Three Things
A tooth, a knee, a memory
Thing 1/Thing 2:
Yesterday, my oral surgeon says: you’re going to get through this. To which I reply, cotton-mouthed and doped-up: you sure about that? He pats my shoulder and I remember how much I do and do not like to be touched—it just depends on the situation. But there he goes, shouting about the nerves he’s yanked out and the temporary filling. I imagine him with pom-poms and a megaphone. And I laugh and point at my knee. Because it’s often that one pain ends and another begins.
A few days ago, I was walking home, scrolling my phone and yelling at it when I trip and go flying. I am airborne, friends, and I can actually feel my kneecap dislocate and I can’t even stop it. I’m on the ground, a few blocks from home, and two women rush over as I straighten my leg and my knee pops back in place and I’m closing my eyes because oh, fuck, are we really here again? Are we here in the month when I don’t have my Kaiser doctors because my insurance is being sorted out?
We are absolutely here, my furry friends. But, for some reason I’m not sulking. I’m not in heavy pieta. Because I have every reason to be. We live in a hell-scape where child rapists run rampant and unchecked. Everyone is crazy. Condiments cost $10. Every month I wonder when I’ll be homeless should women stop buying clothing. We’re also at war. And rightfully hated by every country on earth. I would very much like for the aliens to swoop down and make mulch of us. Call me when the shuttle lands.
Instead, I order a knee brace off Amazon and ask my super-cum-neighbor if she has pain pills.
No, but she has weed. She comes over with a baggie and I say, do you have a cigarette? She’s incredulous that I don’t have rolling papers. I tell her I don’t smoke. With a straight face she asks, do you have a potato? Oh, wait. I have a potato. She returns with said potato fashioned into a pipe and I burst out laughing. What? She says. This is what I learned in college. The potato works. And indeed it does. Because after I cough out a lung, I fall asleep for seven hours. Pain free.
Thing 3:
I’m reading Lucia Berlin’s Welcome Home. I love Berlin’s work and this particular book filled with stories, photographs, and letters reminds me of a whole other time. A time when we wrote letters instead of illiterate texts. A time when we roamed the country, the world, without worry. A time when we were photographed in black and white, in sepia, in full-blown technicolor. Berlin’s book, published posthumously, centers the places she’s lived as characters. Place drives the story as we see her travel from the West to New York City to Santiago Chile to Mexico—all from a young child to having two children and a heroin-addicted lover in tow.
They lived simply when simple was noble. When it was normal to wake in the morning and rake your floor free of scorpions. And pick apart fresh fish with your hands. I was sad reading Berlin’s book—not because it isn’t beautifully written, it is—because I miss a life simply lived. I miss boarding a plane. I miss wandering a countryside. I miss all the photographs I took over the last twenty years that were stolen from me out of a storage unit by junkies.
I miss lots of things. But it’s the photos I miss most because I know memory tends to go as you age. And I had those pictures. Pictures that conjured moments. That jettisoned me back to a time and place I often find it hard to see. All I have is memory, all I have is me, and I’m not sure how long I can trust both.
I’m luckier than most. I’m alive. I’m safe. I have a nice home and health insurance. I’m grateful for everything and take nothing for granted. But I miss the life I used to have not the means of how I afforded it. I thought about that a lot as I received a couple of interesting work opportunities. But then I was reminded, especially in this climate, of how grateful I should be for the possibility of competing with a pile of other people for this project. Be grateful for the consideration. Give us your best work at the cheapest price. Give us all of you, in the middle of the night, during weekends.
And I said no to all of that. Because all of that is what got me here in the first place. But I do miss the blue dark of a plane landing in Cambodia. The barnacle-covered rocks in Biarritz. Being able to go home, to New York, to revisit all the places I grew up, lived.
But the world wants to remind you the price you have to pay to exist, to live. It will cost you a knee, a tooth, all of your heart, breath, memory until you’re face down, climbing into the dirt.
Oh, I KNOW this was some good sleep!
"This is what I learned in college. The potato works. And indeed it does. Because after I cough out a lung, I fall asleep for seven hours. Pain free."
Being able to fashion a pipe out of anything is a lost art.