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CHANGES

WAVING GOODBYE SOFTLY TO THE PROMISED LAND

WAVING GOODBYE SOFTLY TO THE PROMISED LAND

Know what heartbreak feels like? It's a continuous plummeting in the way back of your throat right near where the words usually form, a rhythmic thudding with zero rhythm that also feels like you're being strangled by the hopes you used to have for tomorrow. It's a burning you swallow with every single gulped breath. It's the purest of your dreams ricocheting through the sky like fireworks that never explode or pop – they never sparkle with the kind of fiery light a piece of you thinks might be the one thing that will actually save you.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

The snow came down in flakes so large and fluffy that they reminded me instantly of that book I used to love when I was little, the one about the boy who experienced so much delight during a snowy day that he tried to keep a bit of it as something tangible so he shoved a snowball in his pocket to have a memento of the moment.  It’s always during the very early mornings or the middle of the nights when the tales I read as a child feel the most present and maybe it’s because I feel then like I am myself part of a waking dream.  It’s funny – those mini memories never wind around any of the major memories from that time.  I think far more about how I loved Sesame Street and the way I knew every single word of that Blondie album than I ever reflect upon my parents’ divorce or how I went from not even thinking about something like heat to knowing quite well what kerosene smells like.

THE WAVES

THE WAVES

“Tuffy!” my father called out, and I could hear his voice rebounding against the rolling waves.  “Be careful because I won’t be here.”

I was fourteen years old and it was August.  I stood in the East Hampton surf, willing myself to ride the next wave that came my way without being caught inside of it like I had been that time last summer when a chaos of funneled water spun me into what I’d been briefly sure was the absolute nothingness of forever.  My father was heading down the shore to cast for bluefish.  In less than an hour, he’d be dead.  Those were the last words he ever spoke to me.

And the thing is, I have been careful.  I knew that to fall apart completely in those first terrifying teenage months would only serve to harm me spectacularly in the long run and I guess I’ve always been someone who considered where one moment might fit into the puzzle that was the rest of it.  So instead I did the normal sort of rebelling that was so common for a suburban girl growing up in the days when people looked into one another’s faces instead of down at a screen.  I sometimes drank cheap beer in basements.  I came home from afternoon barbeques held in my friends’ backyards covered in hickeys.  I knew the terror of the second when the condom breaks and how difficult it is to pee on a stick when your hand is shaking and you’re not sure if the screaming is inside of your own head or some external horrible audible omen.

TALLULAH

TALLULAH

I was on the phone with my mother the other night when I broke in and interrupted her while she was midsentence. She was right in the middle of telling me a story about how she’d just been featured in the Style section of a newspaper and that she’d thought it hilarious when a reporter actually stopped her at an event and asked, “Who are you wearing?” as though she was Jennifer Lawrence sauntering down some red carpet while dripping in Dior instead of holding a purse that had once belonged to her own mother.  I asked her to please hold on for just a second because I needed to parent my puppy immediately.

“Tallulah,” I said patiently to the white ball of fluff standing in my kitchen, a ball of fluff that is clearly made up of equal parts goodness and demonic intentions.  “You must stop leaping high into the air because you think that trick will get you a cookie.  I will give you a treat after you show me that you’re a good girl by eating the kibble you’ve ignored all day.”

My Maltipoo cocked her head to the side as I spoke and then she looked me straight in the eye.  I stared back at her, my gaze unwavering, and she slowly walked towards her bowl of food and began eating her kibble. 

“Had that been Wookie,” I said to my mother who had waited patiently and silently as I bartered with an animal, “that fight would have lasted for three days and would only have ended once I apologized for my behavior.”

THE MEADOW BEHIND THE HILL

THE MEADOW BEHIND THE HILL

When it comes to a bedroom, my general rule is that I slumber far more effectively when I can theoretically see my breath.  I’m not entirely sure where this preference comes from or even recall how long it’s been a habit, but my guess is all of those years spent tucked under the covers inside of dank and steamy cabins at sleepaway camp probably contributed to my current hope that I’ll see frost forming on my windowpanes in the height of summer.

Sometimes, though, manmade chilliness does not quite go as planned.  It was a few months ago when I crawled into a bed in someone else’s home and fell into what initially was a blissfully heavy sleep.  I woke up less than an hour later due to a miserable combination of factors:  a puppy exploring a bed she’s not used to, some Netflix show about gangsters blaring at some ungodly volume, and an air conditioner that was apparently made by NASA to approximate what Pluto feels like.  I tried snuggling further under the covers.  I thought about that Barbados heat wave I’d once sweat straight through.  I nestled into the person completely passed out beside me who clearly wasn’t impacted in the least by everything in that room that was causing me total misery.  I considered getting up to turn down the air, but I was afraid Tallulah would think it was morning because, while she’s a very wise puppy, she has yet to master distinctions in time when she gets excited.  I finally realized my only real option was to undress the guy next to me.  I figured the best-case scenario was I could put on his clothing to warm up, but should he misread anything, sex might work to thaw the frostbite, too. 

I did not end up putting on his clothing.  And my clothing didn’t stay on either. 

