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04.17.04 - 11:36 p.m.
everytime we say goodbye i've been writing this journal entry in my head since last wednesday morning, and i still haven't committed all the feelings and thoughts to paper...or d-land speak for that matter. and then, friday evening...the theme of saying good-bye arose again -- this time in a completely different context, where i met and chatted with an author, whose work i've read since 1995 -- two completely different contexts...i know each of these women in two completely entirely different senses of knowing... if ever i've had a soulsister its alice, and she's been in my life for four years now...a fellow grad student, but also my island sister (we share the cultural heritage of colonization by the same british mother countries... which means that, while i've neve been to new zealand, and she's never been to jamaica, we both grew up on milo (a beverage that makes ovaltine taste like dirt!) and every once in a while we'll recount a similar saying that both our sets of parents will say, though they two have never met... alice isn't my double, she's my better half. she's organized and firmly assertive, whereas, i'm dreamily associative and indirect to an annoying fault. she's a global traveler, and somehow lands on her feet and manages to amass a bevy of friends, just because she's just so damn cool... and (blush) i am too, i too am blessed with circles and circles of friends, and yet her networks seem to arise instantaneously and she doesn't appear to worry so damn much about 'the status of her friendships'...alice thrives in a crowd, whereas i am drawn to crowds, i work my ass off at cultivating friendships, fret far too much about making sure i haven't pissed any of my friends off,i'm always doubting that my friends even want to associate with me, and am CONSTANTLY torn between wanting to hang with friends, and isolating, because i get overwhelmed so easily with all that stimulation of my intuitive knowledge about these peoples flowing through me... (i have a wickedly long memory, and i wish i didn't sometimes...far easier to forget...past encounters, past troublesome ambiguous statements others say years ago, while i still cringe remembering conversations almost word for word) but back to saying good-bye... you see, i've planted myself in this same uncity for going on 5 years because rootedness matters so much to me...i'm afraid to take my fellowship money and finish my dissertation elsewhere, in part because i can't be bothered building new friendships, new support networks, can't be bothered figuring out all over again whom i can count on and show my everything, and who's a satisfactory connection just passing through my life... meanwhile, alice left town for the second time last year...the first time for a summer to be with her family...this second time it was to spend an entire year in hawaii - to see her family back in nz - and for other research/personal reasons...and while, i know she's coming back in the fall...this second time is the penultimate time, before the last time when she moves back home in nz for good... and i try so hard everytime we say goodbye to not think about THAT goodbye, because i just don't know when i'll see her again... yes, ms. a has taught me how to be an enterprising cosmopolitan diva...and to resist national continental boundaries, and even turn myself westward...rather than always think of airline travel as flying towards the u.k., france, and other nineteenth-century imperial centers... i knew that alice was coming into town on wednesday morning for less than 24 hours...she in fact didn't tell anyone;however, i try to resist the urge to take that as 'proof' that alice loves me best... a silly way of measuring relations because alice doesn't love that way... i know alice came into my life to teach me a new way of loving...this effervescent girl who has a million friends across multiple continents and hemispheres, somehow manages to have room in her heart for every single last bloody one of them. the hardest, and yet most valuable lesson, in knowing, befriending, and loving alice, is to trust that somehow alice cares even about me ... when i turn the situation around, of course, i can see how i too love abundantly, how i love the act of loving, i honest to god do - don't write me off as a sappy, wishy-washy seaweed, pulled by the current of everyone else's desires (although, i used to feel that way in prior 'people-pleasing' days)... no, i love abundantly...even when friends i haven't seen in years fall off my radar screen, when they pop up again, up springs that love, full-force, true, the memories recur, twilight of the best days of companionship, yes. so why should my friendship with alice be any different? it's not...and i know that even in december when our good-bye will be the last good-bye, by which i mean, we will say good-bye to living just eight long blocks away, say good-bye to impromptu movie nights, sleepovers, study break walks at 2 am, when we say good-bye from living a stone's throw