Reading the tea leaves May 2013
A fascinating pattern has emerged as someone began probing
poems I posted on my blog back in April 2012, at what would have been the
height of my brief association with her.
If she is the one doing the probing, the question is why: Is
she being nostalgic for that all-too-brief time of tranquility, or is she searching
for something else?
The impression I get is that she is the kind of gal that
once she leaves a situation, she never goes back. She moves on.
Although at the same time, I suspect if someone is persistent
enough, depending on just how safe she feels. If unthreatened, she might even
look back at some old romance with some affection, viewing someone with some
regret as if a missed opportunity. This may well be true of her stalker from
Brooklyn, when at the time she thought she was stuck “frittering every possible
bit of energy away into whatever random task/job/relationship” she decided to “codependently
sacrifice” herself, or would spend the rest of her expectedly short life to the
concept of carpe diem.
She resigned the job, and yet, it becomes clear she could
never separate her ambition from her flirtation, and the fact that she
continued to communicate with her stalker long after she left the job (while at
the same time accusing him of being a stalker), showed some level of lingering
affection for the man – even though she put his stalking to good use in winning
over future allies.
There is no way of coming to the same conclusion with me,
and the tone of her most recent poems suggest still glowing coals of rage.
Which makes her probing of my old poems (if it is her at all) all the more puzzling.
What I neglected to note was her claim in earlier posts that
she suffered from heart problems due to the anxiety and stress, which she
believes will lead her to live a short life. She also suffers from a contagious
variety of cervical cancer (This according to the blogger GA, who learned it
from two local attorneys in Hometown, who had contracted the cancer as a result
of oral sex).
Her leaving the job with her Brooklyn stalker may have had more
to do with the lack of future opportunities the job provided than the man
himself – he was a poor manager, tips were down, and the business seemed about
to hit the rocks. The same thing would have eventually happened if she had
stayed at our office – something she well knew and why she told the office gossip
that her job with us was just a stepping stone – perhaps to television or The
New York Times.
But she knew she tended to self-destruct when things in her
life became too settled –something of a self-deception since calm such as that
was never real, an illusion seen from the outside, while chaos reigns within.
New York was no exception. She previously went through the
same dilemma.
“I knew in my heart things were not right,” she said. “But I
eat myself back into submission with the usual arsenal of excuses.”
It is difficult to know from the outside if the calm she appears
to be inside of with her current job is merely the eye of a storm.
Most people learn and grow from experience. Not so much with
her. She frequently spoke about “sacrifice,” or blamed the industry, and bolstered
herself with the idea that she had to suck it up, a phrase she frequently used.
The fact that she tends to get involved romantically with
the bosses at each of these places, suggests that her current failed romance has
been with someone in authority, and that she has somehow come around again to
that same point where she might need to suck it up or move on.
But unlike her job in New York, which really was a temporary
situation while she tried to figure out how she could pursue her life as an
artist, the current job really is a trap.
People tended to call her lucky because she has so many
talents, but she often burns out even in art.
“I find myself unable to focus,” she said. “I’ve done the
singing thing and found out how quickly what you love can turn into what you
love to hate.”
Over the years, she did a lot of other things she loved, and
in each case somehow managed to love to hate each.
Quoting Camus, she said, “There will always be external
circumstances that will bring you down. It’s what you make of it that counts.”
Which brings us back to where she is today, and if she is looking
for someone to blame for her current predicament. If I read the tea leaves
right, I’m being eyed as her scape goat. I hope I am wrong.
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