PHILADELPHIA, PA-

Earlier tonight, I performed an exercise that is part inspiration, part ritualized humiliation for sins past.

I opened one of my file cabinet drawers that houses years of my writing attempts and publications.

You might be able to see from the picture that I label items ever-so-carefully and helpfully so that I know precisely what is in each file: “writing stuff I,” “writing stuff II,” and so forth.

Unfortunately some of the publications are far more cringe-worthy than some rough drafts that never reached another human’s gaze.

I said things about feminism and science I can no longer say with a straight face.

I seriously reviewed performance art that would now induce bursts of laughter from me, the kind with some spittle involved.

I posited thesis statements and reasoned my way around politics, pedagogy, race, gender, and class.

Now I have no idea if things could ever be that simple.

Or if they should be.

I found other bits of writing, some holding promise for future projects.

Most of the writing reminded me that there are ways I don’t change.

I found a poem from around 1996 or before in which I wrote - yet again - about sending something in the mail to another person:

I watch you walk by everyday. Your dog shits on my lawn.

I follow you home one day.

You live three blocks away in an apartment with a post office and a hair salon in the foyer.

You pick up your mail. I know your box and your name.

I have to pick up the shit every few days.

Sometimes I ignore it for a week. Very messy.

I keep it in preserves jars.

When one’s almost full, I spoon in honey and watch it ooze golden over your dog’s turds.

I place the jar outside for bugs and flies to visit.

Later, when I seal the lid tightly, they smother in sweetness and filth.

I wrap the jar in brown paper and mail it to you.

Since you’ve moved in, I’ve bought many jars of preserves.

Apricot, peach, grape.

Bitter apple.

I think about you often.

   

I never said it was a good poem.

I evidently was working on some passive aggression and likeability issues around that point in my life.

The poem is evidence: for quite some time, I have been obsessed with the themes of sending a message, letters, and using the mail.

Freud might say that I have a repetition compulsion, wherein my ego demands a coherent narrative of the self, yet my subconscious seeks to resolve wounds and unmet needs from my past.

The result of this conflict requires a given act, an act that might unify the two warring parts of the psyche.

Unfortunately, it’s not terribly easy to meld the divide.

The act must be repeated.

And repeated.

You get the idea.

Ah, compulsion.

How I obsess over thee.

Let me count the ways.

Um, rather, I better not.

Perhaps writing about letters and mail is my repetition compulsion?

I have never had a problem with the mail carrier.

UPS never done me wrong.

In particular, I seem to have developed  - for well over ten years now - a fascination with either the sender or the recipient not quite knowing the truth of the other.

Or never responding, and instead existing in silence, contemplation, resignation, or love.

There are times when I write about a message that is itself obvious, yet its intended meaning and receiver remain somehow indecipherable.

A trip to the file cabinet containing “writing stuff I” and “writing stuff II” invariably begets a trip to another filing cabinet, the one containing the file of letters to and from my ex.

I have saved every piece of writing that D. has ever sent to me, including the envelops.

I have written often and regularly about the stream of letters I have and have not exchanged with my ex: stories of us, stories of why, stories of what happened afterward.

Stories of sleeping with other people and a missing testicle.

Right now, that file is out on my bed.

I’m not sure what it means that D. sent me writing repeatedly on the theme of forgiveness while we were apart, in between visits through miles and miles of road trips.

Perhaps that was D.’s repetition compulsion.

Yet maybe there was no Freudian pathology.

Maybe there was only the desire to tell, the desire to know, the desire to be known.

Desire itself.

There are two cards from D. that I keep together in the file, even though they were not sent together.

The pictures on these cards below manage to tell the entire story of D. and I.

Actually, they symbolize the contents of all the letters.

One card delivers what its cover indicates: ripe promises, sugar, flesh, light, and sweetness.

The other card delivers equally well: a labyrinthine door closed shut, enshrouded in complexity, darkness, and filth.

Sweetness and filth.

After those two cards in the file, there is a letter from D. written on both sides of a large, brown grocery bag in perfect script.

If someday you ever have a burning need to know how many words a person can write on both sides of a brown paper grocery bag, just ask.

I already know the answer, but if you were to ask me, I would double check.

I’m nice like that.

I will spend hours staring, counting words, scrutinizing text, and thinking of all the things I didn’t say then.

I will give you the definitive answer to how many words it takes to say goodbye on a brown paper bag.

D. told me goodbye by writing a letter with many paragraphs about falling in love and sleeping with someone else.

D. then bizarrely offered an update on a recently purchased book: “Right now I am on the part called ‘the case of the missing testicle.’”

Both of us suffered from a case of missing . . . fortitude.

I can tell you when a relationship starts.

Often I can provide an exact date.

It is hard to say how and when relationships end, especially when reality indicates one thing and D.’s own words at the end of the brown paper bag send an entirely different message:

Please write. I hope that this letter gets to you. And if I knew that it was to arrive in your hands, I would.

D., here’s the truth: there are days when I want throw my body into walls so my bones break and I can fold myself into a letter to arrive in your hands, even if I have to smother in sweetness and filth through the whole journey.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 2nd, 2006 at 11:13 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.