COMMON GROUND

COMMON GROUND

“I didn’t raise you to do something like that,” my mother said to me – and I swear I could almost see icicles forming on her tongue.

“Actually,” I responded, “You raised me to do exactly that.”

********* 

To fully understand this story, it’s essential that you know two things:

1.    I will do anything for my brother.

2.    I will go anywhere if there’s even the slightest chance that a pig in a blanket will make an appearance.

It was with those two factors dancing like alcohol-poisoned sugarplums in my mind that I agreed to accompany several members of my family to a political fundraiser just a few days ago.   Those events are not typically my thing.  I don’t own a business so I don’t view a proximity to politicians as a necessary evil and I generally tend to not want to attend gatherings that are fueled by very small glasses of wine and stilted, albeit polite, chatter.  The only political events I’ve attended over the last decade were ones my family hosted or events they were honored at and to those I’d show up on time and I’d smile at everyone and eventually I’d go hide out in the kitchen so I could snag the appetizers first and also pump the caterers for tips about how to make a platter of food look extra pretty.  The best tip I ever got was to form the dough around the mini hotdog into the shape of a daisy and then poke that sucker through and whammo: a pig in a blanket in the shape of a flower is born! Then you shove sticks into them to give it all some height and plunge the sticks into some wheatgrass and the whole thing comes out looking like a blooming garden of nitrate deliciousness. I had a ton of them made for a party I threw to celebrate the release of my first book and those blossoming piggies looked so beautiful I almost cried. 

THEN

THEN

I come from a generation of girls who wanted Jordan Catalano for a boyfriend even though he couldn’t read.

I knew the names of the biggest models in the world and I slept in a bedroom with their faces plastered across the wall, aspirational black and white imagery that would become both inspiring and crippling when the day finally arrived and I realized I’d never clear 5’4” without heels and I’d never be able to describe my body as lanky. But sometimes when I couldn’t sleep, I would look up at those pictures and try to figure out what it was precisely about Christy Turlington’s mouth that made it so unique.  I thought it might have something to do with the way her lips turned up even when she wasn’t smiling and I practiced smiling that way in the mirror, but my smile was always too wide and I could never pull it off. It was Linda Evangelista who was my favorite, though.  In spite of all the rumors that she was the biggest monster around, I found the sharp angles of her face almost otherworldly and arranged the way they were somehow made her almost magically beautiful and besides, there were more than a few days when her haughty bitchiness was what I aspired to the most.

In an adolescence where Google searches didn’t yet exist, the only porn I ever saw was through static. I often wondered if I was the only person in the world who sometimes turned to that snowy channel in the dead of night.  Since I was certain I must be, I never discussed it with anybody else.

THE RAIN

THE RAIN

It’s raining, and I gave away my umbrella to a guy who swore that he loved me. I’d be furious, but I’ve always been the sort of girl who prefers to dance in a downpour instead of running for some shelter.  Besides, I look really good wet.  

I used to be proud of being someone who routinely beckons the unpredictable and the mildly unattainable to inch closer to me, but now I find myself wondering: is the stability inherent in feeling warm and safe worthy of cancelling out the mystery I’ve never been able to stop myself from craving? There has to be a balance that exists between the embrace of the comfortable and the thrill of the unknown.  Sometimes I’m positive I’ve found it, but then a new hunger beckons and I tiptoe away from the light to see what’s crouching in the shadows and reflecting up at me from the puddles and I can no longer even pretend to deny that there’s something undeniably alluring about the torrential grey rain. The sudden exposure, the way it almost feels dangerous – how it soaks you so completely that it’s like you’re newly constructed, a different assortment of cells than you were before.  And there’s a wantonness that comes from being cracked open by all that water.  Your shirt is molded to your body and your hair drips down onto your shoulders and, even with lines of mascara running like indecipherable messages down your cheeks, you know nobody has ever understood you more completely than the way you’re understood during that storm. You also know you have never felt sexier or more alive.  

For me, the barrage of rain has always brought forth a feeling of possibility.  There’s something about the wildness of that kind of weather and the scent it leaves behind that I’m drawn to far more than all those Clean Cotton candles lining my living room.  The patter of water hits my downstairs windows at odd angles and I recline on my couch with a cup of peppermint tea and I stare at the patterns made by the reverberation of the water and I become who I really am:  a dreamer.  And that’s a far more complicated thing to be than some rather fortunate people will ever know.

It’s interesting that a song titled after a body of water brings a question I’ve often wondered about bobbing to the mind’s surface.  In The River, Springsteen poses, “Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true, or is it something worse?” and I’m here to tell you that, from my perspective, a dream that remains unfulfilled is way fucking worse than a lie.  Those are the dreams that will haunt you.  They will invade your sleep and become the cause of your nightmares and they will reoccur time and time again until you begin pondering why your own subconscious is clearly plotting against you.  The unrealized dreams will stay spinning in your thoughts and they will warp your soul with shooting pangs of pain that whisper and hiss, “This almost happened for you…” while you wince and cower and proclaim to your bathroom mirror and to the most overcast of skies that you will never allow yourself to dream ever again.  You will not be able to keep that promise; it will be just another dream you’ve had that will not come true.

