Sunday, March 23, 2014

Mittens and Mortality

I heard something on Wiretap about a website that tries to reconnect people with their lost mittens.  It was a sweet and quirky piece on loss, about how a mitten is sometimes one of the first losses we suffer that no one but us really cares about. Parents don’t post signs all over the city, trying to find your mitten.  If you’re lucky, you get new mittens, but the new mittens aren’t as good as the ones you had.  It might also be one of the first times we notice that the value in some things is because it’s a pair.  Half becomes useless. 

There’s also something tender about mittens themselves.  They convert our dexterous hands into little warm paws that you can hide things in, like a dime to call your mom if you need to.

About 25 years ago, I bought a book on knitting mittens.  Pretty standard: a dozen patterns with pictures and instructions.  For some reason, maybe because I was on a long car trip across the country with little to read, I read the introduction, and it got me really choked up.  It was one of those things, like Pirate Radio, that always gets me, because it's about trying to bring your better self into the world.  It said something about how it doesn’t matter if you pick patterns from this book or a different one, but find a mitten pattern, memorize it, make it your own.  Knit mittens for everyone you love, and when the mittens get lost, knit them a better pair.  And when the person seems a little lost lost, knit them a pair even if they don't need it, because actually, they do.  Because life is about losing and carrying on with dignity and with luck, two mittens.  It’s about people noticing and caring for one another, and offering what they can, even if consolation is in the form of two tiny woolen paws.  

I just went to find that book and couldn’t.  I looked with my other knitting books, and also with my writing books, but poof.  Maybe I gave it away.  Would I do that?  Yes.  Because I haven’t made two of anything in a long, long time.  Hats.  That’s all.  Two heads are not better than one.  If people had two heads, there would be nothing left for a person like me to knit.

I’ve been having the same dream over and over lately, not like MLK’s dream or anything.  In my dream I realize I have to leave, go away from my loved ones to a far away place, and I can’t take anything with me, and I have no work or housing or anything in the new place, but there’s nothing I can do about it.   BC says it probably means I have some undetected disease that only my subconscious knows about.  Don’t we all.  Mortality, that’s the disease. 


Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Horoscope in Pictures

These are a few pics from the desert.  I don't have a real camera, just an iPhone, and it was so bright that I couldn't really see, I'd just aim the phone and hope it captured some of it.  I guess the way I'm living the rest of my life.  Can't really see, just hope I get some of it right. Thanks for bearing with me.  Route talk.
xo
Betsy


Aries (3/21 – 4/19):  

A gorgeous house made out of bottles in 1906 by an old (drunk?)
man in the ghost town of Rhyolite, NV.  Aries, begin gathering bottles.



Taurus (4/20 – 5/20):  
Does this seem like your life?  Kind of gorgeous, but sort of missing a
piece, but quite possibly, that's where the beauty lies, Taurus?


Gemini (5/21 – 6/21)
Gemini, I think you can fly!!  (Be careful.  Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.)



Cancer (6/22 – 7/21) 



Cancer, sometimes everything is just a little off.  Like, maybe,
instead of skin, you've got a blanket-like plaster covering?  Or worse, you don't, and
everyone else does.  See if you can peel off blankets just a little bit.
 Oh, and pump the tires.  (The sky really was that color.  I think.)












Leo (7/23 – 8/22):  
Sometimes life is a weird mix of dusty artifacts, bones,
dead things, and hope.  Leo, focus on the hope.


Virgo (8/23 – 9/22):  
Be careful.  Weird stuff is happening on the planet.  Secrets, mysteries, and areas that we know
nothing about.  51 is just the beginning.  Area 52 is the pink building to the right, a brothel.
Not to digress from all the hopey changey horoscopish stuff,
but one of the saddest things about Nevada is all of the sorry looking brothels.   I just picture
women sitting in these trailers in the desert with big signs, like "BAD SUE BROTHEL", waiting
for someone to come pay to have sex with them.  Ugh.  Lose lose.  

Libra (9/23 – 10/22):   
The last supper, Albert Szukalski.   You will not have your last supper
this week, Libra.  But slow down and enjoy, as if it were.
(Sheesh, I've gotten preachy.)



Scorpio (10/23 – 11/21): 
I couldn't resist.  One of my pollinator drawings.
They look better all reduced like this.  In real?  Pretty wonky.


Sagittarius (11/22 – 12/21):  
Sag, enjoy the week.  Nap and be merry.



Capricorn (12/22 – 1/19)
Sometimes things are so beautiful and mysterious you can't really
tell if you're on this planet or another.  And so it is, Cap.

