This morning as I drove to
Denver, I had so very much to say. I was going to describe this little girl and
how she would turn out in my story. How her Quincinera would go, how her family
would have saved and slaved for it and how she would have just wanted to wear
tennis shoes because at15, she still wasn’t ready for high heels and womanhood.
But I can’t remember what else. There was something about a man and his body
and how to describe the way destiny arranged his limbs into my path, but I
can’t recall exactly what intersection I was at when I was supposed to run into
and then write about him. What happened? Were they supposed to meet?
Did he miss the little girl
too?
Maybe I was supposed to start a
book about an apocalypse. The one where the floods come and those of us who
live atop mountains where it is dry and without plenty would be flooded with
humans coming up the hills to where they might survive. I would write about the
way the groups stood atop of mountains and shot at the scores of people who clambered
up the mountain trying to survive the rising tides and rising temperatures. The
floods of people with floods behind them, and their panicked faces and how the
westerners couldn’t handle it. They defended their land against the flood of
bodies coming up the hill, desperate. But before that, there was the Florida bride
who sizzled and steam rose from her side as it was so hot at her wedding that
she literally caught fire. Rain on her wedding day would have saved her but
instead her dress melted into her flesh, what was left of it after starving
herself to fit into that dress in the first place.
But then life got busy and I
didn’t write the characters down and they moved on to other authors, handed out
by other muses.
And should I even bother to
tell you how much I missed, trying to juggle the people I encountered yesterday
and the let down when I didn’t get a chance to have that meaningful
conversation with any of the authors. We got together to donate books and it was
my tribe and I was so excited to see them. The introverted, contemplative lot. How
I love to take a long break inside their minds and hear what they’ve dreamt up
lately. And then instead, how we spoke in snippets abuzz with holes of
interruptions. What was I saying? I was saying how I missed the connections I’d
hoped to have. Only that wasn’t what I was crafting with words. It was deeds
and I’d hoped to dance around it a while in conversation, hoping we could waltz
into the world of friendship and remember how it felt to be together. But it
didn’t work on account of the cheese holes, the way we didn’t finish a thought.
The way I didn’t hear you, or see your face and watch it while you formulated a
thought. I didn’t see. I was too busy.
We’re all too busy. I
fantasize about winning the lottery, like any poor fool does, really. Except I
think my fantasy is all about time. I want more of it. I want to use it to hike
and skip and listen and never, ever do laundry again. I don’t want to own more
anything. So really, if I think of what I most want at any given moment, it’s
connection. When I think of what I miss about high school, the answer is mostly
nothing. High school was a terrible time for me. But in those years and the
ones that followed, I had those deep down friends, anything-friends, the ones
you can do nothing with or swim around a pond, or go to a party, or start a
ruckus, you can do anything with them. Those friends. Nearly 20 years after
high school, I still know plenty of anything friends, everything friends. But
the times when I’m around them are rarer and so what I truly miss is that one
friend. The one friend you see every other day or so, that you talk to once or
twice or sometimes even three times a day. I miss that connection. And if I
think of what money would get me, it isn’t that. So maybe I need to figure out
how to right my ship and point it toward the chance to connect and form that
friendship. Except, everyone’s too damned busy for that sort of thing. It’s too
bad. I think it’s how we’d be happy.
