Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers

I let these sorts of spaces lapse. More than lapse, I let them die. I regret nothing about those decisions; we'd a life to start together—and each of these spaces was a messy business of the uneven before.

*******

Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers playing as we write, the pup chewing angstily at our feet—a mix of rain and snow and sleet and gray outside. November weather, I think, even if only the end of September.

I write for a living now. So mostly does she. It doesn't feel real, even as it isn't even the beginning of what either of us ever could have imagined. I've never seen a Hollywood writer do so much sitting, so much Googling, so much rewriting. If there's glory, it's in the monotony. I know better, but still: Two steps forward, two steps back. It's a tango on the best days, a junior high slow dance on others.

I'm happy, mostly. It still doesn't feel real as often as not.

We're in Spokane for the moment, a fleeting stop in a life of oh so much travel almost entirely predicated by obligation. Some day maybe we'll have the time we want, the time to just be, to build a home and a life in our mountains. Some day..., we say. A cousin on one side of her family just married; a cousin on the other side to be married this next weekend will continue the travels for a further week before we head home—only to overnight unpack and reprepare ourselves for another trip, this one medical in nature. There's always something, isn't there?

Truthfully, though: We're all just slip-sliding, running in place if only to keep from bankruptcy, barely making ends meet—aren't we? As to what those ends are...well, that keeps changing.

Once it was for certainty, or for vocation, or for the want of love. Now, though? I think it's simply for enough. Enough is enough is enough—ad infinitum. Make of it what you will, the world a raging dumpster fire and winter is coming and...but being that we're both white and of a certain age, we'll mostly be fine and that in and of itself is its own kind of infuriating.

*******

We've each other, and that'll be enough. I remember so proudly saying "the most beautiful poetry is telling the world to fuck itself," and I wasn't completely wrong, but I wasn't right either. Instead, I think "this is enough"—for better and for worse—is the strongest distillation I have to offer. Poetic perhaps not, but no less true.

Albums from other lives, it's true—Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers is learning how to play "Lucky You"; is a trip into a life so nearly not escaped; is bad memories of a life best forgotten.

I still can't believe I was so lucky as to escape. To find this. This is enough; this is more than enough.

Tomorrow we head to the mountain her father loved so dearly and in the tired aftermath of a summer that saw a 50-day swim streak, it feels so fitting. Nevermind the snow. Seasons change; we've each other; this is enough.