Tonight

I loved the humidity tonight. I biked to the middle school, the one I attended at the turn of the century. In seventh grade, I had a tradition in the afternoon of doing my math homework right when I got home and then biking to school to deliver the hulking book to my locker, so I wouldn’t have to lug it the next day with all the other books. I biked that route tonight listening to Brand New. I needed the muggy air, the smell of honeysuckle coming at me at certain points along the way, the creek before the school full because of recent rain, the shock of magenta azaleas on the golf course. I needed these sights, the old sights, the steep dirt path I used to take from the bike path to the basketball court. The first time Blondie hung out at my house we biked to the middle school and stood at the court. I remember there was a funny conversation—already a perfect circle, the way they are now with a thousand funny revelations that we both understand in the same way. When I pumped my way up the hill behind the school tonight and stood at the top, about to cruise around the building, I opted for Vanessa Carlton’s White Houses, a perfect song for nostalgia. I don’t know, guys. Nostalgia is sometimes my medicine. 

Like, actually, I'm a creep. Shampoo bottles from hotel at AWP conference. 

"We'll tidy up, 

It's sad to hold, but leave your shell to us,

You explode."

Perfect Love

Learn to love with LOVE FIRST and all the little things about someone second. That way, all the little things fall into the first category.

I could say that more clearly.   

Love should come first. Perfect, complete, total love should preclude anything else from really having substance. All the other little things are nice–the things they say, the things they do. But they’re just little shadows, beautiful little shadows. The only real thing, the only substantial thing, is love.

Dough and I talked about this on April 15, the Monday we drove from her condo in Tempe to the Grand Canyon. Neither of us had seen it before, and it affected us more than we thought it would. When we walked out to the lookout, Mather Point, and got our first sight of the canyon, I felt like my stomach stretched out to include the whole thing.

At the lookout, we milled around looking for potential picture-takers. We didn’t realize how obvious we were being. A woman stepped up, “I’ll take your picture.” And we laughed at ourselves for thinking we’d been discreet.

After a bit of staring at the canyon from the edge, we retreated to a higher point further back and sat on a boulder. I said, “It’s appropriate that we were talking in the car about love being so huge, being everything.” Now we were overlooking a huge canyon, the perfect setting for this thought.

I mentioned something I’d said to her before, “When I see you, I don’t see you as a physical body. When I look at some people, I see their body, and I think, ‘Oh, that’s them.’ But when I see, say, your leg,” I gestured at her leg, “I never think it’s you.” That’s just one illustration of the love I described above. I see her as perfect, and her body is secondary to that, not something all that substantial. Same with her thoughts and her expressions and her clothes. They are not her. They are great, but they are not her. Her is something in the ether, something spiritual that can’t be taken down with wind or fire.

One of the things Dough and I love about our friendship is that we are completely honest with each other. And I think the perfect love, the love that precludes all else, is what makes this possible.

Canyon sisters. April 15, 2013.
 

“If all you wanted was me, I'd give you nothing less."