So. These are the last communications I had with SH. I did a poor job of reading these at the time and didn't respond with the attention I ought to have, in the end. Read it; maybe it'll break your heart like it breaks mine.
Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 4:56 PM
From: Bananarchist
To: SH
hello my dear,
sorry i was a stupid mean bitch earlier. as you know, THAT'S DEBORAH. but deborah is no fair to you, and i don't like being that stupid mean bitch to you. i am back in the internet cave, where my big fat greek wedding has been replaced by a matthew mccoughanhahehayh feature i am unfamiliar with, but which is equally distracting. after we left off our crappy gchat i walked outside, where it started downpouring, then i got "hey hey CHING CHONG!!!!" by fucking teenagers, then i went into a cafe where i paid $5 for a hot chocolate that came out of a machine at the touch of a button, like i was in an ice skating rink, e.g., and then i ordered a chicken curry which was my first all brown meal eveer - it was two scoops of rice, plus golden curry with chicken morsels in it, topped off by a disgusting mound of french fries aka chips, and then i bit my lip so hard it started bleeding and there is a flap of skin on my lip. which is to say, after i reached an emotional nadir with our gchat, i then went out and brought my low to new lows.
i was erally distracted earlier and i am really distracted now. i guess what i really wanted to communicate to you was that i really, really miss you. i'm lonely generally, but specifically i'm lonely for you. i've been thinking lots about you on this trip, everywhere i go. i keep seeing things that i know i am not fully appreciating, and there are things i am experiencing that i think would be much better if appreciated by you. all of katie's wedding, for example, and all of ireland. today when drenched and freezing - i learned later from irish news that the wind was reaching gusts of 60mph and the weather is at a low of 9 degrees C, which is approx 48 degrees fahrenheit - i fell asleep desperately needing to pee on the bus ride back to galway, and i had this little half awake dream that we could lay in bed for the next week watching olympics, and that was all i wanted to do. so i was in a haste to write you and hope that that little dream could come true.
of course, i realize now that it was a totally selfish dream. as i sat down to gnaw through my all brown, vegetableless dinner (and also my lip, as it were), i started a journal entry that might have been the first reflectrive one i've written all vacation long. asi mentioned before, i've been mostly just writing down sensations, since this has been a sense-heavy, introspection-light trip. but today i felt so crush and tired and lonely and disappointed i had to force myself to eat and get warm and get my stupid brain to think about why i was being such a douchebag. this, of course, only happened after i sat in the hostel and watched two hours of olmpyics wrap-up...i felt so dizzy i could hardly stand...for breakfast and lunch i had only 10 choco digestive biscuits, bcause i had no cash and i had to save it fo the bus ride back to galway...anyway. anyway, the point is that i realized i did not fully respond to your email yesterday about your job anxieties. i realize this is the most productive and anxious time of year for you. exactly a year ago you were in mexico trying to do exactly what you are doing this year. you were frustrated last year in your writing goals by john and a hurricane, and it would be totally selfish of me to blow through town and disrupt your work for a second year in a row. your academic work, though you discount it when you are in the midst of it, is phenomenal, necessity, and nearly impossible. i know it takes the life of you. and i've seen you lecture enough times to know that what you have to say you should be saying ten times louder and to a thousand times more people. so i would not thnk to interrupt you when you are in this time. i'm really sorry to have been so insistent. i felt personally rejected when you didn't want to see me, but of course it is not about me. i hope you get lots of work done and i will find another way to occupy the next six days in this silly wet country and deal with my own loneliness, since that work, on my end, will make me both more appreciative of your time, when you give it to me, and better equipped to demand less from you and entertain my own damn self.
not really sure what i'm saying. i'm very, very tired and matthew mcohonhoho is at the climax, ahem, of this moving picture. just wanted to write to say that i love you, and i am still carrying many rocks that i will somehow deliver to you, i suppose by us post because i'm not moving these damn things to chicago with me.
anyway, i love love love you. i will see you not soon enough, but until then...work with wings, my dear hippo!
love
m
Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 10:03 PM
To: Bananarchist
From: SH
hi my m,
thanks for your email -- i feel your loneliness and i feel the cold.
it's not that you haven't sufficiently expressed your understanding
about my work schedule, though i really really live off of what you
have to say about what you do get to see of my teaching and writing.