Aquarius (1/20 – 2/18):  
M. hiding in a cave out of the sun in some weird formations near Beatty.
Don't hide out in a cave, Aquarius!  Hang out more with the humans, especially me!

Pisces (2/19 – 3/20) 


Little Ubuhebe Crater. Is that the coolest name ever?
Pisces, everything's looking up.  Crater already happened.




Friday, March 14, 2014

What happens in Vegas....

Aries (3/21 – 4/19):  My little M. and I are perhaps the last people on earth who haven't been to Las Vegas, so it's probably weird to write about it, like, um, yeah, we knew that, we've all been there.  Like a post about Christmas.  "And then people SHOP.  A lot!  And bring a tree inside!!"  But I had no idea.  I can't even find words.  All I keep thinking is, my sister must never come here; she would be so over-stimulated she would be throwing up within minutes.  

M. and I were wishing R. were here because he'd totally know what to do with this place, and he'd make us laugh, not that we aren't, but it would be funnier with someone who wasn't quite so busy taming the voices that say, FLIGHT FLIGHT FLIGHT."  Aries, quiet those screaming flight voices in your world this week.  Yours or someone elses.

Taurus (4/20 – 5/20):  Speaking of flight... on the plane yesterday, I was trying to do a complicated knitting thing because I could.  Knitting is super boring unless you're either 100% distracted or the project is complicated enough to take all your focus.  But still, as far as string tricks go, it's a good one:  fuss with a ball of string and poof, a hat!  So I have this complicated thing I'm trying to do and it's all P1 K3 YO K2B PS3B, blah blah blah, and it repeats every 10 rows, and I keep mucking it up and when I do, I have to start at the VERY beginning just to figure out where I am.  Oh, I'm at the beginning, I tell myself.  (In so many ways, but that's not the point here.)  

So I'm trying to create a cool leafy habitat out of string, and count and focus.  But at random unpredictable intervals, the woman next to me asks a boring question, basically, route talk.
Me: (in my head: K1, KSP1, YO - wait, is that the row I'm on?)
Her:  So, what are you going to do in Vegas?
Me:  Oh, just a quick vacation. You?
Her:  Same.  Coming from Juneau.
Silence. so I go back to it, Sl1, P2B, K2,P2tog, etc.
Her:  How's the weather been in Seattle this year?

I won't bore you by typing it out the 16 times it happened, but eventually, I decided sheesh, stop knitting and listen to this woman!  DUH.  Because if we're going to die in a plane crash in a few minutes, why not at least get to know one another first?  That's what I always say.  

So I put my knitting away and tried to talk and it was the strangest thing, we still just had this one sentence deep, totally boring conversation, and I was totally giving it my all.  I mean, I was asking questions, trying to think of interesting stuff, and it was pretty much like, "Yup, penny slots."

Taurus?  Don't try to do anything too complicated this week.  It just won't work out.  

Gemini (5/21 – 6/21): At the car rental place, the guy behind the desk was all, "So, first time in Vegas?"  Which didn't bother me at all, in fact, I'm kind of sad in a way that I've lost my Vegas Virginity.  (What, tevas and socks isn't a look you see here much?, I wanted to ask.) But then he said, "So, you're here for the slots, aren't you?”  And proceeds to give us tips on how we shouldn’t drop more than $50, but if we’re gambling we’ll get drinks for free, like Zombies and Margaritas, so even if we don’t win, we’ll come out ahead. 

Sheesh.  I don’t know if I was more insulted by the slots or the girly drinks.  Really, I wanted to say, if we were here for gambling, which we’re not, it would absolutely NOT be just dropping coins in a slot.  We’d be doing something complicated, maybe counting cards, maybe a heist. Oceans 100.  “Perhaps,” I wanted to say, “my adorable daughter and I are renting this big-ass shiny red SUV because we are up to no good.”  Why don't people suspect that?  Gemini, pie day.  Enjoy.

Cancer (6/22 – 7/21)  So also on the plane, in the seat directly in front of me, is some seahawks guy, which is like a religion in Seattle, and his shirt, instead of saying 12 was like, 11.  And everyone was fawning over him and his name meant absolutely nothing to me, but we get off the plane after that terrible part where you think it's all over and you all stand up and wait for like another 3 hours while everyone gets their stuff from the overhead bins.  Right?  WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH THAT?  But anyway, when we're all finally off, he stops and does like, I dunno, a dozen or maybe a hundred pushups while people watch.  Except me.  I was NOT watching.  Gemini, your week will be filled with metaphorical pushups.  Do a few real ones just to remember that we're all here right now, it's not so terrible.  (Well, it sort of is, but sheesh, we can still do pushups!)

