miracle-gro

This blog was originally posted to The Dresden Dolls Diary.

How to spend time when there’s never enough time. there’s no way.

Up in the cloud club, behind the old spinet, since the grand is at the studio, trying to remember how music is played. the sheet music needs to be finished, the sheets are staring at me, the ink is wet and everything i do is an accident, but some accidents are good. at seven o’clock, i decide that life is worth living outside of my life so i go out to see casy dienel at the lizard lounge. brian has my volvo down in new jersey, so i take the subway. people on the subway don’t talk to each other, unless they’re drunk.

getting out in harvard square, in a terribly weird mood, neither here nor there, i start to think about all the people i know who are getting divorced. three years, ten years, twenty years, it seems to make no difference. when will the world shift the paradigm and realize that alone-ness with sporadic moments of togetherness is better? everything i love to do, lately, is alone. but maybe that’s because my life has become such a warped context.

walking to the lizard lounge, our old haunt where we played many a many a show, i descend the stairs into dark red. “heroin” by VU is playing. there are eight people there. in the story, it sounds like paradise, but in reality, it feels superficial. none of these scenes ever feel authentic. still, i order my beer and sit at a table, feeling like this moment is a worthwhile one, a rare moment worth enjoying. casey plays her piano and sings. she’s wonderful. her new shirt keeps slipping off her shoulders. she seems lonely, so her music is good. she wants to move to brooklyn.

you held me
like a tundra
shifting blocks of ice….

i stay longer than i should and leave for the subway, sitting on the bench letting my thoughts spin and not paying too much attention. i decide to get off at park street and walk home. it’s a long way, a few miles. all the bars are closed. boston is a bleak pre-pre-holiday wasteland. the lights are on, but no one’s home. fall blow-out sale. everything must go.

i walk through the public garden and casey’s words are still echoing.

you held me….
like a tundra….
shifting blocks of ice

everything is still picture-perfect, even though it’s almost bare. the rose bushes and the swan boats.
i wonder how long into the winter they manicure the bushes. do they stop when it snows? do they never stop?
for the tourists.

i walk over the littel foot-bridge, singing my song to myself.
there’s a couple kissing and they don’t stop kissing, they pretend not to notice me. they hold a long moment while i pass.
it’s not uncomfortable for me. i wonder if either of them is married.

i double-back after the footbridge to stay off the main garden path, so i can walk along the pond.
the pond isn’t frozen, but there’s no sign of life. all the fallen leaves have gathered to the banks, magnetism.
the whole park is desolate, just expanses of gray in the night, different shades of nothingness.
the pond is stillborn, even more man-made depressing in the fluorescent lights that must stay on at all hours. never lit by the moon.
the trees are clinging to their last few dried-looking white tea leaves. everything must go.

in the pond. by the edge. something’s there.

it stands out like a bright green radioactive mistake of nature, bobbing there, magnetized with the rest of them to the bank, like some summer leaf that didn’t get the memo.
it’s a small bottle, a very small bottle, a definitely non-industrial sized bottle, a bottle about the size of a salad dressing. an empty bottle.

an empty bottle of miracle-gro.

floating there, comically dwarfed by the bigger miracle of death, fall and everything must go.