Monthly Archives: October 2014

it is hard not to eavesdrop on neighbouring conversations. the ear is tuned to seek patterns. once you learn a language, you cannot unlearn it. you go from noise to words, to gist to full sentences. suddenly the hum is no longer humming, the buzz is no longer buzzing, and you can no longer turn off the people around you.

***

“i’m sorry,” the woman said, peering deep inside the other woman’s body.

“it’s okay,” the other woman replied.

when a little piece of you is removed, she thought, you cannot follow that piece; you can only hope that it will be looked at carefully, with eyes that you yourself do not possess.

the older couple is telling the younger woman how they met.

they met in michigan. before they met, he had already planned to move to new york or california. she hoped he would pick new york. (“please pick new york, please pick new york.”) it didn’t really matter to him, though he preferred manhattan. (“it’s changed since.”)

they got engaged on christmas morning 1978 over the phone. (“it sort of just happened.”) his mother got all choked up when he announced it over christmas dinner. they got married in march 1979. it was a simple, do-it-yourself wedding. there was a blizzard. it had been a cold winter.

they rented a u-haul not long after and moved to upstate new york. he had found a studio apartment walking around in a neighbourhood that he liked. it was cheap. (“so cheap.”) they lived there for six to eight months, until they got their own place. that’s when they became demolition experts. (“that’s when we became demolition experts.”)

the younger woman nods agreeably.

do you have any friends there?

i do, i say, as if people need to be reassured, as if people cannot cope with the idea of my solitude, as if the question wasn’t revealing their own fears of distance and seclusion.

it is a record year for readiness. we are told to brace for golden light, for fire-darting steeds. there will be a wonderful celebration. it will be thrown out there, or thrown for us, even, knowing we will be there, waiting and ready. and so we are ready, and we wait. we get comfortable, until we reveal it all: a reflection of ourselves, or people’s understanding of our difference. we are used to it—we have waited frequently, with no qualms and no regrets.

***

hüzün and sevinç come together at a fork in the road. we pause and hesitate to commit. we feel torn between the two. autumn is upon us; leaves are falling, petals have dried, a cold wind seeps under an auspicious sun. we realise we do not have to choose, and we need not always wait.