just right

c and I went to a diner under an overpass in Greenpoint on thanksgiving. It was empty apart from the waitress, one guy behind the counter, and two other pairs of girls who looked a lot like us and left soon after we sat down. We ordered matzo ball soup, the turkey dinner, french toast, and a chocolate raspberry milkshake. Everything came at once. We took a few bites of the turkey that was smothered in gravy and then turned our attention to the french toast. We sucked down a few inches of our shake, and I topped it off with the peach vodka c had in her purse. 

The turkey grew cold and the gravy wrinkled. We drained the shake and got a little louder. 

The atmosphere was wildly depressing, but c and I being two romantics lapped it up. We paid the bill, went to two other bars where we talked about our taste in men, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and our mothers. And then to house of yes. c charmed an older guy whose coattails we rode at the door. I spoke with a German boy for a while who called me an angel because I got him a glass of water. It was a nice thing to be called so I kissed him.

I am so full of cautionary tales. I was loaded up by literature and film. of women who get married and then are tortured by the role of wife they are then asked to play. Who give birth and go mad because everything they once were had to be handed over to their sweet sweet baby. And I am equally, perhaps more so full of tales of women who resisted or strayed from these paths and lived free of such great responsibilities. But they, too, lacked. Just like me who thinks she is empty of any real—I refuse to say purpose because I don’t believe in such a thing. Weight it is, I guess. Babies and husbands are attractive weights, easy answers to the question. But what if it is all too light. Many cautionary tales present such cases. Kundera, you are right: The lightness of being is unbearable, but so too is weight. I am scared of weight because I fear I cannot bear it. I am so used to floating. That is Sabina’s dilemma, huh.

Cautionary tales go in every direction—liberal/conservative, moderate/extreme—but they really mean nothing. Cannot truly be believed. One doesn’t know unless they try. And one doesn’t know what to try until their gut points them in one direction or another and grumbles when it gets close. Even then, who knows. Sureness is illusory. Conviction, temporary. Every person is an explorer fumbling in the dark, because everything in front of them they have yet to try (Kundera). Even when it is alleged to be the same thing, it is a new set of conditions. All I know is that My life lacks weight. It's very light in many ways. And so I float and have grown quite used to this vantage point. 

Weight has never agreed with me. It tends to pull me into a pit. It is not because I am weak but because I take it too seriously and feel better off without it. I like to be full, yes, as I did after sitting with c for hours in booths and on bar stools, kissing the German boy who called me an angel, and as I do tonight after cooking rigatoni and watching the sopranos, but weight affects me differently. Everyone must negotiate with the amount of weight in their life. Some people take to it, others are forced upon it, but I doubt that anyone is ever really satisfied with the amount of weight they bear. I think what people try to do in life is negotiate what kind of weight they can manage, what is not too much or too little but just right, though so often the mark is missed. Or the weight turns out to be heavier than they could have ever imagined, and they are stuck (oh, Carmela, Priscilla, etc.). This is a particular fear of mine, this trap, because I was ensnared so young.

I dreamt last night of pink roses. The pink was pale, the petals nearly transparent as petals tend to be, but these especially so because of the shade of pink. One large one laid across the small pot from which it grew. I admired it, imagined plucking it and putting its single stem in a tall, thin vase with cold water. I lifted it up and found below it five or so more just like it, though smaller and slightly crushed. The pot held them like a nest would a crop of baby birds chirping for mother. I fixed each one up, fluffed them like pillows and smoothed their petals like I would a child's hair.

After that I dreamt that I dropped a carton of eggs on the sidewalk. I had been expecting to drop them so I wasn't too upset. I walked away and before getting too far turned around in time to see a man scoop one up off the pavement and suck the goo out of its shell. He then walked away. I wondered if I had made a mistake not doing the same. Had I wasted the perfectly good goo of a dozen shells?