Leo (7/23 – 8/22):  So we stop at this grocery store, and sort of forget where we are, because it feels like any discount grocery store anywhere.  In fact, it feels strangely like Monroe, WA. I glance at the bananas as we’re selecting other produce, but I don’t make a move towards them, because I know, though we’ve never talked about it, that it would go against M’s moral code to eat food that’s so not local or sustainable and I don’t want to be the one who leads her astray.  But she notices my look, and walks over and grabs 2 bananas, and says, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”  
I know, car rental guy.  We are not who you think.  Leo, step out a little bit this week.  Have a banana.

Virgo (8/23 – 9/22):  Driving down the strip, I thought I might actually have a seizure, there were so many flashing lights, and I also constantly thought I was under arrest, because flashing lights from behind, isn’t that what it means?  To the point where I think M. thought I maybe have some weird criminal history.  But we both tried to get in the spirit, and watch giant tv screens that are placed on the sides of huge flashing skyscapers, and look at the nude-ish women.  And we were following a red convertible with the top down, and the woman pasenger kept holding her phone out and taking selfies, and I thought, oh sweetie, your arm isn't long enough to explain this whole situation in a picture.  But she was also taking pics of the other side of the camera, and it just made me kind of sad, like, someone taking a picture of the Milky Way with an iPhone, and coming home with a picture of three stars.  It was so mystifying.  But your week, Virgo, will be mystifying in just the right way!  Enjoy it.

Libra (9/23 – 10/22):     We eventually made it to our room, which, though I like to think we’re not naïve, they do make it complicated.  Like, if your room was the twelfth room on the fifth floor, for example, I would call that “812”.  But here, they distribute zeros randomly, making it 08012, so it’s more like a zip code.  We get on the elevator that serves our range of floors, and press 8 because it’s our floor, and happens to be the top floor in the range.  And one guy on the elevator says, “oh, thank god.  I was on here earlier, and people kept getting on pushing like, 3, and 5.”  And another guy says, “I hear ya, man.”

And I’m thinking, really?  This is a problem?  A 2 second stop at a floor that’s not your own?  Where could you possibly be going in such a hurry?

Scorpio (10/23 – 11/21): We get to our room and I see that look in M's eyes, like, “May we never have to go out there again.”  But I prod us to go down and have a drink, just to experience the full thing, and it’s vast, looking up at the starry night and you’re just one tiny person.  Which, when it's the sky is strangely comforting.  Look, I can only do what I can do, try to understand, try to do the right thing, but obviously, I'm tiny, and how could I?  But I probably can't mess up too badly either.  That's what the sky is like.

This is like slot machines, and it looks like we have messed up, and badly, and all the water that should be going to Mexico is going here, and the jobs that follow the water are custodial.  

We each order whisky, M. rocks, me neat, and they give her like a whole bucket full of ice instead of the three she prefers, and it costs about a thousand dollars, and I feel bad because she’s bought this drink for me, and by the way, she tips generously.  Of course she does.  And we sit in the lobby and sip our whisky I think how lucky I am to have this kindred little person with me in the big vast world.

Sagittarius (11/22 – 12/21):  Did I mention about the smells here?  Our rental car has this distinct odor of axe body spray and weed.  I spent a while trying to figure out if those smells overlap in the real world, and I don't think so.  Do you, Sag?  Wish you were here.

Capricorn (12/22 – 1/19): Every so often you have a person in your life who's so unique, the connection seems so rare and important that you wonder what its about, and if it's in your head or in the world.  It's confusing but you try to enjoy it while you can.  And life goes on, the truth has it's own life to live, erodes its own path, and the humans have very little ability to control that.  

Did you ever see that little spot in the alley where the water drips, right across from the gum wall; it's a very tiny drip.  I haven't actually timed it (sheesh, who would do that!), but I'm guessing maybe one drop per 12 seconds, possibly 14.5.  Some days when I walk by, I don't actually see a drop.  But it's made a pretty big dent in the concrete.  Have a good week, Cap.

Aquarius (1/20 – 2/18):  So E-bro gave me this really cool blue trackball that looks like a very small crystal ball, and I was so planning to bring it with me and maybe tell fortunes.  But alas, I forgot.  And, what looked so shiny and magical in Duvall, well, I don't even think it would be visible here.  Aquarius, be visible, but not in a shiny way.  In your usual magical mystical way.

