Because I Will Always Do It Again

July 16, 2013

For me it’s never been about here or there; it’s all in the movement from and to, the freezing and, my oldest love, the melting.

Though I can’t, in a general way, believe much of anything, I especially couldn’t believe that you were IN your mom’s tummy, floating around in that complicated liquid. I would squint at her belly and imagine—because you were not yet steeped in discursive thought and unable to distinguish yourself from otherness—that you were somehow the liquid or the liquid was somehow you or that you and the liquid dwelled seamlessly together in a place ontologically prior to your distinction, and I loved you with an abandon that bordered on madness.

The first time I drank I blacked out and remembered oblivion. Swallowed, lost myself, in the passage of time.

Chan master Furong said “The blue mountains are constantly walking.” David Foster Wallace said it was within our power to experience things “as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.” And Adam Duritz, when referring to a black-haired flamenco dancer, sang “She’s suddenly beautiful / Well, we all want something beautiful / Man, I wish I was beautiful.” You may not understand why I juxtaposed those three quotes in the same paragraph and that’s okay. Not knowing is part of it. Not knowing is how I know I will do it again. Because I always do it again.

Ever since you could not be distinguished from liquid—and probably before—you mattered. It’s more than I can fathom to imagine you melting. Now if you’re reading this closely enough, you’ll say “But Dad, a contradiction—” and, yes, that’s right, because you are sacred and beautiful and it’s illogical, yet possible, to love someone with the same force that made the stars and to simultaneously be so, so sorry. I am never not sorry.

I have watched you meet people and matter to them. They see you, smile, say hello, and—from there—from not knowing each other and crossing the bridge to mattering, you begin to mean something to one another. You change each other. Melt a little. Become mountains that walk. It’s during these times that I remember the idea of you inside your mom’s belly and yet, here you are, mattering in the world, and a tension twists my skin and my heart is a piece of ice that pines for the sea. I love you. I love to melt. Man, I wish I was beautiful.

There is something about you, little girl, that commands my attention and paying attention is a giving of one’s self and, in this giving, an inquisitive mind might find the bones for a definition of love. I become absorbed in your laughter. I lose myself in the rambling narrative of your animated storytelling. Where does the time go? You make me wonder about the blurry place between (or prior to?) my eyes and you, where one of us ends and the other begins. It’s bedtime. You are reading me a story and I marvel at the strange reality of your eyes as they skim just ahead of the sound of your chirpy voice, fluently. The story happens. But we’re in your bed, two ice cubes floating in your room. The world outside throbs with innumerable manifestations of the same old stories. People coagulate into the matter of love. Others melt away in the confusion of tears. Mountains crowd the sidewalks. Between places, in taxis that blow rude horns, people reflect on themselves and wish they were beautiful. Somewhere, a drunk looks up, beside himself, and speaks to the moon. Candles burn in mysterious windows. Wax melts. And so do we, you and me, melting into the story you read. There’s a castle, a princess, and something difficult and urgent that must at all costs be done. In spite of a great big world that relentlessly happens and happens on fire with the same force that made the stars, we’re lost in our story, swallowed in the mystical oneness of all things deep down.

And then you, gone, lost at sea, are sleeping. I sneak out the front door, sorry, to do it again. I always do it again.

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