Under bright and unbecoming lights, we sing and dance and stomp for peace. Why this venue, we do not know. But this is where the movement has a home, and so this is where Amen and Sheva come to talk about the Sulha, about the fundamental need for forgiveness, and about steps, significant even in their insignificance, towards lasting reconciliation.
It is here in this cold exhibition hall, with Arabs and Jews sharing pillows, that their words and their music ignite in all of us the fire of hope, the positive energy of idealistic aspiration, and the mind-forming belief in the power of human spirit.
I danced. I clapped. I stomped.
And I sung. Even though, most of the words I did not understand. They were in Hebrew. Your language. (Which became my language too, the language of my love. But also, in a strange way, the language of my heart beyond you or me or my heritage or any of my dreams. It is the language that flows most naturally through my body, that I seem to understand without understanding. A language that comes to me not as a language, but as a deep spiritual echo with a message much deeper than words.)
Yes, we danced. And we talked about idealistic, maybe even impossible things. (But maybe they are not impossible, and that maybe is good enough for me.)
But still, even here, how you are with me.
I know how you would have hated this gathering. I know how I would have hated having you there. How I would have struggled with you, but really struggled with myself. I know how we would have argued afterwards, irreconcilable (although in the end, leaving you less bitter and more accepting of our differences than me).
I know we could not share these things. (I will never forget the Iraq protest and the woman and the mud puddle. The intolerance of it.)
But still, in the presence of these lyrics, in the presence of my vision for your country, in the presence of all things beautiful and hopeful and sincere and pure, it is you who are with me.
Of all the people I could share it with who would understand. Still, it is you.
Showing posts with label of the heart. Show all posts
Showing posts with label of the heart. Show all posts
June 15, 2007
May 14, 2007
blossoming tatters
When hope rises, it illuminates the future, a space that just moments ago was the darkest of alleyways.
She comes each day to the foot of this alleyway, one street lamp above her, shining down on her blossoming tatters. She knows what she looks like, standing there. She sees it every day in the mirror. Every window she passes. In bathrooms at parties, fixing her hair, this is what she sees.
She is standing at the foot of this dark alleyway. It is the future, but she cannot see into it, and though she tries she cannot yet trust the darkness. She fears it is empty, and she hesitates to walk.
She stands rigid below the street lamp, pale in its narrow fluorescent light. What the lamp shines on, this is what she knows. She can be sure of that. The blossoming tatters. The hope of hope.
She can be sure also of her grip. She has a good grip. She can hold on. She can weather a storm. She can walk in bright light. She can walk in darkness too. Everywhere but down this alleyway, where she stands and stares as if at any moment something may emerge from those deep shadows. Her anticipation stares too from under the lamp, watching for what might come out to meet her, instead of her going in to find it.
No, nothing will come. She must go.
(Parts of her have already gone, she knows. But the alleyway needs all of her. It needs what is standing under the street lamp.)
While she drives to work, she is standing at the foot of the alleyway. While she showers, she is standing at the foot of the alleyway. When her eyes flicker, they are focusing on the alleyway. When she turns her lips away, they are turning towards the alleyway.
And then sometimes, out of her depths, hope will rise. And when it does, the alleyway is illuminated. And then she can see that there is life ahead of her. Then she can see there is a lot of life.
And then more alleyways. And then more life.
And in these illuminated moments, which sometimes last for days, and will soon become weeks and months, she seems to forget about the bright, sharp street lamp above her. In these moments it is not only her and her fears that are illuminated in this darkness. It is all things and all people. It is everyone's hopes achieved and hopes dashed. It is all the dreaming and all the grasping.
It is a million-million dark alleyways, flickering madly as hope rises and sets in human hearts all over the world, like so many fireflies in the fearful night.
It is the human condition, of which she is a part.
And in its light, her tatters blossom a little more.
She comes each day to the foot of this alleyway, one street lamp above her, shining down on her blossoming tatters. She knows what she looks like, standing there. She sees it every day in the mirror. Every window she passes. In bathrooms at parties, fixing her hair, this is what she sees.
She is standing at the foot of this dark alleyway. It is the future, but she cannot see into it, and though she tries she cannot yet trust the darkness. She fears it is empty, and she hesitates to walk.
She stands rigid below the street lamp, pale in its narrow fluorescent light. What the lamp shines on, this is what she knows. She can be sure of that. The blossoming tatters. The hope of hope.