away from each other..., it won't be the last goodbye... but still, it hurts... i can't even tell you why and where the hurt comes from, but nothing can bring tears to my eyes on command than thinking of saying goodbye to all that... anyway, wednesday morning i hauled my ass to campus to meet her at 9:30AM, more like 10AM...she's the type of friend that i can call and say groggily and non-coherently, "alice, i'm just putting my undies on, where are you, i'm gonna catch a bus, i'm on my way"... and she doesn't miss a beat...so i put on two matching shoes and throw on something, even though it's freezing out, forgot my watch, my papers to grade, just got on the bus to see my sister... dummies that we are, we arranged to meet in the library...because hell where else have we spent so much time together... and the librarians know we're regulars...so when i saw her across the way, and she comes barreling toward me...and i give her the longest hug, and tears rolldown my face, even though i thought i'd cry, i didn't know how the sorrow and joy would pour ( aw, man i'm crying right now, i'm such a sentimental sop, what the hell?? ... yes, i knew i'd cry, but i didn't know that i wouldn't want to let go, even though i was saying hello-not goodbye - it's not that i haven't talked to her so often each month, i can tell you exactly what's up in her life, it's just maybe the realization that my sister alice - who is always with me - is palpably with me - and just how very much i miss our friendly hugs - i've been told that i give great hugs, and yes, i do - true hugs, emanating strength, hope, realness, bodily bonding, connecting, love - (what's with the american 'dainty' pats on the back's type of hugs?) - anyway, alice hugs even better. and maybe, yes, i've missed that as friends we hug hello and goodbye - just as my family hugs hello and goodbye - cultural sisters, yes. we sat down, didn't bother with coffee, and yet, i didn't know what to say, because i didn't want to catch up on news, i just wanted to catch up on sharing the same space in the same time, catch up on being with time... would you believe that alice surprised me with a birthday present, my birthday was 4 months ago and like whatever, i so didn't expect anything from her, and then the tears started flowing again - i didn't even notice it this time, and i felt a bit embarrassed...used the opportunity to show her that i had new glasses... and i looked up and she was crying too...and it was okay... you see, that's it, that's the fear i have, i've always had with alice...that if ever she saw how very much she means to me, if ever i showed her love, her friendship, her being mattered to me, i fear that she'd tell me it's too much; she'd tell me to stop loving so hard . loving too hard isn't the same as loving too much...yes, loving hard and much are both about intensity, but loving hard is feels like i'm signifying something else, i'm loving much; that too much love surfaces so fully, unabashedly, immediately, exposed .that's hard love...not quantity...but availability...when i love hard it's all there, i giving my everything in love, and it's okay... it's okay to love even popular, queen alice while not feeling self-conscious over how dearly i care about her...and then she left, for toronto, then michigan, then new haven, and back to this uncity at the end of april...
and believe it or not, we didn't even hug good-bye...a zany alice hour, we zipped through fall creek in her roommate lauren's car...even stopped to say hello to friends of liace who happened to be walking on the sidewike...we zoomed by gimme (cafe), the creeks, the laundrymats, the elementary school, and for those 10 minutes or so, it's as if she'd never left, you know? since i was in the backseat, and lauren and alice were bound for the trainstation an hour a way, i just gave her a squeeze on the shoulder...it was enough
the feelings of that hour those stayed with me all week, though...i tried so hard not to think about how empty life in this city is without friends i love with such reciprocal unconditional unshakeable trust...i tried instead of how i've made worked so hard to fill in replacements, and the newer friendships i've cultivated since alice left...they fill me up too, but it's not the same...it's a cue to keep going as she has, to take flight, and i will...
geez, i said there was another story of saying good-bye, and i have to get back to grading so i'll try to keep this shorter... friday night i said hello for the first time to an author who's about 5 years my senior...e. danticat...and among other reasons, i remember her as the first caribbean american author whose fiction had a plot that dealt with a young black woman with bulimia... the book, br_th_eye_mem_y was published one month before i graduated college in 1995. and while i was unsatisfied then, and now, with the depth of that plot, i remember feeling such a delight in recognition, in visibility, that my story had made it into mainstream literature... danticat's first book was among the earliest selections of oprah's book club.
