Saturday, June 28, 2008

The Fabulous and Not So


Lately I've been thinking about the way we present ourselves on our blogs (as well as in our lives). The way we can make an ordinary thing seem like our life is kissed by something so great, well, we just have to explode and take photos and put it out there in the cosmos for others to come across.


My new chair came. I took it in a cab home. It was sunny and we drove over the Brooklyn Bridge. It cost me $30...I was supposed to go out last night and meet a good friend not from here for her birthday, but I couldn't. I was too exhausted and heart broken. The ex is already back on Jdate. I know, I never blog of these things---the really personal ones. I like to guard my ~real~ life and keep those private moments, well private. So I don't know how long this post will actually stay up. But I'm digressing.


And I'm also living in the past a little bit and I'm sure I'm going through all the things anyone who has ever gone through a break up has been through. This was a man I thought I could marry. I guess I was living in some deluded life that he would realize what it was we had and he would not be able to let go completely. I don't know if this is the case, but I most certainly do not have an online dating presence.


Though as a woman, I suppose these things are a little easier. Wear a cute shirt to a poetry reading and read a poem about menstruation and you will get asked for a drink afterwards. So I know maybe I shouldn't let my mind run in these circles. He did say the dates weren't good. In my mind, he was still mine...


Maybe I need to be hit over the head with this. Maybe I shouldn't waste my tears. Maybe I should sieze the day---after all, I've been in bed since 7 p.m. last night. And I'm sure that my mr. right is out there and has probably already emailed me a poem about me or spent the better half of the evening listening to me snivel, or maybe he knows the right place to have dessert, or can hang shelves. I want to believe it's out there. But I'm still tired and my heart feels like the kitchen after the restaurant's closed. Or like my new chair in the early morning light. My favorite jeans within reaching distance.


6 comments:

MacGregor Rucker said...

I share your reservations about keeping personal things out of the blog realm--a separation of church and state so to speak, but perhaps it's the perfect place. Catharsis... or something. Having also had a recent split from someone I thought could be "the one," I've yet to record any of my feelings about it on my own blog, or even in a personal diary. There just weren't proper words, or I didn't have any anyway. It did occur to me that I can articulate everything except my most profound feelings, both joy and hurt... but maybe a blog is the right place... instead of pouring endless laments out to friends, who really can't bring comfort. Some things need to be said aloud but who is the right audience? But you were brave to put this up. And I hope you don't mind my commenting... Loss resonates. Enjoy that chair in the meantime. Take comfort where you find it. The small moments count.

Carly said...

thanks so much for responding---I had hoped people would and I still feel like I have a lot more to say, but I think it will travel to some "fiction" writing. My mom says to put my feelings in a basket---get them out but keep them somewhere where you don't have to confront them all the time. Blog = Basket here I suppose!

Unknown said...

Carly, I'm so glad you posted this. I hope you don't delete it. I particularly love the restaurant kitchen metaphor. I feel completely hampered in expressing real feeling on my blog because so many family members (and ex-inlaws), students, and others visit it. I started a private "members only" blog just for my girlfriends shortly after I learned that my marriage was ending. But I haven't had the heart to post on it since I started the disaster that was/is dating. In some ways, it's sort of the Wordsworthian principle of "spontaneous overflow of powerful emotion recollected in tranquility." The "tranquility" is the tough part, of course, and that takes time, more time than an up-to-the-minute blog offers.
I guess this proves to me that there is no substitute for the paper journal--that private notebook just for me. Eventually, of course, it'll all be in what I think of as "The Memoir." Well, one can always hope.

Unknown said...

Oh, and by the way, I have total chair envy. I really need you to go furniture shopping with me!

Carly said...

We'll do chairs, bedding, and bourbon! I'll bring the flask :)

That will go into the memoir---that and the slide rule and GLDB---I want to be in there for the humor and cornbread.

Maggie May said...

i totally understand this feeling and the feeling of that half lit picture.

i could say something trite here about it all getting better matter of fact i guess i just snuck it in sorry for the run on sentence

this is interesting because i just wrote a poem about hearts=