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I like to call myself "a deconstructionist, a post-post-modernist, and a sex-positive feminist." I like the way it sounds. A glib way of both acknowledging and dismissing my academic allegiances. I am fond of self-dismissal.
I don't think that words mean things. Or rather, I think that the relationship between words and meanings is infinitely complicated and ever-changing. I think that dictionaries provide flawed but useful guides to meaning, rather than answers. I don't think that "meaning" is a fixed and singular state. I don't think that anything is fixed and singular, really. Absolutes are useful concepts, but not actually attainable in real life.
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I am trying to write a story about this moment, when Andrew pulled out a velvet box from his pocket and asked me to marry him, and I know that we were sitting on some rocks in La Jolla, and could see the ocean, and it was sunny but not hot, and he was wearing jeans and I was sitting on his lap and it was after I'd gone to college, but before the end of my sophomore year, and I am trying to put events into place, and I can't remember.
When I left for college, I had a boyfriend. I was not engaged, not yet. At some point, I went home and came back with a ring. I spent my first summer in San Diego. I worked at my father's machine shop, and went to Andrew's house after work. I ate a lot of Jamba Juice. I was always on a diet. I wanted to look good for him. I remember these things, but they don't tell me what I want to know.
I am piecing together facts that I remember to try and figure out the rest. It's like those logic puzzles from school where you get a list of clues and try to figure out which of six hypothetical children is the tallest.
1. I know that when I began my sophomore year, Andrew and I were together.
2. I know that Andrew & I broke up before I came home for Christmas.
Therefore, I know that we broke up during the first semester of sophomore year.
3. I know that I got engaged in San Diego.
4. I know that I spent at least some time at home wearing my ring, but not telling anyone.
4a. However, I don't think that I spent the entire summer with a ring—going to work every day—it would have gotten in the way, trying to type with it on my finger backwards, the diamond pointing towards my palms.
Therefore, I probably got engaged either near the end of summer, or during Thanksgiving break.
5. I know that I told my parents we were engaged while in Baltimore and then broke up with him before I the next time I went home.
6. I think that Andrew was in Baltimore when I told my parents that we were engaged.
Therefore, it is unlikely that I got engaged during Thanksgiving. (He would not have visited between Thanksgiving and Christmas break.)
Therefore, I probably got engaged during the summer.
Therefore, I probably was 18 years old, not 19.
It bothers me, that I don't remember this, that I don't know the answer, I only know the equations.
Nonfiction is a funny thing. I'm still learning the idiosyncrasies. Back, way back, in my previous writerly incarnation, even my first person poetry was fictional. I was Lot, or Persephone, or a host of nameless women with husbands and histories. So this mining of my life for material is a strange and new experience for me.
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