Chapter 16: Acting Lessons
by Emmet
After dinner, we went to a jazz club, drank too much beer, and debated the merits of Chicago versus New Orleans jazz, a topic I knew little about, but was happy to express uninformed, drunken opinions about nonetheless. Nina laughed and debated, and was harmless, certainly better than the bizarre Jazmynne, but I felt nothing. And if I felt nothing, I would be loyal to Grace, in my heart, as I wished it could be Grace sitting and staying up too late, listening to jazz and forming uninformed opinions about it together with me. I wondered what she was doing this weekend, if Tad had approached her again, or others, but didn�t want to think about that.
I bowed out of giving Nina a ride home, pleading drunkenness, and told Jerry I�d pick up my car from his house the next day; they dropped me off. Home, late, past 2 in the morning, and I went for the box of journals I read each weekend, fishing out Grace�s, read her words, looked for signs.
Things that are surprising to me now: That I actually like someone named after a jewelry company. The difference between first impressions and lasting impressions. Changing impressions. Like with the Musician, who seemed so mysterious once, so captivating, but as I got to know the person the mystery dissipated when I saw the boy that was there, neither good nor bad, but not the depth I had imagined, because when we don�t know, profundity can be there if we want to think it is, as I thought with him. Or we can imagine there is no depth, that the waters are shallow only, as with she I called Bimbo for so long, really, until I experienced birth and realized there is no greater depth than that. And discovered that a name that seemed superficial and trite actually means �manifestation of God.� That intelligence can be where you least expect it, in ways that are unfamiliar. It is the unfamiliar that intrigues me now, that I want to uncover and understand. That there can be great complexity in simplicity, in trying to understand it. In everyone, really, there must be more than meets the eye, and with some we are lucky enough to learn that, even if the more is less than we expected. Better, of course, when it is much more, and I am finding more now than I had thought or hoped I might learn. Other lives. That a challenge can be an act of love.
I fell asleep with the journal by my side in bed.