January 25

Sitting at the kitchen table upstairs, no lights on to impede the coming dark, stammering through edits to my inchoate dissertation when of a sudden they arrived home in a cloud of cologne & sickly perfume. These scents always conjure nausea in me, an allergy since I can remember. No phone call. They wanted to visit with me (intermittently, while I unpacked their car), to expound on the details of their marvelous celebration, but I deferred, claiming to be in the middle of important writing, the momentum of which was in motion & my attention to which was critical. She kept trying to give me things from their trip to Costco: a loaf of bread, a five pound bag of coffee, a papaya the size of a small child. I will give them back, each & all, in the morning. She kept wanting to tell me that her granddaughter played piano, that she saw her dearest friend from junior high, that her daughter fought through the pain of a torn ligament in her knee obtained the day prior at Whistler. I want none of these details. A landscape unpeopled with such figments. A foundation free of mites & rot & caustic erosion. A firm ground.

These lessons pour over me, thick & heavy & unrelenting. A hand stretched from an awning in a hailstorm. Or an umbrella pelted through & torn. These have been my choices & I have made this bed. But from it, to arise & to go & to find a footing instead. God, for a lightness.

Comments

matty lite said…
Take some of my lightness. I have too much.
January 26, 2009 at 6:34 AM
Unknown said…
very generous, kundera. send it on over.
January 26, 2009 at 7:34 AM
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