“I love making, I love doing. I love being to the full, I love everything which is not sitting and watching and copying and dead at heart.”

Today marks the second anniversary of my brother’s death.  There is a vocal part of me that does not want to recognize this, wants to ignore it, wants to get past it and move on.

This is the first time I have ever written about Hart since he died. I do not like it.  It’s not that I don’t have anything to say, or that I’m struggling for words.  No, I have too many words, too many disparate thoughts that I don’t want to acknowledge.  It feels strange to even type out his name.  This is the worst I have ever felt while writing.

I think that it’s probably important.  To speak, I mean.  Or write, in this case.  Even if I don't ever do it, even if I'm not good at it. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve made it to speaking yet.  I talk about Hart, about what he was like, about the things he did; I even occasionally talk about our relationship.  I don’t talk about his death.  I’ll give facts, snippets of useless information to anyone who asks – and no one asks - but I don’t talk about it the way you’d talk about something important.  I give suitably morose “too bad” statements, lay it out as if it were nothing more than a macabre timeline of unfortunate events, and then end my story with a joke and a chuckle.  It is a self-defense mechanism that I am not sure I understand. 

When I was in high school, I wrote an essay about my brother’s struggles with depression.  I’m not sure what I did with it; it’s probably long gone by now, victim of numerous hard drive wipes and catastrophic computational failures, but I may have even included it in my undergraduate applications.  I’ve rarely thought about that essay, and I don’t remember what was in it, other than that I titled it “Blankets.”  I think it made my parents very sad.

February ninth is the date that I remember.  Not the fifth, which is today.  I’m not sure what significance the ninth actually has, other than that which I’ve ascribed to it – I don’t know if that was when I learned he was dead, if that was when he died, if that was the day I flew to San Francisco, or if it has some other, even more disconnected relevance.  I don’t think it matters.

The ninth is next Thursday.  I know this because the gourmet foodstuffs my father and I ordered will be arriving on Tuesday, the seventh: Four quail, fifteen quail eggs, a pre-made container of duck-and-veal demi-glace, two large sections of duck foie gras, and some sort of caviar selection that my father has designed.  It feels strange to me to be celebrating.  Last year, I think I spent most of the day in my car, driving up and down the canyon roads near our house in Boulder.  This year, I am in Summit County, skiing at Copper Mountain and Arapahoe basin. 

My father told me yesterday that he thought Hart would approve of our plan of stuffing ourselves with expensive, decadent food.  I don’t know what Hart would have thought.  Hart is dead.  I don’t usually like ascribing emotions or opinions to him.  Josh is probably right, though.  There are things that Hart liked, and pigging out was one of them. 

At some point in the last several weeks I reminded myself that it was February, which meant that it had already been two years.  I must have blocked it out again, because yesterday, when my father reminded me, I realized I had forgotten.  I think it would have come back to me as we got closer to the ninth.  February fifth holds no meaning for me, although it apparently does for my parents.  That’s up to them.  Mostly, I find that reality is what you make it.

The second year has been worse than the first.  When I came back from school, I felt as though I had some sort of purpose.  I was not pleased to be back in Colorado, but I could tell myself that I was doing my part to keep our family together, and that, at least, had some sort of meaning, some sort of importance.  Working at my father’s company was just a temporary thing; it helped him get back to work and it kept me from losing my mind.  Now, it has been two years since I graduated, and the only progress I have made is, finally, completing a set graduate school applications.  I haven’t even decided if I want to go back to graduate school in English.  Some days I think that I should go to culinary school.  Or get more serious about cobbling, sewing, tailoring, even biology.  Even law school.  Once again, I’m working at Stratus, feeling more out of place than I ever did during my first stint, feeling as though I ought to be doing something else, feeling as though I’m somehow gaming the system and stifling my own growth, but also feeling relieved at having a job. 

People ask me, “How are you doing?” Or, “How are your parents?” I always tell them, “OK.” Usually, I don’t want to talk to them.  I don't know what they're asking.  Do they mean, "How are you doing?" Or do they mean, "How are you coping with the death of your brother?" Most people don’t ask, though; they’ll ask me what I’ve been up to, what I’ll be doing next year, if I’m planning on staying in Colorado.  I’ve been here for two years.  Two years is a long time.  Have you seen Finding Nemo? You know how the Ellen Degeneres-fish repeats “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming,” to herself, over and over again?  When I got back from school, that’s what I would tell myself to do. “Just keep swimming; Stop, and you’ll sink.  You’ll drown.  You’ll die.  You’ll wallow, you’ll be stuck, stuck somehow somewhere someway.

I knew that the first year after Hart died would be a bad year.  I didn’t think that the second year would be worse. The first year was survival. The second year is uncertain, vague, gelatinous, lacking in gravity.  What do you do when you realize that you are alive?  That you are alive, but that nothing will ever be the same again, ever?  It felt like someone had accidentally hit “pause,” that Hart had just stepped out for a minute, and that soon enough he’d step right back in.  I spent a year keeping my head above water.  I don’t know what to do now. 