If you’re not entirely vigilant, the unfulfilled dream can end up becoming that which defines you – and that’s a very dangerous slope to teeter on.  What exists just over that jagged cliff is a sea of regret, an undertow of blistering anger that’s cut with a toxic dusting of sadness.  Simply put, it is loss you will be wading through if you allow yourself to fall and you will find yourself drowning in something that never really was.  You have to fight to regain your footing.  You must force yourself to remember what was real and what was just a candy-coated illusion.  Yes, just the idea of it tasted like honey and unbridled fucking delight, but it was never tangible.  You never actually held it with both of your hands.  There were times you had a good solid grip, but there were even more times you watched as it slipped away.  

But cautionary whispers and self-directed ruthless censure aside, I have to tell you that I heard an expression the other day that settled someplace deep inside my head in a manner that feels like it could maybe be permanent. A man was speaking about a friend he’d lost touch with and there was both wistfulness and sorrow lining the tenor of his voice as he described that person as “one of my favorite dreaming partners.”  And in spite of it all, I think if I could choose how some people remember me during those bleak rainy days when memories always feel heightened, it would be as a worthy coconspirator who listened and cheered and indulged their dreaming.  It would be as a person who had her own dreams.  And it would be as the girl who made them feel like they could and would accomplish anything and everything, even as the heavens opened and the rains fell down.      

 

Nell Kalter teaches Film and Media at a school in New York.  She is the author of the books THAT YEAR and STUDENT, both available on amazon.com in paperback and for your Kindle.  Also be sure to check out her website at nellkalter.com Her Twitter is @nell_kalter

 

THE METAPHORICAL DOOR SLAM

THE METAPHORICAL DOOR SLAM

A bunch of years ago, my best friend was muddling her way through a long and tedious stretch of being single.  It wasn’t that she was dying to be part of a couple just then, but she was starting to feel like she was slowly being driven mad from all the cavorting she found herself doing with sociopaths and psychopaths as the sun went down, to say nothing of the emotional kleptomaniacs she associated with during daylight hours.  Making matters even more trying was the way her vacant relationship status somehow managed to weave its way into every single conversation she had during every single meal she shared with every single member of her rather large family.  It happened time and time again.  She would arrive home from THE WORST FUCKING BRUNCH IN ALL OF HISTORY (EVEN THOUGH THE WHITEFISH WAS REALLY GOOD) and, emotionally mauled, she would pick up the phone and call me. As a friend, I made it my business to be supportive.  I tried to offer her solutions to her very real problems.  I suggested, for example, that she put herself up for adoption and maybe find a family that prided itself on its patterns of withholding.  I volunteered to take pictures of her twisted into that yoga pose where her ankles end up tucked behind her ears and then post it online because I was certain she’d land a boyfriend in less than an hour.  But in the short-run, I encouraged her to maybe keep her dating experiences to herself, to not share them with her mother unless the story involved a guy who might actually end up looming large in her future.  I also told her to stop being wooed by the lure of bagels and lox, that she could purchase that shit herself and then enjoy a quiet meal where nobody asked her to pass the cream cheese after guesstimating exactly how many seemingly perfect men she’d allowed to get away from her during her twenties because she’d prioritized sexy stubble over basic human decency back in those hypercrazy days.

Since I too have made several romantic choices that were based almost entirely on some guy having the kind of scruff that caused my knees to buckle whenever I caught a glimpse of it across the room or gazed up at it while I was reclining between his open legs, I maybe wasn’t the best person to turn to for advice.  Still, I wanted my friend to be happy and I knew that sometimes she wasn’t even looking for advice or answers; she just really needed to decompress and talk through her stress.  I recall particularly how our conversations after holiday dinners tended to be especially long since as she would recount every insane comment her mother made over the entire evening. (Passover was always the worst, what with all that time spent at the table before even a fucking bit of food is served.  And the Israelites thought they had it rough…) But probably my favorite comment of all time was made by my friend’s mother during one particular Seder and it’s when she asked her daughter, “Aren’t you proud of me for not even bringing up that you’re still boyfriendless?  Aren’t I handling your loneliness so well?”  To this day, I cannot believe there were knives and electric turkey carvers on that table and nobody ended up in the hospital or in prison.

THE FAUXMANCE & THE FOOL

THE FAUXMANCE & THE FOOL

There are certain things I just don’tshare all that easily and I guess the reason for my reluctance is pretty simple: they’re the things that cause me to feel temporary (but still momentarily paralyzing) paroxysms of shame. Shame, you see, is a tough one. I can totally temper my anger and I can quietly quell my joy, but my shame comes roaring out like breath that’s been laced with fire, as though I’ve instantly been transformed into one of those mythical beasts from literature and film that have always psychologically traumatized me for absolutely no good reason whatsoever. Shame happens, and I find myself emotionally and mentally pummeled by something I probably should have – and could have – avoided in the first place. Very rarely will I find the strength to turn my fury on the person who caused the actual distress to infiltrate my life. No, I am far too preoccupied with going inward so I can more effectively beat the shit out of myself until my brain and my stomach and my tear ducts become as bruised and abused as my heart.