Choose.

LINDA (43)
The thing is Martin, there a  million different lives you could be living right now. You could entertain the idea of that girl in LA you dated in college, or the one you never did, or the job you were offered in Portland. There are a million different choices that you could have made that would have led you somewhere else. You could be vacationing in North Korea like you wanted, or working for Legal Aid in some far away country, or having whatever amazing adventures in your head that you thought you'd have.  Who knows maybe in some alternate universe you're happy with that girl, and you have that job, or your single and your kayaking in Iceland, or your still in your hometown married to Maya, or whoever.  There are a million people out there that you could be with, that you could be content with, if you just chose them. You could be with anyone if you actually chose, if you weren't constantly looking for something.  But you didn't, you didn't do any of that. You used to say you wanted your work to succeed so it would be like you lived everywhere in the world at once. You can't have everything at once.  You have this. So choose it. Choose us. Cause we're what you have. We want you to choose us. To be here.
 This isn't something I, or life did to you.  You get a vote here, and every day with your complacency, you choose this whether you admit that or not.  I  actively choose this. I choose you, every day I wake up and I re-decide. I recommit by being here, with you.  And  yeah, it's not going to be as exciting as the what ifs and the could be's, and photos and e-mails of other possibilities, but that life that probably would have gotten mundane too. But it's here. And it's yours. And you can commit to that, you can accept that, and be here, or you can just go and always wish you were somewhere else.

Not for our eyes. (Based on words from a friend)

There are things that are not for our eyes.
If my mother could have googled my father she would have run, or maybe he would have, regardless I wouldn't exist.
There are things we shouldn't know, of others others, unless we are told that there are others. There should not be photographic 'proof' to mill on.  There should not be images or videos of who people are perceived to be, or want to be perceived to be, not who they are when they pause on the phone line, not the sentences they form that are intended for us, looks intended for us, words intended for us. It just gives our narrative pictures, springboards for the mind, and instead of creating things we create stories. There are things that are not for our eyes.  Things that came before and things that came after. Things that never come so we build them.

For a while, I looked for signs of who she was. Of photos or posts, or words or clues, or something that could indicate that she existed. That she tried to piss on your wall. Essentially that's what we do right, we piss on people's walls. Boys walls, girls walls, like dogs. Mark our territory through likes and comments and  here here here here I am. And I haven't marked you in a while, I haven't read you in a while I haven't spoken to you in a while. I haven't seen your face, or heard your voice, I don't know if I want to, if there would be a point, but yet it's okay that we're intertwined. It's an agreement we made before all of this, that, and the offense of pulling out at this moment would make something out of nothing, or maybe it wouldn't. And I hid you on some-things, others I can't.  So I'm thrown some of you, and you me, and our feeds cross and our friends cross. It seems quite stupid feeds crossing, when two actual voices can't even speak.


You built me, and I built you. You'll build someone else, and I will too. It's what you do with the person who is there in the morning that matters, and maybe our stories didn't hold up, maybe hers will, maybe his will.

And the thing is we all build people. Create a narrative to suit ours, regardless of word bites, and photofeeds, tweets, and updates, and likes and dislikes. Since humans met they've been building narratives. 'I like the line of his cave drawing of an antelope he must be sensitive. " " His shoulders are broad he'll be a good provider and husband". "Her hip to waist ratio means she must be fertile" is replaced by a million meanings for an arm touch.  "He listens to NPR, so someday we'll listen to Ira Glass on Sunday mornings while making pancakes with our two point five children". We fill in blanks after a beer, a glass of wine, some coffee, a night. Eventually though those memories fade until the next contact or were eventually replaced by actual reality.  We built a frame and replaced it with solids when we knew the foundation was there, in relationships, in friendships in everything. We earned actual facts and in the meantime our imagination held places for some, not all but some.

There are things that are not for our eyes. Before this there were people we never knew existed that we never knew to build. People I will never meet, that might live miles away. People with bright eyes, or too much eyeliner, who like the same music, or have bad taste in music. There are people who travel,  and seem sweet, or sexy, or trashy, or simple or  just different, or some other adjective I choose to put on them based on mere pages. People whose very existence make me seem like a stalker. People who probably don't know I EXIST.  People who I wouldn't recognize in the grocery store.  I'm sure some have built the narrative around mine, around digital me, one that is far more exciting than the reality. And I'm sure there's a girl somewhere thinking I'm another's other, pissing on someones wall. And the truth is if she or I just built stories around ourselves, and lived those stories, we'd both have more to show for it.