Pisces (2/19 – 3/20) To the desert today.  Thank goodness.  (What does that mean, anyway? Thank goodness?  Really?)  Speaking of language, is it the lamest thing ever that "za" has become acceptible shorthand for pizza?  GRRR.   Again, my dear Pisces, you've been short changed, but I will totally make up for it soon.  Because we're on our way to Area 51.  Oh, and that woman next to me?  Bud light with a shot of crown royal in it.  Right?  But she just ordered it, "Bud and crown" and the flight attendant couldn't hear, or maybe, like me, she couldn't believe it.  But let's not think about her anymore, on her 7 day vacation here to do the penny slots.  By herself. 











And today, the desert.




Sunday, March 2, 2014

Ice Fishing in America

On-line dating, it turns out, is not unlike ice fishing.

Ice fishing: Bundle up, venture into the biting cold in a location that may have fish. Act like it’s not terrible.

Internet dating: Dress up. Go out alone to meet a stranger. Act like it’s not terrible.

 Ice fishing: drill a hole through several inches of ice, accidentally drop a mitten into bitter cold water, hope to catch a fish. Pretend this is a super fun lark, and you’re getting a huge kick out of it.

Internet dating: Conversationally drill through layers of protection and scar tissue; hope to connect with another human being. Pretend this is a super fun lark, and you’re getting a huge kick out of it.

Ice fishing: Hold the metal drill with a bare wet hand in wind chill that makes you wonder how much of your skin will remain with the drill.

Internet dating: (I won’t carry the metaphor here, that of holding a cold drill with a bare hand.)

Ice fishing: After the line is in the water, go into a cozy hut with good friends, drink beer, and tell stories about the weird thing that got snagged on your line.

Internet dating: After the date, gather with friends over a drink and trade stories about your weird experiences. This is that moment. 

Here’s a date I went on. He arrived late, really late, allowing me wonder if I was in the correct location, if I’d been stood up, how long I should wait, and whether I should start out this potential new relationship by calling him on his tardiness. But he eventually arrived and I swallowed my irritation, although I resented that my timeliness gave him the advantage -- I was the eager one, the one who’d gotten there first, the one who had approached seven strangers, hoping each was him, and had to face the brush off every time, and then stand there with those same men who were waiting for wives and girlfriends, but now I’d been revealed as the woman on a blind date who was probably being stood up. He was the one who breezed in late.

We walked together to the hostess. “How many?” she asked us. “Twelve. I mean two,” my date replied. I assumed he was trying to be funny, and chuckled to be polite.

 The hostess directed us to a different hostess for outdoor seating, so we approached her.

 “How many?” she asked.

 “Twelve. I mean two,” my date said again.

 It definitely wasn’t funny the second time, but I tried not to hold it against him. Now there were two things I was trying not to burden our relationship with: his lame sense of humor, and his tardiness. I felt guilty that we hadn’t even talked yet, and it was already like that tired old marriage with built up, unspoken resentments. I reminded myself that most of us aren’t very witty on a first date, that lateness happens.   As we sat down, I wondered what he could be thinking about my nervousness, quiet manner, and the massive sweat stains under my armpits from the half hour of anxiety I felt while waiting for him. He’s bound to be disappointed too. Forgive, I told myself. Show up. Be generous.

 We sat down across from each other, and he stared at my hair.

“Wow,” he said, “you’re my kryptonite. I’m speechless. I can’t tell if it’s red or blond.”

 I chuckled, in an effort to lighten things up while he stared at my hair, muttering “kryptonite. Total kryptonite.”

The space where a conversation belonged became filled with uncomfortable silence. His comment might suggest that my hair is an amazing color, or that we’re both twelve, or that it’s a meaningful factor in a relationship, hair color. But it’s dishwater blond heading towards gray, and we’re 50.  I wondered if he used the kryptonite line a lot, and if it worked.

“How’s your summer been?” I asked.

 “Great.”

 “Have you done anything fun?”

“Yup.”

“Anything you want to talk about?”

“Went to the Mensa Gathering.”

“Oh, what was that like?”

“Interesting.” I felt like I had drilled, with great effort, through a thick block of ice and had gotten to something I was genuinely curious about. The Mensa Gathering. Here was a man who allies himself enough with his intelligence that his summer vacation was designed around a club that’s only criteria is that you have a high IQ. I was curious, but he offered nothing.

