the love dress of anna tap.

“she would come and sit with us, bringing one of her blue dresses, a needle and some black cotton. at first i thought she was mending some holes but gradually i began to understand that anna was stitching words into the dress. the first word she wrote was peter. the second word she wrote was loved. the third word she wrote was claire. as weeks passed she wrote other sentences with black cotton on her dress.

monday morning epiphanies include:

- the knowledge that we will never get back together, nor will it ever be a good idea for us to get back together, we work sometimes as friends and never as lovers. so it goes.
- feeding into terrible cycles of insecurities and ex-games are painful and don’t help anyone grow-up/on.
- there is nothing wrong with me except for how poorly i perceive myself.

i vow to:

not spend the rest of the summer obsessing about the details or the various unimportant and emotionally crippled men that litter my every day scenery. instead, i will drink lots of flower-tea, read too much oscar wilde, be mildly self-indulgent and genuinely happy and uncomplicated. i will also be a kick-ass feminist, careful and socially-aware human being and will listen to a lot of ani difranco.

accomplishing any one of these tasks will rock my summer.

i have come to a plethora of decisions. i have fallen asleep and woken up in exactly the same manner; thinking about change. i am not easily motivated and i look for it in other people.

last year i turned twenty-one and i stayed up all night reading melissa banks and potato salad (made in honor of the big day), prompted by a 1am journal entry. under the guise of making choices.

now i am staying up late, dividing my life into periods of time. each discernible, after the age of nineteen, only by the boy i gave my heart to. only by the amount of heartbreak i was experiencing and how much disarray we were in. the last three years have been barely seperable; boys i lost my virginity to, boys i smoked too much pot with, boys i fell in love with, boys i wanted to fall in love with, boys i never quite got to be with – little indicators of how much time has passed and who i will be tomorrow. this adds up to an experience that barely resembles a reality. there were moments of wine with claire and mexican in kensignton and jazz festivals in the park and sunday-afternoon boating that i would never want to take back but given the chance i would wipe it all out. to take back years, not days or moments only.

birthday wishes: quiet drinks out with the people i love the most and a real sense of packing up and moving on, nostalgia free. twenty-two is prefeced by momentum.

rain. rain. rain.
tea. tea. tea.
this is the combination for the perfect season, which is neither warm nor cold but a hybrid of chilled-to-the-bone-nights and heavy wool sweaters.
am reading under the tuscan sun, still, and soon observatory mansions by edward carey. i am more excited about the possibilities and a book than i have been in a long time. for a really long time i thought i hated post-modernism because i think about eliot and woolf with such mournful pleasure. i was wrong.

i wrote some little notes on green sticky papers to remind myself.
the things i forgot:
the sweet young hipster couple from the bus a few weeks ago came into work yesterday. this time it was the shaggy-haired, handsome father who had the baby boy wrapped tight against his chest. they all smiled big and i really could feel the store filling up with their love. they bought handmade paper and i felt warm and nervous while ringing in their order.
last night i dreamt about having that sort of family. i am so petty; jealous of all the love that other people get to possess and be filled by.

we used to say that our love was like hemp rope,
three times as strong as the rope that you buy domestically.

last night i was sad, because i always am, and my pretty neighbour-girl-friend came by with half a litre of gelato (coconut and coffee) and let me practically crawl up in her lap and cry for two hours. we listened to dar williams and ani difranco and metaphorically held on to each other. and yes, she is capable of creating a sense of betterment in my life after only two hours.

these are the things i love about my new apartment and life: i am close to all of the shops i love, i can get coffee and gelato and see movies in only two blocks, a stretch of carefree independence. in the big yellow house, past all the traffic, my favorite girl lives and visits often. my bedroom overlooks the street i love and our kitchen is tiny and well-lit. this apartment seems small enough to know itself and what it wants, but big enough for us.

i have two new jobs, a short walk away. i sell handmade and mass produced greeting cards. the customer spend minutes upon minutes picking out the perfect cards and we smile and talk about the weather. i help pick out leatherbound journals andwedding invitations. i have keys to the shop and i’m not sure how well i fit in. at the old hotel, down the road, i sit at the front desk and take reservations and put the chocolates on the pillows and adjust room temperatures and drink coffee from the cafe next door. in a lot of ways this is a life that i’m not worthy of.

in a lot of ways i can feel the world falling apart fast underneath my feet and my karma is disintegrating. a lot of things need fixing around here.

i am reading frances mayes’ under the tuscan sun too late in life and too early in the season. but you should be, too.

i have everything i want, except for the feeling of completely alone.
this isn’t exactly what i wanted to be writing.
but i realized: that you really don’t know me in the least,
worse is that you don’t care to
unless it benefits you in the end.
except: i have come to care too much
again
and now i am worried that you’ll leave without so much as
a good-bye. in the very style that another one did.
one day i had a best friend and intimacy and the next
just a stranger who i don’t recognize on the street.
the thing you are all really good at is leaving
and i am skilled in the art of being torn apart,
hesistantly and then all at once.
quick quick quick.

everything and then alone.