Valentine Suite

 

She’s a little thing. Center of my life.

Mad at me right now. But she chose Valentine’s Day to tell me she still loves me, I can only do the same.

Recently posted this about her. Never did Jump 2 or 3. Time I did. Songs will do. Guess this is Jump 2.

I left. Had to go reclaim my vanity, my lost wonderfulness. She didn’t think I needed to do that. She’d seen the inside of my big cardboard box, knew what a writer I already was. She’d also given me the biggest crowning instruction I’d ever had, ordered me to do a “Comma Seminar” for all the proofreaders at our nuclear engineering firm. An amazing experience. Snapped everything together in my head. Completed the process that had been going in my head for four years. So, of course, I abandoned her.

Amazingly, she told me this again today.

We were all wrong back then. I had a career after, lost it. Completely. Called her, drunk, in the middle of the night. And she was there. Still. She agreed to meet me. No more red mane. A tiny woman crouching in a motel waiting room. With all the guts it takes to reclaim your lost love. When I fell in love, instantaneously, all, over again. 

And I’m still the same jerk I was then. Sort of.

I did do what I set out to do. I reclaimed my lost heritage and then lost it again, she didn’t care. She took all the stuff that was still sitting in the lost cardboard box and published it.

She gave me life back.

Twenty-two books after the one that should have ended my life. But for her. And now she’s paying. I have really truly honestly tried, and never promised what I couldn't, that I would keep on living.

Some of us just don’t make it.

Not sleeping though. You think I have a problem you can fix by ignoring me. No. You can’t.


Dreams I can’t stop dreaming. Boppa left, Susie left. Dad doesn’t. I’ve written everything I can about him, Where are you?

But never think I don’t love you with every fiber of my being. Patricia Hurley Laird. I will always love you.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The After Party

Image
Writers? A Murder of Crows Had a thing here this evening. Everybody present. S’great. You got to keep watch all the time, keep the predators away from prey. Twice I had to rescue Nathanael West from Sylvia Plath. She had that thin-lip teeth-deep-inside look going. I gave him a whiskey sour and she moved on. Barthelme was weeping again. Best to leave him alone when he’s like that. Otherwise you get too many minimalist paragraphs of extravagant grief. Nearly had to shoot Beckett. Damn good looking cuss. Women line up to wait for him. Useless to tell them he has the IQ of a turnip. Kafka died again. He always has to top Camus. Messy messy, as usual. Had some fine drinks with the two F’s, Scott and Bill, tied with me for the worst first novels in history. (Thurber’s Henry James screech doesn’t count.) Willa Cather took off her top. At least Kafka didn’t have to see that. Then things got ugly between me and JJ, the fake one-eyed wonder, when I told him I’d written a cosmology bigger than...
Read more

Impaired Consciousness is the Invisible Plague

Image
  The physical aspect of the mind at work … The state of the nation at this point is terminal. As far as I know I’m the only one who fully understands why this is so, because I’m the only one who has devoted a writing life so continuously to the subject of human consciousness.   It’s only now that we can finally see the symptoms that demonstrate what is really wrong with the people who are responsible for leading civilization through the storms and rapids of our times. They are suffering from profound impairments of consciousness. In point of fact, almost everyone is, including the people who are emotionally and intellectually on ‘our side’. There are three distinct U.S. populations coming sharply into focus one calendar year before the make or break decisions of November 2024. All three are impaired. Mathematically, each of these can be considered a set.  There’s the set which is engaged compulsively in a civilization-level process of murder-suicide. Their actions are so...
Read more

I could blow it all up

Image
  The real me. Why I keep fighting to tell you. I could tell you all a lot about life, Trumpsters and Haters. Why don’t I? Why haven’t I? Because I invented a new kind of writing meant to survive me physically, which turns out to have been a bad bet. For example, I know far more about the gender (i.e., sex) thing than anyone imprisoned in niche paranoia understands. Except for youth mutilation, it’s all understandable and addressable. I know more about the Christian variosity than anyone else has had the wit to understand. From Catholics to Evangelicals I have a unifying theory. Worse for you, I can connect all my current insights to massive works I’ve already written. Been on to you all along. My unofficial subtitle for this post is “Songs About Me.” Why I begin with one of my favorites over the years… Bowie or me just drunk… Yeah, I’m both and been mistaken by both. Come back and explain this later.  So. Songs. About me. Which is just ducking the question. I get to a place y...
Read more