Saturday, February 17, 2007

Something To Ruin


Once a student of mine admitted that he fantasized about taking his most treasured possessions and throwing them off the Ambassador Bridge, assuring that he could never have them again. Don't, he said, you ever want to destroy something you love and never be able to get it back? Yes, I said. It's called dating. Lots of the other students laughed, many were still visibly disturbed by the idea of willingly getting rid of things they loved. I thought his impulse for a long time. I couldn't imagine what I might set on fire or throw into a river. I lose so much due to carelessness that it seems inconceivable to me that I would do such a thing on purpose. But I have fucked up so much, including myself, that it would be disingenuous to pretend that I couldn't drive to the bridge and throw a little more into the water. Don't we all long for something to ruin, at least a bit of the time?
My sister once had a plastic rat doll named Missy, and she cut off all of Missy's hair which had once been red dreadlocks into teeny-tiny hints of dreads. My mother shook Missy in her face and said, How would you like someone to do that to you? My sister insisted Missy needed a haircut. It wasn't pretty. Saying my mother could be formidable is like saying Mary Lou Retton was a great gymnast. Except my mother didn't smile like Mary Lou. It wasn't in her nature. That was one of the things she'd thrown in the river. It didn't happen all of a sudden, but it happened all the same, and when something is gone, sometimes you can't get it back, carried so far away by currents of our own making that like Missy's aborted dreads, you can wait for it to grow back but it won't and can't. You don't, I suppose, have to die to feel dead.
Michelle's Spell of the Day
"I can feel my lifetime piling up/ I can see it smashing into yours." Talking Heads
Cocktail Hour
Drinking comedy special suggestion: Never Scared Chris Rock
Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Saturday!
51 Days until The Sopranos airs!

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Those people who jump off the Ambassador's Bridge because they lost all of there money gaming in Windsor Cananda are so crazy! They wouldn't even go through the ice!

JR's Thumbprints said...

What if it were the other way around?--You try to destroy something you love only to find that it comes back even stronger than before.

Charles Gramlich said...

For years I threw away pieces of my soul every day. I sometimes wonder where they are. And how much I have left.

the walking man said...

The problem is in loving things, I would willingly throw things I loved to the depths of the Detroit River never to see them again.

Why? Because there is no thing that i love, not this lap top, not my tools left over from a different life, not my car, which I think of as a prized possesion, not the stuff I have of my moms from her recent passing none of it means anything, it's stuff that represents something. A way to move around without walking, memories...mostly so in truth what good are the things?

Now if you're asking would I throw my beliefs of God, my old lady or my dog or one of the kids off the bridge no. Because it's God, and the few people I allow myself to love that I would die for, before I allowed harm to come to them but I have no fear of that.

I look around at the stuff in my house and don't care if it's there or not, makes no difference because I can watch one tv as well as another, or if I run out of one pain med so then i have pain until I have money but and I have done it, throw all of them away then I have to control my pain in a different way and that is to spread my love out far enough to include myself.

Peace

TWM

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Anonymous said...

Is this a way to prove undying love for my wife? That, and absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Anonymous said...

Awesome pic. Scarlet

Jayme said...

Who takes these photos? Do you? Most of photos of myself are slef portraits, whether it is you or someone else, I just love them!

Dan said...

I think the only way to appreciate what you have sometimes is to be without it. Maybe there's a bit of that craving in wanting to get rid of things. And I also believe that the only way to truly appreciate life is to die (in your mind) first, or at least come very close to death.

Anonymous said...

Fitting post for me -- I ruined my blog, deleted everything, but it feels good to start over...got a new one. :)

Anonymous said...

Michelle, were you crying when this picture was taken? The writing tonight made me ache, and the photo topped it off. Thank you.....