I’ve realized that this has been my life for years. Sitting in dormitory kitchens in a country that’s not mine and with people who aren’t my people, either. Our only common link to each other is our presence in an improbable place, far from our homes.
This afternoon: in your communal kitchen, eating fried bananas and
listening to your foreign speech, the sunlight streaming in through the high windows,
looking out at the distant road and the dead tractor.
I’ve had this memory before, I think. I know this feeling.
And it’s true, it’s slant déjà vu: like slant rhyme, it doesn’t quite match up, but nostalgia is the same. France, South Korea. Tomato, tomato.
Slant déjà vu, my term for nostalgia.
~~~~~~
I walk up the dark road to my apartment. The streetlamps illuminate the oily pavement; the cold air burns my lungs and I revel in it. Somebody drops a can and it clatters noisily off into the distance. I’m suddenly overwhelmed with slant déjà vu. Three years ago, I think, breathless now—not with the walk, but the urge to cry.
I’m in the bus, and I suddenly remember my grandmother’s perfume. Rather, the smell of her whole house. I can’t describe it, but I’m overwhelmed with the scents of her kitchen and the pillows on her couch. The bus shudders to another stop and I leap off.
I woke up the other morning and wrote something down. I seem to be doing that a lot lately. I wonder if that’s the choice I made: be happy, or write.
But, that doesn’t make much sense, because I was rarely happy with you. You know why.
I’m trying to move past heartache, but I seem to be occupying a different space now. Before, my life moved forward with regular beats and hours that became days and then years. Then it all imploded, and the whole structure ripped apart as easily as poster paper. Today, or lately, time is like an empty room filled with bright grey light. A place where melodrama isn’t indulgence—nor is it warmth, or more than indifference—it’s just a space where hours have expanded to mean little more than the difference between light and dark.
But, I still have memories. Like most things that are ignored, they fall on me unexpectedly, always singly, while I’m walking down a dark street or eating a fried banana in a bright kitchen.
So many images, but all of them are this.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
Es ist einfach so. Hast du sie nicht erkannt? Du musst es annehmen. Ich habe Sorge, weil ich Sorge hätte für jeden Mensch in dieser Stelle, nicht weil du mir jemand besonders bist. Ich schneide den Stress raus. Bist du zufrieden?
Es ist so. Die Liebe. Ich konnte es dir kaum auf meine Sprache sagen, nicht weil es nicht stimmte, sondern weil ich so viele Liebe hatte, dass es mir Angst gab. In jeder Stelle, auf jeden Schritt, hatte ich doch Recht. Was lächerlich ist, ich habe keine Ahnung wer ist schwächer, du oder ich. Ich glaube du, aber sicher hast du eine andere Meinung.
I’m starting to feel protective of other people, even though I’m still the protected one. It’s frustrating, to be taken care of when it’s useless. No one agrees. So I’m bright and cheerful. Bright and cheerful is easy. Why was I so scrupulously honest before.
Also:
I met a handsome man lately. I still know enough to recognize him as a Handsome Man. You would have blocked him out like the sun, but anyway without you I can see. I could never describe you as sweet, but this Handsome Man is sweet. He’s talented and gentle. Whenever I look to him, he smiles at me. I know enough, still, to see that we would go out to dinner, or to a movie. He’d take my hand. That’d be enough for a while. Oh, well.
I think I’m destined for this kind of life, after all. A slanted life. Off center, not quite it, but okay enough. I won’t ever ride horses on my great-grandfather’s property or drink bitter coffee under the heavy arch of grapes that your father has, reserving each bunch for a member of the family. Instead, I’ll sit in kitchens, closing my eyes against a memory no one around me relates to, and smile brightly when I’m passed a plate.
Yep.Hate him! ^_^
