Collected Lies

Sort of unintentionally, I went out to get Chinese food today for lunch while celebrations of the Chinese New Year were still going on. Getting Chinese food always makes me feel foreign but it’s usually in kind of an uncomfortable way, like I’m doing something wrong. I’m self-conscious about not being able to fit in with local customs. Today two men wearing one of those Chinese dragon costumes came in shouting happy new year and I felt like I’d stumbled on something new and wonderful.

It’s February now and Lucy has long since stopped hiding inside. When we both got home later in the evening, I told her about my experience, because I like the vaguely arbitrary nature of new years and I thought maybe we should have a late celebration. I like that she doesn’t need a reason to celebrate, of course, but I still take comfort in the knowledge that there’s a reason for this beyond just my own whim, which I’ve been suspicious of lately.

Posted by martin at 1 February, 2009 (14:03) | [ ] | No comments

I suppose it’s cowardly, but I’ve spent the last week and a half hiding away, trying not to see anyone. I always do this when New Year’s is folded away in a drawer for next year, and everyone is holding out their resolutions like shiny new 2009 pennies, because I don’t want to be asked if I’ve made any New Year’s resolutions.

I don’t know how to really tell people I’d rather make my changes as they came to me, instead of waiting for the beginning of a new year. That instead of making resulotions to do things I should already have done, I want to come into this year looking for happiness around the corner like the bones of a discarded piano in a snowy alley, like a red flower in a cup on the windowsill looking all confused at being the only living plant it can see, like Martin coming home with his face all cold bringing me stories to hurry on my self-imposed exile. I don’t know how to explain that when February comes, and they’ve forgotten that they resolved anything, I’ll still be laughing my way through a leap in the dark.

I think it’s probably safe to come out now, but I’m waiting a little longer, shooting irresolute glances at the door and still mostly content to be curled up at the window in the evenings, reading, painting, trying to hide a mischievous smile at the thought of the things that could happen in the future.

Posted by lucy at 10 January, 2009 (05:17) | [ ] | No comments

It’s not very usual we get a white Christmas here, so this year we made the most of it, though sometimes making the most of it means staying inside drinking tea and cocoa, wishing we had a fire, walking to visit friends after we exchanged our presents and had our breakfast and throwing snowballs at each other on the way. Walking in the snow is slower than usual, and I think it’s mostly because we stop every few minutes to exchange another volley.

Sometimes when it’s cold out and you’re drinking hot beverages you feel like you just need something else, something cool and summery to drink. I was thinking this and playing The Long Winters and just when the song Scent of Lime came on there was a scent of lime on the air, and I thought Lucy was probably making tea with lime, until she came in with a tall cold glass of whitish juice and ice, without me having to ask. Her hands smelled like citrus. “This is a summer drink,” I said with a smile, and she said “I know, so it will warm us up.”

And it was a happy Christmas, drinking fresh-squeezed limeade and watching the snowbound city from our window.

Posted by martin at 27 December, 2008 (21:43) | [ ] | No comments

I keep wishing that tonight, without warning, will come a snowstorm so bad that Martin and I and everyone in this city is stuck at home; planes are grounded, it is too dangerous to drive, eveything comes to a stop.

If this happened, with nothing else to do, I would make tin-foil stars and hang them in our windows, and light candles to reflect off of them. We would huddle inside, taking turns checking on the progress of the snowdrifts, drinking tea and slowly depleting our provisions. Perhaps some brave and nearby friends would walk over to see us, but once they had come it would end up snowing too hard for them to leave, and they would stay the night; our apartment would be a pool of candlelight in the storm until we got too tired to talk.

I’ve been watching the weather, and it’s getting too late for even an ordinary snowstorm, but I keep hoping, imagining us when the sun came back out, perhaps on the 27th– we would emerge in the morning blinking, hand-in-hand, looking skinny and newborn just in time for the new year.

Posted by lucy at 23 December, 2008 (17:09) | [ ] | No comments

Lucy and I were walking home the other night–just after the first snow hit. It was cold and we were bundled up and as we got closer to a tree she pointed at it and said “look, it’s decorated for Christmas!” I laughed at first–it was not, in fact, decorated, but little beads of ice had formed on the tips of its dead branches and it certainly looked wintry. But she insisted. “No, look!” and pulled me so I was standing where she was standing.

She was looking through the beads at the intersection ahead, where the stoplight was green and the crosswalk sign was red, so the ice on the tree glistened with Christmas colors. I sometimes have a hard time getting enthusiastic about Christmas decorations, but I was happy the rest of the way home. I doubted anyone else had ever seen it, but holidays are meant to be personal anyway.

