The Ghost I Love the Most
Tender is the ghost
The ghost I love the most
Hiding from the sun
Waiting for the night to come
Blur, “Tender”
This summer, the air in Providence was thick with a pulse. It was overcooked. The sun never set. The night never came, so there was no blanket to cover me, no blanket for me to hold. There was nothing to hold. The plants all bolted before we could eat their fruits. It all grew bitter.
So when I saw millions of Seekonk Crabs creep out from their quicksand underground hideaways all at once, I knew. And when I walked around the cemetery crying about my own life rather than the ones under me, I knew. When every single banana rotted in one week’s time, I knew, that the summer heat had burned the ground, and the water and the fire and the flesh and the grass had all melded together into an inescapable sludge. And that all the creatures here, around me, and within me, were off-kilter, wacked out, detached, and floating aimlessly. When the heat of July became the ease that is September, all I could do was try to understand this sludge. Get real close, and stare at it straight in its liquid eyes.
At first I refused to accept that I had been boiled, broken down and reshaped from high temperatures. From the anxious, ozone, methane crockpot that was this summer. It was only by the time October came around that I realized there were parts of me that needed tending. Tender tending. So I listen to the song “Tender” and understand the line when they say “I’m Waiting For That Feeling.” I wait. I wait and think about how many tupperware containers my liquid love could fill. I wait, and know that they are filled to the brim and every once and a while they tip and spill over onto the floor.
I listen to “Big Sur” and dream of Big Sur. Convinced that the Beach Boys know that’s where I belong. The Beach Boys know that my clothes have been left in the washing machine overnight and now I’ve become quite moldy. They know that if I’m tender with my being that I’ll be at Big Sur one day, with my love.
I dream of Big Sur and watch schools of fish, hinting at life beyond the surface of the dirty Providence river. Autumn has cooled the air but the water still boils. And the fish know that. They live in the September Hot Springs.
I park my bike on the dock in the middle of Providence and Barrington where men are doing BoatTalk. I sit with my back to them, stationed between Men and Sea. They talk about Craigslist, Craigslist Boats. They hate rap music. They hate it. But after minutes of anger at the “incessant” noise coming from the parked car, they reflect on the week ahead. They remark that the weather channel said it’s going to stay warm through the week, and rain on Thursday (It did) (I got wet). For a moment during their pleasantries I reflect back on late Saturday afternoons in my life before I grew up. Before my brain became electromagnetic. Ice cream, soccer games, stickiness, jaunts of childhood.
“She looked hot, didn’t she look hot? I told her she could give me an autograph, she could autograph my back…”
Later, he said,“I beat the shit out of her husband.”
When I decided it was my time to leave, I turned around to see the faces behind these words. They were skinnier than I expected. I thought their words were filled with meat. I thought their bodies carried these things they said on the dock between Providence and Barrington where I parked my bike. Rhode Island men, with thick Rhode Island accents, saying things their weight didn’t carry. It felt uncanny, the imbalance. It was warm with a cool breeze that day, but they were holding the summer in their words. They laid out their sludge.
Tending is biking. I biked past a fox later that day and we locked eyes for only a moment. The fox ran one way and I peddled in the other direction, scared of each other.
The heat made all the molecules in Providence, in Rhode Island move incredibly fast. My heart raced all summer.
I’m tending, I’m picking up the pieces. I’m “waiting for that feeling”. I’m dreaming of Big Sur. I’m watching the way crabs and bananas hide and rot. I’m walking, I’m biking. I’m accepting. The men are tending and dreaming. They want nice boats, and they dream of hot women. They tend their anger. They tend the weight of the words they carry. We’re all trying to, I guess.
I’m observing the sludge. I’m tending and dreaming.
Mira Goodman