The microcosm is the macrocosm, or some such tiddlywinking crapola. It starts when it is already angst-filled, as it always is—so how can it truly start? When you are with someone for years nothing really starts. It just leaves off from one reckoning to continue on to another. We were going outside to drive to my mother’s, when we saw the clothes on our neighbor’s property. They were where their garbage cans were normally standing. But now there were folded garments in a pile, with a strange police one on top. I passed it first because I took out the compost, which I always do. Then I had to go back up to the apartment and help him find his sunglasses—again. I’m always doing that. Then he came down as I tore the place upside down to find them—and I did—so he must have seen them as he plopped down onto the sidewalk and started scrolling. He didn’t seem too bothered, especially as he wandered down the block to see a box of books put out—nothing good except a Hawthorne, I’d seen it last night when I had to go out and buy oat milk so we would have some in the morning—obviously he wouldn’t. I came downstairs with his ridiculous women’s sunglasses—not because they are women’s but because they have PRADO silver-stenciled on the stems. I don’t care, he oinks. They know it’s just me under them.
Why do I put up with it? I feel too sorry, I’m too tired, and though I desperately want to change my life, I’m not in a position to, which is to say I’ve taken up the position of defending my nondefendable position. Position underneath position. And, in fact, just last week I read an essay by a modern German philosopher that fits. He says we have begun to be blind not to our capacities, but to our incapacities—not to what we can do but to what we cannot, or can not, do. So, in actuality, I’m not blind—I can not or cannot leave him because when I leave him I leave myself, my own inner capacities or some such admixture.
Did I mention my son?
I realize I have not filled in the details that compelled our disagreement. Perhaps I shouldn’t. Perhaps someone will not side with me after the lunacy of our disagreement is brought out into the open air? Though isn’t that the text? Even Joyce added interrupting words of others into his dictation of Finnegans Wake. That mysterious stack of clothes—folded up and pressed, placed stealthily after sunset in June. Why? If only it were that simple, but we are speaking of the communication quagmire around it. So I told him our neighbor, Siana, asked me where those clothes came from. We were driving by this point, but I know him like I’ve tracked this animal in all weather over decades—his micropause with a combination of stepping on the gas and needing to change the song signaled distress—and he will often lie fallow for a few moments, playing dead, until he will suddenly ramp up like someone gave him a shot of adrenaline: You mean that she put out the clothes but she didn’t know where they were from in her house? I was a bit startled and I swabbed an eyelash away to cover up a guffaw because I knew where we were going, the ship was headed for our iceberg, but (to hell with it) I was going to let it go there and even increase the engine power: Did you hear? I said she asked me if she knew anything about them.
He seemed to comprehend the reiteration, though usually it takes repetition three or four. He left a song on, some chintzy 70s Tom Jones thing, but the temperature then changed as he came from a different direction: Didn’t the one on top say it was some kind of official shirt, like a police shirt?
It said Pigs will be Prigs.
Oh, so this was some kind of a setup?
I don’t know what he is speaking about most of the time. It’s a disappointment—more to human civilization than to me. Then I could hear him running the phrase “knew anything about them” through his mind. I possibly worded it too ambiguously. But why can’t he listen? By the by, he’s a failed writer. His creative-writing teacher told him to learn how to do something that will make him happy. He does read comic books or graphic novels and he belittles my Finnegans Wake club that reads one sentence every two weeks as completely ridiculous.
But I could hear his internal monologue: “Know anything about them”: well, maybe she had clothes that didn’t make sense to her, even the Pigs one, perhaps her jovial husband acquired clothes and she didn’t know anything about them and then one day she decided to get rid of them, do some spring-cleaning—June is still spring. And I knew soon enough some other shoe was going to drop or some other shoe would rile up his head. He began to stir….As to Siana’s question, if you would know what she spoke of (mainly in the “knowing”), do you know anything about them? Maybe like, Do you know what these clothes, specifically the cop ones, mean? I guess it could mean, Do you know where they came from? But why wouldn’t she just say that off the bat? You have a good relationship with her, yes? She doesn’t play language games with you.
Of course not. Only you do!
Ha. Harumph.
I should have been checking in on my son—to see what he was up to (if he watched us or played Shoot the Cars), but I kept with Mr. Grumpy.
Do you know anything about them? is such an interesting question with so many implications.
Are you a political analyst? He uses “interesting” too many times. It should be used once a day if that. Now it’s utilized all over the place. What a bullshit artist. Ha! How do I approach him? I’m not sure. I take what I can get.
Suddenly a song I know he didn’t like wasn’t skipped and I steeled myself.
Roger, don’t go there.
Go where? You mean gaining clarity? Cutting through the s-h-i-t?
He knows how to spell it, he’s ten.
I didn’t.
That’s why he’s a better man than you.
Did I ever tell you the story of Robert Schumann?
An ungodly number of times.
Oh, so you can follow me. See, I’m the horse leading the pack.
It’s when he speaks in these inane metaphors that I know I have certainly married the wrong person. Did I ever like him? Did I ever want him? I could tell other stories but I’m telling this story. This day, while driving in this car.
