A Requisite For Lu Lu

The following I wrote, oh, back in 2009 if I remember right.  I wrote it for my friend Lu Lu on her birthday.  Some of the pacing and descriptions I've changed only slightly just now.

Partly inspired by her actual physical appearance and partly by unrelated events from my life, the short is an attempt to describe a kind of feeling that comes with separating two lives through the breaking of relationship - specifically when, after one party tries to forget the other, what it can feel like when one small unconsidered thing can make all defenses break down completely, and memories, unwelcomed, come flooding back in.

The woman in this short is also named Lu Lu.  It is a work of fiction.



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It’s like being reminded of thunder.

It’s like being reminded of trains at midnight out the bedroom window.

She can’t help but look around startled when she hears it.

It reminds her that much of certain things she remembers

That it makes her start, electric muscles flinch in sparks
And her voice timbre crack in mid sentence

When she hears the looming sound.

It was, after all, his favorite song.

He’d only listen to it now and again, with hopes that it would never wear out

So many other songs just wear out sometimes.

Like barestrand socks.

He didn’t want to try his luck, so he’d only listen to it sometimes.

When they would be together at a coffeeshop and it would come on the radio

He would stop talking, with his hot mug in his hands

And close his eyes.  
The ivory rim of the cup this close to his mouth.

The steam fingerprint fogging his glasses.

It was something that just happened sometimes.

And when the song was over

Conversation would begin again, and he’d say sorry, 
You were saying something special
I remember!  Don’t look at me like that, I was totally listening to you!

Or something close that.

It’d usually make her laugh. Under normal circumstances.

The sound of heartache, when it comes, wells in great deep sighs

Shaky wondering sighs

That make her eyes close.

So she does what she can, avoid the places they used to go together

Get rid of the things that remind her of him

Change her phone number

Change her address

Change her hair color, her vocabulary.

The usual.

She hates that this happens so often to her, and that she believed
It wasn’t going to happen,
Again,

This time.

She’d done all that she could to remove the possibility of remembering him

But she couldn't control the playlists of coffeeshop courtyards
And rail station patios.

And it jars her friends when she covers her mouth

And clenches her eyes

And turns her face

And runs like swift lightning from the room, her skirt a billowing cloud.

The empty chair her leaping point.

She runs to somewhere less crowded with electrons 
Like a brilliant and bright beautiful blur.

And like lightning, people murmur with head winding shock through their surprise

At something so beautiful and cast leaden strong falling back to earth

The way she does in those times.

Like lightning.

Like thunder.

Like lilting piano.

Like chalk bright sky blue eyes.

Like the rumbling momentum of his train leaving town.

Like tear stains and coffee grounds
On a blouse that she forgot she was wearing
On a rainy day

Bliss Is.

“Nate, you should be in constant bliss.” …is what he said to me. We were both in a crowd, we were both where the concert played, and our voices soughed. In this coffeeshop we were looking into one another and talking about what we found there. And as many of my conversations will do, things deftly turned to G-d.

 We talked and chatted and I listened as he spoke. He made that comment about bliss in reference to what life lived with G-d should feel like. Constant bliss was the precise words he used.

 He said the words, and in an instant, standing there with my coffee mug cooling against my fingerprints, I saw it happen; I saw the eye of his mind careen backwards into his life and fasten onto all the copious deficits of happiness and joy that, to him, are bound solely to eschew straight out of separation from G-d. There were craters in his experience, blown wide with ash and smoke, ribbons of pains and white hot hurts like canyons that followed him all his life. The requisite of myopic dispensation, selective intimacy. Addiction.

 And above the slake of periodic honesty with himself I saw a kind of cloud, like a death vapor with it's soul hunger quenched like red iron in cold oil, rising above the strangling fray of disappointment, and instead of striking with its ice fingers like it had with all of his grandfathers, it lifted the gaze from the derelict to, oh just barely above.

 All it took was just that much altitude, and in the vision I was having into the marked open envelope of my friends mind, I could sense a change in the air, a freshening intake, a tingle on the tongue. Just above where the wisp cloud strode, like a spread sheer sheet pulled out and turned straight into a layer of fog, I could tell from where I stood that my friend could see all the way to the horizon. Floating there with his sight cleared of the dark mist of his past, he could see how the world should be. He could glimpse what life in G-d should be and to him it was a fathomless bliss. A dizzy Joy. A constant tarry.

 Who knows how many teachers of the bible had told him that his life should be full of bliss. Maybe only two, I don't know. Maybe it was a friend that he lived with that had talked with him late into the night from their bunks, over old coffee. Maybe it was a homeless man with a grasp of wonder who whispered it in his ear over a cold and wrinkled dollar.

 Whomever his influence had been, I could see with clarity the flowing ease with which he believed these things, how close he stood to the words that he chose. His eyes were tracking on mine with a smile.

 And I’m glad he believed that then.

 I remember thinking about his words year in and year out since then, and saying to myself, “Yea. Bliss constantly. That’s what I deserve. Why am I not in constant bliss?”

 But I don’t believe it now. I don’t deserve Constant Bliss. And I don't mean that I think I'm not good enough to have bliss in in ever ebbs, either, like I believe that I'm not worth it.

 You see, it’s just that the power of bliss isn’t that we have it in comparison to not having it. But that this bliss, when we have it, well... it anchors us in a moment. It's so good because the feeling lingers, and time sits down a moment.





 I think bliss should be here sometimes, and heartache in other times. I think there is meaning in the fact that the palette of colors that is human emotion needs to be used in full, not squeezed till all the ochre is gone, all the phthalo blue dried up, and the rods and cones we use to see them shriveled all out to dust and wind and longing.

 Give me bliss, yes, but only at the mountaintop maybe. When I kiss the metal rope anchors at the top of the dry and raspy climbing rout. When the bread is piping hot, or when there is ice cream on my lips. Let bliss be there, but let it surprise me with it's being.

 And give me sorrow at all the wasted years without her, you know? Give me fear when it’s all uncertain, give me rage when all I've worked for is stolen.

 Give me vertigo when I step near the edges, hunger when I can't afford the least of these, give me that treasured and wonderful gravity pull kind of longing when I see the stars.

 Let them come and go like people do, let the feelings come and go. We are fashioned in a high degree of complexity for more reasons than we can ever know. We know good and sour terrible emotions because we are made to know what the world means with our feelings. To touch the world with as many sensations as a body will allow.

 I'll take bliss. But also give to me its sister, just as strong as, with roots that run both in parrallel and as deep as, the opposite and strangely similar, the weeping woman of the spirit; Heartache.

Jupiter Jazz

This is the beginning of a challenge for myself that I've been kicking around for a while. Several years ago, I challenged myself to write every day, and painful as it turned out to be sometimes, I did it. This week I've set my intentions, finally, on writing as close to every day again as I can manage. So far, it's been three times this week, as opposed to zero in five months! My intention is to use this space as a gallery, if you will, of the writings that I find most powerful from both this endeavor, and from my experience writing over the last 17 years. Here's hoping you read, enjoy and are affected. -Nathaniel