My Maudlin Heart
Forget me nots are blooming
When we were on the bus going to see Magnetic Fields, passing a brown bagged Arnold Palmer, there was a group of friends sitting on a row of seats perpendicular to us. The friend sitting in the middle of this trio said “The fact of the matter is the fact that…” I repeated this back to Chloe because it made me laugh. He said it so seriously and I am hardly ever serious and find those serious people unreal. What is the big deal? Where is that stick up your’s? That graduate school talk is capital B boring and sounds not that smart which is why I hardly have told people I am going in the fall. (the irony because it is only a matter of time until I become a person on the bus who will use big words redundantly). Regardless of big words and bus rides I feel simply Maudlin, maybe Morose (keep note that this will become aforementioned momentarily), but hopefully in two years I will master whatever it is that I am trying to do.
I guess why I never take myself seriously is because I could be happy alone, because I am happy alone. It has its moments, the lonely kind, but I find it funny how most people close to me cannot stand it–being alone. I can take myself out and keep myself in and be organized and occupy myself with an agenda of work followed by a workout concluding with dinner, a show (on the telly), and reading myself to sleep. I have become suspicious with my effortless loneliness. If I am missing anything, I like to be alone to feel it and frankly feeling anything has not been happening—I believe academics call that apathy. The only thing I have been feeling is unsure. I have never been a sure person, because it seems no matter how much you save, it is never enough, no matter how much you buy, you will run out, no matter how fast you run, it will catch up and no matter where you are, there are multiple pronged forks in the road. Combatively, I flip through old journal pages that are embarrassing and sometimes stroked with genius (but mostly maudlin and morose and self loathing). I came across something I scribbled down some days ago,
“I am just for no one, for now.”
How pathetic and selfish! There were also entries about what I wanted to be when I grow up (i found an ancient journal), and I realized I am maybe in that growing part and maybe thats why it sucks. When I measured under my current height, there would be those dull pains in my shins. My porous calcium bones defying gravity and hurting me while they were at it. I cannot remember the last time the tape measure got pulled from the kitchen junk drawer, causing either my Mother or Father to direct me to “Stand up straight”, adjust my chin down, and then make a hash mark on the pantry door frame with the date and my initials. I guess if you manage to stay alone there is no one to measure or rather no one to measure you–but what happens if you have already stopped growing before then?
I do vaguely remember my freshman year of high school (thanks to the ancient journal)/(which was a set of braces, training bras, and prescription glasses ago) the hash mark says 10 years ago. This was the year we read To Kill a Mockingbird.
My English teacher used to be a music journalist and we were her first class of her first day being a High School English teacher. She described her previous position as going to concerts and writing about them, or listening to a new album and writing about it, or sometimes talking to musicians and writing about their answers to her questions. I wondered why you would stop that to teach the same book to seven classes? We would do this exercise, where she would play a song and we would write only for the length of the song. I remember she played Arcade Fire a lot and she wore combat boots and I thought she was cool, but at the time my uniform skirt was long enough and I never wore make-up and I was scared of teenage boys.
This past Sunday April 28th I saw The Magnetic Fields and thought I would write about it because I remembered my high school English teacher’s old job for some reason. The show took place at the Curran Theater near Union Square and it was a sit down concert. Meaning all the band members were sitting down and so was the audience. It was a show that started promptly and Chloe and I showed up late, and the crowd looked like they would love to tell you about how they almost lived in Brooklyn for three years.
Half of 69 Love Songs got played and we walked in as “Come Back from San Francisco” was concluding. The irony! I have nursed or rather this album has been by my left, right, and bedside the past month or so. I have never gotten over a low grade envy I carry about people who get to make music. I listen to music and hear the words, feel them deeply (whatever that means), but will never know the feeling of writing two kinds of things and picking out words that go along with it. Some of my favorite words I got to hear in the Curran Theater after dark were
Grand pianos crash together when my boy walks down the street
If I was the Grand Canyon I’d echo everything you say
and you used to love me that way
So you know how to love me that way
No one will ever love you for your honesty
No one will ever love you honestly
There was an intermission and Chloe bought us Redvines, other people bought IPAs and popcorn. They did play “The Book of Love” a song that I manage to skip when it comes on but hearing it while I was captive in the Curran these words sounded so true:
I love it when you read to me.
I love it when you give me things
You ought to give me wedding rings
The show ended promptly and I did not get to hear “Papa was a rodeo” or “Epitaph for my heart”, which is probably a good thing. We rode the bus back home and we turned on Sex and the City. The episodes centering on if you can be friends with an ex (the jury of four fictional women says no) and the other topic if women are meant to be rescued (this really depends).
The sun has been out a lot and I have been enjoying it and it makes me nostalgic for tanlines (in due time I keep telling myself). I keep circling back to things that have been said to me or things I have read. My friend Joe (i.e. my friend with the most IMPECCABLE taste) and I have been in the habit of sending each other lines from things here and there. Usually it will be a picture of a book and then the responding party will express accolades and then beg the question “where from?” or he will send me these profound one liners or existential questions like for example, “Thoughts on tennis bracelets?” or something for no reason like “Martin Scorsese!!” In all actuality this string of texts back and forth is very much us and esoteric not because it is our own conversation because Joe seems to get things like no one else:
[topic undisclosed + typos because this is exactly how these things were said/texted]
Joe:
I know the way im looking at it is morose
And shouldn’t be the final perspectiuve
Caroline:
Do you feel like you’re on the emotional journey of it all?
Morose is a pretty word
Joe:
But I always think about something I journaled once
“at some point it occurred to me that I’d actually
have to want what I want”
Morose is a gorgeous word
In October I read Fair Play by Tove Jansson and it has some great words. It centers on two partners, Mari and Jonna, a writer and an artist. The novel, from what I’ve learned about this author’s style via the blurbs on the back, captures the everything in the seemingly nothing. Relationships and sharp observations seem to murmur in the background of these hundred or so pages. There are two quotes I think of often from this book. Firstly and unrelated to anything,
“The friendly crowding, the jukebox, the pool balls clicking from the curtained off section of the room, a sudden laugh in the even flood of conversation, a voice being raised to object or explain, and people coming in the whole time and somehow finding space.”
Then don't read the next quote if you will read the book (I do recommend it by the way)
“She looked at Jonna and suddenly she understood. Jonna really wanted to work in peace, a whole year, now that she was really working well… Mari was hardly listening. A Daring thought was taking shape in her mind. She began to anticipate a solitude of her own, peaceful and full of possibility. She felt something close to exhilaration, of a kind that people can permit themselves when they are blessed with love.”
This book seems to celebrate those cliches regarding the beauty of the everyday when you are inspired and in love with someone (or something). I really am having trouble doing both. One because I lack a Jonna or Mari to love and travel throughout the American Southwest and watch Fassbinder films and have vice versa artistic critiques with (reference to the Novel’s plot). And two, because I do not really feel the urge to do any of those things with anyone.
I do not even really like myself that much and there is a lot I would change if available, but solitude is something I relish in. It is quiet and private and exclusive to a fault. I have found lately in my solitude that words matter a great deal and when I have shared words I like with others they (the words I like) are not usually met with the same enthusiasm. So, I am unsure as to why I decided to share so many words I like. I am telling the same bad joke expecting a laugh this time. Maybe someone will also get it? Or not, but I will have a masters (eventually) and they won’t. (and I will be alone and they won’t).