I have nightmares about Hart.  Not that he’s dead, but that he’s alive.  He’s alive, and he’s just been pretending, or hiding, or there’s been some terrible misunderstanding.  I’m always angry when he reappears: “How could you do this?! Why did you have to die?  Why can’t you stay dead?”  My dream-identity can never cope with the double-shock of learning that he died, acclimating, and then learning that he’s alive; and so I wish that he were dead still, that I didn’t have to (once again) re-map the world in my throbbing head.  I feel very guilty about these dreams.

I have a few things of Hart’s.  They’re mostly unrecognizable now.  I have a pair of black, coated jeans that I bought with him while we were in Gothenburg.  I tailored them with my sewing machine, and now they’re like leggings.  I have a pair of APC jeans that I gave to him after I purchased a better-fitting pair.  Those were bleached, and worn, and now they’ve been dyed black.  I also have his Gameboy.  This summer, when my parents and I went to the family cabin on Lake Sunapee, I brought the newest Pokémon game with me.  Hart loved Pokémon, and whenever we went on family trips he’d bring it with him.  It was often infuriating at the time, but it felt right to bring it with me and slog my way through the game.  

I do not have enough time to have any time to waste.  I do not have time for bland foods, bland movies, or bland days. I do not have the patience for bland people.  I do not like to kill time, waste time, or pass time.  I don’t like it when I catch myself doing it.  It’s difficult to quantify that, to know how things fit into such a heavy-duty hierarchy.  I think, though, that it is most important to not stop having fun.  Surviving is not living. 

a glass

I've been trying, for a while, to come up with a variation on the "last word," which is my favorite cocktail. Attempts have included such disparate - and ultimately discarded - ingredients as rum, brandy, bourbon (this showed promise), and even Malibu's sultry coconut delight. Tonight, however, I feel as though I've finally hit on the winner:

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Synthese:

2 tequila (silver)
1 green chartreuse
1 maraschino (luxardo)
.8 st. germain
~.7 lime juice

Shake until very cold, strain into cocktail glass

Garnish with lime wheel.

Now, I was doing my measuring with a fruit juicer, meaning that only a rough 2 Oz. measurement was available to me. So, this could be slightly off. However, I think it's quite a successful drink, especially considering it all came about as a response to my current lack of gin.

The tequila and lime is a very obvious combination, but both the St. Germain and Maraschino work surprisingly nicely with a base that I really hadn't considered before tonight (I'm not much of a tequila drinker). It's much smoother than the Last Word, which is both a good and bad thing. The tequila gives the drink a sort of velvety smokiness, and although I enjoy the rough edges on the gin, this ends up being a drink that is familiar without tasting like a margarita. There's a definite kick to the combination, and I was pleased to discover that it really wasn't "too summery," which is really all that comes to mind when I think of tequila and lime.

So, I encourage you all to try your own spins on your favorite cocktails, as you never really know when you'll come up with a gem. Do try this one out as well, although you may have to do a bit of experimenting with proportion to nail the taste you're looking for.

City of Mirth

I tried to climb one of the towers, once. One of the big ones, I mean. The little ones are easy to climb, you can just shimmy up those until you get lost in the fog and can’t see the ground and it starts to get dark. Then you go down, if you don’t want to die. But you can’t get your hands around the big ones, and so you can’t climb them. They’re smooth, smooth as polished gold. There are no ledges, no handholds, no nothing. So, when I say that I tried to climb one of the big towers, what I really did was hurl myself into the side of a tower a few times and then give up.

There are no doors in the towers of Mirth – none that I’ve found, at least. There are windows, though, high up; windows behind which lights must be turning on and off, because something is up there, blinking randomly in the fog. I’ve never seen a person behind one of those windows. I’ve never seen anyone walk out of or into a tower either. But there are Mirthians. Oh yes, they’re there in their gilded spires, playing with light-switches while all around them the ones who come to Mirth scream and disappear.

On the subject of pants

I've never really cared for cuffed pants. Granted, I don't wear trousers often, but when I do, I don't really want to look like some asshole who hangs out at Pitti and spends the rest of the year blogging about yachts and tassel loafers.

Thickening

Driving a 996TT around Boulder is a lot like driving a WRX around Boulder:

1) Both have four wheels
2) Both have four wheel drive
3) Both are manual
4) Both have boxer engines

Well, I guess that those are about the only similarities, really - at least on paper. One is a 480 HP pocket supercar, the other is a friendly little four-wheeled ski-lift. But they're both sort of burbly and comfortable, and, well, car-like, and the Porsche isn't nearly as intimidating as you'd think.

It has surprisingly excellent visibility, with the one caveat being that you're pretty much staring at everyone else's bumpers when you drive around, which is actually a bit unnerving when you're surrounding by 3-ton SUVs carrying distracted mothers too busy using their cell phones to pull over for you.

In the shop's lot, I found myself laughing like a maniac as the starter ticked over and the throaty woofle of the flat-six filled the bubble cabin. It sounds like a tyrannosaurus trying to clear its throat, in the absolute best of ways.

