recycling

I've been recycling emotions. The sadness I attribute to external things: inaccessible people, impossible desires, crazy situations. This afternoon, after an hour in the old book store, the difficulties lifted, and I was simply "me," thumbing thru books, looking at images of Hopper, ignoring Picasso, making these small purchases that give me so much delight.

For the longest time, I've acknowledged the painful awareness that I'm not the person people think I am. Part of that is my own dissembling. It's not outright deceit. It's on the edge, very near it. But another part is the strong desires of these people, their own veil to the truth. So S thinks I'm a commie, a divorced woman, someone maybe looking for a mate. None of that is true. Well, I'm not a communist. And I was never married in the heterosexual sense. This misconception arose from one stray comment, just three or four words that came out of my mouth in response to someone's question: "Have you ever been married?" and my answer, "no, not officially." That's three words. And what a difference it's made to Them. And what a weight I carry with me. But am I responsible for what they accept as truth? Or am I playing with integrity?

Then there's the whole spectrum of priority and values. What's more important, me having a future or me correcting a misperception? But I've already answered that with my diction. The connotation of "misperception" is vastly different from the one attached to "misinformation." I am finding that silence is as painful as my voice. I am realizing that they do not coexist for me; it's one or the other. I'm looking at human activities such as deceit and fiction.

K called me an existentialist but that's closer to her truth. Again, misperception. Again, should I correct? Could I? S says Science is truth, is her god. I quibble with her over the definition of Faith. I want her to change her mind. I want her to say anything but Science. Say it's the faith that the flowers will come around every Spring or that the birds build their nests in late May. So now I see how the both of them might be connected, attached, attracted to one another. One with her determined grasp on Science and the other with all her intellectual intensity. Trouble is, I want them both coming round to my view. I want them both smiling at single moments.

~*~