i went to my work last year as a way to boost my own self-esteem and
to reassure myself that i do have a purpose and that all of this
face-feeding and walking around sleeping and treadmilling is in
service to something bigger than just me, and also in order to fixate
on something other than you, and that's where i find myself again this
year. i want many things that seem impossible right now and farther
away than they have ever seemed, including a job where i get to love
strangers in a controlled classroom environment where i have all the
power, and a carefree life with you, with no regrets and no
bitterness. i'm worthless as an olympics informant and in nearly
every other way until i can find the confidence in myself -- or the
reality check -- that i need to figure out where i am in the process
of gaining both. i'm sorry to hurt you and to damage our connection
during this time, but i've never really ever been so totally
resourceless in these departments. i came home to atlanta, and i want
to stay here, because i feel exceedingly vulnerable. i guess i like
working in the restaurant b/c at least there i feel productive, but
i'm afraid that i'll never get out of here...i'm afraid that the
person i used to think i am is changing even as i embrace these new
things that i'm learning and feeling, like solidarity with the kinds
of undocumented subjects i want to write about. it seems
farcical...even the life we were headed towards together -- the kind
of life where one buys different kinds of pastel-colored toilet paper
to match the hue of each guest half-bath in your 4/3 house (that's 4
BR, 3 bath), like the glorious gravicki, or vickace -- the life, in
other words, that i thought i wanted seems like a dumbshow...and i was
the dummy who once thought she was smart enough to see through the
conformity and see the true happiness within. maybe there will never
be time when watching the olypmics in bed for a week will make us
happy. maybe all the anarchists out there are right. maybe we are
meant to be fitful, restive lovers who feed off the idea of each other
but can't dedicate ourselves to praxis. every handful of years, i
grow my hair out...you've never known me during such a period, but
there have been three so far in my nearly 29 years, and this is the
fourth. it feels like recovery from something at first, and then it
feels like a lie. i'm in the interim, but i already can't remember
what i looked like with shorter hair. i drink myself to tipsy every
night and think ambivalent thoughts about us...you've caught me at
such a moment. make sense of what i've said...this is all i can give
you now, my lover. you know, i'm back to thinking that you knew on
some level what you were doing the night of our going-away party --
sorry to distress you -- but now i don't blame you...i'm close to
forgiving you completely...i know that b/c now i'm suddenly grateful
for this distance and time apart, b/c i had no idea that this was
coming for me -- this self-doubt and hair-growth -- and i'm glad you
aren't around to have to see it. i want you to forget me if you can,
but remember me enough to find me later. i remember you -- the best
You, the You that you promised to be when i fell in love with you the
first night we met. i'll see you soon.
xo,
me
Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 5:57 PM
From: Bananarchist
To: SH
stepho, my love! i cann't write you much again because this is the
world's slowest computer and there is a line of angry frenchmen
awaiting tihs very internet terminal, and they are talking loudly, and
again i am distracted as all get out. i am here in clifden ireland on
the rugged west coast, or so the guidebooks say - i had to think long
and hard when i started my juournal entry htis evening where i was - i
forgot - connemara? clifden?? who knows? i just got on a bus and got
me away from the godforsaken hostel above galway's @party district"
where loud music blared untli late into the morning, it was like
crema, actually, except everyone going into the bars was pasty pasty
paste - oh where was i?
so i had a hard day. a long walk instead of a bike ride, a slog in the
rain. ruined my camera. got totally drenched. then sought dinner on
the tourist strip, was stared at, was not served, and was hurried
away. after dinner i killed time beofre the "town hall irish dance"
session that i was dreading going to all day, since i pictured
eight-year old girls being the lord of the dance kind of like the
plastic players in table soccer, linear movements on hinges, etc., -
so i killed time by going into a bookstore and browsing guidebooks. i
started off on connemarra west cost of ireland tour guides, but got
bored, then i intently read the rough guide USA and the rough guide
NYC. i teared up multiple times. i spent about half an hour reading
about nyc. while walking to the irish dance i decided at the last
minute to instead go to the movie theater and watch sex in the city,
wihc was the best 7 euro i've spent so far. i really miss you and i
miss home and i watched the movie with both in mind. i had a big
stpuid grin. i loved listening to all the irish girls - btw i have
finally found a country where veryone is as dowdy as me, cause the
weahter is such shit here that everyone wears frumpy sweaters and i
felt right at home with my four polypropylene and one big white fleece
hoody layer on. all the frenches have left so i guess my love for you,
xpressed via email, has outlasted all of their patience. foque you
francais, vive l'amour! anyway, i i really enjoyed listening to all
the irish girls coo at the labels and laugh at the american jokes.
