Disruptive. Disruptions? Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band… As I try to sort and sift, to make sense of a world gone a little crazy, my most stabilizing force is a year in the mist and everyone else clamors me me me. Perhaps this is how Ginsburg felt… “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked” Or Yeats’ centre which could not hold.
I hadn’t heard much from my Omaha friend these past few days. I’ve been playing a little hard to get with my friends. Taking the I’m here, but don’t really feel like reaching out approach. I reached out to see how she was. Intuitively, I knew what the quiet meant – I wasn’t wrong. Her ex -boyfriend saw her on a dating app. He’s asked her to come back. She did. I told her to be cautious. The last time she felt that it wasn’t working, she was about a week away from coming to Memphis, and he said he could do and be better. I can only point out the pattern. I won’t hear much from her until it’s broken once again.
I went for another long walk today – probably a little more than six miles. My friend Katherine joined me part way through. She said she enjoys our walks. She does most of the talking. I listen. I sometimes share, but I usually get cut off. I try to see it as practice in the art of listening. She tells me about the guys she’s dated, her mini crush on the guy I got the number for…. I’m kinda like her gay best friend, except for the gay part. She knows I’m not dating and have no real interest in it – seems to respect it. It’s probably why she’s as comfortable as she is with me – she’s attractive and I don’t hit on her.
After the walk I ordered ribs and brisket from Rendezvous. It’s the famous BBQ joint here in Memphis. I had their ribs once a few years ago – good, but I felt like I’ve had better. The place gets packed with tourists (not now), and it’s an iconic spot for the city. I want to support them – apparently they were one of the few restaurants that didn’t abandon downtown when things got bad here. After dinner I poured a beer and sat on the balcony, wrote, and watched a storm roll in.
BBQ 
Cheers
I tired to get some pictures of the clouds and the lightening. When the rain started to come down, I moved inside. A few minutes later lightening struck and the building’s fire alarms all went off – they’re deafening. There was no fire, just a lot of noise.
Before Lightning 
Lightning
As I settled in on the sofa, I got a message from D, the first woman I really dated after getting divorced. She’s funny and sweet and warm. She and I had a great connection, but she broke things off more times than I can remember. Like me, at the time, she was recently out of her marriage. She taught me how to be affectionate again. We told each other that we loved each other. Back then, she wanted to know if I was ready for a woman like her – could I see us living together. At the time, I thought so. She was also the woman who made me reconsider dating someone with kids (I didn’t want to until I met her) – I had wanted to meet her kids and thought I might be able to do the parent thing again. For a while, she had a knack of always coming back around. It was a dinner with her that convinced me to end my relationship with another woman – a relationship that was probably going much better than I recognized. Stupidly, I did the comparison. With D, I laughed and had fun, and I wasn’t sure I would get that warmth from the other. When I realized the mistake I had made and the woman I broke up with, rightfully, refused to give me a second chance, I told this person, I couldn’t do the back and forth anymore. We stopped talking. I saw her about a year and a half ago. Her kids went to school two blocks from my ex-fiancee’s place in Philly. I walked that neighborhood all the time, we were bound to cross paths. It was because of my time with D that I knew the neighborhood as well as I did. Tonight her Facebook text was simple… How’s Tennessee? I wrote back asking if she was writing to tell me she’s getting married? She’s been seeing a guy for a pretty long time (I’ve looked her up once in a while). She didn’t reply. While it’s possible that she just wanted to say hello… I’m guessing that either she is about to get hitched (the picture associated with the account is of her and her guy) or things have fallen apart. I’d be happy for her if things are going well and sympathetic and sad for her if they’re not. I try not to close doors on people.
I sometimes wonder what makes us reach out across the great divide, or what holds us back from doing so more often? What keeps us curious about the people who grace our lives, what makes us run? What makes some of us go back over and over again, what makes some so certain that we can never go back? What are the exceptions to our self-imposed rules? How do we learn to hear the differences between head and heart, and which one should we trust?
My friend, Lisa, and I texted a bit tonight. She’s still stuck. I said I understand. I said sometimes I wonder if “using” someone else, finding a “replacement” is the only way out? She asked if I’ve tried that, and I said I haven’t be able to. I said the best I can do is convince myself that there is no “way forward,” there is just an attempt to be and to appreciate now. It’s all just an appreciation of the now, a respect for the then, and as Dobyns put it, a seeking for the answers to “what comes next and how to like it.”