Left-a-me...
i miss me. lots. even though i’ve got friends. some are really good and close. others are of the “hihowahya?” category; you know, the ones who ask but don’t REALLY want to know? but of all my friends and family there is no one that i spend more time with than me. and lately i’ve been gone a lot. some days i’m not home at all. you can knock and call out. you can peer into the corners of the windows below the shades, but you won’t even catch a glimpse. way back in the corner, under my reading lamp (which is off), there is a lumpy shape in my big chair. but there’s really no way to tell from here if it’s just a big old comforter and a pillow wadded up, or something (or someone) else. on some other days you find me home and get me to come to the door and open it. but it’s not quite the same, is it? i look like me, and all, but just a half-a-bubble off of “just right”.
it’s pretty uncomfortable for us both, really. mostly, it’s in the eyes. but there’s just a bit of difference in the voice, too. not pitch or timbre or volume or anything you can put your finger on. subtle. scarier, actually. kinda reminds me of a new-millennium-version of “body snatchers” or “stepford wives”. the zombie-makers have gotten so skilled it’s not nearly so easy to tell us from them anymore. and they got rid of those damned pods. those were a dead giveaway. gonna have to work harder than that to figure this one out, boyo.
so they come, and they knock, and they smile and come in and sit down. mostly they don’t flip me crap and help themselves to beer outta my fridge like they used to. the politeness of possible strangers now colors our conversations. meaning is not instantly interpreted and trusted. all is subject to question, now. was that a tic i saw? did the eyebrow rise a bit when he said that? that laugh felt a little forced to me just then, didn’t you think? wow, hey look at the time! i forgot i have to be back home in about 15 minutes. glad to see you again though. let’s get together again real soon. the relief in the eyes as the ruse is accepted. the quick hug with it’s new wooden veneer. yep, saw him just the other day. he looked pretty good. really! well, sorta. mostly. you know. i’m sure you’ve heard....
i miss me. i always knew there were things that made it easy, and some other things you had to overlook if you wanted to love me. but lately the balance is off. it’s now a debit account. keep thinkin’ one of these days i’m going to get one of those windowed envelopes from my emotional banker. you know, the really thin ones that don’t have a statement in there? just the NSF notice? and then what? i dunno. reminds me of piglet.
piglet had been to a birthday party. on the way home he accidentally let go of his prized balloon, and it snagged in the branches of a tree. as piglet stood contemplating the balloon, christopher robin and eeyore and rabbit came along. they all puzzled as to the best way to retrieve piglet’s balloon. christopher robin suggested that perhaps the best way was for him to shoot it down out of the tree with his popgun. piglet reminded him that his would take most of the recreational value out of his balloon.
then rabbit had a suggestion. “so what if you climbed on my shoulders”, he said to piglet. “do you think you could reach the balloon then?” “nope, we still wouldn’t be able to reach that high”, answered piglet. “well then, what if you climbed on my shoulders, and then i climbed up on eeyore’s back?”, wondered rabbit. “oh fine”, spoke up eeyore. “and what if eeyore’s back snapped suddenly under the weight of his two friends?” “oooh!” piglet exclaimed. “would your back snap if both of us climbed up on it, eeyore?” “well”, said eeyore, “that’s the exciting part – not being quite sure until it happens”.
so many people seem to be able to make speculative decisions about things. not the little, relatively inconsequential ones – we all do that. but the big, life-wrenching, scary, out-there ones. i often wonder how they do that? i’ve never been able to convince myself with any certainty. there are so many possible options to any given situation, especially if you involve multiple people with their multiple options and multiple motivations. get out! nobody can see through all that. or maybe it’s just me. i know i’m a crappy chess player. i’m not sure if it’s a mental deficit, or what. but i do not have the ability to project myself into a situation where i have never been, and postulatively experience the range and complexity of my emotions and feelings about it, (much less factoring in yours and/or several others’), and then somehow pop out the back side of all that with a reasoned, carefully calculated perspective of “just how things would be”. as far as i am concerned, this gaping inability can only be explained in one of two ways: 1) either i have some kind of hole in my powers of reasoning, or 2) many other people are substituting all kinds of “stuff” for the actual, demonstrable, experiential facts necessary for informed decision-making; you know, fear of uncertainty? a concern for the similarly uninformed opinions of others? an inability to creatively construct, (using similar tools to those which they profess to employ in the original decision, by the way), a “return” or “recovery” or “redirected path” in the face of a potential failure? i dunno how they do it. not a clue.
as for me, i’m with eeyore: one can never be quite SURE until “it” really happens. everything short of that is comforting fiction.