SHAKE

KYLE, 33
'Shake it off'.  My dad used to say that.  I hated it, it was so condescending. I was in little league, a catcher and I sucked. I did. I sucked. And these guys would just ram into me. Into home. Full force and I would just get the wind knocked out of me. And he'd call from the stand. 'Shake if off'.  'Shake it off Kyle'. 'Let it go'. I mean that's what people say, and you don't really think about it, it's just what people say. Well not everyone, like when you get into a car accident you're supposed to stay put. Survivors have been known to have huge adrenaline rushes, and just run for miles in a minute, just run into a field or something, and just shake. Right after an accident. Because that shock, that feeling needs to go somewhere. Physiologically animals do it, they're scared they shake, they show it.  They release it. But not us ' we stand up straight, we breathe, we toughen up'.  But instead modern medicine, they tell us to stay still, don't move.  Sit tight. So it just sits there in us. The trauma or feeling or whatever you want to call it.

And I was just sitting there at my desk, at work. About 4:30 at work, and finally I was still, really still, feet  flat on the ground.  And my hands and my feet just went numb, and my arms twitched, vibrated. Because they wanted to move, needed to move.  And at first I wanted it to stop. I tried so hard to make it stop. The feeling. So much so that I couldn't breathe. 25 minutes. And it wouldn't, they just kept moving. Cause God, it's been months. I've been trying to shake this thing, ignore this thing for months. deal with it, And at first I resisted, the pulsing, the bubbling, because I've talked about it, you know. Talked about him you know? Thought I made whatever peace I needed to make, for now at least, whatever peace I could. Because how do you, I mean that takes time.  But there I was just moving. Twitching under my desk, as people walked down the hall. Shaking under my desk.  And I just decided to sit in it, sit in the shakiness, sit in the discomfort, and let it pass through me. Be free in it. Almost enjoy it.  Let bits of it go. And I don't know what it was. I don't know if it's stress or tension, or thoughts, or regrets, or not forgiving stuff, or him or I don't know.  I just know that when it was done, I slept in for the first time in months I was so exhausted I slept right through my alarm. Annie had to wake me up. And I could hear him. "Shake it off Kyle. Take your time, and shake it off, It's your game". I should have been a better catcher.

PARTIES

For guys, at parties in LA, whose potential I see while staring at their shoes and eyes.

'That's interesting... Really. The things is'... The thing is I don't care. I don't care about your band, or your comedy show, or your unironic/ironic cover of 90's, or that you play 6 instruments including the key tar. Or that your gig last week was great, that you say it was great. I'm sure it was great. Or that Portland sucks, or that San Fran was cool, and that you're just happy to be back. 'So you can focus, you know? on other things? Other projects'. Or that you're instagraming this as we speak. The thing is; I would care, I could care, if you cared to ask anything about me. I look at you and know that I could care.  That I could severely utterly care about these stupid, benal, idiotic things that you share while holding a beer, if you cared about my stupid idiotic benal things.  Asked about them; my stupid idiotic benal things. Because we all have stupid things. And that's just what you talk about, you ask about, until you break through. Until you choose to care. And that's why I ask questions,  every question I ask you, I hope that the response is that thing, is that one thing that will break you through out of the stupid and idiotic and into the real. And I  don't want to know this shit; I want to know who you think you are, and you who you think I am, and who you want to be when you wake up in the morning, and who you end up being by the days end. I want to know what you're afraid in others, in yourself. I want to know if you sleep with the light on, and why. I want to know what your real laugh sounds like. Not the polite one you do in groups out of courtesy, the real one.  I want to know what flits past your eyes when you close them, what you see ahead when they open. I want to know that song you love, that movie you love, that line that makes you think, that word, that phrase, that cadence, that makes you laugh, makes you you. I want to converse in a way that makes the youness of you and the me-ness of me just float, be, meet, dance. . But instead I  just say 'that's... that's really interesting' and quietly sip my wine and wait for you to care, as you look around the room.

paralysis

I missed the turn because of the tears, and thought there was a turn where there wasn't, so I waited at the intersection at the light in the turn lane with nowhere to turn, and cried. I cried because I felt my leg. I felt my leg on the break, and I realized 3000 miles away, she couldn't. 3000 miles away my mother's leg was numb, and it burned, the plaque intercepting her nerves from the feeling. I realized the plaque could grow until there was no feeling left and that she, just not it would be paralyzed.  I thought how many times we've used that word, misused that word, 'paralyzed'. "Unable to act, the absence of motion, of feeling".  Perhaps for a moment i have been unable to act just for a moment, a second, by fear, or guilt, or life, or just that feeling of not quite being in your skin. But i have never really been nothing, felt nothing. I feel too much, there has always been a something to feel; whether it be pain or fear or joy or even apathy.  I have never felt nothing. "Nothing, no motion. Frozen. No life, no heat. Dead. Numb."  There's nothing after that, no kick, no step, no freedom. Stuck.I thought of this as I waited I thought of her feeling nothing.

