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Sunday, May 06, 2012

Laughter

Yesterday, I wrote an email to an old friend. She's one of those people that I won't speak to or hear from in, literally, years and then one or the other of us will email and we pick right back up again ~ until we fade off and go another couple years. This time, it's been a little over a year, which means the last she heard about my life, we were still in Anchorage. Well, holy shit, a lot has happened since then. Instead of trying to fill her in completely ~ which would've taken several hours and depressed her ~ I nutshelled it. And found myself describing Lithus like this:

"My relationship with Lithus continues to be such a blessing. We laugh and we dance in the kitchen."

Which is true, and got me thinking... We have always laughed. Even jobless and homeless and living in someone else's basement, we laughed. Being offered jobs that didn't really exist, not being offered jobs that did exist, taking jobs that existed in places we never wanted to see and don't ever want to see again, we laughed. We have always danced. On street corners and expensive clubs and dive bars and our own living rooms.

I could've written that same sentence for years, but I didn't. In thinking about it, I figured out why. It is, indeed, different now. When we started dancing, there on the corner of Boylston Street in Copley Square, it was new and shiny. Our laughter was nervous, wondering if the other was real, if the other shoe would drop, if this thing would last.

Then, dancing at clubs in Worcester and all over the Pacific Northwest, it became about proving to the other we really were real, that we were real, that this was and could continue to be our lives. And we laughed at the novelty of having found each other.

For the past two years, definitely, and possibly the last four since the accident, we have danced in living rooms and kitchens, in order to hold on to each other, to keep moving, to remember and remind that this isn't all there ever was, ever will be. We laughed so we didn't cry, with an edge, a little manically, even.

Now...a little wiser, a little older, a lot further down the road, we dance in our own home, that we both belong in, that we both know the other will return to, that no one controls but us, that we have created together, to music that sometimes comes from a source, but often no one hears but the two of us. And in clubs that pound out a beat we hardly hear, but feel. And we dance to the slow saxaphone that plays constantly on our streets. And in hotel rooms by the light of my laptop. Our laughter, even the most riotous explosions, has a peace behind it, without a hint of desperation. It's light and easy or deep and bellowing, but always real.

Which, is just a really long way of saying "My relationship with Lithus continues to be such a blessing. We laugh and we dance in the kitchen." I guess I did fill her in completely.



Those are Pobble Thoughts. That and a buck fifty will get you coffee.

3 comments:

Rose said...

Nothing like laughter and old friends!

Gay Soldier's Husband said...

Laughter and dancing. The best of humanity, no?

AppsRUs said...

Bravo! Peace be upon you....