Tales of love & ocean

Just got home from a semi-decent movie that told a beautiful love story. It’s difficult for me to talk about love. Maybe I’m so far removed from anything like it that I’ve forgotten to care. Or I’ve resigned myself into acceptance that I’m not entirely — or at all — dateable. And that’s all right. But when I’m on the subway, pretending I’m in some Chicago movie, listening to the Beta Band, I wonder what it feels like.

And this was one idea I had, after listening excessively to Ingrid Michaelson’s “Far Away.” I think this is exactly what she’s singing. (I told you, I have this awful fisherman-at-sea fantasy.)

Mess of tenses.

I had just finished seventh grade when the Chili Peppers’ Californication album reinforced the band’s position as a killer ’90s rock staple.

How would the seventh grade me (unfortunately awkward, self-conscious, hopelessly weird) look at the 23-year-old me (still the same), washing dishes in a Queens apartment while the local rock station plays “Scar Tissue.” I still know every word. The song annoyed the piss out of me when it was popular, so I have no nostalgia for it. Maybe that’s why it’s one of the first songs to strike me as just a song that’s in my past, not a song that is my past.

Thirteen-year-old Tanya hears the song and cringes, changes the station. Twenty-three-year-old Tanya lets the lyrics wash over her more easily than the soapy water on that plate, letting adult contemporary rock shack up in that lost part of the brain that seems perpetually reserved for adult contemporary rock. That’s where all those Three Doors Down and Matchbox 20 lyrics live. You never meant to remember, it just happens.

And then you remember nothing for a minute, and keep scrubbing the dishes, and you switch to NPR for the Writer’s Almanac, because it’s always fresh old news.

Mr. Postman, do you have a letter for me?

Do I think I would disappoint a great number of people if I announced that all I ever want to do with my life is live recreationally on a body of water with a husband who does manual labor, preferably fishing? Yes, yes I do. As the subject of nearly every poem, short story, or pretend novel chapter I’ve written in the past few months, this fantasy is crowding my brain.

So on days when I wake up to dismal clouds and gusty winds between skyscrapers and blaring taxis, not coastal cottages and salt-rusted pickups, it’s only fair that I listen to songs having to do with living by the sea.

These include, but are not limited to:

“The Ocean” by Dar Williams (preferably featuring John Prine, since he makes everything better)

“Fish & Whistle” by John Prine

“Far Away” by Ingrid Michaelson

“For My Own True Love (Lost at Sea)” by the Decemberists

Not to mention any of the drillion songs that remind me of the river or New England coasts.

Just something I wanted to say.

Just don’t say meteor shower around me.

Curses, New York City. A pox upon you!

(But not really, whoever is in charge of poxing, because I’m a hypochondriac and can’t handle a few spider bites let alone a pox.)

Ambient light eats up the hours of my first summer in years without the Perseids. My time is not over, just taking a break.

Speaking of breaking, remember when you started a blog when you were 12 and it was still alive (in a different capacity — I’m sure no one wants to read about my 8th grade obsession with, well, everything and my knack for TyPiNg LiKe ThIs) when I was 23? I can’t take breaks for reasons like this.

Though I still write. Oh, OH! gods of writing how you love to smack me upside the head midway through my fourth It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia DVD and ask me what the hell I’m thinking! And then I realize I’m thinking about all the times I caught a toad, it began to pee on me, and I threw it at my sister. So I write about it.

My dreams lately most always involve my sister and I in an angry altercation, which I then have to remedy with a 9 a.m. phone call to be sure we’re still on good terms.

The summer heat suffocates me every time I step out of my office. It makes my throat close and drives homeless men to dry-hump the sidewalks. This is not a joke; I saw it today. 

I’ve been conversing with people I probably shouldn’t and coloring in my cookbooks in hopes to fill a hot, summery void. I finished another book last night, this one a complete work of fiction that had me falling in love with real Catholicism, real Jesus-loves-the-little-children crap that I haven’t felt in some time. I wanted to cry and dance at the same time, and I grabbed onto my chest to keep my heart from coming out. This isn’t a joke, I’m a drama queen even when I’m alone. This was all after I read the Sermon on the Mount which, as a Catholic school veteran of, oh, 18 years, I’ve been over once or twice before. All I could think, is this how Father Dan feels all the time? And my void was voided for a minute.

If I stop comparing my friends now to my friends then….well, I don’t know what. But the next two weeks promise reunions and excessive Bonaventure love, and you can’t top that, can you?

That’s my phone. It’s a dear Bonaventurian. Goodnight.