I was informed a short while ago that I’m soon to be spending some time with the person responsible for the greatest lesbian break-up song of all time.
Snippets of these lyrics go through my head with great regularlity and have since I first heard the songwriter perform them on a Live ’85 – the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival album – back when there was vinyl. They are firm, direct and heart/gut-wrenching … depending on when you hear them in the cycle of a relationship.
I’m particularly fond of this part:
“… life don’t clickety-clack down a straight line track … it comes together and it comes apart.”
Do have a listen, someday, if you can manage.
Ain’t Life A Brook
I watch you reading a book
I get to thinking our love’s a polished stone
You give me a long drawn look
I know pretty soon you’re going to leave our home
And of course I mind,
especially when I’m thinking from my heart
But life don’t clickety clack down a straight line track
It comes together and it comes apart.
You say you hope I’m not the kind
To make you feel obliged
To go ticking through your time
With a pained look in your eyes
You give me the furniture, we’ll divide the photographs
Go out to dinner one more time
Have ourselves a bottle of wine
And a couple of laughs
And when first you left
I stayed so sad I wouldn’t sleep
I know that love’s a gift, I thought yours was mine
And something that I could keep
Now I realize that time is not the only compromise
But a bird in the hand could be an all night stand
Between a blazing fire and a pocket of skies
So I hope I’m not the kind
To make you feel obliged
To go ticking through your time
With a pained look in your eyes
I covered the furniture, I framed the photographs
Went out to dinner one more time
Had myself a bottle of wine and a couple of laughs
And just the other day
I got your letter in the mail
I’m happy for you, its been so long
You’ve been wanting a cabin and a backwoods trail
And I think that’s great…me…
I seem to find myself in school
It’s all Ok, I just want to say
I’m so relieved we didn’t do it cruel
But ain’t life a brook
Just when I get to feeling like a polished stone
I give me along drawn look
It’s kind of a drag to find yourself alone
And sometimes I mind
Especially when I’m waiting on your heart
But life don’t clickety clack down a straight line track
It comes together and it comes apart.
Cause I know you’re not the kind
To make me feel obliged
To go ticking through my time with a pained look
In my eyes
I sold the furniture, I put away the photographs
Went out to dinner one more time
Skipped the bottle of wine
Had a couple of laughs
And wasn’t it fine….
“Every relationship we have with another person is really just a relationship with ourselves,” she said. These words were accompanied by the raspy sound of tissue being yanked from a resistant box. “Each person reflects back something essential about ourselves. We get a chance – however briefly – to experience ourselves through someone else’s eyes.”
And then she blew her nose.
I’ve been thinking about these words since hearing them. I’m still not sure I agree, or understand. But since they’ve been in my head a while, I thought I’d write them down.
[Cross-posted from Vox.]
This summer seems to have a relationship “theme”. Seems most of the people in my life, including me, are wrestling with issues of visibility, of actually being authentically seen by others. Or maybe they aren’t wrestling at all … maybe I’m just noticing.
I had a conversation with a relative of mine a few months ago, trying to get caught up with her. It went something like this:
Me: So, how are things with you?
Her: Great! Bessie (her oldest daughter) and her new husband are in their new house finally and are anticipating pregnancy soon. Gertrude (younger daughter)’s beau has just moved in and they seem very happy so far … Billy-Bob (her husband) is really enjoying retirement and is doing …
It is almost impossible to get an answer from this person on how SHE is. So, when I first noticed this, I thought it was a gender thing. You know, women being trained to fade into the background in their families. Then, today, I got this e-mail from a male relative:
Things are going OK. Busy as always. Junior #1 – was at Wakefest last week. Off to Fanshawe in Sep. Taking landscaping. Junior #2 – working in TO. Off to Dal in Sep. Junior # 3 – rowing. Henley (largest regatta in
North America) starts next Tuesday. He’ll be down there all week. Junior #4 – auditioning for Fear Factor today in TO. Harold – seems to be doing OK…no better/no worse. Wishbone the dog – getting older. Crops – terribly dry.
Once again, the author is not present in this accounting of lives. Since when is it so easy for one’s entire
life to just disappear from one’s own radar?
A few friends of mine feel as though they have been rendered invisible to me by virtue of me being in a new relationship. I want to plead forgiveness based on, well, that thing that happens when you meet someone new. It can get intense at the beginning. But, in truth, there is a deeper flaw in my character that I’m trying to examine this summer. My friendship pattern has always been, since high school, to be involved in many activities, with a wide range of people. This leads to a wide range of friends, happily. I am never sure, except with a handful of key individuals, just how visible I am to them. I’m always surprised, a bit embarrassed
and slightly pleased to find out that I’ve been missed. I need to be better at both seeing, and being seen by, all the wonderful people that I’m lucky to have around me.