She can be sure also of her grip. She has a good grip. She can hold on. She can weather a storm. She can walk in bright light. She can walk in darkness too. Everywhere but down this alleyway, where she stands and stares as if at any moment something may emerge from those deep shadows. Her anticipation stares too from under the lamp, watching for what might come out to meet her, instead of her going in to find it.
No, nothing will come. She must go.
(Parts of her have already gone, she knows. But the alleyway needs all of her. It needs what is standing under the street lamp.)
While she drives to work, she is standing at the foot of the alleyway. While she showers, she is standing at the foot of the alleyway. When her eyes flicker, they are focusing on the alleyway. When she turns her lips away, they are turning towards the alleyway.
And then sometimes, out of her depths, hope will rise. And when it does, the alleyway is illuminated. And then she can see that there is life ahead of her. Then she can see there is a lot of life.
And then more alleyways. And then more life.
And in these illuminated moments, which sometimes last for days, and will soon become weeks and months, she seems to forget about the bright, sharp street lamp above her. In these moments it is not only her and her fears that are illuminated in this darkness. It is all things and all people. It is everyone's hopes achieved and hopes dashed. It is all the dreaming and all the grasping.
It is a million-million dark alleyways, flickering madly as hope rises and sets in human hearts all over the world, like so many fireflies in the fearful night.
It is the human condition, of which she is a part.
And in its light, her tatters blossom a little more.
May 5, 2007
Angelus
By Cynthia Zarin
One opens the book at random, opens the day,
reads the old architecture whose face runs
like a dog along the window while the sun plays
catch with itself, bounding from Sunday
to Sunday, speechless with desire.
What more could there be than this?
The beams of the cottage, the sheltering
bones of your hips, the great abbey
of the afternon that fills as we watch with sound
and the voices trail back to you from the apse,
from the nave, from the shell-shaped hollow
at the base of your throat that even as it says
what it wants, even as it wills it, holds back,
and a great threshing noise saws the air
as the new beams are hewn all over again as
they must be continually, and knowing this
our very words, making and undoing, are torn,
the color of blood. For why are you here before me
after all this time, time which was mine alone
but now, because we have brought each other
here, belongs to you? We talk to each other
as birds do under the eaves, like the swallows
who return and return, and each time find
everything changed, everything different.
.
One opens the book at random, opens the day,
reads the old architecture whose face runs
like a dog along the window while the sun plays
catch with itself, bounding from Sunday
to Sunday, speechless with desire.
What more could there be than this?
The beams of the cottage, the sheltering
bones of your hips, the great abbey
of the afternon that fills as we watch with sound
and the voices trail back to you from the apse,
from the nave, from the shell-shaped hollow
at the base of your throat that even as it says
what it wants, even as it wills it, holds back,
and a great threshing noise saws the air
as the new beams are hewn all over again as
they must be continually, and knowing this
our very words, making and undoing, are torn,
the color of blood. For why are you here before me
after all this time, time which was mine alone
but now, because we have brought each other
here, belongs to you? We talk to each other
as birds do under the eaves, like the swallows
who return and return, and each time find
everything changed, everything different.
.
April 15, 2007
unrealized realizations
So many feelings in me that I cannot untangle from this sticky, incenstuous web. So many thoughts, the ghosts of which leave pale streaks of unforgiven moments across my heart. Unrealized realizations, weighing me down. How to scrape away the disenchantment. How to release the dread of repetition, of magnetically making the same mistakes over and over again. So many untruths blocking out the light. A thick film of insincerity, angular like a diamond’s surface, obscuring my desires for tomorrow and deflecting beams of truth that were homeward bound, shooting them off into opposing directions at sharp angles, away from me, away from my need.
March 6, 2007
the delivery
any minute now a large van will pull up outside. inside this van will be two men, sweaty and aggravated from their rush-hour commute to my doorstep. they will smile, though, because this is afterall their job, and in me they expect an excited customer, relieved by their arrival, grateful that this once distant time has come. with their arrival, they know, i will have come to the end of my waiting for the shipment of all my things from new york to where i am now, melbourne, australia.
my shipment. those boxes. the remains of my old life, our old life, our fingerprints intertwined on every box, his smell mixed with my smell, our socks thrown in together, our photos layering each other as we used to lay, folded into each other and asleep. all our clothes folded neatly, our candle holders and ornamets bubblewrapped, padded with care.