Although I was weary of the surgery required to extract a conversation, I was on a mission now. You don’t go ice fishing because it’s fun or comfortable. You go because you’re from hardy stock.

“What were some of the interesting talks you went to?” I persisted.

“Well, the one I didn’t go to but wished I did was about sex toys. All the women who attended got vibrators -- small purse-sized units with 5 speeds.”

 I tried to imagine a vibrator that couldn’t fit into a purse, but was brought back to the present as he illustrated the five speeds with sound effects and hand motions.

“Vroom, vroom, vroom,” he said very slowly while he curled the fingers of his flattened hand toward his palm, in creepy slow motion, over and over, as if he were gathering something. He demonstrated the five different speeds by increasing the rhythmic hand motion while rocking back and forth. I wanted to look away. I wanted to yell out, “Please, put your hand away. Stop.”

 But I didn’t, partly because I was shocked. But, let’s face it, also curious. Where could he possibly go with this conversation? Is there really a person who thinks this is a good topic for a first date? 

The waitress arrived and he ordered for both of us without consulting me. “We’ll each have an IPA, and we’ll share an order of nachos with chicken.” I repeated my mantra. Forgive. Be generous. He’s doing the best he can.  But the pile was getting bigger: lateness, lame jokes, vibrator talk, and now chicken, which absolutely doesn’t belong on nachos. I comforted myself with the thought that at least, if he were taking charge of the ordering, he would pay. That hope evaporated like the icy mitten falling into the lake when he later announced that he’d forgotten his wallet.

 “The vibrator,” he continued, “looked just like a mag light.” “It wouldn’t arouse attention if someone saw it in your purse.” He laughed, and I wasn’t sure if his laughter was related to his use of the word, “arouse”, nervousness, or if he was suddenly reminded of a funny experience he’d had looking through a woman’s purse.

  Ice fishing: It yields few fish.

  Internet dating: Ditto.

 One of my favorite dates was with the sausage maker. On the day of our date he wrote and said, “I’ll be bringing you some sausage tonight.” I told this to a friend, who commented, “Ha! Are you sure he means actual sausage?” The sausage maker spent the first 45 minutes of our outing clarifying that this wasn’t really a date, just a meet-up, something I’ve found to be common – a reluctance to name anything as a date. He seemed inordinately confused by the menu; it took him quite a while to understand that you could select three out of the five options for the appetizer platter.

 I was relieved, at first, when he stopped talking about how we weren’t on a date and started talking about sausage.  It turns out that my attention span for sausage-making is significantly shorter than the 60 minutes of our “this-is-not-a-date” that he spent on it. He talked about the recipe, the process, and so on, hardly pausing for a breath.

After a while, I was bored enough to stop ignoring my friend's barrage of text messages: “Did he give you his sausage yet?” “Why aren’t you answering me? Too busy with the sausage?” “Sheesh, are you actually eating sausage on a first date?” But as we parted, he said, “You know, I was told that this would be really harsh, that women I meet online would be hard on me, judgmental, but you were really nice. So thank you. This was my first outing since my girlfriend died a year ago.” And I felt terrible about the texts, that I had been privately laughing at his expense. I was the mean girl he’d been warned about.

 I went on a billion first dates, and found some common threads: men were usually quite late, often disheveled– not that I’m big fan of the GQ look either, but a number of times I wondered, wow, what happened to you? All that mud on your pants… Or other creepy things, like blatantly checking out 16-year old girls, or the guy who told me, within a few minutes of meeting, that he wishes he’d had more sex with his wife while he was married and “could have at her anytime.”

Another man told me his beloved wife had died and he was finally ready to move on and settle down with someone else, which appealed to me until I learned that his wife, the mother of his four-year-old twins, had died exactly 30 days before our date, which he spent talking about how easy it is to have sex with the women he meets online.

 Another man, who, after we agreed to meet at the pig at the Pike Place Market, told me I’d be able to recognize him because he’d be holding a red balloon. I couldn’t understand why we’d need a red balloon to find each other in an area that’s the size of an actual pig. I wondered how it would work – would he carry the balloon with us on our date? Give it to me? If we entered a restaurant, would he tie it to the chair, or hold it?

 One man I met started the conversation with, “I hope you don’t mind that I’m wearing six shirts. I couldn’t decide which one to wear, so I wore them all.” And indeed, stacked near his neck, were the collars of six different, not particularly color coordinated, button-down shirts. Like so many people I met, I couldn’t decide if he was charming or nuts. I later settled on creepy when I learned that one of his hobbies was attending rape trials. A rape trial enthusiast.

