Because Love is like Falling and...

A few years ago a friend (my lover at the time), asked me if I wanted to go bouldering. For those of you who are unfamiliar, bouldering is essentially rock-climbing but without all of the contraptions. The walls are shorter, the courses designed to be safely conquerable. There are no ropes, no harnesses. No other human being anchoring you to the ground with the force of their weight. Nobody to catch you. In bouldering there is you and the wall: your feet and hands snugged into holds fashioned to keep you from falling.

I agreed to go despite a lifelong fear of heights and a recent distrust of my own body. See, there are times my body forgets to be my body. Times my hands disconnect from the circuitry and drop whatever they’re holding. Times my feet tangle themselves into the subtle nuances of thin air. I have frequently felt helpless against gravity. But the truth is I was tired of the cold and the dark; winter so long you forget there is anything but winter. Tired of the routine and the safety. The artificial warmth of bedrooms created by breath and blankets. So I said yes.

The Circuit is an indoor climbing gym full of lights and noise and bodies. The climbing walls are coded with numbers, letters and colors according to difficulty. We entered that foreign space with our rented shoes and borrowed chalk, not knowing what to expect. Intimidated by the novelty we sequestered ourselves to a corner of the wall. My lover (at the time) jumped into the fray while I read and reread the rules. Never stand, walk or climb underneath another climber. No running, skipping or jogging. No food or drinks on the carpet. No Climbing under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Committing them to memory like they held the secret to success. Like they could equip me for the task at hand. 

Following the beginner pattern she easily scaled the first wall, an up/down circuit that brought her quickly back to where I sat cross-legged on the ground below. I think you’re up. I stood, walked closer to the wall studying the pattern, breaking the code. The bodypuzzle unfolding in my mind. 

My hands surprised me with their steady, arms bearing the body’s weight with unanticipated grace. My borrowed shoes gripping the divots and juts just so. My body splayed across the wall and climbing. Slow and steady. Strong and sure. I reached the top of that first course, pounding an open palm across the flat space between wall and ceiling. Victory. But coming down is the hardest part. The body, better suited to rising than anything else, slowly stuttering its way back to the earth’s surface. Toetips stretching delicately, probing out each ledge. I made it back because you have to make it back, one way or another. 

I hit the ground with a splitlip grin, ready for more. What’s next?  

We slowly worked our way around the perimeter of the wall. Some courses were top-out, no coming down from those. Once you were up and over the ledge your feet carried you down the ramp like feet were intended to carry you. Others, up/down like the first, required the cautious consideration of navigating your path in reverse. 

In climbing, there comes a point eventually where you are halfway up or down a wall and everything just stops. Your arms refuse to reach for that next handhold. Your legs won’t straighten or they won’t bend. You can’t move up or down. Fatigue creeps into every muscle and joint, fingers aching, heart pounding. The only option is to let go. 

Lately my life feels like that first unconquerable wall. Everything tired, everything aching. Letting go means forfeiting all of the height I’ve gained. Means falling. Means trusting the ground to catch me. Means letting myself be caught. There are no ropes or harnesses, no person anchoring me with their weight. There is only me and empty space; those subtle nuances of air. When you can’t climb anymore, you let go. Acknowledge there are more walls, more days. And maybe you will be stronger next time. Or maybe you will just be less afraid of the falling. More accepting of gravity. 

The first time I let go I fell hard from a high place. Landed heels to ass to back. Let my body sprawl across the padded ground. Let my body breathe and laugh, flexing hands and arms and legs. When I think about living I think about climbing. I think about falling. Think about standing back up, powdering my hands with fresh chalk.

Analyzing the bodypuzzle. 

Scaling the next wall.

-b

So long, so long.

I am a reckless collector of memory.

Under my bed shoe boxes teem with notes, postcards, scraps, and shopping lists. Totes stuffed with cards from every occasion. My empty spaces overflow with Miss Yous and Happy Birthdays. The ticket stubs: Brandi Carlile, The Great Gatsby. The empty gum cartridge from my first solo road trip, each silver bubble ruptured in an effort to stay awake, stay awake, stay awake. Albums full of photos from when photos were a thing. Smiles permanent and fixed points in time like somehow remembering makes them real. Like remembering makes anything more real. Your face could be more than your face just because I ask.

Every few months I dig through the e-mail archives. Click through the digital relics. Expose myself to the plotlines fallen by the wayside; all the places my story didn’t go. All the places it did. The inside jokes I’m no longer party to, familiar but forgotten like the tune to a lullaby your mother used to hum. We were once so small. Like any good archaeologist I recognize beauty in the scraps, even if I can’t identify their original purpose. If I hold onto these things I can nearly piece them back together, nearly piece myself back together. Nearly find peace.

Today I learned that a former coworker lost her battle against depression, and it’s got me thinking about the lexicon of losing. What it means to be reduced to words and memories. How a struggle so fierce can be expressed so passively. I only knew her casually, but this loss tears at the seams of my community. Prickles at the back of my mind. We are so small. Memories. Words. There is no agency in either. After we’re gone we are thrown to the mercy of the people who cling to us. If we knew how they would cling, would we ever be able to leave?

There is no such thing as a casual tragedy. But there is information gathered in passing, a hung head in the back hallway, a moment of processing before the day lurches forward again. I didn’t really know her, but somebody did. This was somebody else’s beginning and end. And I feel selfish for the relief, that brief instant of recognition: this could have been my loved one. Someday it still might be. But today I can read through the archives fondly knowing the people I care for are still breathing. I can tell them I love you, please be ok even if those aren’t the words I use to say it. I am so profoundly sorry for everybody today who can’t say the same.

