Stay of Execution

Dear Lost

This has got to end.  I've had it up to here with you.  You want all of my time, but you are constantly withholding information.  Take, take, take, that's all you do.  Why's it have to be like pulling teeth with you, always?  Why won't you ever just say something?  Why do we have to go around and around all the time?  Why the tangents, and the diversions, and the endless little domestic spats to distract us from the real issues all the time?  Would it kill you just to give me something, once or twice?  Everyone has secrets but you, you're hiding so much from me.  I deserve better, after sitting through so many of your episodes. 

Sure, you're good looking.  Yes, you've made my heart race from time to time, I'll admit that.  And you still know how to push my buttons, I won't say that's ended.  I care more than I should.  But you're a tease, dammit, and it's getting old.  I'm sick of the strange camera angles, the person walking alone in the jungle and hearing something rustling in the vegetation just beyond, that old trick.  I'm sick of that music, the cheap way you go for thrills.  I'm sick of the flickering lights in the hatch.  I'm sick of the same old unresolved sexual tension that's thrown in as filler, and the soft firelight on the face of the gurgling baby as a representation for whatever domestic tranquility the castaways are supposed to have established, and the way you cut to a flashback every time we're getting somewhere on the narrative.  It's a formula, Lost, and it's getting old. 

I liked you for your complexity and your intelligence, the offbeat narrative style you have.  And I'll admit, you've got a visual appeal: great scenery and a hot cast.  But we've got to work out something that's a little more fair.  I can't keep giving you so much of my time unless you'll give a little more back to me.  All I'm asking is that we tie up some loose ends.  Would it kill you to answer some questions for me?  Who are the others?  How many are there?  What is the black smoke monster thingie?  Where did the polar bears come from, and where are they going?  What's with all the kids?  Why did the others vacate the hospital hatch?  Why do they want Locke?  What does the button do, and what do the heiroglyphics mean, and what's the meaning of that map?  Why does the island have magic healing powers?  Who's dropping the food?  What the heck are the numbers all about, for that matter?  Where's the boat that they took Walt from the raft in?  I'd like you to just sit still long enough for us to have a meaningful conversation for once, without endless diversions.  When I spend time with you I always leave more mixed up than I came into it.  It's frustrating, and I can't help feeling that you are doing it on purpose. 

I've made a commitment to you, and I will be there with you until the end.  I am asking you to think about your commitment to me.  Maybe you're punishing me because I wasn't there with you right from the start.  But I think you'll have to agree that I've worked hard to overcome that.  I'm nearly done with Season 2.  You should know by now that I'm serious about you.  I think it's only fair to ask you to look at how you are treating me.  I hope that by the time I start watching Season 3, you will have found it in your heart to open up to me a little more.  No more games, please. 

With frustration, but with fondness and with great hope for the future, I am still yours,

Scheherazade

Dear [ ],

There are some things about adult life that I should have figured out by now, but that still make me feel awkward and silly.  One of those things is telling an ex-boyfriend about a new relationship.

I guess it's hard because it means acknowledging feelings that I mostly pretend I don't have.  The small feeling of lingering anger I still feel at you, for not being willing to take a risk for me.  The feeling of wistfulness, because 'what might have been' might have been pretty good. The stupid feeling of competition: ha!  I've moved on before you did, and I'm happier, to boot.  The urge to rub your face in it: See, see what you're missing?

So those are there, and to be a grown up and not give in to that stupid stuff I just haven't said anything.  And yet there's the part of me that wants to know you, to complete the conversion from romance, which we've left behind, past the ambiguous friendly low-key flirtation between single people who in slightly different timing or circumstances might have been something, to a clear and unambiguous friendship, without that confusing dangling potential.  After all, there was so much good between us, so much common ground for a strong friendship.  That foundation is more compelling than the small childish urges that come from a relationship that never fully got off the ground.

And this is what I want to tell you: I've found someone who really WILL take a risk for me. 

Dear [ ],

I got a splinter yesterday, and last night as I tried to get it out I got angry at you. The last time I removed a splinter it was yours.  We were at your place, and you held out your hand to me.  Can you help me with these? you asked.  It took me by surprise. 

You had everything: tweezers, a sharp needle, a match to sterilize the needle.  You sat by the window, where the light was good, and I squinted at the soft heel of your palm, muttering and trying not to hurt you.  It's harder to take out someone else's splinter than your own, maybe, because you can't feel the pain and in your imagination it's much worse.  I hated the idea that I was hurting you, clumsily chasing the tiny sliver embedded in your skin.  I winced inwardly as I worked the deep one out.  There were two of them, and I got them both.  You never flinched.  You sat, quiet and brave, reassuring me that I was doing a good job. 

