Reflections on Conflict

It still seems funny to me. Tim and I moved in and the three (really, the four) of us didn't know each other any better than Tim and I when we moved in to the apartment last summer. I hadn't thought much of it. I was more worried about the unknown roommate. But when you left for a while and we did some cleaning and some rearranging of the furniture, it was not what you expected. You thought it was an indication of our low regard for you, that it was some deep-seated disrespect. I admit that it was disrespectful, but just in the shallow sense, the way someone turns the corner without signaling. But that is a big disrespect and a regular concern for a cyclist riding alongside. I think you felt like a cyclist, the terrain and behavior changing suddenly. It didn't help that you came off of a rough trip.

Afterward you seemed to have cooled and I seemed to understand your vantage better. Unfortunately what you were asking you weren't willing to give. Respect is never a one-way road--not that I know of any one-way roads in terms of people--and you seem to expect to see something you don't practice. I remember wondering how people might jump from sports to parties to the night after to family and still have it all in there, all in their life and in their head. It boggled me. Those were things, practices, behaviors I didn't know. I spoke with Becca on the way back from Sarah and Matt's farm; she said that what they were doing--farming--was so crazy and great and miraculous to her. I agreed. What Becca had trouble seeing was her own delicate magic of pastry making, the pleasant rituals of gelato. Where one saw magic the other saw the quotidian.

That's where we are, I think. What you do in terms of work and management is really something. I can see that and appreciate that. I most certainly respect the challenge you've set for yourself. That said, you drive me up the wall with complaints about money or difficulties because their sources are obvious to me. Flagstaff is not a town for juice and smoothies most of the time; selling such goods--regardless of their quality--is a fool's once the frosts start coming. We might get weird late-fall summertime days, but last week we got snow and next week it might average in the 40s or 50s. This is where you are living and it seems foolhardy to complain about it.

Despite that respect, despite that appreciation, you are obviously not interested in practicing that which you demand. Without practice I don't know if what I do or who I am makes a difference. I could push and I could make space, try to connect through the depression, anxiety, and frustration you experience, but why would I? You have made so little effort to make it feel worthwhile and one bad day seems to undermine any successes made in the meantime. There is a lesson in this, a lesson about how we build bridges and how we tear them down again; about the scorched earth we sometimes leave in our wake. But forest fires and lava flows bring out new growth. One can always find green sprouts the year after such devastation, not to mention the abundant mushrooms feasting on the boon. If I thought you would be in my life in some capacity in the years ahead, I might try. As it is, I see so little topsoil, so little humus worth cultivating that I leave you alone and I make a point that you leave me alone. A chipped bowl, cluttered kitchen, loud chatter into the night, a bike sitting squarely in the middle of the entry, these are sometimes the cost for what I have now and what I feel I must wrest from what you would otherwise take.

And yes, dammit, that is my lamp.