there's a whole joke sequence on 347 vs 917 area codes that of course
NO ONE understood - i can't imagine anyone outside of nyc even in the
rest of america to understand, really -where i wanted to shout I HAVE
A 917 NUMBer BITCHES but i forgot my cell phone in the hostel so the
effect would not have been thesame. it was also very entertaining to
listen to these girls coo whenever louis vuitton or manolo blahnik was
mentioned. like, could you be any frurther from these things, molly
maguire of clifden with your mud-stained, heavy-soled shoes and your
knit wool sweater made from your pet sheep? i don't think so! not that
you or i, even when we were new yorkers, were anywhere nearer to those
mahnolo blahanainknis than molly maguire, but still, i felt so
patriotic
oh shit, the place is closing! i need to go, the guy is closing
windows and turning off lights here. i didn't get t osay what i wanted
t osay - which is i love you, and i miss you! and i want to quote
big..."i know i screwed up - but i will always love you." it's true! i
cried when that came on the screen. forgive me, miranda! forgive me,
carrie! i will always, always, always love you. please come back to me
when you are ready to come back to me. i am crying! i miss you. let us
meet in the middle of the brooklyn bridge, or arkansas, since htat
will be the chicago-ATL halfway pt, and start over, okay??!
promise me you'll love me at the end of this!!!
i promise you i will love you!
m
Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 11:36 AM
From: Bananarchist
To: SH
i'd better write you now, in the afternoon, when there is still time
before the lounge closes and the testy frenchies staying in the hostel
monopolize the lone 1998-era computer, which starts up a glacial pace
and requires superhuman patience to work. today i weighed my hurt knee
in one hand and my time in ireland in the other and decided that i
would rather risk hurting my knee further to see some more of this
country rather than sit on my sorry ass in this cow town way on the
west coast, so i rented a crappy bike (a diamondback marravista...no
vehicles, two or four wheels, motorized or pedal powered, are better
when made in america vs. here or japan) and did a 30mile ride around
the coast of one of these irish dingleberry peninsulas. it was
astounding, actually. like most of the last few days, this one started
with not terrible weather that turned, by midday, into torrential
rains and winds. still i got some quality (dry) time on two fasinating
beaches, one which appeared to have sand but upon closer inspection
revealed itself only to have crushed up bits of coral, and another
with bright grey sand that appeared white from a distance. i wish i
had brought my shorts or somethin else to swim in, but it was probably
too cold. i grabbed some treasures at the beaches to bring home to
you. i also stopped in a rock shop today for you...there were no local
rocks. the kindly polish shopgirl directed me to pick up some gravel
from the road in order to get local flavor. i've already done plenty
of that! you're getting gravel from doolin, kilfenora, and clifden.
but i found a nice "pendulum" for you , which i will ship to you when
i get back home. it came down to this particular kind of rock vs.
jasper. both bave healing powers and are meant to absorb negative
energies. both focus the imagination into action, and reduce
stress...wihch i thought woudl be particularly good for you, given how
hard you've been working. the jasper's provisions were marginally
closer to your needs but much uglier than the other rock, so i bought
you the other.
half of my day was spent biking in a downpour on a 13km stretch of
road called "bog road", which apparently is haunted (only at night,
though) which i didn't know about until i came back to the hostel. it
was gorgeous. for about an hour of biking, there were NO structures at
all in sight. about three cars passed me. it was just a rolling,
poorly-paved road running through marshland and bogs. occasionally i'd
pass sheep standing in the road - one stupid sheep keep bleating
loudly becuase it had been separately from its flock and was standing
in a bush in a positoin where it could see the others - i said,
"idiot, your friends are RIGHT THERE" but it was a baaaaaad listener -
but there were stretches in the road where i couldn't even see sheep.
