This weekend I went to the Berkshires with Stuart, the “berk” part standing for “ber(ser)k” because it was pouring rain from Rhode Island when we left with a truck full of camping gear, dumping buckets all 3 hours to Savoy Mountain, and absolutely pissing it down when we arrived at our campsite.
Which wasn’t even our original campsite. That one, beautifully situated right under an apple tree though it was, looked like the very swimming pool for us to drown in. So we found another site that looked sturdy and spacious enough to hold us, the car, and the canoe we’d have to use to leave after the floods, and Stuart and I pitched our tent.
Which was an insane experience all its own. Two people, in the pounding rain, both wearing rain slickers with hoods, yelling to be heard in the noise, trying to raise, hoist, and peg a tent. I started crying a little right then because it was ruining his birthday weekend, all this rain, it would be ruined and we’d have to hole up at a motel, and I cried because I wanted it to be perfect. But you couldn’t tell, couldn’t really see the difference between tears and raindrops, so I stopped crying. We somehow got the tent up, we somehow dragged the tarp over it, and threw ourselves into the front room to strip down before entering the sacred and dry second room. It felt safe and warm in there, comparatively.
We passed the time with salami and cheese sandwiches, and precariously made cups of tea, using our camping stove as close to the entrance of the front room as Stuart dared light it. We played Uno, read our books (Heller for Stuart, Penelope Lively for me) and flashed the maglites through the thin tent walls, trying to scare off invisible bears.
“What about psycho killers!” I woke up with a start and asked him. I hadn’t thought about the killers, the machete-wielding lunatics that could be roaming around in droves outside our little tent.
And in the morning, when I woke up and woke Stuart up, there was no rain, no bears, and no psycho-killers. There was only the dripping from the trees and the leaves standing out in yellow and red on our blue tarp. We’d survived the first night, and it wasn’t raining. After twelve hours and dire predictions and the quiet belief that we would, in fact, have to throw in the soggy towel and up-sticks to a motel, we were still there.
We had baked beans and cheese on toast for breakfast, and listened to the drip-dry forest around us. That may have been the best moment of the entire trip, because it wasn’t raining and there was tea and toast.
Stay tuned tomorrow for stories of peeing naked, tiny sunfish, whistling for bears, and one big Walmart.
October is always a great month because it’s the month where Stuart arrived in New York, we got married, we went on our honeymoon, and it’s also the month of Stuart’s birthday.
A year ago, in the evening, he came through the gates at JFK and almost not believing it was finally here, I launched myself into his arms. I haven’t left since then.
We took a taxi home, staring at each other in delight and also being the usual couple we’d become, talking about the flight and the city and our plans. It was so exquisitely new and yet so familiar, to open the front door with him standing next to me, as if I knew how I’d be doing it for the following 365 days to now, and all the days ahead of us.
A wedding anniversary is a special thing, and Stuart and I will celebrate it thusly. But this day, perhaps, was even more impactful, even more of a memory to be revisited and cherished. Last October sixth at night, I got into my bed alone for the last time. Last October eighth in the morning, I woke up to a lifetime of mornings with Stuart around.
This photo was taken at Astoria Park, underneath the Triboro with a view of the city. It’s a spot we’ve come to love dearly, many bagels eaten and books read and runs relaxed from and kites flown there since last year. But on October eighth, last year, we ventured out of the house together for the first time to see the sunset together at Astoria Park, and then with my brand-new camera phone, I took this incredibly crappy photograph of us kissing.
The only thing you can see is our eyelashes and the outline where our lips met. But I’ve kept it in my phone since then, and though I’ve cleared the picture file many times since then, I’ve always marked that one to save.
And now, I’m sharing it with you, on the anniversary of the best day of my life.
It’s got to be related – for a week, I’ve been going to the gym in the mornings, and for a week, I’ve been more productive at my job and less tired at the end of the workday than I’ve been in years.
Most mornings since he started working, I wake up with Stuart, or around then. That is to say, I wake up and drag myself around moaning about how tired I am, and then I hang half-asleep in the doorjamb saying goodbye to him, at 8 AM. And then I wander around trying to decide whether to continue to catnap, or whether to get ready. I usually opt for the happy median – I surf the internet in my underwear until 8:45 AM, and then I hurl myself into the shower, throw some clothes on, and mope out the door at 9:10 AM. This means I am perpetually ten to fifteen minutes late to work.
It occurred to me exactly a week and a day ago that these mornings are a colossal waste of time, and while I’ve tried to do exercises in the morning, it’s just as easy to sit on my couch. So I decided to bite the bullet and rejoin the Equinox in my building, and simply leave every morning with Stuart at 8, work out on the elliptical watching Katie Couric (or movies! ET!) for 20 to 30 minutes, have a quick shower and head upstairs to work.
The end result is that I’ve gone for five mornings now, have run a mile each morning which is a lot less of a nightmare without he pounding ache in my legs after real running, and have showed up on time and animated for my job. Something that happens even more rarely than me exercising. I’ve even found a way to make the gym shower experience a little less awful – I put a slice of my favourite soap in my gym bag.