Last night, alone, I didn't have anything.  If I have a sewing kit I don't know where it is.  I buy a new one every six months at the drugstore and immediately forget where I stow it.  I got an old blunt pin, the back end of a brooch, and didn't bother to sterilize it.  I couldn't really see where it had gone in, or hold my hand in a place where I had a good line of sight.  I had to pull back the skin on my pinky with my thumb, awkwardly, while I stabbed around at it with the other hand.  I was clumsy and ineffective.  It stung, and I kept giving up, then realizing it would hurt more if I didn't take it out.  I got mad at you, mad at the memory of me taking care of you.  I was mad because I was alone, and mad because I wouldn't have noticed but for the intrusion of your memory.

I've learned lately that I am not very good at asking for help.  It's not just asking for help, a friend corrected me.  It's accepting help, being helped.  I'm no good at that.  Last night as I poked dully into the flesh of my finger I thought about how nice it felt to take care of you.  What surprised me when you asked me to take out your splinter was how simple and intimate it can be to trust someone else with small things, flesh wounds.  It wouldn't have occurred to me to ask you, then.  And now, when it might have, you're not here. 

I wish you were. 

But I did get it out, eventually, without anyone's help.  And it only stings a little.      

Scheherazade

Letters I'll Never Send: To My Dead Dog

Dear Belle,

You would have loved this day.  It smells delicious, and it's sunny but not so hot that you would be panting helplessly on the dining room linoleum.  Yesterday's thunderstorms mean mud puddles and streams in the woods, and you would have splashed and lapped and laid down in the cool dirty water without regard to how it would make you smell.  You knew how to savor the sensations of a day like this. 

The grass has grown over your grave and the rosebush is blooming and dropping petals down on you.  Standing back there you can hear a buzz of invisible bees, quivering somewhere inside the flowers. 

I miss you every day.  That's what I want to tell you.  When I mow the lawn over your grave I remember digging it, and laying you in there, stiffened and wrapped in a blanket.  I remember seeing you dead at the vet clinic, patting you and talking to you and crying.  I remember seeing you alive at the clinic, all ripped up, tired and bleeding but wagging weakly at me, giving me a little lick.  If were given magic powers and I could do anything this is what I would do: I would go back in time to that hour when you slipped out of the yard to go for that fatal ramble, and I would keep you right beside me.  I wouldn't look away.  If, somehow, I wasn't allowed to do that I would go back in time to when I was patting you and you were still alive and the vet was telling me you were stable and would recover from the attack.  I would stay there, with you, all day long, patting you and talking to you and cleaning the blood off of you gently with a cool wet washcloth.  Maybe if I had stayed things would have been different.

Once Upon A Time

I had a crush on you, and you got hypothermia.  I took care of you -- got you inside, put you in the shower, gave you a clean towel and a cup of tea, and put you into my bed. I sat with you and put on some quiet music and let you sleep.  I went out and left you in my bedroom and guarded the door from the intruders in the kitchen.  Occasionally I went back in to check on you.  Do you need more tea, something to eat?  You were exhausted, and grateful, and tired, and sweet, and I just wanted you to stay and stay.  I think I gave you my blue fleece pants, the warmest, softest things I had, and some thick woolly socks.  I sat on the edge of the bed, looking at my knees, talking to you.  I hardly knew you but I knew you were kind, and cute, and being near you made me shy.   I was so glad for the chance to take care of you. 

I don't remember how it ended.  You must have driven home with your teammates, back to Rhode Island.  Did you take my socks, and return them at some other regatta, on some other visit?  Did you spend the night, and I slept out on the couch?  I don't think so, but I can't remember.  I do remember that months later, after I'd graduated and moved far away, you wrote to me.  You were in California and were still grateful for the way I'd treated you that afternoon.  And after you wrote to me I dreamed about you, vivid dreams that stayed with me after I woke up and interrupted my daytime.  We didn't even know one another; we never even kissed.  But something about that shy sweetness we both had, the bubble around that afternoon when I tried to warm you up, made you vivid to me. 

It's been more than 10 years since I've seen you; I can't be sure that I'd recognize you if I ran into you today.  Last I heard you were programming computers and living on a boat with a girl in Santa Cruz.  That's pretty cool.  I wish I'd been braver back then, and had known how to take more of a risk.  I would have liked just to know you.  You seemed safe, kind.  I wanted to talk to you.  But I was about to graduate, and you were a year behind me, at a different school.  I didn't know how to try.  All I could do was bring you more tea, play the Karelia Suite, and hope you would be so comfortable you would somehow just stay there, in the dappled green afternoon sunlight of my room, dozing off and waking up to smile at me. 