the life in these things is thin now. thin and emaciated from lack of sustenance, no love of late to fatten the heart of things in those boxes. no conversation to fill out the empty spaces. no sharing or making of plans to make the layers of tape burst at the seams.
the men will bring them inside. put them there, i will say. they will lay them out.
and there the boxes will lie. like so many caskets. like a memory morgue in my living room.
and this is the end of my waiting. this is what six years of waiting has delivered.
they are here.
my shipment. those boxes. the remains of my old life, our old life, our fingerprints intertwined on every box, his smell mixed with my smell, our socks thrown in together, our photos layering each other as we used to lay, folded into each other and asleep. all our clothes folded neatly, our candle holders and ornamets bubblewrapped, padded with care.
the life in these things is thin now. thin and emaciated from lack of sustenance, no love of late to fatten the heart of things in those boxes. no conversation to fill out the empty spaces. no sharing or making of plans to make the layers of tape burst at the seams.
the men will bring them inside. put them there, i will say. they will lay them out.
and there the boxes will lie. like so many caskets. like a memory morgue in my living room.
and this is the end of my waiting. this is what six years of waiting has delivered.
they are here.
February 27, 2007
perfect connection
Who has the right to expect perfection of another? Who has a right to want completeness? To set up this stage littered with trap doors, to underestimate the rise of disappointment, its inevitable swell, and not only to believe, but to expect, to invest emotion in its unsustainable reality?
And then to explain that love was lost in that moment, when the well-oiled points of total connection slipped by one another and fell awkwardly to the floor, and lay impotent and thrashing in prosaic confusion. Their fall from grace, from the exaltation of sky and endlessness, of blue depth and the illusion that frosty clouds are warm cotton clusters; that they are cushion castles and do not house tomorrow’s storms and sudden, random electrical shocks.
And then to explain that love was lost in that moment, when the well-oiled points of total connection slipped by one another and fell awkwardly to the floor, and lay impotent and thrashing in prosaic confusion. Their fall from grace, from the exaltation of sky and endlessness, of blue depth and the illusion that frosty clouds are warm cotton clusters; that they are cushion castles and do not house tomorrow’s storms and sudden, random electrical shocks.
February 20, 2007
history of love, page 72
(i found this old conversation with myself scribbled across torn pages, coasters, napkins and magazine ads. dated april 23, 2004)
Going out for a drink alone on friday night. Delay my departure from work. Delay deciding whether to spend the night alone, or alone. Have scrolled through names in phone book. Don’t tell. Have left similar message on two or three answering machines. Don’t tell. 7.30. 7.45. Nothing to do at work. Lots to do at home. Nothing I want to do at home. Lots I can pretend to do at work. 8 p.m. Reapply deodorant, perfume. Touch up blush, make these pale cheeks rosy.
Out the door, into the elevator, out the door, and then the last door. Mist of rain, maybe drops. Back into three doors, elevator, get umbrella, bathroom, don’t stop at mirror, leave work for the final time this week. 8.20.
Walk down 9th avenue. Would get a cab if I knew where to tell him to go. Walk. Raining. Still haven’t opened umbrella. Cab stops at red light in front of me. “Head to the east village please.” Get out on 2nd Avenue and 5th street. Nothing there. Walk. Walk.
Open umbrella now. Think: you said you would publish. Think: you said you would transcribe dedushka’s interviews. Think: you said you wouldn’t think about him, about going back. You said it would be different. You said.
Going for a drink alone on friday night. Think: is this really independence? Or is this defiance? Or is this creating the sensation of hope, giving gaping masturbating inner-demons something else to suckle on other than loneliness or fear of it never ending.
Drink alone on friday night. Maybe you’ll meet someone, and he will be it, the reason for it all, and knowing that will change everything. Will change everything.
Walk over to First. In Standard now. Four couples, three gay guys and me, and the pen I borrowed, and my drink, and this song I don’t know, and the tunes in my head, and the pictures of us, and the memory of “no,” and the answerless void, and the defiance of defensive strength, and my phone placed before me, dark. No one will call. Couples never call.
How many more like me? Like me, right now. Next door? A block away? Should I look for them? Will they look for me? Who is fooled? Who is fooled?
I am fooled. Sometimes. Sometimes.
Bar-gazing now. Corona, Stella, something I can’t read, Amstel Light, Guiness, something else I can’t read. Have ordered many of these for others before. What’s touching their lips now while I remember bringing something to their lips? But not even. They have no faces. I don’t know who they were.
