A Day in the Life, Part VIIIEmpathy for the Living

My mind is a cacophony of words; images; thoughts.


It is silence, and then a terrifying mess of sounds.

It is awash with ideas and experiences, old and new, many now too lost in time to ever be communicated or understood.


For example: everything you see here is three months old — a single two days plucked from the early summer — though the words are a bastardization of every moment since.



But let us work backwards, for a moment. The unordered order of the recent past.


Yesterday I skipped the post-work workout and drove directly home; tired and unmotivated for anything other than sleep.

When I pulled up to my apartment, I was first greeted by a neighbor (don't worry, I like this one) and his dog. A short conversation and a minute or so later, and I was unloading my car when a man on a bicycle pulled up behind me and said:

"Excuse me, miss. You speak English?"

"Yes," I said, turning around to find a face as vaguely familiar as those words.

And then it hit me. Again and again, as he continued to speak.

He was exasperated and out of breath; a wad of cash in one hand and an inhaler in the other.

And then his story — as familiar as the cash, the inhaler, the bike — began:

He just needed a few more dollars (he said, showing me the wad of tens and twenties) to get his inhaler filled at the Walgreens down the street. He isn't going to hurt me, he said, he just needs a little help so he can get his asthma medication.

"I gave you 10 bucks for your inhaler a couple months ago," I said truthfully, realizing his plea was as likely a ruse before just as it was then.

"I know, I know," he said. "But I just need a little more. It's for my daughter," he said, gesturing to the invisible no one over his shoulder after repeating a story to me that was otherwise identical to the one before.

"I'm sorry," I said, shutting my car door, angry with myself for having ever given the ten dollars in the first place.

"God bless you anyway," he said, pedaling hurriedly on to his next victim.

I looked at my car and sighed, wondering if he'd return later to "bless me" (and my vehicle) for our lack of alms.


And three days before:


His face crinkled and flushed into a melancholy red as he let out a painful sigh.

"The sun is going down," he said, looking out of the window. "The sun is going down and I haven't seen my mom all day."

The inflection at the end — coupled with his keen observation of the rural horizon — was what killed me, my body filling with a sort of empathy that, these days, is reserved especially for him.

He's only six, after all. Going to school all day for the first time in his life, leaving his mom at home alone with his infant brother. Spending three nights a week refining his martial arts skills, and every other weekend with his grandparents.

But that wasn't all I thought about then, putting my hand on his shoulder and telling him I'd let his Papaw know it was time to take him home (it wasn't our weekend, after all).

Secondary to my concern for him, it bothered me that it's seldom his father he misses (or at least: that he talks about missing). That he's become so used to that absence in his life, it's hardly worth mentioning. It is, after all, his father who swims in the same gene pool as I, and it pains me to think our role in this little boy's life could be in any way amiss.

But I shake off the thought, reminding myself that this attachment between a mother and child is historic. An inevitable fact of life, really. It's the mother they so often cry for; seldom the father.

Why is that?


"But I can't go yet," he said, sniffling and wiping his eyes. "I need to bull ride Papaw first."

I informed my father of this change of events and stood by, amused, as my nephew threw on his favorite cowboy hat and hopped onto my father's back.

He was smiling and laughing in seconds.


It was the same smile I saw three months ago when I opened my apartment door to find him on the other side.

He marched in, hands on his hips, and rattled off a list of things he wanted to do during his weekend visit.

And, boy, did he keep my parents and I busy. Museums


and aquariums

and sculpture parks


and hatcheries


(just to name a few).


I had fun, really. All of us did.


But one thing really struck me on that trip, something that was solidified this past weekend:

There's no denying he resembles both of his parents, but it's particularly interesting for me to see him now: he's the same age his father was when I was born.


And now when I look at him, I see the beginnings of the boy I first remembered.

A Day in the Life, Part V"Washington becomes Oregon"

There's something altogether humbling about turning the page on a calendar.

I did that today for my home and work calendars (all five of them), amazed to realize the summer is nearly gone.

Next will come autumn, and then winter, and then spring, and then summer.

You know the story -- it neither begins nor ends, it just... keeps going. Sometimes considerably faster than we like; and some days slower than we ever thought possible.


But enough of that; you're probably wondering why one person would need so many calendars, in which case I feel compelled to say the quantity has more to do with an obsession with art, rather than an obsession with time.

Though it is most certainly both.


Every time I turn one of those pages, I'm as eager to see the next month's artwork as I am disturbed to see the previous one pass.

And I cannot help but think, too, how ironic it is that days drag on whereas years pass in a proverbial blink.


