerely is either a liar or a dangerous sociopath. Every single living human being is capable of acts of unfathomable monstrosity, just as they are capable of doing things so amazingly kind you find yourself telling the story years later. So I said something like "you sure about that?" and hinted at one of the stories she'd told me years before.

"That's not the point. You always miss the point." The point, she explained, was that I needed to stop being such a fucking coward. And she was right, of course. As ever, my quest for accuracy in all things caused me to miss the point completely.

One more thing I regret, I suppose.

a catalog of regrets, pt. 1

She regrets that she believed him, or perhaps merely that she believed in him. She's not really sure what precisely she believed that was wrong, but privately she suspects that she simply wanted him to be an entirely different person than he was. And, worse, she expected him to play along. And he would persist in not doing so, and they would both get angry. She regrets some of the things she said when she was angry--she regrets that anger has a way of making you say things you really mean.

He regrets that he meant every word. He always means every word, and this gets him into trouble, because it's far more important to him than saving his relationships with the people around him. Or perhaps that's simply his excuse. Sometimes he imagines that his obsessive adherence to the truth is really just his way of denying his anger. He regrets that he doesn't understand the self he is so obsessed with protecting. He suspects that she understood his self better than he did, and he regrets that she never shared that understanding.

She regrets the dim sense that she lives in a bubble. She has overcome her reclusive tendencies and surrounded herself with people that are all amazing and brilliant and clever and witty, who talk about the things she likes talking about and make the sort of art that she likes to consume. She regrets that she feels claustrophobic sometimes with all these amazing people around, that sometimes all she wants to do is curl up with a book and shut out the world. She wishes that people understood how wonderful her life is. She wishes that she understood how wonderful her life is.

He regrets his tendency to replay conversations in his mind and relive the moment as if it were happening right now. He has always been fascinated by the idea of alternate history--if this one thing had happened slightly differently, the entire world would be different today. He feels that most of his conversations are similar. He could have done it differently, done it right. He knows that this is wrong, of course, but his mind refuses to listen. His mind refuses to do a lot of things he wishes that it would.

november stories, pt. 1

Let's just make this a thing.

This is a month where change happens, where the wind howls through the streets and rips the leaves from the trees, leaving them to dance and swirl endlessly, tracking themselves everywhere. It's not a gentle breeze, either. It's the relentless kind, the kind that saps the warmth from your bones. It's the kind of cold you can only really get in the death throes of autumn. This is a cold far more real than anything winter can throw at us. This is a month where everything is stripped bare and left raw and gasping for warmth.

I've written so many words about these pale blue skies, about distance and alienation. The skies are never right, especially in November. But it was a November, long ago, off a back road somewhere in Montana, I think, when I last trusted a sky. I stepped out of the car and stared at the stars, so bright and clear on this bitter November night, and I smiled. I could have stayed out there forever if my traveling companion hadn't woken up and ruined the moment with the dome light of the car. "What are you doing? Are you all right?" I let her drive after that.

I never thought I'd have a moment like that in the city, but the other night, between the buildings that make up Seattle's skyline, this beautiful pale moon was rising. I stood there in the middle of the street, with the leaves whipping round me, and suddenly felt like the sky was right. Someone shouted at me from a passing car and I smiled and waved and kept walking. It didn't matter. There would be warmth again. Things were going to change, finally, truly.

echoes

The day before I left for good--right before I actually told her I was leaving for good--she started asking me prying questions. Some of them felt like an interrogation, but mostly it felt like she was trying to get me to open up. (That's probably fair: I'd certainly closed off since I decided I was leaving, which I guess is why I hadn't told her yet.)

What stuck with me about the questions, though, was how her version of events seemed so different from how I remembered. She asked why I'd done something that I remembered her doing. (We had a particularly heated argument. We got drunk and she started kissing me, then abruptly stopped and said she just remembered what I'd said earlier, and she couldn't stand sleeping next to me. I slept on the couch in one of her t-shirts and prayed her roommates wouldn't notice. She asked me why I'd left to sleep on the couch that night.) I wondered which one of us was wrong. Or maybe we were both wrong. I felt certain I remembered things correctly, but I'd long since realized that certainty is usually the best sign that you're very, very wrong.

So I spent the evening lying and evading questions. I probably should have felt guilty about it, but I'd told so many lies since I came (starting with, I suppose, "it's good to see you again") that I hardly even noticed. It seemed easier and more natural than just telling her that I remembered things differently (and starting another argument, prompting a question like "why do you always pretend you don't remember the unacceptable things you've done?"). So I dodged questions for an evening, until it was too much. "I'm leaving tomorrow. I won't be coming back."

Neither of us said another word that night. She kissed me like she meant it then. Until morning we could both pretend things had been different.

ghost story for the day of the dead

You can never cross the same river twice.

One last ghost story, then--though I suppose all stories are ghost stories eventually. This one came after a summer spent at sea on a salvage vessel, so far north there were days where I thought I'd never see another sunset. But even endless days have to end sometime, and eventually the dark crept back into the world. We were trying to get as much done as we could before the winter made our work impossible.

This was the night of the equinox. I didn't have a calendar, but I could feel it in the air: this was the day that summer was finally in retreat. So I went above decks, and I watched the ocean, and my thoughts turned dark. How many men had died here, under this moon, on this ocean? How many had never received a proper burial, and were left adrift forever?

A truly ancient sailor's ghost joined me on the decks, then. I don't know how he got there, or how long he'd been standing there. I didn't dare speak, but I watched. At first I thought he didn't know I was there. Then he turned to me and looked at me with empty eyes and told me his story, which I sensed was no longer merely his story. It was the story of a man who had left everything behind for a life adrift, and who fled that life, terrified that he would be adrift forever. It was the story of a man running: running from stability, running from chaos, until ultimately running was all he knew.

He died at sea. He could just as easily have died in some quiet seaside town. What I think he wanted to impart most is that he did not die at peace. He seemed relieved, having told his story, but he did not go away. I sat with him, and we waited for the first dawn of the winter. Then I went below decks and slept like a stone. I'd never been so eager to return home.