It was a quick call, hours earlier. It was an after the fact conversation about emergency rooms and plaque, and a casual reference of not being able to move much less walk. A simple 'So this thing happened' like she was telling me about a minor bump in a parking lot. My mother mentions her illness with the casualty of  sharing going to a new restaurant. "So by the way I'm on IV's now".  There's a certain flair for the dramatic and self indulgence she's never had, so I inherited most of it for her. Since seven I've been feeling for her, but I couldn't feel this.

 Here I was, on the opposite coast, my foot on the break, my foot on the gas, in motion, mobile, a task I do mindlessly. Music purring through the speakers mindlessly. When I walk, steps I take mindlessly,  thoughts forming words mindlessly, these fingers I type mindlessly, ungratefully.  I can't be grateful after every step, every task ,because that gratefulness is too scary, the fragility is to scary.  The trust is too scary. The brain tells me to move and i move, I scratch my head, I squish my toes, I think to speak and before i can think it, it is done. But tonight maybe she can't, in weeks she might never,  so  I feel my foot on the gas, and turn. Not quite sure where I'm going, but I turn because I can.

frequency

LAURA
Maybe they were all lies. Everything they said what they saw. Maybe they were the kind of things that people think they want, but the idea of sustaining that being in the presence of that is too much. Maybe I'm..forget it. This isn't about me right? You said this isn't about me? And I know you think you're different, but you're not.  I mean you are because you're you, and I care about you but- You all talked about, my hands, my fingers like you talked to each other like you were paraphrasing the same script. Because you can say all those things, you can say all of it, and I can say things I don't really mean to try and make you stay. Recycled turns of phrases that I can twist but I'll believe in the moment, and it doesn't matter what you say, or I say because you're still going to leave. That's how this is going to go. After we have that obligatory cry you're going to leave.  You left in your mind weeks in, moments in, and you've just been riding the obligation of that presence. Because they all leave. I mean I guess everyone leaves everyone eventually right? And it's my fault my frequency that I'm sending out in the universe... the same thing just coming into my orbit, listening for a bit.

 And yeah sure, in about two sentences you're going to say that we'll keep in touch, that I'm 'special' or some bullshit that you want to be part of my life in some 'context', but you won't, we won't. Because I don't turn it off, can't turn it off. And I wish, I wish I could change the channel to some pop song or something, but I'm.. I'm Phillip glass. No that's pretentious I'm.. I'm that Bon Iver album you listen to when you first get it, and then after a while it's just too hard or it reminds you of something else... it's just too something. And you like it, it's a good album it's just not a 'fun' album.  I don't know.  And you'll try to call at first, and we'll get coffee twice and pretend it's normal so you can feel good about yourself, but then you'll just let it go. Let me go. All over again. And I'll find out over the internet that you're engaged to some girl, some boring, simple easy girl, at least I'll tell myself that that's who she is. Simple. And I'll envy her for being so simple. And staring at a screen I'll wish I could be more simple.

SARAH

Prospective addition for the play 'Carrying'

It was better. It was better that way. It wasn’t something I was ready for or he was ready for. It was just better. At least I thought it was, think it was. And I felt better because I knew I wasn’t the only one. Before it happened I had taken my friend Erin, and I sat in the lobby and watched these teenage boys, wait for their girlfriends and play xbox. With their hoods up playing video games, kids playing games. And I was a kid. And I’m not saying we used it as birth control or making excuses for the girls I knew, know that have had three or four. Or excuses for me or whatever. But it was better. I was 23, 24. A year out of college. And it wasn’t like I had been with a lot of guys, and it wasn’t like he was an important one. Before this, important. He worked at the bar I worked at, he played keyboards in some ironic cover band, he sent things into McSweeneys, and was tall, and sweet and I didn’t know his middle name. Because we had only hung out for a month. But I usually ask people what there middle names are, it gives you a false sense of intimacy. I mean you don’t think about that, if you thought every time you had sex ‘would you be willing to be bonded for the rest of your life with this person in raising a human being together’ no one would get laid. So it was better. It was the better thing to do, and I called Lisa and cried and decided. And she offered to come and go with me, and he offered but Erin said she would. And the appointment was all set, and the night before I just started bleeding. And I bled until it was gone. I just sat in the bathroom and I bled. And I felt relieved and guilty all at the same time. And I’m not saying that I’m being punished or whatever, with this thing, now, because I don’t know that I believe in something bigger to punish me. And maybe it was my body just rejecting it, saving it. And maybe that’s what this thing is too I don’t know. But the thoughts we have, something has to be listening right? Even if it’s our smallest cells listening, something has to be listening. Something has to grow.