thinking future thoughts
in which a girl in a pleated skirt reminds me that there's still plenty to rely on
“At last, at last, everything’s ahead. The smart ones say so and people listening to them and reading what they write down agree: Here comes the new. Look out. There goes the sad stuff. The bad stuff. The things-nobody-could-help stuff. The way everybody was then and there. Forget that. History is over, you all, and everything’s ahead at last. In halls and offices people are sitting around thinking future thoughts about projects and bridges and fast-clicking trains underneath.”
— JAZZ, Toni Morrison
Some days start off one way and turn in an instant. Like this past Friday, when I wake up before the alarm, like usual, but more open to the possibility because instead of my when-alone-in-bed pile next to me of body pillow, Kindle, another book and maybe the iPad, maybe my glasses and definitely my cat — next to me Phil is there, and like usual he has probably already been awake for at least an hour while I’ve been in Dreamland.
I like that he converses back with me when I’m Sleep-Talking from Dreamland, like recently when I was dreaming that my old cat Layla had been hiding in the green shoebox in my closet for years, waiting for the perfect moment to let me know she was still here, or when, after watching Ripley, I dream that Grandma is living in Atrani and she’s young, in her 20s, and I was taking a train to visit.
I like the way love can look like entertaining my Dream-States as much as my Awake-States.
Then, as he’s getting ready to leave, he hears me gasp from my bedroom, where I’m still sitting on my bed in my Adidas kimono with my phone in hand, because after all it’s not even 7, yet.
He thinks I am reacting to a news alert. I’m not, but it’s good to have perspective, I call out to him. He comes back to the bedroom.
“It’s happening,” I say.
Phil looks at me like he’s never been shook up by anything in his entire life. I could still be talking about my dead cat in a shoebox in the closet or my 92-year-old grandmother somehow also in her 20s on the Amalfi Coast, and Phil would look at me in this exact way.
I like the way I’ve grown to rely on this, like how I could say the craziest fucking thing imaginable and he’d still kiss me on the forehead and say “have a good day” as if absolutely nothing happened. I could say, “Phil, I am an extraterrestrial” and he would kiss me on the forehead and say “have a good day” and everything would be fine. I don’t tell all my secrets but any time I do I’m sort of left thinking “huh” because it’s never been a big deal, not once.
Anyway, the news is bad, but it’s not “updates from the Middle East Crisis” bad, of course.
But it is Enough to Fuck-Up-an-Entire-Morning Bad, to drink so many cups of coffee on an Empty-and-Anxious-Stomach Bad that when I sit down at my desk, instead of reading my email, I picture my insides, like they are burning, like they are on fire.
When the news officially comes at 9:30, a short and terrible time later, again, it’s bad but it’s still not news-alert-level bad. Still, I’ve never hated Corporate America more and I resent the shake-up.
I canceled my acupuncture appointment for this shit?
Later that evening, a very pretty and extremely superior-acting hostess at the restaurant asks me “what can I do for you?” in a tone that I can’t seem to un-hear & I hear again, how, when I’d asked about my options at 9:43 that morning, the response was: this is it.
this is it —
this is the table you can sit at,
this is the job,
take it
or leave it
plenty of folks waiting for
that seat
even if
You don’t want it — you never did,
but here you are, sitting
The next day, partly for something to do, partly to see the prints by Japanese women exhibition, mostly to see my favorite Matisse, I go to the Art Institute. I need something to rely on after yesterday’s shake-ups.
the Buddha,
O’Keeffe’s sky,
the Matisse
At the museum, I count on this consistency.
Did you know Georgia O’Keeffe was 77-years-old when she was working on Sky Above Clouds IV? You go to the Art Institute enough times and eventually you learn a thing or two. She painted a painting 8-feet-high & 24-feet-wide! It couldn’t even make it through the door in San Francisco!
Meanwhile, in the basement, there are miniature rooms. I peer into miniature Drawing Rooms & miniature French Salons & Libraries & a miniature Georgia Double Parlor & California Living Room & I am listening to “Hanif Reads Toni” & when I accidentally catch eyes with a girl, a woman, who is maybe 22 or maybe 40 or maybe 14, or maybe all of those at once, like me, I look away, because I am crying. I am crying and Hanif is reading:
“Below is shadow where any blasé thing takes place: clarinets and lovemaking, fists and the voices of sorrowful women. A city like this one makes me dream tall and feel in on things.”
I go back upstairs and walk past the Buddha & me, too, “I’m strong. Alone, yes, but top-notch and indestructible—”
I don’t yet know that my favorite Matisse is gone, off view.
The museum is crowded, full of girls in pleated skirts listening to TSwift, & I am not a girl am I, I am a woman in wide-legged pants & I am listening to Hanif reading Toni over & over as I walk past the sculptures thinking future thoughts
I am wearing my mother’s mother’s mother’s diamond again & she is hanging out with my mother’s mother’s blue ring & my mother’s ruby & of course her wedding band & I am in my WILD FEMINIST bomber feeling protected by all of it
Lately I keep meeting my mother in the mirror, especially today in the museum mirror as I reapply Clinique Black Honey & a girl smoothes her black pleated skirt next to me & looks at herself in the mirror like she’s thinking serious thoughts
Later, she bumps into me in the modern wing as she is giggling with a friend & it’s not serious at all, her braces gleam as she laughs & I smile like I know a secret & of course I don’t but it feels good to consider it, to be protected by the possibility of it
“At last, at last, everything’s ahead.”