Per Day...sounds like the diet for a Swedish, hiway-bridge troll: no Volvos, and only one Saab per day...That's my limit. One stifled sob per customer, per day, that is. Lila reproved me yesterday, mildly, when completely unexpectedly, our conversation wandered into emotionally tricky ground, when I heard the gravity of what I was saying and--in just an uncontrollable fraction of an instant--my voice started to crack with barely repressed (barely repressible) sorrow. "C'mon, Woody, baby," she said to me, "don't get all mushy on me, now. It doesn't help..." (cuz she's Deutsch, it sounded like "moooshy"; it'd rhyme with the sound of the German nickname for Ursula, "Ushi.")
Otherwise we had a cheerful, sometimes comic, basically 'trivial'--quotidian--chat, interspersed with frequent protestations of affection, care, concern, and love. She'd dispatched her son to the store again for things for dinner, and we had a care-free (ceteris paribus) chat. She regaled me with the charms of ship-watching, identifying different flags, or companies or cargoes from the beach (a pleasure I also know well, from time spent in Seattle, 25 years ago). Beachcombing, and playing with her dog at the beach. Puttering. Visiting friends. Keeping busy. She sounds better every day. I love hearing the fun in her voice.
I am trying to negotiate a "one-stifled-sob-per-day" deal now, because I cannot ever be certain that something won't be said, or won't occur to me, that will strip me of all seld-control, and tip me like a bobbing duck over that tenuous line into (unwonted) stuttering, sniffling lachrymosity. I don't want Lila to not want to call for fear of my becoming "moooshy." I am slowly learning both how to avoid the tricky territory, and how to fall on the grenades.
The "Struggling-to-find-a-working/workable-perspective--one-that- balances-all-the-competing-feelings--and-not-having-a-lot-of-luck-
figuring-it-out-all-by-my-lonesome" Method (my usual approach) is not working very well, it seems to me. And I'm in a position to know. So, tomorrow, I'm having coffee with a friend who also happens--according to mutual friends whom I asked for advice because of their connections with local 'social services' people, and who've consulted her themselves--to be a pretty gifted counselor, and I'm going to try to ask her a lot of questions. And in all probabilty, blubber (or is it saab?) like a jilted teen.
I don't think I'm crazy, or going crazy; I'm just really sad and kinda depressed, too, which I think is comprehensible and defensible. And manageable (tho I guess 'crazy' could be 'manageable,' too, with the proper drugs--but, then, tis EVER thus, nest paw? Who has the right to quantify YOUR pain?). The issue, as I see it, is that I have no previous, personal frame of reference for this situation, no comparable experiences, no scale for the emotions, no way to fix 'excess' in any kind of quantum way. Never before has my lover had cancer. It's the Olympic gymnastics of the Heart, improvised, to strange music (Wagner?). I just don't know.
That's some of things about which I'm hoping to chat with my friend, the counselor, tomorrow. It falls into that category of "not getting in the way."
One thing: It's a damn good thing I can't burn down galaxies...
In the meantime, this strikes me as suitably bizarre expression of a relevant sentiment:
The Leningrad Cowboys
Who knew?
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