crdj #5

It is a Friday (which I will set aside, as I've been known to, for papers, projects, and the purple journal that is presently and sadly gathering dust).

I had mentioned (possibly threatened) to post one of my papers from school. I decided to post my 5th Course Related Dialog Journal (CRDJ) which I wrote for personal reasons and then decided to submit as I felt it relevant to my studies through the Tony Wolk's class (he is a great teacher). This was my Borges/Calvino Lit class.

At the time: we were reading If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino (highly recommend, esp. to writers and serious readers): we were also talking about multiple-persons, and time-travel (as applied mainly to Jorge Luis Borges' stories--whom I also recommend). The you in the last paragraph is my professor, Tony Wolk.

---a respectful warning (not an apology): there will be some foul language.

Leslie Darnell

ENG 448---Wolk

18 Nov 2008

CRDJ # 5

I was collecting my thoughts for this class only to find them scattered. The phone rang ten minutes ago.

I don't know why being several places in the space of moments is often considered fictional, or even fantasy. This would seem to place a limitation on time and space that I have always failed to recognize.

I could tell you about the past hour of my life, and I could put me in several places, and indeed several persons. I did put me in those places and persons, if I could put me anywhere other than where I am.

The woman who checks her phone to see if anyone called while in class. The husband called, he must have not looked at the time, having called ten minutes before I was due to be out of class. Apparently I was not in class ten minutes earlier. I call him with the sounds of traffic and construction and portent crowding my ears. I should have listened to his voice mail message first.

Now I am walking down the hill, down the crowded walk, trying to hear, and knowing what I am hearing even as I can barely make out what he is saying. He is saying something about “I need to come to his work...to...we'll go home together. He needs me to help him...”

I am on my way, down the walk, down the hill, crowd thinning. I'll walk to the train, maybe the whole way. I am hurrying, going somewhere I don't know, but I know to--quickly...

I apologize to the young woman who wants to discuss gay rights. I have to go; sorry I don't have 60 seconds. Then I found that I did, but I was not nearby her anymore. I am hurrying up the block to cross to Pioneer Square to catch a train. I waited a little more than those 60 seconds for the train. Only a little. I didn't know. I only knew that I was going to see Sean at his work. And I felt I knew why.

I was in Bozeman, receiving a call. The same soft voice threaded along the line to sink in my belly. Sadness with anger in a calm request. I have heard illness in my ear. I have heard mourning in my ear. And I have heard this calm request...“I can't talk about it on the phone.”

The train is emptier than my thoughts. There is enough room for me as me and me and me and me and I crowd into the corner, looking out of the window.

This is the first time any of me has never registered a smell to the train.

I'll rely on some other awareness to remind me of the stop I want. As it is, nothing looks familiar, and yet annoyingly so normal.

I am leaning, registering nothing.

I am leaning, registering everything...the one bicycle, he goes to sit, comes back to stand almost immediately. The man reaching, stretching across the aisle to pick up a paper off the seat. A younger man than the other two gets on, and then off the next stop, why didn't he walk? The fence around Mercy Corp.: looking at children's sad faces through a chain link fence.

I am leaning, wondering why again. Again and again, why? Not woe, but close.

I am leaning, "woe," and see: my reflection is calm, terribly calm.

I am leaning, seeing the anger on my face in the pane and I my eyes burn black, my jaw set, my teeth bared. One moment my teeth are clenched, the next I am screaming. I have no restraint in my rage. I am yelling at everyone and no one. The man by the bicycle is trapped; the man with the paper huddles next to the window. They daren't look at me, and yet they cannot look away. I might hit them. Certainly throw something.

I am leaning, with tears burning my cheeks. My scarf is soon soaked. And my lips are pressed closed, relieving none of the trembles pulsing through my chin. I am weeping and most assuredly no can look at me. I cannot look at me, fallen down, curled up inside myself, on the filthy floor, punctuating any escaped sob with a tightening of arms around knees.

There are words. There are always words, whether mine or yours. All of them are hideous and regretted, especially when so thoughtfully predetermined.

I think I know what the call is. I think I have misread his voice. Surely there was a time that I had. Not really, one of the strange things about Sean on the phone, I hear him most clearly then. The number of any other reasons he phoned and needed me to come by almost directly correlate with all the reactions I experienced.

Rob, father of five children, was in fact laid off after everything else; wasn't Sean going to email him to make sure he was okay, after hearing about Scott losing his job? This would make Sean very upset, and angry...needing to vent. It was the lunch hour.

Sean's mother is in the hospital, or even worse. I can't even say it. But why would he be angry; except why wouldn't he be angry? He must feel completely lost.

He and one of the others on the project he was working on got into an argument. Not a blow out because Sean doesn't yell or throw fits, but he gets frustrated; time is lost; nothing has been achieved; we can see a big waste of time and money. He needs to vent. I'll call them the assholes so he doesn't have to and we can move forward.

My stop comes, I see, and hear the announcement. It is so quiet on the train and I almost missed it.