 For a long time I was mystified by all of this. Is this truly your best foot forward, I wondered, after each of these encounters? But I eventually came to realize something else. Single people at this age are beleaguered, lonely, discouraged. This most basic human instinct and need, to love and be loved, has eluded us, separating us from the rest of the species. Maybe this behavior, of showing their worst card first, is a strategy built on a foundation of disappointment. Hope has been dashed so many times that they don’t want to even pretend it has a solid launching place. “Look,” these men seem to be saying, “I’m chronically late, I’m unkempt, and all I have to talk about is sex. I’m basically pretty weird. Are you still interested? Because this is what it will come down to eventually. If you’re not up for it, let’s not even get started.

 You know that game you play the first time you’re hopelessly head over heels in love, but still deeply insecure, the game of, “would you love me if I lost a leg? How about two legs? How about two legs and a hand? How about two legs, a hand, a disfiguring facial scar, and I get really mean?” Etc. It’s like that, but minus the part where you’re hopelessly in love. Just random people wandering around, saying, “look, could you love me like this?”

Dating requires that we’re vulnerable and forgiving, that we show up, put our whole selves out there in the face of rejection after rejection, with people sizing us up, over and over, and saying, no, I could never love you. And still, we wear our six shirts and carry our red balloon if that’s who we are, and doggedly hope to find our person, the one who thinks its charming not tiresome that we speak of vibrators and sausage. We hope to find the one who can see through all that to something tender and worthy of love in spite of our abundant and obvious flaws.

 Maybe there’s more honesty in their approach than I bring on a date, even though I claim to value authenticity and strive for it. I try to dress up a little and be interesting. I try to be normal, when it might be more truthful for me to say, look, this is it. I’m quirky. I nap a lot. I’m messy, and I have a million incomplete projects and the attention span of a gnat. I need tons of time alone and I use some of it to do math problems. I take the water temperature before I pour it over the coffee grounds nearly every day, for no apparent reason. I have an imaginary pet rabbit named Geoffrey, and its spelled with a G. I wear clothes from a dumpster. I probably drink too much, and I don’t do the dishes after dinner. Sometimes I leave food out overnight and eat it the next day anyway. Penpal might be my highest and best use on the planet, because I usually write back. I’m better on paper than in real. I take a pottery class and never touch the clay; instead, I sit on the sidelines and draw bugs.  I’ve never been to Las Vegas or the Space Needle and I don’t know the first thing about actors and actresses or tv or sports. I wouldn’t recognize Tom Hanks if he walked into the room. In fact, I hardly recognize anyone. We could sleep together for six months, and two years later, I wouldn’t know you if I saw you in the store. I’d clean my house the first few times you came over, but eventually, there would be clothes on the floor, dirty dishes, clutter. I’m demanding in some weird ways that you won’t notice at first, but at some point, you’ll find me tiring, because I have to get to the bottom of everything. I expect emotional courage and fully showing up 100 percent of the time. I get disappointed easily, I’m painfully direct, and I’d break up with you if you said Happy Monday in a non-ironic way, or if I think you’ve underestimated me. If I get a whiff of you being insincere, I’ll be gone in a flash, even if it’s the best you can do. I’ll try to communicate when you just want to hide. I’ll probably get fat and bitter, and eventually see everything as half empty, and you’ll find me depressing and cynical. We’ll have a fight and you’ll hide behind flowers and chocolate and I’ll hate you for it, because I’ll want your words, and you’ll hate me back for not taking the damn flowers and moving on.

 But I’m here because I imagine I have something to offer, and if you could bear with me through all of that, it might turn out good. Contrary to what you’d guess from the life I’m living, which we’ll call “100 Years of Solitude” I love people, and I can be unbearably loyal and forgiving, and, to those I care about, their biggest fan ever. I’ll try to figure you out, and you might find that intrusive but I’ll mean it, I’ll want to understand you, what you care about, what makes you tick, where it hurts, and why. I’ll try to be gentle and generous with you, and I’ll encourage you to do your best all the time, even though you might experience that as nagging and wish I’d leave you alone. But I’ll believe in you, maybe more than you believe in yourself, and I’ll be right.

 The best thing about ice fishing, as I’ve said, is hanging out inside the cozy hut with your friends, thinking optimistic thoughts about what might be on the line, and what a great fisherperson you might be.  Thanks for being in the hut with me.

I'm excited to report that the author Celeste Ng has selected m y modern love essay to read for the Modern Love podcast next week. Suc...