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Dimnutive Derivative 

I suppose one way to put it might be

that I’m quite financially unsolvable. 

Unresolvable?  Unresolved?  I used

to invest, almost in an unbeknownst

fashion, we called it 401k.  Or that

might have been a brand for a pair

of pants that, when I was much more

financially solvable, I used to wear on

occasion.  I’m a hard fit, my legs a tad

too short for most standardized fits.  But

at least I’m in the states rather than in

Europe, where everyone is apparently

a teeny weenie skinny-Minnie.  I could

take a too-long pair up a few inches,

it’s true.  I had an internship during the

year I earned my last degree in which

I taught young students interested in

the dramatic arts how to sew, then we

built costumes at shop before each play,

then I managed the house during each

performance, also an internship.  And in

the various theatres we had on my grad

school campus that year there were no less

than 10 full-fledge theatrical productions.

Like most years for most of my life, it was

a pretty busy year, and income was pretty

sparse, despite three internships (the third

was for a campus drug and alcohol rehab

counselor) and 20-30 hours per week at

the local Big Lots.  So I’m a bit short, but

if push came to shove, I could take a pair

of jeans or slacks up to my twenty-eight or

so inseam, should there not be any of what

they call abnormal sizes available.  Like I said

I am something around a 28 and a half inseam

and it’s usually hard to find anything less than

a 30 inseam.  Some jeans have sizes that are

shorter than 30, like Levi’s, which I know,

because I grew up wearing 501s.  Ah, no

wonder the subject got off course when I

mentioned I once had a 501k.  Not being

employed at the moment, and having long

ago gotten rid of my 401k money in the

decade of destitution that I am still riding

out just as penniless as ever, not only do I

owe taxes (at least to the state of California

now) with no income in over a year and a half at

present, but to various small credit cards that I had

used to build up my credit ever since I could afford

to when card companies began to give me a little credit

once again.  This is a game that isn’t fun, so let’s change

the subject.  I’m a non-solvent human looking for a job,

having just days ago turned 59 years old.  Which sounds

like a practically unsolvable logic problem, especially if I

were to continue to add on pieces and parts of my

issues at hand.  My ongoing problems.  My tragedies.

My down-right tragedies that have kept me from my

betrothed.  My betrothed.  I do have one of those, and

I’m quite rightly giddy about the notion.  The only problem

is that he lives in the Southern Hemisphere and is attending

school and I live in the Northern Hemisphere and while we’ve

taken care of the papework to get him here we’ve been unable

to pay for said paperwork, the visa that would have him here

and ready to marry me within 90 days upon his arrival.  Even

though we talk every day often several times live, and chat

intermittently, in order to make the visa part happen so that

he can come here I saved up because it is required that I visit

him in real life before I send the visa which I completed.  After

mandatorily going down to visit him in person a year ago March

for a couple of weeks.  And it’s been six and a half years that we

have been thusly betrothed, pretty much.  It’s a notion that I used to

make fun of when friends of mine got into long-distance partnerships

of romantic and/or commitment and/or sexual natures (the top three;

I mean, sure, you can have one, you can have a couple, but to find someone

in which you are able to work out all three seems to me that ideal, like you

have something really worth working on, keeping going.  And I’ve not

exactly been wise with commitments, but I’ve had a lot of them,

and many of those have been from three months to 10 years or

so in duration, which means I have what they call experience.

The same thing that if you were to look at my professional, or

paid employment resume you’d see that some pretty good

experience is something I also have plenty of in the career I

happenstanced into and have been relatively happy with.   One

would think that things might, considering a pretty decent amount

of experience with each, be able to procure both reliable and purposeful

employment along with a more personal relationship, a small family at

which to spend the rest of our lives.  But as if this writing and several

years of working quite intensely to get at least a good part of what I

had going or me for many years back, one would be sadly mistaken, as

I had to deal with a ridiculously cowardly break-up from someone with whom

I’d lived and loved, as boyfriend, partner, romantic and otherwise (in other words,

it was the perfect set-up for one of those special ones that had good sex, a real

commitment and actual empthetic love, all as defined by me at any rate.

This supposedly aware individual (me) who was in love, in a commitment and

had wonderful intimacy for ten years with this individual, or thought he did, got

hoodwinked into dealing with his all but actual death (so possibly worse?).  The

death of of a very longstanding intimate partner who just disappeared

without even a warning after 11 years or so, so that he could and would marry

someone for who he’d apparently been hot for and spent much intimate time with

during 80% of the long duration of time that we were together in a supposed

committed relationship.  This all sounds pretty normal, I supposed, except for

the extreme cowardice he displayed by leaving me to grieve like he had literally

died in my world.  a death that I didn’t get literal, but in all ways but.  I had to

spend valuable and very ill (thanks to this loss) time dealing with the fact that

not only was our relationship fraudulent, traspiring through what at the time

seemed and still feel like were the best years of my life, only to finally have him

disappeaar with no warning in that horrifying way of cowardly not even giving me

an explanation or even one word that he was going to leave and I would never 

see or hear from him again.  In other words, I became a widow.  He was my 

dead former spouse.  But the voices of dying spouses live on in the ears and 

minds of those they’ve left behind.  Don’t they?  And this has been a meandering 

story, in which I have now vulnerably relayed to you that, at 59 years of age, 

that is, at an age when most people begin to at least think in earnest of how 

they will wind down, should they have such a luxury.  I unfortunately have a

need rather, to wind up.  And of getting the love I currently have who lives

on the other side of the world to me.  Or work with him to find a way to get us 

reasonably and contentedly together for a life that is real, that includes the both 

of us working together, on more than, say, a couple of videoconferences and

intermittent texts throughout the day.  to get the chance for regular and real

touch, living as the best way we can come up with the intimicay we want, in real

and meaningful ways.  Rather than having only two weeks out of six and a half

years in each other’s company, we can have all but maybe two weeks of the year 

in each other’s company, or more.  Again, I am writing this as a means of   

relaying, of understanding what I need by articulating myself, of using you as 

a meaningful means for me, by casually giving you a bit of the things I find

important in my story (why it’s important I do this we can talk about some other 

time, but it truly can be good for me).  That’s what is on my mind and why I have 

said what I said here on these virtual pages.  And so I am appreciative.  Of being 

able to do this.  Of you being there, whether or not you are.  And of using this as 

a means, in this case, like a diary or a therapist or writing at a poem (and no, 

this is not my only way to write, it is just one).  Thank you so much.  Perhaps 

knowing a few things about me might be a good thing for you, I cannot say.  But 

passing what I have along to you about me has definitely been good or me, 

in understanding better what is happening in my life, in preparing for a hopeful 

adventurous future with a person with which I desire to do so, and in helping to 

instill within me by talking about it realistically, some helpful goals during the 

process and the motivation to do my part to make the goals happen.  That’s a lot 

of help.  So please accept my most humble appreciation at your participation

in what has been a bit of a vulnerable and potentially helpul exercise by me.