My Rice Paper

Spring is here. Pollen secrets its way between conversations so much that we stop saying, “God bless you.” The sky today is blue, photoshop quality. There is a crispness, a sharp intake of air that chills and refreshes and reminds you of horses thundering wild and free across a tall grass landscape in a land that has never seen a civilized man. I hope I never become a civilized man.

I used to have these sensations this time of year. Like a voice. A softly growing tremble that has its roots within some primeval source that originates in the depths of the human soul and reverberates through the span of every restless thought I’ve ever had. And I’d run across the Konza prarie. And I’d scream. And the wind was the one thing that would comfort me. I’d look down from atop a hill, bronzed, breathless, arms spread, surveying the trail behind and the rocky paths ahead. In reality I guess I was lonely in some way. Or missing something, or locked with the knowledge that I was not complete. I don’t know if girls can relate to this, maybe only after menopause. There is some caged spirit that is not me yet defines me more clearly than a resume. Maybe it is just the inner self attempting to escape the decorum of a preconceived notions of how life is meant to be.

Tonight I am sitting alone on a Friday night. I sip sake and eat squid and rice watching Tivo-ed episodes of Scrubs and The Office. [I really am getting tired of David Spade commercials] This isn’t where I have to be. The night has dropped quickly over the spring day. Sometimes I think that I can only write in two moods. It is like sorrow leads me to the page, and anger sharpens my words. So I write either angry or sad or some emotion in the middle.

“The distance between the deepest of human emotions is no greater than the thickness of rice paper, the deepest love and the bitterest hate, it is the weakness of the heart, it is our most formidable enemy.”

I wake up at 6:23 this morning. In bed, I’m watching the clock record the minutes until Yuuki leaves for the airport. I haven’t been getting much sleep lately. I want to fall back asleep, sleep in until the sun fills my room and the chickadees court each other in the tree outside my window. I lay in bed. A little black box sits idle. Its contents consist of a pair of cufflinks that I promised to give Yuuki yesterday to wear with her French cuffed shirt in England. She’ll only be gone a week. We never managed to make our way back to my apartment so I never got them to her. 6:38. It is just like her to buy a French cuffed shirt and not have any cufflinks. I laugh. Reach out from the covers and take the box, check the jewelry inside. The metal is cold. 6:47. I throw back the covers, grab a fleece, my keys, run out the door.

6:48
6:49
6:50
6:51 Red light.
6:52
6:53 Stop-sign.
6:54
6:55… Yuuki’s phone rings.

“Hello?” she answers.
“It’s me.”
“Oh, hi!”
“I forgot to give you something.”
“Oh?”“The cufflinks.”
“Oh. It’s okay.”
“Well, I’m bringing them to you.”
“Oh. Where are you?”

…

“Are you here?”

…

“Yes.”I felt rather foolish. I really didn’t know what to say. Aside from the facts that she already knew. [Je t’adore. Je elle adore]

6:57. She is in my arms again.

7:04. I am back in my car, heading back to my apartment singing John Denver.

9:05 (pm). I sit slowly sipping sake from a green glass bottle. That voice that links me to my primordial self has departed. A new resident claims ownership in his stead. It soars. it sinks. it survives on the countenance of another’s wish. It swims and wallows and slips into the solace that only sleep can pretend to impersonate. Yet unlike sleep where dreams linger only faintly in the subconscious, this burns hotter the more I try to change the subject.

And I have to stop writing. Because despite being alone and lonely on a Friday night, a smile grows in the little places that should be filled with smiles before they age and harden. And happiness makes the writing glib, but I’d rather never pen another word than give up my greatest weakness.

I love all the seasons, but for now this one most of all.