Two days off in which I attempt to construct a utopian attitude toward life:

I worked until ten Friday night training the new employee and then discovered that we had lots of holes in the schedule for the following day’s massages in the student clinic. I got Brad, Beth and myself nine am massages and then the three of us coasted around Maplewood for a bit, surfing garage sales. It was citywide garage sale day and so there were literally hundreds of them. In a break of character I actually bought nothing. Brad and Beth bought… muffin tins, a Brita water pitcher, candles, and some other sundries. The universe offered me power tools. I was tempted to buy an old circular saw for eight dollars and later a rusty table saw for three, but if I had these items I might be tempted to build something, so I took a pass. Since my tower of Babel collapsed I’ve tried to steer clear of construction. Actually the second saw was rusty and dangerous looking and the first one was at an estate sale and there was this sort of aura of death around the whole affair that put me in a more reverent, rather than deal conscious, mood.

I overheard the son say, “Yeah, we came over this morning to get ready for a sale at some future date, but when we saw everyone on the block had things out, we decided to just put out a sign inviting everyone in.” It became clear through general conversation that his father had just passed away. He did not seem shaken, just a little sad. The house was full of relatives working the sale and I heard more than once the sentiment that they only all saw each other anymore under these sorts of circumstances. That’s certainly true for my family. The last time we were all together was my grandmother’s funeral back in 1997.
No, scratch that – we had a reunion after the twins were born, in 2002.

Everyone asked repeatedly where R was. “We’re not doing very well. I don’t think we’ll be together too much longer.” I suppose when you stop going to each other’s family events it’s a clear sign that things are over. Her grandfather had passed away some time before and I had had to work. I didn’t travel with her to Chicago. Everyone in her family was asking where I was. I still regret not having gone. This weekend is the two-year anniversary of when she moved out. Ah, well. I know I write about that relationship a fair amount. If I go back through this blog she shows up in dreams and has generally cast a long shadow. I am occasionally asked by readers of this blog why that is. “Do you think that she was the one?”

I don’t think there is a one. I’ve have never thought that there was. Six billion people and you’re supposed to find one of them? Ha. I think you meet people and you negotiate relationships. Sometimes those negotiations stand, but if you’re put under too much of a strain, sometimes they don’t. We got hit with a lot of stressors, both personal and financial, and we didn’t have a good foundation. We both had our good and bad moments and I’m not really interested in playing the blame game. For a thousand and one reasons it didn’t work. I guess the hardest part is that we both wanted it to. I think we really both worked our butts off for that relationship. I feel a great deal of guilt. I feel like we had a good thing and we are smart people so why couldn’t we make it work. I’m friends with many of my ex girlfriends, but I get a lot hate energy zapped at me from R’s direction. I’m not really sure how that happened. We separated gently with more tears then anger. The anger came much later and is only just beginning to fade.

Well there’s some human drama for you blog-o-verse. Hung up on a ex, nothing all that fascinating or original about that. Isn’t it odd how some of us understand so little about ourselves and yet we daily sail our little personality ships through chaotic storms of social interaction, sending up flags of salute or firing volleys of cannon shot pretending all the while that we know the score and that the some total of all these antics matter more than a teardrop in the rain (Bladerunner)? Six billion monkeys blogging away on all their own internal “dashboards” checking in a few times a day to see what they think of themselves and their experiences. I think it’s time I joined a cult, some really good mystery school with answers to everything that only a few people are in on.

It’s all a mystery, and no (know) amount of imagined knowledge about the forces of gravity or the physical laws that may have led to the formation of the sun and moon get us any further than WTF. Our modern literary geniuses, after the defeat of all cultural paper tigers from organized religion, God and personality to government, knowledge, and Truth big T have boiled down human ethics and purpose to one short succinct phrase to be found in the novel V. by Thomas Pynchon, “Keep cool, but care.” Keep your cool and don’t loose your heart, because there is nothing you will encounter and no one you will meet that isn’t wholly or in significant part certifiably insane (including yourself).

So after we insanely shopped in the insane yards (do those property rights extend to the core of the planet? How much magma am I currently renting?) of our fellow lunatics, buying whatever crap we erroneously thought we needed (which they knew they didn’t), exchanging little bits of paper and metal for material goods as though that made sense, Brad & Beth went home to prepare for a housewarming party and I went to St. Charles to help Vanessa and Chris unload their rental truck into their new home. Parties with friends and the practical movement of habitation accoutrements would both seem like sane pursuits, but I assure you these are all the endeavors of madmen (and women). We’ve seen what Chris likes to do with his jeep and large rocks, and Vanessa made us listen to Vanilla Ice and showed us her collection of New Kids on the Block memorabilia. No sanity there.

The only sane thing, the only “true” thing, is caring about each other enough to help move our material mythologies around and to have parties the celebrate the temporary and aesthetic resting places of all that stuff (which will all eventually end up like that circular saw I didn’t buy). To accept that we all have baggage (and are generating bushels of new baggage by the second), for me to accept that R made a choice, she moved out and she moved on and I need to do the same. Today I am going to Angela’s parents house for the first time, to celebrate her father’s birthday. None of her siblings will ask, “Where’s Karl?” because I’ll be there having a glass of wine.
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After I posted this I went to said birthday dinner, after which we returned to Angela’s and resumed a conversation that has been unfolding for several weeks. We decided to separate . . . I had deleted this post when I got home, but I have decided to reinstate it.