Nature Abhors A Vacuum

Pondered-Out

In the interest of truth in labeling, I should mention that I'm only vaguely aware of what that 'subject' heading has to do with what's on my mind today...but if I had to try to connect the dots, I'd say that I've just been thinking a lot about how when something or someone leaves my life, there's always something to mark the displacement. A lot of things and some people disappear with only the smallest effect: there's a momentary swirling of the waters, perhaps a small eddy in the wake, and the space is filled with either forgetfulness or the awareness of something or someone new. Often, though, it's not so simple. When a person, place, or thing is rooted deeply inside me and then is gone, there's an entire suite of cataclysms that gets set into motion. Whether the vacancy is slow and measured, a careful drawing-out intended to cause the least disturbance, or it happens suddenly with the whipcrack-snap of a heart or two breaking, everything in my life gets rearranged. There's some unavoidable geometry at work that ties the magnitude of the shuffle to my love of the Cherished Thing Lost. Sidebar: I read this little snippet near the end of a short story by Poppy Z. Brite, the strange and beautiful New Orleans writer of gothic fiction whose shoelaces Ann Rice is not fit to tie: 'You hold on to what you have; you do not give it up easily, even when you know it is poisoning you.' I'm looking around at the aftermath of some self-induced upheaval. I don't think I've ever cast out any of my own demons, but I do think every now and again I've opened my eyes certain mornings with a terrible clarity and known that whatever spun-sugar shrine I'd constructed around someone or something had melted away. Hateful and blessed, those certain mornings move me ahead and through my life. I don't like them but without them I'd still be in love with the first girl I ever cried over, back in the third grade. (Her name was Kathy Leaf...and Kathy, wherever you are, I hope you're well and happy, and I'll always remember.) That phrase in my subject line is an axiom of this physical world and I'm convinced that for most of us, our hearts are bound by it as well. Emptiness isn't a tenable state for us...even though sometimes, it sounds like it would be a gift. Instead, we're tied to the laws of the vacuum; when something gets removed, something else rushes in to fill the void. Tears and alcohol; blood and water; pain and mistakes and hard lessons learned.