Posted by martin at 21 December, 2008 (15:49) | [ ] | No comments

When the sun breaks through the clouds this time of year, its light is like lemon juice– pale, sour, but enjoyable.  Earlier today, Martin and I were at a diner having lunch, I guess a little celebration of the sun that shone a gold crescent in our window that morning. We had sandwiches, and water with slices of lemon that we sucked dry, our faces puckered.

The shop windows are full of Christmas displays now, but I have a few straggly plants in our window that I’m trying to nurse to life like spring. By some unspoken agreement, we stopped on the way back home for gelato; I had lemon and we both left our jackets open, and shivered and laughed as we threaded through the concrete sidwalk traffic.

Posted by lucy at 5 December, 2008 (20:20) | [ ] | No comments

It hasn’t snowed yet but the rain is coming as hard as ever. It was sunny and warm yesterday morning–or warm enough–so I didn’t bother with a heavy jacket and I left my hat at home. I stayed late after work with some of my coworkers, and by the time I was on my way home the rain was coming down pretty hard. Most people were hiding under umbrellas or wearing heavy coats and hurrying their way back home. I tried to hide under my hood at first, but I was pretty much drenched before too long.

But it was still warm and there was a pleasant breeze. I unzipped my hoodie and threw the hood back and walked home with a spring in my step and a smile that probably made me look a little crazy–but nobody was looking at other people.

I was thoroughly drenched when I got home. Lucy saw my smile and said she was glad I still go out in the rain.

Posted by martin at 1 December, 2008 (13:29) | [ ] | No comments

Of course you can’t be unhappy for a whole month at a time, not without pauses. I felt less dreary this last week, only annoyed at the clouds that have been almost perpetual. But it’s been like Martin and I are both waiting for a change; in the evenings we’ve usually stayed at home; Martin reads philosophy and I paint, or we drink tea and hardly speak. I’ve been trying to paint bright things, Moroccan oranges, port cities, forsythia, Chinatown– but I never finish. Most nights it rains, and we wait quietly, collecting rain on the windows.

Yesterday evening, though, we discussed this state of affairs, and decided we had to go out. It was raining pretty hard, and we didn’t go far, but on the way back, I felt better, more immediate. “When the snow comes,” said Martin, “we’ll find an appropriate way to celebrate.” That helped; I love when we celebrate things. “When the snow comes,” I said, “I will wear nothing but red.” We haven’t wrapped ourselves back up in silence since then. My sense of expectation is coming back, like marking of calendar days with red X’s.

Posted by lucy at 19 November, 2008 (10:53) | [ ] | No comments

It’s not necessary to know how to make soup in order to be pure in heart. But if you do know how it means you definitely are–because what are poets for if they can’t pronounce the truth? What’s a poem for if you can’t use it to prove you’re pure in heart, or that you’re alive or beautiful or hurting or really just human?

I’m never happy when Lucy’s not happy, and I’m pretty sure I can’t make a good soup either. Anyway I was being mostly quiet, because I’m not happy with the words. I keep going back to these old philosophers and logic books and theologians and it feels like I’m just being pedantic, and that’s not helpful to anyone. I want to be helpful.

For everything I say about autumn it never lasts long enough. The cold seems to be coming and I almost just said the winter is really here. One day I’m going to come home and Lucy will have made some good soup and I just know I’ll find a new reason to love the winter all over again.

Posted by martin at 8 November, 2008 (23:34) | [ ] | No comments

It is getting cold, with that dreary, fatiguing November cold. I am never myself in November, not until the snow comes and shrouds the cold in soft. I was walking home yesterday night and it was raining, and I ducked into Paul’s bookstore with my dripping umbrella and dreary head. The lights were warm and ferocious, so I felt okay for a while. I studied an antique French cookbook.

A poet friend of mine just wrote in a poem quoting Beethoven, “Only the pure in heart can make a good soup.” I stuck my head into the back room and told Paul I couldn’t make good soup. He kind of shrugged, uninterested, so I walked home in the rain and told Martin instead. Walking in the November cold, it had started to really bother me, one of those things that only matters because you’re kind of miserable. Martin said he thought I was okay because I could make soup, if I tried to learn; I just hadn’t yet. I sat cross-legged on the counter and said I was still worried. Martin said I shouldn’t be. I said I hoped the snow would come soon. Martin looked at me curiously and turned on a few more lights.

Posted by lucy at 3 November, 2008 (18:23) | [ ] | No comments