Hold on to those horses, we have a boatload of ground to cover. Because I never met a metaphor I didn’t like to mix.
Such a year, such an end of year.
Hearing about George Michael’s death Christmas Day felt like a kind of bookend to Prince in April. Man, 2016 was such a year of loss. These two guys, same generation, hit home for me, too young. George Michael was surely not the artist Prince was, but he could sing, and dance, and simply sexy AF. I have been listening to cuts, especially the sweet, slightly edgy Father Figure,
That’s all I wanted
Something special, something sacred
In your eyes
For just one moment
To be bold and naked
At your side…That’s all I wanted
But sometimes love can be mistaken
For a crime.
But for its spark and dance potential, my hands down favorite is Freedom. It came out the year I left Paris (départ no.1). Those supermodels, male and female, oh, oh. Remember Linda Evangelista? I actually knew a fashion photographer back then, he would fly to Ibiza to shoot Linda and Christy and Naomi. He too was beautiful.
During my cab drive from Weehawken to JFK to fly out October 1986, laden with trunks, the driver asked me if I was going to Paris to model. At 5’4″ this was not a question that frequently came my way so I considered it an honor of rare occurrence. All I could do not to kiss him, because long leg envy has always been mine.
The “Freedom” video was hot hot hot, everyone in it was a superstar or on the verge. Even today it is gorgeous, undated.
I think there’s something you should know.
I think it’s time I told you so.
There’s something deep inside of me.
There’s someone else I’ve got to be.
Take back your picture in a frame.
Take back your singing in the rain.
I just hope you understand.
Sometimes the clothes do not make the man.
All we have to do, now,
Is take these lies and make them true somehow.
All we have to see
Is that I don’t belong to you,
And you don’t belong to me.
Freedom;
You’ve gotta give for what you take.Posing for another picture.
Everybody’s got to sell,
But when you shake your ass
They notice fast,
And some mistakes were built to last.
That’s what you get,
I say, that’s what you get.
That’s what you get for changing your mind,
And after all this time….
So damn cheeky.
I was back in the states in the first year post-departure, with a toddler, trying to figure out my life and the relationship with his father (There’s someone else I’ve got to be) so the song held lots and lots of meaning for me (Is that I don’t belong to you, and you don’t belong to me). Freedom is so very lovely in theory.
Auld lang syne 2016. I know it is probably the political landscape that is on most people’s minds for the year in retrospect, but for me 2016 was all about the landscape of the human heart. It has been like an extended trip to a new very foreign country, one not without beauty and pleasure but with a significant language barrier. Sometimes hand gestures are enough, sometimes not.
Fractals come to mind again. That craggy coastline that seems anything but orderly is in fact completely so, Mandelbrot would tell us. Our hearts, which start out from babyhood, in my mind, like super smooth muscles, gradually become as craggy and full of nooks and crannies as the Nova Scotia coastline. Sharp spots, dangerous ones lurk there, also magical caves and deep pools, there to explore. But it takes time. And like Nova Scotia, just to get there takes a long time, however you travel– so once there, you want to stay awhile. And have a lobster dinner or two.
When we love intensely, we might as well be thrown down in an alien landscape, in the dark with no tools, like some Outward Bound exercise run amok. Moments of rushing joy as we figure out how to survive interspersed with soul-sucking terror at what we have gotten into and what we have no control over. And just when we’ve managed to set up a little camp and some small piece of terrain is becoming soothingly familiar, a dust storm blows up, a typhoon blows in and we’re back in the shit.
You’d think the force of it might lessen with age, that is not my experience. In fact, it seems way more disorienting now. Who knew.
Is love ever a crime? For me, the short answer is no. Of course it’s what we do for love that can be anything from sublime to a crime. Back in my innocent youth I was a firm believer in the ability to control one’s passions– maybe not easy, maybe not smooth, but doable. This is the gal who ran two-a-days for 15-mile days in the heat of southeast Virginia, willpower and backbone and the Scottish stout heart and all that.
It turns out I didn’t know the what from the where. But I believe we are all on the path to enlightenment. Not to mention, I’ve been humbled. From my French experience (Innocent Abroad!!) on up through single parenting and the aftermath, I got religion. Now, come to Jesus, sister.
