sentimentality & attention

We were standing at the top of a cliff.

My sister had already removed her shoes long before our short trek to the top, and her feet moved over the rocks and red dirt and sand, silent and unnoticed. She lifted her chin and spread her shoulders back as she cast her eyes over the great Pacific crashing angrily against the rocks below.

Suddenly, she was performing.

The water was as great and as small an audience as she had ever known.

She leaned over the edge, all poise and purpose, and I remembered something she had told me not too long ago about how stupid unsuccessful suicide attempts are. "If you don't succeed at killing yourself," she said, "then you didn't want to die. You just wanted attention."

But she only said things like that when she was performing.

My sister stepped down, boldly, as if daring the ocean to make a move. The cliff tapered a little, leaving a few feet of steps closer to the water and closer to death.

I edged near her, but not too near, as if my presence alone held her back like a rope, like a buoy. But I knew it really didn't. 

If she wanted to die -- really, really wanted it -- she'd just up and do it.

"This is my favorite color," she declared suddenly, calling out into the air like a gull. She spread a single arm towards the waves like she was selling them. "It's so... angry."

The waves drew in their breaths and threw themselves against the rocks, one after another after another. They shattered in the air, great fireworks of glass droplets spraying towards the sky, and they frothed and swirled in the crevices of the land. It didn't smell like salt. It smelled like dead things. Little white lines and patterns danced across the surface of the blue -- seething, gaining momentum before crashing back again.

They shattered in the air.

My sister took off her hat and sat adoringly on the very edge of the crumbling pale lava rock. "This," she said, almost too quietly to hear over the crashing and burning of waves and rocks. "This."

I stood, and feared, and waited, and watched as she looked and smiled and sighed.

"Hey, you wanna maybe come back up here?"

To get my sister to even think of doing anything she hasn't already done, one must use the words 'want' and 'maybe'.

She did not answer, only stood very suddenly and brushed her hands on her thighs. She turned, and walked back toward me. She tossed her head over her shoulder, where the words swirled in the wind and the spray and found themselves back to me, tousled and somber. "That's all you need, really. Just two minutes with what you love."

Then she looked back at me. "Sentimentality is for lazy people."

I subconsciously gripped the hair-tie around my wrist and laughed. "Is it?"

"Why, of course." She put on her hat and began to descend the mountain, not on any trail of course, but just wherever it seemed to be going down. "Why would anyone waste so much time just thinking about things that you loved that aren't here anymore? Really now. There's so much else to do. Just move on."

My mind wandered back to the Strauss CD on my desk, and the plaid shorts I can't seem to keep from sleeping in even though they don't fit me, and how sometimes I wake up and my eyes are wet and stuck together and I can't remember what I was dreaming about.

I felt the hair-tie at its connecting point, already beginning to fray.

I thought about those stupid black boots, the ones with the duct tape and rubber cement making up for a loosening sole on one side. And that hole in the left toe where the snow always sneaks in, the old leather crumbling and folding and fraying like a memory.

And then I thought about the delicacy of Christmas lights reflected in reading glasses.

And then a branch broke and I was on a mountain, and my sister was still talking, and she was asking where she left her shoes.

And my mind reminded me that I needed to stay alive, and watch my footing, and eat and sleep even if I can't remember why it's so hard to do that. Why is it so hard to do that? No, don't think about that right now, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. Food matters. Sleep matters. And you wonder, why are you telling me that? But by then you've already remembered.

Then the branch breaks, or the coffee spills, or the alarm goes off, and you thank your mind for providing the denial and disassociation one's health requires. But you will remember anyway. It will be a loop of forgetting and eating and remembering and forgetting and sleeping and remembering, with songs and conversation dispersed throughout it generously, because it's a good life you live, and a great privilege to be breathing.

But you will remember anyway.

Only a single moment, a single silly question which you laughed at while no one else did. A word, a glance, and then your own awful laughing. But they want an answer from you, and you can tell you gave them the wrong one: the only answer that doesn't match up. And it's just the reason why. And they look at you very sadly and you sink a little smaller in your chair. Attention? 

No one would do something like that for attention, and my sister knows this as she stares into the angry swirling sea. You do it because you want to die, of course. You do it because you want to.

You want to, right? You want to loop on that word, that look, that question, so that then you won't have to think about anything else. You won't have to replace the boots. You won't have to return the books. You love those boots. You love those books. And you love those furious waves, the danger of standing too close and holding on too long.

You don't do it for attention, you do it for sentimentality.

You do it for love.

[NOTE: No, I haven't updated in forever, and yes, this is a pretty cryptic and not-very-well-written post, but it's been a weird and busy few months. I'll post something good soon. Hopefully. Oh, and by the way, it's my birthday today.]