Dear [ ],

On my walk today I smelled sweet fern and it made me think of you, and that memory took me by surprise with its softness.  Since we broke up I've tended to think of you as "the jackass," and to be honest, I've felt mostly dismay and regret about the fact that I dated you at all.  But today as I walked along past the sweet fern I remember standing with you in a sandy field of scrub and sweet fern and all kinds of good things about you came back to me.  Maybe you were a jackass, but you were a lot of other things, too.

You knew a lot about plants: you taught me the name of the sweet fern, rubbing it between your fingers so I could smell it.  You taught me the name of pachysandra, too, and I remember how full of color and play your garden was.  You hid small treasures in the garden and the woods -- you made tiny sculptures and hung them in the tree branches and I found sweet little ceramic coins you'd made among the birdhouses and the flowers.  I remember you teaching me to shoot and the fun we had aiming at clay pigeons and targets.  I remember racing along a woodsy path on mountain bikes with you, our dogs crashing along beside us, and playing soccer in that clearing.  I remember how you cooked, marvelous peppery meat and fish, perfect salads, while I sat engrossed with a book.  I remember the great granite fireplace you built and those wonderful kinetic metal sculptures you made, and how your house was full of flourishing plants.  I remember speeding along country roads in your convertible, to that brown-green lake that smelled shady and fresh and felt so cool to swim in.  I remember sailing with you on a slow light-air day, diving off the bow and floating gently back to the stern to climb back into the boat.  I liked the way you could set the anchor from the stern. 

We laughed a lot together, carelessly.  You were fun.  You live in a world full of playful beauty, sounds and smells and tastes and visions.  Yes, there's a recklessness about you, and something else.  But this letter isn't for finding fault with you.  I know exactly why we aren't dating anymore.  But over the last few years I've forgotten why we ever did.  And today, the smell of sweet fern reminded me of some good reasons. 

I'm sorry I've been cold to you.  I hope you are well, and happy, and that your garden is flourishing. 

With affection,

Scheherazade

Dear [ ],

It wasn't so long ago that we were driving around your neck of the woods and you were pointing to wonderful houses you almost bought, but didn't.  I was struck by the tour, a landscape of missed opportunities, dodged bullets, lessons learned.  You live in a beautiful, wistful place.  Not long after that, when we were both crying, I said, "I don't want to be another house you should have bought." 

I remembered that the other day.  Maybe it's the time of year.  I think of you often.  Who knows where I am on your map of the world?  Am I a woman you should have loved, when you had the chance and the price wasn't too high?  I'm not sure where you are on my emotional landscape.  I recently came across a piece of writing I did back then, three months before we broke up.  I was sad, I knew it wouldn't last.  And yet I believed in you, and in us, and I couldn't reconcile those two things.  I outlined all the reasons that broke us up later.  Reading it now I was surprised, because I remember the sunny days on the rocky shore, the walks in the woods, the scrambled eggs, with the optimistic blur of affection.  But our relationship was full of regret and frustration and wistfulness, even when it was happening. 

Dear [ ],

Someone mentioned granola to me today and I thought of you.  I thought of that week I spent with you, our sophomore year, when we had that blizzard and your whole state was shut down.  I remembered walking through the snow with you to that store to buy huge Thompson raisins and almonds and sesame seeds and oats.  I remember mixing and baking and how different the product was from any granola I'd ever had: thick, sweet, crunchy clumps.  I remember being amazed by you -- that you knew how to do this.  Had you known this in high school?  We retreated to your room and watched the snow cover the skylight. 

I remember wearing garbage bags and sledding with you and your roommates, Stick and Stu and Steven.  There was an endless soundtrack of Allman Brothers music coming from Steven's room, and I can't hear "Jessica" without thinking of that dingy house with surfboards in the corner and a batik fabric hung up as a curtain.  I remember a walk I took down to the river when you were in class, how I poked around in the mud with a long stick and watched three black birds across the brown water.  I remember the train station and how I left late at night, with your blue wool sweater. 

A few days after I got back to school there was a letter from you, on the yellow pages of a legal pad, in an envelope that you'd decorated with pictures of chairs.  Do you remember that?  You always used to decorate your envelopes and that one made me laugh.  Sometimes you dripped candlewax on the pages of the letters or on the envelopes, and I think you did that with this one.  I posted it up over my desk where I could see it and think of you. 

