Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Passionless

My blog has become completely non-anonymous – identification buried within a guise of anonymity. Some members of the family read it. Some good friends read it. I love that – it’s wonderful to post a post of my inner workings, or something memoir-related and know I’ve reached out in some way that’s good and warm and love-inducing. Similarly, my usual readers have become like family, like my good friends.

There is such a thing as too much information under these circumstances. I’ve found myself cutting information. Trimming detail. Reconsidering how I describe another. Edit, edit, edit.

I’ve definitely remained quiet on some potentially interesting topics. Mustn’t talk about that…anything but that.

There might be judgment. Someone will delinkalize me and everyone knows how terrible that can be.

So I wonder what to do now? Do I create a new blog, under a new name? Do I reveal my real name here? Do I just come out of the blogger’s closet and be done with it? What IS this blog about? What DO I want to say with my blissful ruminations?

***

So I have a friend of a friend and as a young woman she wished for love and passion in her life. She married, had children. She lived day to day, squeezing in various hobbies or another to fill the empty spots on her daily calendar. One day she woke up and found that she’d turned into a couch.

It was a fine couch, don’t doubt, the friend of a friend said – dark green in color, plaid in design, comfortable. Firmly set. She was a recliner. People turned to her at the end of the day and relaxed there in her warm, cozy embrace. Every night the dog curled up in lazy sleep on the armrest. Children dropped food and money into the creases, they once or twice threw up there, but the vomit never lasted, a solid Hoover brought to wipe it all away. The husband slept on the couch each night, soundly, in front of a blaring T.V.

The couch was useful, highly important, an absolute necessity. She got great satisfaction from her service in the household, but what of her dreams? Perhaps this was passion-redefined, perhaps she had misunderstood passion. Perhaps passion is simply the occupation of time. The hope to leave a lasting impression.

It’s not so bad being a couch, the friend of a friend said. The best time of the day is nighttime when ghosts walk the hallways and the joys of the day swim in the heated air. She sits in the center of the house, watching, guarding, ready for someone to jump into her.

4 comments:

Patrick O'Neil said...

Hmmmm, portrait of an artist as an old couch...

Brenda Clews said...

This is sort of a 'feminine mystique' of the woman who is the mother who lives in the house holding it all together, the drab tasks, the emotional cohesion; only, after 40 years of feminism, she is a conscious couch.

Lori said...

I definitely feel about as big as a couch.

Adriana Bliss said...

Ahh Fromage....so true!

Brenda, I absolutely love that title..."The Conscious Couch." I do think it's quite accurate, after observing so many women in these modern days. So much more could probably be said about it.

Rodger, BINGO. "Metamorphosis" is one of my lifetime-favorite books.

Lori...LOL! I know the feeling.