so to be honest, i've been arguing with this author in my mind for almost 10 years now...and i can admit that i've had the deepest jealousy...on multiple levels...she had the 'authentic' caribbean-american experience i've always wanted for myself...she was born in haiti, migrated to brooklyn when she was 12, she went to a school that would likely have suited my temperament better, she then went on to get her MFA at brown...and fame came at age 26, in part from stories based on her own growing up experiences...
i was born here, in new england, my jamaican parents didn't migrate to a caribbean diasporic city center like brooklyn, nor toronto...i never learned patois properly, i went to an equally elite college but far too conservative in retrospect...and at 25-26, i chose the "easier" of the two roads - the critical, academic, road rather than the creative, freelance writer road... did i want her life, yes...although i don't know that life, but did i fantasize about oprah winfrey heralding me on national television as a role model for caribbean-american women writers of my generation? hell-yeah!
instead, i hid behind more academia, more school, more rhetoric, more knowledge...and only now, as i now that i've got the safety and security of a graduate program to write my dissertation do i have 'institutional' license to make my living as a writer as i've always dreamed...
so, friday evening, she gave a reading on campus as part of the haitian bicentennial celecration...and i brought copies of her books with me, and i was so prepared to be blase, to not care, prepared even to find reasons to resent and not like her...and yet, she just walked into the auditorium, no fanfare...and when she walked by my row, i literally GASPED out loud, because there she was in the flesh...and she looked 'just like me'...by which i mean, she wore the kind of clothese i would have worn to such a reading...she was every bit humble, and soft-spoken, but intelligent and so poised...and she purposefly devoted the evening to more Q&A, and answering audience's questions than reading multiple stories of her work...
and the lovely thing about the Q&A session was that she fielded her own questions (rather than the moderator doing so)...so when i raised my hand expectantly, she called on me...then there's that awkward moment of course when i the audience member makes sure that she's acknowledging my hand, and she indeed nods, that 'yes, i would like to hear and respond to your question now"...
and so, i got to ask the question that's been turning over in my mind since i first encountered her work - about the problem of figuring out the best critical language to talk about her work. what i was saying in so many words was that the caribbean part of me says," the protagonist of the short story you just read feels sorrow; he fell to his death, he didn't jump accidentaly" while the psychoanalytic academic part of me says, "surely, the protagonist committed suicide, surely he was depressed."
and she more or less gave me permission to read her work anyway i want, responding "once i've written the story, i give it away to you" - the perfect answer.
and so, afterwards, i did go up to her and asked her to sign my book...but i more just wanted the chance to talk to her as a 'sister', and tell her about the warring sides of me producing dualing interpretations, refusing to chose one over the other. >
and i also was able to ask her the question i really wanted to ask her , which was "are you happy?"...she didn't find the question odd either...because what i realized by the end of the evening, seeing her in the flesh, is that i could easily hang out with her or go to grad school with her, that given totally different circumstances we could indeed be friends, and so, in many ways she stood up and represented the life not just that i hope to have one day, but the life that i could have today...which i likely will have next year...and she seemed every bit to handle the part of a public persona through her writing okay...
and her answer to my question, "are you happy?"...was this: "oh, yes, the book tour is going okay, it's a bit tiring, but i wish i was back home writing. i'm happiest when i'm writing"
so i wrote my name for her to sign my book. she inscribed "it was nice chatting with you. in sisterhood! edwidge danticat" and that was that...i didn't have to give her my email address or figure out a reason, way to make sure we stayed in touch...
like i know in my heart that my first hello is only the beginning of distant but parallel careers that will likely cross paths from time to time...
thus, my first good-bye, then, was not even a good-bye, but an "until we meet again..."
and i felt peace in my heart, and rooted for the first time since i'd said good-bye to alice three days before, because i know in my heart, we will always meet again.
have faith, circling. don't cry. instead, believe...
yes, we will
MUSIC: Aretha Franklin, "A Natural Woman"
READING: Edwidge Danticat, "The Dew Breaker"
FEELING:loving hard
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