And then you came to visit me at the end of the semester and we had that stupid fight, walking along College Street in the misty spring night.   I still remember it, how irritable I got, how circular I found your logic.  We fought about acting, whether acting and theater was worthwhile or not, whether it mattered if something you work on lasts.  Why were we fighting about that?  You wanted to get philosophical; I just wanted to go to bed.  I remember that night so well, climbing up into my loft with a sense of dread and sadness, lying beside you under the ceiling I'd painted sky blue with clouds.  I was sad because I'd decided on that night, during that dumb conversation about acting that neither of us really cared about, that we weren't right together.  I wish I could go back and shake myself, but I was beginning to be charmed by a sailor at my school named Mike, and it probably wouldn't have done any good.  That summer you took me surfing in the moonlight and I remember the sandy itchy feeling of the green sweater I was wearing, wet and heavy against my skin when you pushed me into the water.  You told me you were falling in love with me and I didn't know what to say.  I didn't love you back, and to this day I don't know why.  You got mad at me in a letter you sent from Africa and I so wanted your forgiveness but didn't know how to ask for it. 

I hear you're getting married, or maybe you already have.  The last time I saw you was when I was studying for the bar exam, when you and I and Harpo snuck into that private beach and clambered around on the seaweedy rocks and wrote our names in the sand with sticks.  You told us about her -- a model, a divorcee, an artist.  It sounded turbulent but you were in love.  California was good for you.  I was happy for you and a little bit jealous.   

I think of you from time to time.  I wish I'd been a better communicator back then.  I wish I'd at least tried to tell you what I felt, and what I didn't feel.  I don't think I was wrong -- we probably weren't meant to be partners, although I still can't figure out why.  But I would have liked to stay friends.  Remember how we laughed?  I think of you and I think of laughter, and of outdoor adventures: climbing rocks and diving into water.  I hope you're doing lots of that, wherever you are.

Love,

Scheherazade

Dear [ ],

I thought of you today, a couple of times, in a bathroom in a coffee shop.  There was a picture on the wall of this bathroom that made me think of you.  It didn't make any sense for this picture to be here in Montana, but there it was.  I studied it, even after I was done, after the toilet had stopped flushing.  I thought about how I would describe it to you, if we were talking.  I wondered what you would think of the picture.  I didn't even have words for the things I would have wanted to describe.  You would have known the words, but I didn't.  I thought about trying to bring the picture home to show you, and how nice it would be to sit with you and point to things and have you explain them to me, naming and speculating and telling me stories all at once. 

We didn't do that enough.  I'm uncomfortable sometimes, asking questions, even when I really want to know.  I like being taught, but I'm scared to be seen as dumb, I guess. 

It made me homesick, this picture in the coffee shop bathroom.  And it made me miss you.  You're a long way away these days.  I hope you like what you're seeing.  I hope one day you'll tell me all about it. 

S

Letter From The Coach

I sent the sailors on my team this email earlier this week.  I wish I could send the same letter, and the same promise of support, to you, my readers:

Hi guys.  Coach here.  I miss y'all.  Hope you're having a nice break.

Two weeks until you're back on campus.  10 weeks left before spring break and sailing.  18 weeks until reading period.  20 weeks until our seniors graduate.

I hope in the next few days you'll set some personal milestones for yourself for the next 2 weeks, 10 weeks, and 20 weeks.  If you like, you can email them to me and I will follow up to see how you did.  (I won't tell anyone else your goals.)  You're more likely to follow through on a goal if you are accountable to someone else.  Any particular goal is fine.  No goals, that's not fine.

Make your goals simple, realistic, clear, and measurable.  An effective goal should have a deadline and a clear outcome, so that on a date certain I can ask you: did you do it? and it will be easy to say 'yes' or 'no'.  So, "floss more" is not an easy goal to measure, but "floss at least 4 times every week" is clear and measurable.  "Be less stressed" -- not a clear goal.  "Take at least two hours a week to do something that relaxes me" is clear, as is "Write an outline for each paper at least two days before it's due." 

Some goals you might think about in the next 2 weeks:

• read (or re-read) a sailing or sports psychology book. (Winning in One Designs, Understanding the Racing Rules of Sailing, The Inner Game of Tennis, and Psyching For Sport are my favorites.)
• Write down your sailing goals for spring season, this summer, and beyond, so you're ready to talk to me about them when we get back to campus.
• Check in with the person you're sailing with this spring.  Ask about their goals, and share your own.
• Write down your stumbling blocks for sailing -- the things you most need to get better at.  This could be a skill or it could be psychological.  When you get back to campus, I'll help you figure out a plan for tackling it. 
• Assess your own fitness, and set some goals about what you'd like to accomplish before spring break (get stronger, lose 5 pounds, be able to hike longer without getting tired, etc.)  When you get back to campus (or before, if you email me), I'll help you map out a strategy for getting there. 

What's possible in 10 weeks? 

• You can get measurably leaner, stronger, and more aerobically fit.

• You can understand the fundamentals of sail trim, tactics, or team racing far better.

• You can become more confident and self-directed about sailing (or, for that matter, anything else that's important to you).

I will work with you on any of these goals.  If it's something I don't know anything about, I'll find a person or a resource that can help you. 

Happy New Year.  2006 is going to be fun.