just me and ireland, and nothing else. lovely. the bog road is
surrounded by what the map labeled "loughs" aka lochs or lakes, but
really they were just small pools of clear brown water stuffed with
reeds, and bog bodies, or whatever else is in these dead marshes. i've
been enjoying the animals on the road. yesterdayi ruined my camera by
pulling it out during a downpour to try to take photos of a pasture
that had two horses closely tailed by two foals, and two cows closely
tailed by two calves. one foal was a beautiful dark brown but
incredibly skittish. the mare came right up to the barbed wire but the
foal ran around in circles. i scratched the white cow's nose, and it
sniffed my hand. but my favorite was probably the two calves i saw
near the bog road playing...they were romping so that from a distance
i thought they were dogs, because i didn't know it was possible for
cattle to move like that. i also spent an hour waiting out a storm,
which ultimatley did not end but just got heavier, inside a pub where
i had a cheeseburger and watched four heats of the women's 3000m
steeplechase. in one heat, a kenyan woman collapse in the water pool
hurdle and three runners jumped ON TOP of her because they were all
moving so fast they didn't have time to avoid her. it was like a
pileup. i thikn the polish runner came spikes-first down on the
kenyan's back, OMG.
in this hostel i have befriended a 70-something british woman from
bristol named sue. i really like her. she has protruding upper teeth
like wallace (from w and grommit) and says charming british things and
she talks about trying to save energy in her house as one of the
friends of the earth and i tell her about texas justice aka shooting
robbers with a shotgun. i've chatted with her about four times now; it
helps to kill the loneliness and the long hours of nothing at all to
do. i have trouble reading because (1) i am reading lord jim, wihch
you warned would be a bad idea, and oyu were right, (2)there are no
quiet places in hostels to read books, and i have trouble writing my
ojurnal for the same reason, so after i get back from my day's
vigorous outdoor activity, all i do is wander around this tiny town in
flipflops peering into pubs and getting ignored by waitstaff. am i
being overlooked becuaseof my timidity as a solitary traveler or
because i am not as large as the dutch tourists (whol, i have read,
are the tallest in all of europe). i am 27 but i still dislike the
question "where are you REALLY from?", when asked by people who have
naught but phenotypical ties to the country they are traveling/living
in, as much as i did when i was 19 and ready to fight with everyone
who offended me.
so what i wanted to write you last night, before i ran out of
time...sex and the city worked for me on so many levels. the first one
is what i wrote you about: its vistas of new york assuaged my
homesickness, and its screening in this 2000-person (and that's
considered very populous, around here) seaside irish town in a room
full of sighing, cooing, and sympathizing irish sea hags confirmed for
me america's supremacy in world culture and therefore my own
importance. there was anohter level though: it was a way of accessing
you from 4000 miles away. i remember what you had written to me about
htis movie earlier in the summer. i saw where the criticism could be
with this movie - i mean, it's pretty awful and awfully written, if
you take it only at face value - but that would be such an ungenerous
way to watch this movie! but i also saw what you saw, the resilience
and neediness of an aging sorority and the matter of fact way the
movie accepted and forgave imperfect relationships. i also really
liked the scene where the pretty one screams "NO!!!! NO!!!" at big
when he tries to talk to carrie, although half the audience sighed and
half hte audience laughed uproariously when her voice strained with
the shout. and then she teeters away in her black dress and high
heels, which is supposed to be funny, or undignified, but i still
thought there was a lot of dignity in her defense of carrie. oh, it
hurt to watch that!
the movie also worked for me because i thought all day about how you
didn't think there would come a time where we could be happy lying in
bed watching the olympics ... it really threw me, and depressed me.
even though i was perfectly dry when i read your email, i felt
drenched with cold irish rain afterward. but i thikn you're wrong, my
dear! the movie reminded me of that. we have spent plenty of weeks
doing exactly that - embedded, watching television, watching movies,
perfectly happy, and together. you watched SATC months ago, and i
watched it yesterday, but i saved a seat next to me and put my jacket
on the chair and my arm around it, and when i laughed i looked over at
you and you laughed back at me.
that's supposed to be sweet but perhaps there is something norman
batesish about it. oh well, i never was the writer i wanted to be. now
the frenches are back, and i turn over this terribly slow box to them,
so write me back, and i'll check my email in a few hours. i love you,
carrie bradshaw!
love
m
Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 10:11 PM
To: Bananarchist
From: SH
oh mandoo. thank you for your sweet email. your trip sounds amazing.
please be careful. i'm sorry i wasn't on earlier to write you.