You see, as the best stories all begin, I fell in love. And of course it being me that’s not enough. Yes, this has problem written all over its sweet red letter ass. That would be A for ass, S for Scarlet…you got it. No flash in the pan here though. Through a good part of the past decade our relationship edged back and forth through the woods of friendship mixed with an occasional mysterious contention, til finally it broke through into a dreamlike glade of something a lot like love. Neither of us were cut out for the harrowing tension (which from the press a fair number of folk must get off on, right??) that something like an affair would entail. We tried different approaches, with varying degrees of functionality (would not stretch to success) and flaming misery. Until it all blew up New Years weekend.
Some of you know that is already a sad, capital-s Sad set of hours on my calendar, a real mixed catchall of emotions, a roiling sea (and seas between us braid hae roar’d) that spans, A Lot. I began to go into detail there but why bring down this lighthearted narrative?
New Years, the midway of the 12 Days of Christmas, halfway to Epiphany, which is kind of my favorite day of the whole thing since my time in France and being introduced to the galette des rois. Next year, reminder to self, best to let it all slide by til at least the 6th.
Let’s go back a bit here. The fall season was flat out, seven days a week, events for les collines every weekend with some back to back, I was on a fast track to full frontal exhaustion coming into the second half of December. Bronchitis at Thanksgiving, a second antibiotic before Christmas. Foolishly in my crazed state I thought, we thought with planning that the holidays could be emotionally managed, right, hovering on a high tension wire we wanted to believe, uh huh, was not about to tip us into, yes, that roiling sea below.
Exhaustion so alters your ability to reason, and anyway being in love what reasoning ability remained? On we tiptoed in an insane yet somehow lovely in its way dance, trying to will our hearts and heads steady. Oh what fools these mortals.
This is the first time I’ve written in the daily grace mode since the Grace Note of Love post, feels like a lifetime ago, back in September. Now you have a sense of why, having been too busy managing my fledgling, under-capitalized business and a love affair that could be described the same way. And no wonder I could not get riled up over the election the way everyone I know did. I was all riled out.
Sometimes it takes a total breakdown before you take it to the mechanic. Sometimes you don’t realize how fast you were driving til you get pulled over. It took a full-on meltdown for me to realize the level of exhaustion, physical, emotional, I’d, we’d been operating with.
But back, back, revenons à nos moutons mes petits. Mutton, er, glutton for pain, fool for love, you can call me all that and more. But there is grace and redemption between these lines. In my humble view to feel this way at any age is a gift not to be denied. We did our best to contain it, to restrain it, we were conscious, not careless, trying to figure it out. It all just, happened. No excuses, but it did.
Meantime the folds and wrinkles, crevices chasms and craters that mark my heart grow deeper, wider, longer. I would like to think that makes me a deeper, wider, longer human being rather than just a prime candidate for a fractured heart. Likely it is both. We can only love as much, as hard, as deep as we are vulnerable.
Yesterday, bringing the wood in ahead of some deeper cold and snow, I heard musical tones that I didn’t recognize. First thought: I’m losing it– but Clarence heard them too, so maybe not. We wandered through rooms trying to locate the source– my second thought was th
at they were coming from my damn iPhone, always updating, maybe it had selected a new ringtone for me.
But no, they were coming from a red barn music box that had not played in at least 20 years, a little barn with roosting chickens and a cow on a runner that goes in and out as “Old MacDonald” plays. I’ve had it since my son was a baby, so attached to it that despite its not working it made every move (at least 10) with us. The runner needs to be hooked up so the cow will again push the doors open and pull them shut as she moves, but for now it, like me, is unhinged, and under repair.
How, out of the blue, spontaneously after more than two decades did this music box begin to play again? I haven’t yet shared my bird clock story here, but I’ve had a few mechanical mysteries with a comic edge since my mother died and I attribute them to her, to her great wit and her love for all of us, a message from the other side. This one, pretty clear. The cow is out of the barn. And wonders never cease.
They never will. And for now, that’s all she wrote xo