MANDIBLE

The whole time I was on the phone with her I stared at a picture frame that hung askew.  I thought for a moment about whether I was too obsessed with things being perfect all the time but then I thought maybe this was a good thing--noticing something wrong and then thinking about, and even having an moment of reflection to really consider, how best to fix it.  In this way, I felt, I strived to make my world more perfect.

I saw on an episode of West Wing a discussion about the US dollar and a bit of Latin on there: "Annuit Coeptis" which means something like "He approves of our undertaking," "he" being God presumably.  Oh, and the unfinished pyramid of course.  We were a work in progress, she and I.  I used to like to think that about us, a work in progress that is and one which "HE" approved of.

And then there's Zeno's paradox where in order to get from point A to point B you must first get to the point halfway between A and B and before you can get to the point halfway between the two you must first get to the point one-quarter of the way there and so on.  So in order to get there, or anywhere, you must ultimately accomplish an infinite number of tasks first and which therefore means you'll never get there. But of course you do.  I tried to explain this one to my sister oh, and also the one about the infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters?  She thought they were both "stupid."

My point is that I used to think that she and I are like that paradox too.  Small steps and maybe we don't there but we're going down the list of infinite tasks.  Could we be like the monkeys too?  Let me think about that one.

Anyways--I used to know a woman I was really attracted to and one day I noticed that she had this way of moving her tongue when she was thinking.  And it wasn't an attractive tongue.  Well, it didn't necessarily "UN-attract," by which I mean that I didn't really notice it (the tongue) until it started moving around.  But once I started noticing it there was really no way to UN-notice it.  And THEN it started to UN-attract.  Up until that point I guess it was "attractive" strictly speaking because it did catch my attention; it did vie in all that moving around with her remarkable cleavage.  But what really made it UN-attract was its odd squatness.  I mean it did lay in there, in her mouth, the way other tongues did, horizontally, I guess for the most part.  But from what I could see of it it gave the impression of being short and stocky.  Like if it was able to get out of there and walk around you might find it wearing a bowler hat, say, and maybe have walrus-like whiskers on its generous cheeks.  And it seemed pockmarked with white spots like it had been mucoused up by a thick full-fat glass of milk and not properly cleansed with a tongue-sucking swallow.  And I guess it looked undone in spots.  On top of all that it then it moved around weirdly while she was thinking so much so that by the time she said whatever she had to say I had checked out mentally.

Needless to say, one hopes, that relationship never went anywhere.  Which brings us to the main point of this correspondence and all the past tenses w/r/t her (of the "me and her" / "she and I" / "US") there above.  The frame straightening phone call was the last for us, filled with attempts to decode meanings and reasons which I granted to her (the attempts) since it's only fair and also because this is a bit of tough time for her.  Her Dad just died, see.  And generally she has not been one to really express herself in life.  She's articulate but not given to fits of emotion which I've always been OK with.  The articulate part was what mattered to me--the part where she said what she thought, which was what I cared about.  The emotion just was something else, whether she had the proclivity for it or not, and in her case she did not and so be it.  But alone in her kitchen, post-big-brother-calling-with-"real bad news"-from Pittsburgh-phone-call when she's sobbing (appropriately) in my arms and I'm getting the first good look at her really crying?

It was the sound.  Not the way her mouth curled obscenely or the snot on my shirt or the way her running mascara suddenly reminded me of my mother's face that time long ago when I opened my own (long story) bedroom door on parental fellatio--none of that mattered.  Honestly.  It was just the sound she made.  I respect her too much to describe it.  I'll only say that I found it disturbing.  And I decided then and there that I could not be with someone who made that sound.  Or was capable of it.

Given an infinite number of her and an infinite number of me is there a scenario where it all just clicks?  Like the sharp claws of a monkey typing Macbeth randomly on a typewriter?