A marker of a life wasted, methinks. A failure to enjoy the moment and the desperation that comes when you realize months upon months are full of wasted days.

So stop wasting them.

I am reminded, too, of a recent communique from a friend, asking who the real me is -- the words and pictures he knows from this fiber optic anomaly, or the girl with an off-color sense of humor who takes pride in her life's misadventures (not the least of which involved getting lost in the hills of New England).

I've been thinking about that question, and now -- days later -- my calculated response is the same as my immediate:

I am both.

Look at it this way: we've all heard the tragic tales of our favorite comedians. These people who -- on stage -- made us laugh so hard we cried, though their personal histories were often of a much darker ilk.

I won't at all profess to contain that level of tragedy or propensity for fame -- because I don't -- but the comparison remains the same:

I'm the reverse, in a way.

Roughly half of the people who read me have never met me. And so, all they know is this... melodramatic voice.

Though in person, I'm full of jokes, terrible puns, and stories of woe that nearly always have a humorous spin.

I'm the girl who cackles with glee when she realizes a simple word has been transformed either by time


Or some like-minded imp.


The girl who thinks this street name -- in hippie city, USA (i.e. Eugene, OR) -- is too fitting to be an accident.



The girl who mispronounces a name she's known all her life when it's out of context, and realizes just how unfortunate (that is to say: humorous) it really is.



And so on and so on, for days upon days.


But you know what I most liked about Eugene? This statue, which seemed more alive to me than most of the people I pass on any given day.



It's the first little boy that most stood out to me. Because for all of my love of literature, and movies, and plays... I understand and appreciate his desire to turn away from the speaker.

It's not so much that he's adverse to fiction.

(In fact, I imagine the converse to be true.)



But that he's immersed in life.

A Day in the Life, Part IV"The Northwest Passage"

I don't often talk about my dreams — neither my aspirations for the future nor what happens whenever I close my eyes.


But last night, well... last night I came face-to-face with the very beast that's made it nearly impossible to write, or speak.


You see, the follow-up to my most recent apartment fiasco is that my landlady now turns the cold water off at night, long before I generally go to sleep.

That means no tooth brushing, no face washing, no showering and — last but not least — no toilet flushing.

And it was the final in that list that I attempted to do around 10 p.m. last night, only to realize my water was already off for the day.

[Yes, I realize what she's doing is very likely illegal — but I have almost a year left on my lease and moving is very time consuming and expensive].

I was so... frustrated... that I couldn't fathom any way to spend the remainder of my evening, except to sleep. I had no words for anyone.


No thoughts.


Just a simple tinge of anger and frustration, welling in the pit of my stomach.


My mind was a jumble of sounds and images, all of them indiscernible. And even as I crawled into bed, I knew sleep would not come fast enough.



How could it, with my pulse racing as it was?


But when it did — when finally the last drops of daylight faded from my eyes — I shouted in my sleep the very thing I'd been meaning to say.


My family was visiting. My sister and my oldest nephew were in my living room watching cartoons when I realized something was awry. I looked up and saw bubbles forming across my ceiling, spreading with pox-like rapidity down the hall and into the living room.

I grabbed my nephew and shouted for my sister to follow, as hole after hole burst through my ceiling and water spewed forth, ruining most (if not all) of my possessions (which are almost entirely sentimental in value).

I called my landlady to report the incident, and lost my temper for the first time — lamenting the photos and books and letters that lay in ruins.

"I just want things to be right — I want back everything that I've lost!" I shouted into the phone. "Life isn't meant to be so complicated!"

And I continued.

I'm tired of all of this.

[There was an exclamation point in my voice when I yelled this but now — in the world of conscious thought — a period and a pregnant pause will suffice.]

And that, as they say, is the rub.


I'm struggling to speak and write because everything is wrong, or even...

Out of place.



And I've come to realize that nothing I say or do will help to restore order.


What I see in this world — what I feel — is so often at odds with what I experience. It's at odds with every newspaper headline and every rush hour traffic jam.



And this streak of bad luck — if you can call it that — isn't a streak at all.


This isn't a phase.



This has been my life, and for as long as I can recollect.


So when does it stop? When do things get better? When do I stop being a doormat upon which other people shake their muddy shoes?


Or for that matter: when does writing about such things cease to suffice as a means of catharsis?


It stops when I stop.


All of it.


And that, I suppose, is what I fear.



That I'm stopping. That I'm giving up.


That for all of these traveled miles, for all of these experiences — however beautiful —



I have forgotten myself along the way.


I worry, then, that there is nothing left to regain.


(And so: no reason to try.)


And yet, even still,


I persist.