August 4, 2011

Useless Information

Some information is useless, and it is best to forget it. The tiny, pursed shape of my mother's mouth in death. I can't do anything with that image. It isn't a puzzle piece, or a lesson. Remembering that my Aunt Ada cut out the fluffy heart of her watermelon wedge and put it on my plate, her conspiratorial eyes shining in a bright smile, might induce me toward kindness today. But no one alive now knew her, the soiled white straps of her summer sandals, her uniform of straight skirts and tucked-in blouses, her necklace of glazed nut shells that taught me what the color brown meant. Hairpins everywhere! That was my childhood.
     I have separated everything into piles, and there is some matter here that cannot be recycled. I sought to draw memory into an outline, each entry tidily indented beneath the line above it—an inverted Christmas tree of ideas, my thesis of myself—shuffling away from the left-hand margin of the page.
     But the strongest impressions, pulling against the center like magnets, still lead nowhere. Lucid, canonical in detail, the sights and sounds of a lifetime—shorter than it seemed—refuse to lie down. 
     Best to put them out of mind.

August 1, 2011

August Afternoon

In the house, alone, all day with my dog dying of liver and kidney failure, I think about quitting drinking. Twice I've gone to the pantry and looked at the red line of wine, crouching at the bottom of the large green bottle like a resting ballerina folded onto her legs. I can't decide which goodbye is harder. There will be no more dog walks, no more drinks at sunset. My life, already in trouble at 20, advances through its new 53rd year by a fresh batch of relinquishments, by the loss of things that just a short time ago I seemed left with. I have run out of excitement about myself. I will not be remembered or grieved, like this dog. And I will be cold sober each day, saying my goodbye to the sun.