The gearshift is very light, as is the clutch. It's certainly not a workout to drive the turbo, and after the initial trepidation that comes with pulling out into traffic, working through the gears really is as easy as in my Subaru. There's no reason to turn on the radio, because once you're moving, the heavy, throbbing bass of the engine is fairly all-encompassing, and does a great - and probably necessary - job of reminding you what your'e driving.

It's lurking malevolently in my garage at the moment, hunched and brooding like some horrific beast-machine from a mechanized, dystopian future. I'm looking forward to the next few weeks.

Complaints

Really, we're all stuck in a rut. How come we're still using cotton to make pants? Still driving internal combustion engines? HOW THE FUCK WILL WE COLONIZE THE COSMOS IF WE CAN'T GET OVER GAY MARRIAGE? I dream of newness, of some monolithic Thing for which we have no adjectives.

Aside

Can you even believe how fucking awesome whales are? Incredible.

re: previous

And then I heard it: a queer whistling that echoed through the horrific cubes and towers of those ancient, cyclopean peaks - breathless, tuneless piping; as if some eldritch power lurked there among the endless clouds, and with whispering words beckoned us all onwards, onwards, to those lofty, lonely heights at the mountains of madness.

A video

I took this from someone else's tumblr.

a scallop

"I brought you sea-glass," I said, wiping my nose with the back of my hand, "And a shell. I think it was a clam."

She smiled at me from her chair, and held out her left hand, palm up. I gave it to her, and she felt its wavy ridges and fluted edges. It looked soft, chalky.

"Pretty," she said.

"Have you eaten?" I said.

"A little."

"Are you hungry?"

"No. I'm fine." She put the shell on the table in front of her, and turned to face me. She held her hand out, and I took it in mine.

"I don't think it was a clam," she said, and smiled again, slightly.

The sun was setting as we walked outside together, bleeding crimson across the golden-blue of sea and sky.

"Sky-blue," I said, looking at her. "That's my favorite. Like your eyes. When it gets grey and cloudy from the sand."

"I always liked the bottle-green," she said, staring out towards the water.

We stood and watched as the sun fell slowly into the horizon.

The sand was still warm beneath my feet. I dug my toes in, and wiggled them. My nose was still running.

"My eyes itch," I said.

She said nothing. I shuffled my sandy feet a step or two closer to her, sand up to my ankles.

"I don't think it's too late," I said.

"You know it is," she said, looking towards me.

"Let's talk to the doctor first," I said. "He said that he thought...let's talk to him first, after we get home."

The last rays of light were struggling over the water. I looked down at my sunken feet and wiggled my toes wider apart. Little mountains of sand rose and fell, like waves.

"Would you really want to try again?"

My feet were getting cold in the cool sand. I looked over at her, but she was staring out over the water, eyes grey.

I held her hand as we walked slowly back up the beach, helping her to find her way over the rocks when we turned up the path. The house was dark.

I dipped my sandy feet in the water bucket on the porch and kicked the droplets off as best I could.

"No," I said, "never."

I helped her climb the stairs up to the porch, and steadied her as she put one foot in the bucket, took it out, and put the other one in. She was looking towards the water again.

"I'm sure I wouldn't either," she said, abruptly. " I don't think I ever wanted to." I waited, my hands on her shoulders.

"How would we even raise it?" she said, blue-grey eyes searching for my face in the twilight.

"The usual way, I imagine," I said. The paint on the porch was grey and cracked.

"But I could never - I mean, I would never be able to-" she stopped, spent.

"I'm so tired," she said , after a minute.

"Shall we go in?"

She turned away from me to walk towards the door, and stumbled. I caught her arm. Her hair was pulling out of its loose ponytail, and some fine strands drifted down onto her neck. She looked up at the sky and exhaled a great, even breath. We walked inside.

"It's a scallop," she said. "The ridges."

We were back at the table. I inspected my feet in the lamplight. I could feel grains of sand in between my toes. They would probably end up in my bed.

"Not a clam?"

She smiled and gave me the shell.

"Not a clam."

It was pinkish and transparent in the light, like a watercolor. The inside was smooth and white. One of the small fins at the base of the fan was cracked.

"Here," I said, and she searched for it uncertainly before I placed it back in her hand, and she ran her thumb up and down the ridges.

"I hate that I don't want to try again," she said, venomously. "I should want to."

"Why? It could have been even worse," I said.

"Worse? I can't see."

"It could have been worse than that. You-"

"I what? I could have died? I wish I had."

The shell cracked. I looked at her. She dropped half of it, and clenched the rest in her fist.

"I hate this house."

"I like it here," I said. "I like the sound of the waves."

"I want to leave."

"We'll leave tomorrow, then."

"I don't want to go back home."

"We'll go somewhere else."

"Where?"

"Where would you like to go?"

"I thought I would like the ocean," she said.

"Maybe you would like a different ocean?"

"I don't want to go anywhere. But I don't want to stay here."

An empty wine bottle on a shelf, full of sand, cast a long shadow on the wall

"Are you hungry?" I said.

"No, I'm not fucking hungry," she said, quietly.

I sat there with her, at the table, as she turned the scallop in her palm, over, and over.

The sun rose in the morning, and while it was still cool I walked up and down the beach, collecting sea-glass.