Jay Elias | You can take it with you

"I have wasted Time, and now doth
Time waste me"
- Richard II

2002-04-15- 1:43 a.m.

Dearest Miss Morland

I saw a movie recently, which I don't think any of you can see, called Code Unknown. It is a French movie, starring Juliette Binoche, which was barely shown in arthouse theaters in New York and isn't availible on video, which I only saw because someone I work with got a videotape copy from the distributor so unpolished it still had the timecode on it.
Magic, my dears, becomes harder and harder to find. Slowly but surely, I am becoming aquainted with the tiny man who masquerades as the great and powerful Oz.
The film is good, if difficult to follow, but I'm not writing a review here. About halfway through, there is a throwaway scene, one which would have been cut from almost any other film. Juliette Binoche is ironing clothes in front of her television, and in the background, you can hear the dull litany of a soap opera. Then there is a crash, and screams, and she mutes the television. Her neighbors are quarreling, and she listens to the shouts and slaps, until a thud. Then silence, and Juliette holds her breath waiting to hear a sound. Then the quiet noise of a woman sobbing. Juliette breaths her relief. She walks over, pours a glass of wine, and gulps it down. She turns the iron back on. She takes the mute off of the television.
When I was a small child, I wouldn't sleep with the closet door open. Outside my window was a radio tower, and it had a blinking red light to alert planes to its prescence. And when it would blink, it would throw red shadows across my hanging clothes. I thought those shadows were monsters. I thought that they were waiting to get me. I didn't dare close the closet door myself; if my parents would forget, I would scream for them to come and do it for me. Until one night, I wanted to see the monsters for myself. I waited for my brother to fall asleep, and then I went to the closet door and opened it. I stared at the monsters. I stared for what felt like hours. And then, I started to wonder, what on earth that monster was doing wearing my winter coat.
Four months or so after Lynn left me, she invited me to a concert her new band was having. I said I would go, telling her that I wanted to be supportive, but I mostly went because I still loved her, and I rarely loved her as much as when she sang. She played the fiddle most of the night, and sang backup, and then near the end she sang lead, on a song she had written herself. The first thing I noticed that her voice was as amazing and earthy as it had ever been; it was like kissing someone again after a long time, and all the sweetness rushes back into your mouth almost too quickly. And then, as the song went on, I realized it was full of our words, things we'd said in moments of love and lust and desperation. The song was an accusation. It was her, placing blame on me for all that I had and had not done.
It was more than I could bear. I sat still until the song was done. Then I got up, and I walked out, and I haven't seen Lynn since that night.
The last time we spoke, she called me on the phone from Pennsylvania, from some home she was staying at. She called in tears, and I didn't want to speak to her. I told her I was going to go, until she reminded me of promises I had made, promises to listen and to be there, no matter what happened or what went wrong. So I stayed on the phone, for half an hour, as she told me a million things I didn't want to hear or to know about her life since, the things she'd done and felt since. She told me it was my fault. She said I'd raised debasement to an art.
I didn't tell her about the places I'd been or the things I'd done since. Thank you Father, for my pride if nothing else.
Since then, I don't answer when she calls, although every month or so I still see her number on the caller ID. She doesn't leave messages either. When she needs to tell me something, she sends an email, and I send one back.
I'm also on the email list for her band, getting concert dates and information every month or so. That is, until tonight, when an email told me that her band was releasing its first album, and that mp3s of selected songs were availible on the band's website. And lo and behold, that song is one of the ones availible for download.
Some doors are best left unopened. I've never been any good at that.
The first thing that floored me was the voice. After all this time, after years in fact, to hear the voice again. What came next was the accusation, a placement of blame four years old now. After all this time, the voice comes back again to tell me I'm a bad person.
What can I say now in my own defense? That I was young and foolish then? That I've learned from mistakes I've made? That it is only a song, a moment, and that perhaps now she has a different take on things? I've lived so long with this guilt, with this conviction that I'm bad and no good and won't ever amount to anything that the sheer weight of it all gives me a headache that never quite goes away.
The kicker of it all is that things like this and worse go on every day, in every place, and none of us do anything about it. The terrifying thing about my lying there, knowing she was in pain and doing nothing, is that everyone does it all the time. I was lying there hurting too; who the fuck was looking after me?
T.H. White wrote once that it is so easy to convince a child that it is bad. I've bourne this burden long before Lynn, and long since. In childhood rooms with blue walls, I bore it, and I bear it now in grown up rooms with plain white ones, where her song comes out to remind me of things I did long ago. But I'm tired. I have to work tomorrow.
And Lynn, I'm not as bad as you, or I, think that I am.

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Doesn't Take Much and That's Messed Up - 2004-03-15
Like Water Under Bridges - 2003-09-08
Jesus On The Dashboard - 2003-08-13
An Administrative Announcement - 2003-08-11
Don't Worry, It's Coming - 2003-08-02

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