I am walking up the blocks, the lights are with me. Everything else moves against me. I am walking quickly. The air makes it in and out of my lungs and I've no notice, except I am not tired—physically.

I am tired. I am so weary. I am thinking of the work I have to have energy for. I have a little girl I have to have stability for. I have a husband I need to have everything for...everything steady in the face of whatever news he has for me.

I am tired.

I am angry. Again. Again. Again.

The unfairness, which has become typical, a cliché that even Hallmark has failed to make cards for. Why not someone else, just as deserving? I could enumerate them. I do enumerate them. There is no logic, or reason, or rationality, or any other words that may mean or decide the same fate because it is all shit.

It is the waste they flush, held their breath against, and looked away from. Well, there is blood, asshole. There is blood and your guts are falling away from you.

The indecision, the poor choices we bear. Some never bear; only those who didn't even hear the button pushed splinter.

I call to let him know I am nearing his work. Maybe he wants to meet me outside, get coffee. I only tell him I am nearly there. He tells me to come in, to his desk. Of course. He sounds better, clearer, normal. He's wrapping up something before coffee. He said he'll be standing up at his desk, look for him. Why is he standing? He's finishing up a detail. He's letting one of the others know about a change somebody else wanted which would reverse everything they've done for two days--billable hours--costing everyone.

He's okay.

But I don't smile at the receptionists just in case.

I see the box on the desk. Sean's back is to me and then not, loading the box. The photo frames are stacked neatly. Office paraphernalia lined neatly to one side, papers and books to the other. Efficient packing, the box. Sean is good with space, getting it to all fit, look nice, quality, efficient, efficient.

He is calm. The only one calm. The twittering--the twittering that has nothing to do with us, only work. Good little worker bees in an otherwise silent office. Suddenly I can hear them working so industriously—assholes. Their only time; the only time I have seen that man at his desk.

I am tearing my messenger bag off and throwing it to the ground. I am yelling, "This is bullshit!" Loudly. Read this loudly, until you are hoarse, and everyone stares, and no one can ignore you.

I refrain from spitting on the supplies so neatly arranged for returning. I don't need them slippery when launching them about the room--over the endless desks--empty--

I hit a few people crouched over their work. I save the heavy things for next, because my rage is not blind. I am fully aware of my targets. And Sean shakes his head and continues to pack his things, quietly, efficiently, already making plans.

We've done this before.

I see the box on the desk as I come down the aisle where Sean's desk is. I am composed, a tired smile straining my face, eyes carefully emptying down my throat. And I am useless at packing the box. I put the picture frames in my bag, and two mini-speakers. I am calm, conversational, restrained, not looking around the room but hearing everything...everything no one is saying that would pertain to the man and his wife packing up this desk. And I, as silently, tell them we have a daughter, and debt, and no family (here), and friends that are so generous that it is humiliating to think about how good they will be to us when they find out.

Sean orders a zip car, he doesn't want to make multiple trips on the train, down this aisle, past his no-longer-co-workers (those spared this time, like we were spared at least twice before in recent months).

Sean has already sent out emails to friends at other firms. Knows he'll go to the unemployment office in the morning; will call the creditors; will call the friends who have independent projects for drafting work—if they have any.

I see the box and I am listless. Emptied. Smiling. Absent. His words are as indistinguishable as they had been on the phone.

I am in Bozeman, the chic little design office. Nothing so ordinary and re-usable as here. I see their faces through the backs of their heads. And fury radiates from my silent form.

I create really good curses; though I fear they will become as commonplace as the coarse words I mutter without breath.

I have no breath, and I will have no breath. I am still hurrying down the hill, across the block, up the street. I am suddenly at the desk, and I am holding a key to the car. My bag is heavier. The drawings we'll leave with bend over my arm.

We are here, in this moment. All of us, swallowing deep, swallowed deep. The calm, weary face of my beloved is before me. His hands on each side of my face, not as warm as usual, but steadier than they should be. His kiss is soft and reassuring and normal and heavy and I am collected.

I am collected. And I have digressed. And what would Lotaria find if she were to break down the words by their use. Is this a paper on Calvino? Is this a story about absolute loss, or will there be found hopeful words in singular forms littered throughout? Would she know how tired I am after this conscious-less write? Calvino would. But how much would he allow the voice to be his? Or is there no question that the voice must always be, and simultaneously always not? I will re-read this with new tears in my eyes, but not the same tears I expended. Or maybe I will not cry, and only understand that I had tears in my eyes when I wrote it. But will I recognize any of this. Will I know any of this tomorrow? I hadn’t known it ten minutes before.

I apologize for any lack in coherence, but “the story” is not fiction. It really happened.

And this was incredibly therapeutic. I realized in class, when you were talking about chapter 8 being in the first person, that I do not write any of my work in the first person, too much tends to leak through, or I am convinced by what I am reading (of what I wrote) that the author must have something in common with the “I”. Again, I am in a strange mood, a strange moment.