it's the dilemma of beauty: Do I dive into a gorgeous day like this, press into it's luscious, cool, brilliant sunshiney texture of fleeting moments—or do I write them down. Usually, I choose the latter as preoccupation, as if I'm too busy observing to participate, pathetically comforted by my capacity to stand apart and watch it all go by—always with intent seriousness. As if it matters.
We are at the nexus of life and death, where fear confronts hope, where tried love rages brightest. Well beyond here, distant though apparent, we can see joy contending with those who have preceded us beyond this place.
wednesday, September 06, 2000 4:16:44 PM
Marylou Arslen, my sister and the oldest of five of us, died on August 23, 2000. I found out just a half hour ago. It is my fault that I was not with Marylou when she died, and my fault that I was not present to support my sister Kate, who was with Marylou. It is my fault that for almost twenty years, I have been just plain unavailable.
The mere sound of my brother's voice in the message he left was disturbing, apart from his words. Martin's speech was measured and even as ever, but unmistakably distressed, strained, and hurt—things very rarely betrayed in the voice of my brother. At least, that's how I remember his voice, from a long-ago time when I heard it every day, a time when he and I would lay on the lawn and show each other the faces and shapes we saw in the clouds. In the late sixties it seemed we were best friends. The last time I spoke to Martin was also the last time I spoke to Marylou, at my mother's funeral, in January of 1998.
How do I explain that? Not death; that will remain forever inexplicable. How do I account for my remoteness from my own family? And if I could explain it, wouldn't that be just another academic enmeshment to keep me uninvolved? I cannot explain it, and even if I could, an explanation would not help. My eldest sister, the one who felt a special kindredness with me, is gone.
Marylou and I shared a similarity I would not acknowledge, and she sought to be my friend. She was the oldest, I the youngest, and that may have nothing to do with it, except that I failed to be her friend because I did not want to be myself. I pretended—unsuccessfully—to be stable, sensible and responsible, more like the median members of our family, Jane, Kate and Martin. That was certainly not a bad thing to try and be, but it was not me. If 'being' is the thing you fear, then pretense is your escape—even if what you pretend to be is the same as who you are. It still defends you against the risks of being yourself. It makes you safely remote. It makes you unavailable. Whatever Joe is, that's what Marylou needed me to be, and I wasn't. I kept pretending and hiding, and now...
Every warm breath was a chance for me to be her friend, and I blew them all away. And now, there's none.
my second paragraph up there was interrupted when my DSL went down. I stopped writing to persue its reconnection, and as a result, I got the news of my sister's death. Though I had no idea of the tragedy they were to fit when I wrote them, the two beginning paragraphs seem appropriate for today. I will leave them.
A long time ago I chose the illusion of connection—the Internet—to take the place of real human contact. It was too scary, and I could not negotiate relationships without always hurting someone. The absence of me entirely from the lives of people was less damaging, I thought, than the presence of me—with walls. But never for a moment did I shed the desperate aching lonliness of that self-imposed isolation. I only pretended to. And very recently, I have begun to realize that the world might not be better off for my not participating. In fact, I acknowledged here just last week, just before this terrible news, that absence and avoidance indeed do injure, as surely as any malicious act. Too little, too late. Yet I wonder if she hasn't been coaching my soul in its revelations these past two weeks, when all the while, I didn't even know she was gone.
Today, this man's new wisdom has yet to become his practice, so my obsession over artificial connections continued, until I accidentally stumbled on a real one.
My DSL has been down for a week, and was just restored yesterday afternoon. It's going down so soon again worried me. Connection failures have recently proven to be a rich opportunity for teasing my soul into a shredded rage, courtesy of MSN's customer support line. Predictably, I went for it, and called MSN. Then I heard a phone company lineman raise a ladder at the pole outside. I took my cordless phone outside to the pole as I tried to convince Shawn, an MSN slave, that the loss of my MSN/DSL was indeed an issue that involved MSN. "There's nothing that WE can do as far as that," he actually said. "What do you want MSN to do?" he asked. What a helpless babe. I was using him to piss me off, to keep me distracted from real life, and he was defenseless.
"I want MSN to restore my MSN/DSL connection," I said, emphasizing its obviousness.
"Well, there's no one we can call to do that." I could not have scripted his stupidity better.
"Who did you call to connect it in the first place!" I saw a hornet in the grass near the telephone pole, and for emphasis, I stepped on it. As he babbled a worthless vocabulary, attempting to justify his illogic, I hung up. That felt good.
From there my attention turned upward, to the pole, where a tall twenty-nine-ish lineman was perched, talking on his phone. He finished his call and said, "Hi." I took a deep breath to diminish the adrenalin rush from the phone fight I just had, and asked the lineman if he had just disconnected a DSL line. He asked me for the circuit ID of the line, which is a 14-character alpha-numeric code. Because of all the attention I have been giving it lately, I was able to recite most of it. "Is your number 797-0782?" Yes, I told him, that's one of my numbers. He told me that he was the cause of my outage, and he was 'conditioning' the line; when my DSL was reconnected yesterday, the new loop was 300' longer on one side and required 'load-balancing'. He said my DSL would be back up in twenty minutes and he'd call me when he was done.
"Don't bother calling, that's my computer's old phone number, now it just terminates in the basement." It was replaced by DSL. It is also my original phone number and is still the number many people use when trying to get in touch with me. "I'll just watch for the connection to come up."
Of course I thought the lineman was attractive—don't I find everything attractive that cannot really be significant? He was tall, and youthful looking, had dark hair, big blue eyes, a very masculine five-o'clock shadow on cheeks that dimpled with the slightest smile, and a big dimple in his chin. But best of all, he was engaging. I have always said that is what we came to this life for; to make contact, to establish human connections. I should know—of all the endeavors in this life, connecting with people is the one at which I fail most.
I went back inside and peeked out my kitchen window, stealing secretive glimpses of ...I don't know. Of a living breathing human being, close by, who navigated our encounter without raising his defenses or assuming any facades; I peered in envious fascination at one just like me, only unmasqued. Helplessly, I watched as this 'connection' lowered his ladder, hoisted it on his shoulder, and walked away.
the encounter with the handsome lineman reminded me of my 'other' phone line and, now that I no longer had any DSL complaints—or glimpses of him—to distract me, I thought I might as well check my messages. Maybe my friend Bernard had recently called.
That's when I heard my brother's voice. I had no idea it had been a whole month since I last checked messages on my old phone number. Unbelievably, my sister died two weeks ago.
now is way too late, and I could continue out of touch with my family, as if this nightmare were not real. I can deny it all, and make tomorrow just like last month, with everyone alive at least. I can pretend it didn't happen, like I've done with other trauma from my past, all I have to do is lie a little more than before. But I was already lying quite a lot.
If you play God and take control of the universe, you can make it anything you want. Whenever you encounter an injustice or a tragedy, you simply fix it by replacing it with a corrected version created by you. So what that your replacement isn't real, it was not a thing you wanted anyway. It's really quite a magical solution, at first. But making the world right in this way is inexorably progressive, as it will eventually construct around you a dark, confining, aspiritual imitation of life. And either you want life, or you want its farcical imitation.
There is a call I need to make.
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