THE STATUE

From the start of our relationship, I got into the habit of writing poems for Heather for Valentine’s Day, our anniversary, her birthday, and Christmas. She once said that when she stopped getting these from me, she’d know the romance was over. I told her it would never end, so when she “returned to the source” (Heather’s preferred phrase for dying) I continued to write poems for her. Even when I entered into a relationship with Julia I persisted, writing poems for both of them on some of those occasions. Julia was understanding of this, for the most part. It was several years before she gently grumbled about it--not wanting to have a husband who had his love divided between two women, even if (maybe especially if!) the other woman was dead and cremated. I understood Julia’s feelings but still felt that I wanted to go on composing elegies. 

And so I did. And Julia dealt with it. 

There came a point when I was beginning to feel that I was writing for Heather out of duty, not inspiration, that I didn’t want to stop because I didn’t want to admit that our romance was over; despite this insight, I went on. 

In such a state, while Julia and I were flying to California, I wrote a poem for Heather entitled “The Statue”, about how I was changing and aging, while she remained for me much as she was at the time of her death, “physically” and in all other ways. There is beauty in a statue, and I could honor it and her memory, but never interact. I could exist in homage and celebration, admiring who Heather was, but without the “is-ness” factor, it was a (pardon me) dead end. 

I showed the poem to Julia, who liked it quite a lot--I think she could see how my thoughts and feelings about the Heather poems were shifting, as was my relationship to Heather in death. Besides this, I was also thinking that it wasn’t quite fair that Julia should have to share a part of my heart with someone she had never known, someone she could never assess for herself or know how she felt about. I was thinking that “The Statue” might be the last poem I would write for my first wife. I did not share this with Julia, as I wanted to be sure.

When we got off the plane and were in the car to our destination, I realized that I had left my spiral notebook on the plane--the one that contained “The Statue”. I could see it in my mind’s eye--stuffed in the seat pocket alongside the airline magazine and barf bag. I could call the airline and see if one of the cleaners had found it and set it aside. I didn’t have my name in the book, and it would likely go straight to trash, but I could make the effort. I couldn’t rewrite it, even though I’d penned it just hours before. Had it been a work of prose, I could reconstruct it, but poetry comes from a different part of my brain--nonlinear and fuzzy, with tangential connections and images that come from a place that is ephemeral. Damn, this is frustrating, I thought but then came the very obvious epiphany (if such an oxymoron is possible). I would not make my long-shot call to the airline.

It was, of course, perfect. “The Statue” would stay just as it was, wherever it was--and I could not know its state or fate any more than I could be privy to the same information about Heather, the model for “The Statue”. I smiled as I told Julia of this strange symmetry. 

It was over. I’d been trying not to admit that the romance between Heather and me could be over. I’d promised her this in life, and I’m not one to easily go back on a vow. But it was time to fess up to the fact that I couldn’t romance a memory in any meaningful way, as the nature of that blesséd state is reciprocity and I’d been driving on a decidedly one-way street for some years. 

Undoubtedly, my subconscious played no small part in my leaving behind the notebook that contained “The Statue”. Were I a more grounded individual I would have made that decision on my own, without having to take the drastic step of unmindfulness. It is likely no mere coincidence that shortly after this incident I proposed to Julia--again realizing the obvious: that it was something we both wanted, though we did not, dared not, speak of it. “Popping” the question is one thing but simmering the question and finally letting it boil over after six years is, in its own way, more surprising. I owed both the marriage proposal and a greater solidity to my approach to my relationship with Julia to abandoning the statue of my love--fetching as it was--and focusing on someone alive, kicking, with the power to change, the courage to love and the gumption to disagree. 

 

FRONT WINDOW

Here I am, trying my best to be Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window. I’ve got the banged up foot and oodles of time on my hands, as well as binocs and a perverse sense of curiosity. I stare across the street at my

neighbors’ windows, but do they cooperate? No! Not a one is having a failed romance for public consumption, much less committing a murder for me to solve. And believe it or not, some of them are so rude as to close their blinds and draw their curtains, frustrating me and my desire to know all about them. I try to drag Julia into joining my speculations à la Grace Kelly, but she must do the 9-5 gig and take care of Cassidy before and after that. 

People always dissemble, Rear Window seems to say, thus the only way to truly know them is surreptitiously. We look from behind and see through their eyes--we know what they are trying to hide and discover the truth of them. This sort of voyeurism requires active conjecture and it is this extrospection which forms the basis for a certain type of psychological sophistication. Looking inward only gets us so far when surveying the outer boundaries of the human psyche--we must look beyond ourselves to see the full range of our capabilities. 

I sit in our living room--shut in and looking out. My mind wanders hither and thither and I invent what I require. There is something inherently immature in devoting one’s time to imagination and art, while others toil in the day to day, but also something essential. It is the creative process that elevates us, in whatever form it arises, and without it there is no point to the mundane toiling that comprises so much of our lives. So c’mon nabes, gimme a break and spice it up! Don’t shut me out--raise your blinds. I need something to work with here. Don’t do it for me, don’t do it for you--do it for Art! Do it for Lit! I promise I won’t tell anyone…but then I might.