The weird upshot of all this exercise is how much energy I’ve got. How much work I actually get done each day, even with the tantalizing distractions of internet, friends online, and the book du jour in my bag. I have to keep reminding myself to check the PWSWM and Stuart’s Emails folders in my Outlook to see if my dearests have said hello or asked me something. I’m finding all kinds of little things that my coworkers need done and doing them with a speed that’s alarming even them, who have known me for three years.
The act I’m so good at pulling, which is to spend an hour of every work day looking obviously and noticeably busy on a specific task, has actually extended out to my entire day. I get in at 9:30, pull up the shades and look at my city, set the hotpot to boil and make a cup of tea, hang my somewhat-smelly gym clothes on the bag hooks to air out (what! it’s MY office!), put the palm, the cell phone, and the ipod on the desk for easy access, and then… just… hop TO. Like some sort of engine that has found out that idling for an hour beforehand makes the performance better.
I feel better after work, too. I get home in a good mood, glad to have accomplished stuff and ready to enjoy a night at home with Stuart. The few times I’ve done something social after work (I’m trying to cut back and focus on writing at home), I’ve had more energy getting around the city. I conk out right at 11 PM, though; wherever Stuart is in the apartment, I just fall asleep next to him. And I sleep like the dead.
It’s not that I’m feeling a flat stomach or I’m watching myself shed pounds. I guess that’ll come, after a few months of running a mile or two every morning. I was expecting that long-term goal. I wasn’t expecting these short-term effects. And I like them. The funny thing is, of all I’ve done this week, the one thing I’ve forgotten to get done is, well, blogging. Small price, though, right?
And the best unintended benefit of all? For years, I would get in at 9:45 AM, fifteen minutes after I was supposed to be here, and see my coworkers already in their offices and feel really guilty. Apparently, this whole time, they’ve all been getting here at 9:42, because I’m here at 9:30, and man, they’re not.
Who knew that running a mile could get so much else accomplished.
Here is a list of things I would rather be doing than what I’m doing right now:
Walking around outside.
Eating lunch.
Buying myself winter boots.
Reading a book.
Doing dishes.
Cleaning the bathroom.
Taping matchsticks together, end to end.
Delivering a suppository to a hippopotamus with irritable bowel syndrome.
See how it goes from the somewhat desirable to the sort of tasks you’d assign to convicted war criminals? That’s because I’m writing. And it’s absolutely positively hair-pullingly AGONIZING.
I would like to take this moment to really speak to other aspiring writers out there. I’m not talking about bloggers – I’m talking about people who are actively (like, today) trying to create fiction out of thin, resistant air. You know all those novelists we read about in the newspaper, that we listen to on NPR, who say gloriously unhelpful things like, “oh, I love writing, it’s like breathing, I’m not happy unless I’m doing it, etc etc etc.”? You know them?
KILL THE BEAST, man. I say we all get pitchforks (the weapon, not the indy zine) and light them on fire and rake them across the front doors of their houses. I say fling elephant dung at these novelists’ walls whilst stabbing at their rosebushes with fire and angst. Because I hate those people almost as much as I hate Gregory Crewdson and broccoli. I’m standing here to say that as part of the Betterment of Self v.4.5, Fall 2005 Edition, I have been (trying to) write, trying to work out the same piece of fiction for the greater part of three weeks now, and with all the generous helpings of constant, daily encouragement (Shana, Stuart, I’m looking at you), IT IS STILL HARD AS FUCK. Do you hear me, you novelists, you smug speakers on the radio who say that writing is like air when really it is more like being shoved underwater and trying to GASP for air? That is how hard it is.
So hard that I would rather attach my fingernails to ten trains all going in opposite directions at full tilt that stare at my blurry monitor for another second. So hard that words I wrote ten minutes ago, words I liked back then in the haze of ten minutes ago, are words that I now want to tie to a white picket fence and slice repeatedly at with an out-of-control chainsaw. So hard that even the act of coming up with violent metaphorical situations for my pain is easier than writing anything that ISN’T a violent metaphor.
You will forgive me, then, for this ten minute interlude of roaring confusion. You will understand that I’m going to publish this post, allowing my blog to serve its original purpose, that is, someplace for me to whine like a starving orphan baby, and then after hitting publish I will return to that wretched word document and continue my torturously slow pilgrimage to my own chosen destiny. But know that I will feel better for the outpouring of slammed-finger-in-car-door agony in which you have allowed me to indulge.
And if you know what I mean, if you know the pain of teaching yourself the patience to go in the direction of the things you’ve always said you’ve wanted and never had the courage to achieve, you can pour out your own violent descriptions of the angst of creativity right there in that little comment box. Because that’s the howl of frustration I have unleashed.
But my title, my title is wrong. It’s a frustration that leads to a pain that’s not so much like pulling teeth, or getting blood from a stone. Those metaphors are not remotely apt, not nearly dramatic enough in their scope. It’s more like that thing that cats do with the extension of all paws in opposite directions, making their own circumference thrice their actual size and creating a disc of cat so unwieldy, so unyielding, as to make the insertion of cat into carrying case an impossible feat.
Yeah, it’s kind of like THAT.