today i drove my gps to their old house and helped them move some of
the things they wanted back to the new place. my gma got her cast off
earlier this week. they slowly plodded around the house in midtown,
where all 3 generations of us lived for the first few months that we
lived in ATL back in the early 80s, and packed a few random boxes and
bags. the house was practically untouched, like they had left it in a
hurry all those months ago. weird. then i went to work...dad was
catering this party -- 100 rice boxes for $500. i wanted to get some
work done this morning, but i couldn't b/c i had to go the gps. i'm
sorry i don' t have anything to say about your two loving emails. i
don't have to say anything, because you totally seem to understand. i
just need time. i love that movie. i'm glad you saw it. but
honestly, i just don't know HOW to recreate our life together, b. i'm
ashamed of what we've been through. i'm sorry to put it that way. i
need more time to get over it. i need my own life, my own prospects,
and more choices than just to go back to living with you. if fewer
people knew about it, if fewer people had been there, it would be
different for me now. i'm sorry...it's only been 3 months, though.
maybe things will feel different after 6 months.
Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 10:53 AM
From: Bananarchist
To: SH
hello my dear,
i feel it would be best if we didn't write about these matters
anymore. i found that after reading your last email i was spun again
into another depression. all these things i know are true - you don't
need to reiterate their truth to me. we'll talk about these things
when we need to talk about them...it's premature now. for now, i'm
just happy to tell you about my day and i will be happy to hear about
your day. okay???
yesterday i did hardly anythin because i felt sick. i watched wall-e
then spent some QT in the evening with my journal, with the olympics,
with the two austrian girls who hvae been in the same hostels as me
for a week, and with the german man harry who was also attempting the
same bike route as me by bicycle. harry and i failed to convince the
austrian girls to come out last night - they were too vain to go to
the pubs with rainpants on - so it was just me and harry drinking
guinness and irish coffee in the pubs. it was nice to finally not be
totally alone here, even if my company is a stilted stereotypical
bavarian man. then today i decided to do a day trip to cleggan, a town
about 10 miles from here. i missed the morning bus so i decided to
walk there. halfway there i got bored of the slow pace and started
jogging...i jogged maybe 3 or 4 of those miles. the weather was not
terrible until the last 3 miles, when the skies opened, as they have
reliably done so every afternoon for the last week. my too-small shoes
and drenched socks pinched me, but blah. and then i had a chowder and
a guinness in a pub, a half hour conversation with an annoying
american woman named shannon aboutthe difference between americans and
irish (she said she could tell i was american because i had an "open,
inquisitive face"...i didn't take it as a compliment so much as
evidence of her patriotism, becuase i was clear from our chat that she
had felt oppressed by the irish all througouht her 17 years of
expatriatism...whatev i'm so tired and red in the face i can't evne
remember what we talked about). i couldn't get away from shannon
because i sat down at the bar next ot her and she chatted with me all
about american politics thorugout my chowder. i finished it, excused
myself, then tgot on a bus right back the hostel in clifden, which has
been home for four days, and was immediately cornered by the german
version of chatty cathy - garrulous gertrude? - who talked about her
badass 22 year-old self to me for 45 minutes as i gnawed carrot
sticks. le sigh. even though i am snarky in the retelling i am
nonetheless happy about the company, even when it is annoying, because
it's so lonely to travel alone. my night looks like an evening of
olympics wathcing, and maybe i'll crack page 100 of lord jim finally.
i really like the book, my dear, even though you hate conrad. but its
aphoristic, so i can't read more than three pages at a time. it's like
reading fortune cookies.
feh! i have been dreading going to dublin, which i will finally do
tomorrow only because i would be embarrassed to tell people i spent 10
days in ireland but failed to see dublin. i really don't want to run
into that crowd of partying hostel dwellers you find in an capital
city, though i am sure i will. blah blah blah. for some reason i can
barely stay awake right now. maybe dehydrated? sorry for this email of
utmost boringness.
i love you!!!!!!!!!
m
Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 12:34 PM
From: Bananarchist
To: SH
stepho, where have you gone to??? i love you.
m
Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 7:04 AM
From: Bananarchist
To: SH
stephanie,
where have you been? where did you go? did your phone capsize? did you leave me? what are you doing? i have called or texted you every day for the last ten days but you have not responded. where are you, stephanie? is everything okay? what are you doing?
please don't just leave me in the dark like this.
Mon, Sep 1, 2008 at 1:57 AM
From: Bananarchist
To: SH
please
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