In the evolution of the new relationship that I’m in, we’ve both noticed not being accurately “seen” by the other. For example, when she behaves in a certain way that I’ve seen before in previous partners, I tend to respond with the layers of assumptions I still carry from those previous relationships. I don’t check out my assumptions, or ask her to help me understand her particular, unique spin on things. Not surprisingly, she does the same. So, in a way, we are seeing each other through the dirty lenses of previous relationships, like murky ghosts are intruding and clouding our field of vision. This happens so effortlessly … and it is profoundly unfair. It is much harder work to wipe the lenses clean, to blink a few times, breath deeply, make the effort to ask and then to listen carefully to the responses. Much harder. But profoundly
worthwhile.
See and be seen … this is my new motto … 
… pass it on …
[Cross-posted from Vox.]
I’m interested in bodies these days. Not exactly in the way that sentence implies, though. Although … (pause) … never mind … moving on …
So, as I drop a few pounds, slowly, my body is changing. People are noticing, which is nice. Other people look at me more than I look at myself given that I rarely look in the mirror other than to check to see if my hair is standing up on end.
I caught a glimpse of myself putting the ironing board away tonight, as it is stored in a cupboard in my downstairs bathroom and one must stand in front of a mirror to access the cupboard. It was a mirror action shot, I suppose. There are parts of my body that are just not going to get that much smaller for a while, like my arms, possibly my calves. These are pretty muscular and are likely to remain so.
Today, I wore a shirt that I haven’t worn much since I bought it. I really like this shirt but it has never fit quite properly, until today. So the wardrobe re-claiming begins, which is a lovely side benefit of all this.
It needs to be noted that the fact I was putting the ironing board away indicates change also, since one of the things I do both poorly and rarely is iron. I have, however, run out of summer-weight work pants and this situation needed to be addressed pronto.
On my drive home today, I thought about change and how people respond to it differently. I’ve left the
most stable job I’ve ever had, albeit temporarily and with a wide and welcoming safety net, to pursue a more entrepreneurial life. The change feels refreshing and invigorating. After several years of work stability, I chose change. Similarly, I’ve been the “leaver” in all but one of my relationships, long or short – choosing change repeatedly there. Some time ago, I was having lunch with my sister and my niece (sister’s daughter) and we were listing out the significant relationships we’d had and how they ended. We then went back in the
family tree and concluded that the women in our family don’t put up with much crap, as we all seem able to pull the plug on relationships that aren’t working and just walk away. The pattern is that we do the ending, rather than have endings forced upon us.
In my own history, this has caused me to attract no shortage of criticism from folks who have claimed that I haven’t done enough to resolve differences in relationships, to “make it work”. I consider these opinions ill-informed and offered from the cheap seats. It is easy to look in from the outside and render such a verdict. In particular, I remember leaving my partner of nine years and hearing no end of criticism for this. No one but the two of us knew how much pain had been caused in the last two of those nine years, and few people know how hard we had both worked to figure things out for the last eight months. One does not discuss such things as a matter of course over coffee. The leaver often gets tagged as being cowardly and emotionally lazy, at least I certainly felt that at the time. In truth, I felt like I’d achieved something brave and gargantuan – I made a strong choice to support my own mental and emotional health. It was absolutely the right one, I can say with clarity six years later. This situation taught me never, ever, to judge someone else’s relationship choices and to offer input on such things only when asked directly for advice or guidance.
Did this relationship ending work out entirely as I expected? No. In some ways, it worked out better as I retained the friendship of my ex with the added bonus of not having to negotiate nearly impossible relationship issues with her. Other than the actual decision to leave, did I feel “in control” of this process? Absolutely not – it remains one of the most chaotic and frightening periods of time in my life. Do
I know how this entrepreneurial gig is going to work out? No idea … I feel very excited and optimistic. Each day, I see progress and new horizons, new possibilities. Will we be fast enough and smart enough to
capture enough of what we need, quickly, to survive and thrive? I have absolutely no idea. All I can do is my best, and support others as they do their best.
Do I feel “in control” of this diet shift? To some degree, yes … but bodies are what they are. The end results are, frankly, unpredictable. All I can do is give it my best shot.
The only things one can be sure about are death and taxes, or so it is said. And change as a feature of life. No matter how hard one struggles to control the nature and direction of change, I think it is seldom
that we are ever fully in control of how things unfold. The opposite of change is stagnation which, to me, would be like death if one succumbed to it. The silver lining of change is possibility and growth. I must
remember this the next time that life proves to me that I’m not entirely in charge.