Unrestrained Prattle.
Yeah, I don't have much to offer this evening.
Today was a migraine day -- and a migraine day with a fever no less! Not to try and seek out sympathy, though -- I know a billion and more people have it a thousand times worse. But today, within the Meg experience (which is limited and blessed, both) it was a crappy day.
Headaches are uniquely distracting for me as a writer. Every time I go to rub at my brow or my temples, I seem to drive away whatever thought I was about to type. Even if it was just a nice little preposition or a verb -- gone.
So, I spent the day at work chasing my thoughts and dragging back my sense of reason with a shaky, but iron fist.
I hate brain pain.
I was thinking today about two things: love and pain.
Heh. They're not always connected, but today they were.
Not because I was feeling one on account of the other, but because I realize that my notions about both are changing over the years.
Pain used to be a uniquely physical prospect. I've always had it around me -- I wasn't an unhealthy kid, but I had my share of ailments from rusty tonsils, cloggy sinuses, wooly lungs and a bad case of the klutzes. There was always a cold or flu that I was on the cusp of catching, but I was a pretty cheerful patient. I've heard from camp nurses and ER doctors that I was dealing well with some pretty nutso injuries. I took it as a point of pride, in some twisted way.
Even today, the sickness that fells everyone else seems to challenge me to press on. Lose my voice? Keep talking. Nose running? Go catch it. Giant rash on your leg? Wear pants. Huge boil on forehead? Well, I haven't had that, but I guess I could lance it. If I knew what lancing involved.
Now, though, as I grow into my years, I've noticed that when I think of pain, I think of my head and my heart, not a broken rib or a streppy throat. I think of the words that have felled small parts of me like baby trees. I think of being ignored in big and small ways, and how that makes me shut myself down, sector by sector. I think of what it means to fall into deep, unfathombale affection, and not have that same passion and devotion be returned.
I wonder why this damn moth keeps running into my hand while I type. Didn't it hurt the first time? Stop it!
Ah, but that moth is just like me. I keep running into hands that will not receive.
I guess that's the only pain that still has any power in my life.
Which brings me to love.
I love love.
I think my whole pysche is bound up in creating scenarios for loving more, or how love could work, or how love would feel, or how I could put love into someone else's life. And I don't mean that in a fruity way. I mean that in a real way.
I imagine glances across rooms that affirm at a distance. I imagine a hand on the small of a back that reassures without intruding or interrupting. I imagine lofting a child into the air to make him feel the freedom of flight with the safety of my arms holding him aloft. I imagine dancing close and humming against a familiar ear to a song we've always known and enjoyed. I imagine the aftermath of an argument where there is no option to leave or walk away.
I think my iPod is messing with my conceptions of both my love and my pain.
When I went to load the thing up, I did so with abandon, forgetting the impact that certain songs had on me at certain times. Not that I give into random emotions on the whim of a computer chip on shuffle mode. But I know myself -- music activates my mind like nothing else on earth.
When a boisterous, fast song comes on (Deee-Lite, Philosopher Kings, Bran Van 3000, Violent Femmes), I have a spring in my step, and the world is a crazy, gorgeous, speedy place.
When a gentle, romantic song comes on (Van Morrison, Etta James, Ella Fitzgerald, Ani DiFranco), suddenly I am flushed with the idea of being in love and showing love and glorying in all of the above.
When a sad song comes on (James Taylor, Jonatha Brooke, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson), I have to fight to focus in the face of tough memories. Memories of matter-of-fact rejections and arguments that ended relationships. Memories of connections broken by words and deeds. Memories of feeling insignificant in the face of someone else's standards.
Oy. All that, and I'm just trying to hammer out a marketing draft! Oh, the pathos! Oh, the overimagination! Oh, the cement brick of history weighing on me and reminding me that none of this is just a song. At some point, all of this has been my silly reality.
Through the ear buds, straight to my heart.
So, I deal with my love and pain intermingled, and it's all rather silly and esoteric, but part of my evolution.
In reality, all I probably need is a coffee and a breath of fresh air and to stare extra hard at my computer screen and command Google to give me facts.
And to not be so easily swayed by my own thoughts and emotions.
But I'm me, so I am. And while part of me would change that aspect of my being to render me a more reasonable soul, the other part of me would conjure it up again and again to plumb the depths of what lies there for the sake of healing, revolution and getting to know myself better.
That's the internal war. Feeling versus dealing. And it's hard to find time for it in a day, anyhow. There's so much to be done -- work, laundry, dinner, tidying, getting to and fro. Why would I pause to indulge my impracticalities?
Because.
As much as I scoff at myself for feeling and aching and leaking tears, I know that that is the most real part of who I am, and it colours in all the rest of my chattery, silly, caring self.
Still, sometimes you gotta pull out the ear buds and work. And take a damn Advil for the migraine. And let the dreams of love go for a second to amble off to the office printer.
Yeah.
Tonight I made myself a great salad and put on Miles Davis, and decided not to write anything funny or cute, but something just true. And to not edit.
Love to all.
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