Here is what I remember: a laugh, and a smile. Eye contact from when eye contact was a thing. How you could mine something interesting from the most mundane details. You made a person feel so fucking special just for breathing. If you knew how we’d cling, would you still have to leave? Did you have to leave us with the pieces so you could find your peace?

In a New York City bar I left my ring on the sink, but not before tracing its lines into the pages of my notebook. In the back of my car, all the clothes I never wear. No longer taking up closet space, but still within easy reach. Memories. Words. Nothing ever big enough to replace a person. Nothing ever real enough. It is reckless the way we hold on; the ways we let go. Slowly, slowly, then all at once.

To every You I have ever clung to: I love you. Please be ok.

-b

trag·e·dy, noun

trag·e·dy, noun

1. an event causing great suffering, destruction, and distress, such as a serious accident, crime, or natural catastrophe.
2. a play dealing with tragic events and having an unhappy ending, especially one concerning the downfall of the main character.

Lately I have wondered about tragedy. The weight of it. The taste, the smell. Wondering about the ways we wear it. Casually like scars so faded we’ve forgotten their origin story. Sharp and white like screaming. Heavy like a gravity we never thought to question. What does tragedy eat for breakfast? How does it takes its coffee? Once you taste it does it haunt the corners of your mouth? There is a space between me and tragedy; it exists in a separate context. I do not wear it as a skin. I do not wrap my tongue around it every time I try to speak.

Is tragedy the presence of a thing or its absence? The moment of combustion, or the second the machine stops firing? Synapses so perfectly balanced lapsing into silence. Maybe it is both. A thing and the absence of a thing. What is the last story I will hear?

I love you or I’ll see you soon or Goddammit, traffic is terrible today.

What is the last story I will tell myself?

I’m sorry or This can’t be happening or Oh my god, oh. My god.

A friend sits across from me in the back booth of a cafe and says What do you believe in? People and words and stories.

A person wakes up and tells himself a story. He carries six firearms into a classroom and ends nine lives two and a half hours from where I sip black coffee. Tragedy. I believe in people.

Lucero Alcaraz, Treven Taylor Anspach, Rebecka Ann Carnes, Quinn Glen Cooper, Kim Saltmarsh Dietz, Lucas Eibel, Jason Dale Johnson, Lawrence Levine, Sarena Dawn Moore.

This tragedy tastes like cold coffee. Tastes like mouth gone dry, like the absence of a thing. I wonder what they ate for breakfast. Wonder about the last story they told themselves. I run their names over my tongue and they feel clumsy, unfamiliar. Does proximity directly impact the force? Does their tragedy resonate more fiercely because the shockwaves ripple through the same tectonic plates where I sleep, and eat, and live?

Lately I have been wondering about tragedy. How we eat/drink/fuck/fight/sweat our way through it. The blood and tears and vomit. The weight. The taste. This is an incomplete thought.

I am learning to play the guitar, my fingertips grown thick, trying to peel away from themselves. They harden so I can press harder into the pain; so I can produce a clearer sound. And maybe that’s what we’re all doing and maybe that’s what we’ve always done. Press into the pain until the distortion is erased. Press into the pain until it’s the only song we have memorized. Play it, over and over again. Make it more beautiful every time.

And then? We learn a new song. Keep our fingertips hardened with clumsy, honed with practice. Let tragedy be the baseline that thrums through our blood. I believe in people, and words, and stories. I believe in tragedy. I believe in pressing into the pain so we can create something more beautiful than our struggle.

-b

"somewhere it is Spring and sometimes people are in real:

I am sitting on a couch across the city from my home, the sky outside like a lucky packet of Starburst: everything red and pink like it could melt on your tongue. So sweet. It is fall now, but the fall before the rain and there are leaves stretching their red-rimmed veins to catch the last rays of summer. They gather themselves in quiet piles along the curbsides. Sitting on this couch I can hear a soccer game at the Jesuit high school behind the house. Music splitting the quiet into before and after. Music sounding like every robot deathmatch scene from every futuristic movie. Voices, and floodlights, and I can imagine the smell of fog-heavy grass even though there was no fog today. Memory. The lawns here are green the way nothing should be green after so much hot and dry. 

Walking around this house with its big empty rooms, and furniture like adults would use it’s easy to be Not Quite Me. I uncoil the hose and add water to the fountain. Or sprinkle flakes into the aquarium. Or run my fingertip over the waxy leaf of a thriving houseplant.  I remember to feed the dogs. Chase the cat inside before bedtime. Lock the front door. Keep my clothes on or the curtains closed. Tonight I will light a fire in the pit out back. I’ll feed it scraps of newspaper, the last seasoned logs of summer. Tomorrow I’ll pack my things and go back to Real Life. 

It has been two weeks and one day, nearly to the hour, since it fell apart in my hands. Since I said goodbye to a whole future. Since Real Life stopped meaning what I thought it meant, and started meaning lonely. Meant crying in grocery stores. On bathroom floors. On mountainsides, and car rides no matter their duration. For ten of those fifteen days I have been Not Quite Me living a borrowed reality. Tomorrow that ends. 

I’ve been trying to make responsible choices, be impulsive in the least destructive ways. I bought a guitar instead of a puppy. Tried to eat my dinners instead of drinking them. 

I am anxious to post this because it’s been so long since I sunk down into that writing place, and I don’t know what I’m trying to say except it is fall, and at 7:30 the sun has packed its bags for the night, and I’m going to be alright. Maybe not tomorrow when I’m confronted with my real life. But some day, in some other future. Perhaps one I haven’t glimpsed yet let alone kissed goodbye. 

And I hope you will too. Be alright. You are so brave for facing each day with your shaking hands and heavy heart. You are so brave.

-b

I’ve missed you so much.