Amy's way or the highway

wish you lived closer

Sometimes I feel like I'm living inches away from my life. Looking through that window, into my house, into my life. I can hear the echos of it, but what of it?
Where is it?
I spend a lot of time, trying to catch up, to run my soul into my body, to line up my shadow with my skin.
I wonder if it would be different if families didn't scatter. I used to think the greatest lives were those lived as far away from family as possible. People who lived abroad, now that was a life. People from the midwest now living in vacationville West Coast, now that was living.
Now I wonder if that doesn't leave too many heart buckets empty.
I get photos on-line of my nieces and nephews. I choose which size picture I need of them. I was on the verge of turning my nieces face into an apron when I decided to write this blog.
I come from one of those families, that diagnosed, might be called "emeshed'. Too effected by each other. Hit my sister in the knee, mine jerks up. Call my mother a name, watch your back. Of course I can call her a name. That's how the "Yo mama," rule works. I don't anymore because I've become too like her. Calling her a name would be inditing myself.
But where are my sisters? So far away, living these West Coasters ocean lives, their tan children, their wardrobes of shorts and sandles...my bones tearing from my body, reaching out for them, longing for them.
Sometimes, I think I'll just wake up and pack my bags. I'll get on a plane. I'll land on their doorsteps, and I'll crack open the Iowa salami and they'll rip oranges off their orange trees.

sorry I didn't know you were important at the time

I don't know about the rest of you, and when I say you, I mean this vague cyberworld I've concocted in my head...these you's who are sitting here reading, as I am writing.
Yeah, you.
Well, I don't know about you, but I lost a lot of good people because I was such a terrible corruspondent. I'm no Peter Jennings. Of course, I was also a party girl  for a good length of my life, and not the kind who has parties, more the kind who goes to parties, so I had no black book, no way to reach people if they weren't at the proper venue.
Years later, walking down these lonely Chicago streets, I wondered "where the hell is everybody?" I still know people, good people, mostly, but where are all those people whom I swore my allegiance to years back?
Google. I know, google. When they don't appear on google, which a surprising number do not, then I can contact my alum. I can email the admin people and ask how to reach the people who know where people are...bla bla bla. I've done that. I've written emails to people I haven't seen in 15 years.
Dear B,
Oh my god. How are you? I was totally stalking you and here you are. What a coincidence.
Love, me.
I know what it's like to receive these emails as much as to write them. It's like "Dear A. I didn't know you were important at the time, but I've met a lot of people since and you're more interesting. Sorry I didn't know it at the time. Love B."

to california on his bday

Dear Cal,
The alien planet friendster sent me a reminder that you were going to be 19 years old soon. Have fun with it. 19 is fun. Henry Miller thought it was fun. Kurt Cobain thought it was fun. I think Axel Rose did too. I don't remember 19. Okay, vaguely, but not unless under deep hypnosis. But in all seriousness, whenever your birthday is, have fun. Saw JG sometime this year. He was like an hour late, but it was nice to see him and I never heard from him again. I called him once from a train platform. Vagueness. Gotta love it. I want no more or less. That sentence was a lie. There are actually some areas where vagueness kills me. Hope school if formidable and you're being smart and tolerant.
Amy

to my lawyer in new york

dear j,
you're out golfing now with the partners and i am sitting next to a smack mouthed crazy man, talking about jesus. we're sitting in the window, together, because a few minutes ago he yanked his chair close to me. then, he slid a biscotti next to my keyboard. i declined. he said, can you blame a man for being in love. earlier, at the gym, a man insisted on holding the water fountain button for me. ish. i hate it, and yet i am intrigued, when the world, cannot see any of my walls. maybe it's everyone. maybe it's this damned mess in the middle east and the whole world is walking around pissed off and driving into their neighbors-hood in tanks.
the mentally ill man keeps tapping the window when he sees children. when they come towards the window waving, he says, come inside, come get your cookie. i only feel slightly possesive of that cookie.
he sucked the almonds paste out of his croissant and its laying there, deflated butter crust.
now, he's taken his biscotti outside for someone to open. the packages are harder to open than CD's. maybe that's why he wanted to give it away so badly. after the nice man from minnesota opens it, the mentally ill man sets his coffee next to the family and breaks off a part of his cookie. he offers it to all of them, who all decline.
i can't help thinking he has the right idea, this wall-less man, who left me to join them. he's this permeable thing, uneffected by the rules of modern day personal distance society.
the world is in turmoil. i'm constasntly pretending the news is some mel gibson futuristic movie, and not the real world. and when i say mel gibson, i mean mel gibson before we knew about his religious fundamentalism, but after we knew he had ten kids, which definitely made him less attractive to any liberal middle class girl who wore "i'm pro-choice and i vote tshirts" at age five.
the crazy man dropped his cookie. he's picking up the crumbs from the ground and adding them to his tongue. the minnesotans continue to eat their blackberry ice cream, unphased. the father looking person keeps an eye on the crazy man, but only as a precaution.
a lovely northshore mother, or the nanny, walks by pushing a stroller. her knees aren't like tea cups but they are very tan. if orange is brown, they are very very sinkissed. the man disppears as far as the window can see.