Dewars, J&B, Johnny Black, Johnny Red, Glenfiddich. Same, same.
Too intense to be out alone. Not for me, I am fine. But for the others. It’s a small bar. I am distracting. They’re living life-light. For this minute anyway. I remind them of the pen writing furiously inside them. Of their eyes intensely focused, of other days, when there was nowhere else for thoughts to go.
Don’t want to start writing about you.
Don’t want to start writing about you.
Need to pee.
Have peed.
Sensation. Is that hunger?
I think I’m having a good time, actually. It’s the writing, feel very centered and honest. Truth has its victory and I get to feel connected and unneedy of more than my own words. Have texted Vinnie. He is single and broken hearted. Is that why?
Third Chivas. Why the hell not. Is that hunger?
The difference between up and down is a single thought. More important than anything else is understanding why that is. Nancy. She’ll tell me it’s all nothing. My own figments taking over. She’ll try to set me back on a truer path. A truer path. A truer path. Funny how I want that path and don’t. Funny how I associate it with nothingness, but also the everything that will eventually come.
The bartender is called Robert. Musician. Masseur. Been searching for ten years. Still doesn’t know. Still doesn’t know.
Bar phone rings. Robert says, “Hello Desmond.” You pick up your phone too when you’re working. You do too. Did your phone ring tonight, baby?
Is everything I write actually to you? Bombay Sapphire. Tanqueray. Yeah. Think I might be hungry. Bus boy doing pull-ups on the bathroom doorframe. “Next one’s on me,” says Robert. May be a long night. Maybe Pier 63 afterwards.
Things getting more distant now. Does it really matter what has transpired?
Here I am. Guess so.
Bathroom again.
Hanif Kuerishi. The soulfulness I cannot reach.
230 Park Avenue South. Is it mine? Is it mine?
Will you come there, baby? Will you come, there? Will we understand each other on their 20 year old couch? Will their 20 year old speakers play our song?
Vinnie hasn’t written back. Maybe he’s happy now.
I wonder if I would make a good movie moment. I wonder if I would be the comedy, or the tragedy.
Better drink up. Better drink up. Bus boy lighting candles. Four jars, match burning too fast, two jars done, third - just, fourth candle now, but he’s not going to make it. There’s always another match. So why do we let ourselves burn, to make the first one feel like it lasted?
Don’t want to strike again. Don’t want to strike again.
And if you walked in now? Well, nevermind.
Knob Creek. What the hells is that? Maker’s Mark. Jack Daniels.
And I’m wondering, I have the hiccups now, are you behind every effort? Are you the impurity that makes no thought clear?
I have the hiccups now. Desmond (who’s arrived) says, “should I scare you?”
Yes, please scare me. Scare me more.
Going out for a drink alone on friday night. Delay my departure from work. Delay deciding whether to spend the night alone, or alone. Have scrolled through names in phone book. Don’t tell. Have left similar message on two or three answering machines. Don’t tell. 7.30. 7.45. Nothing to do at work. Lots to do at home. Nothing I want to do at home. Lots I can pretend to do at work. 8 p.m. Reapply deodorant, perfume. Touch up blush, make these pale cheeks rosy.
Out the door, into the elevator, out the door, and then the last door. Mist of rain, maybe drops. Back into three doors, elevator, get umbrella, bathroom, don’t stop at mirror, leave work for the final time this week. 8.20.
Walk down 9th avenue. Would get a cab if I knew where to tell him to go. Walk. Raining. Still haven’t opened umbrella. Cab stops at red light in front of me. “Head to the east village please.” Get out on 2nd Avenue and 5th street. Nothing there. Walk. Walk.
Open umbrella now. Think: you said you would publish. Think: you said you would transcribe dedushka’s interviews. Think: you said you wouldn’t think about him, about going back. You said it would be different. You said.
Going for a drink alone on friday night. Think: is this really independence? Or is this defiance? Or is this creating the sensation of hope, giving gaping masturbating inner-demons something else to suckle on other than loneliness or fear of it never ending.
Drink alone on friday night. Maybe you’ll meet someone, and he will be it, the reason for it all, and knowing that will change everything. Will change everything.
Walk over to First. In Standard now. Four couples, three gay guys and me, and the pen I borrowed, and my drink, and this song I don’t know, and the tunes in my head, and the pictures of us, and the memory of “no,” and the answerless void, and the defiance of defensive strength, and my phone placed before me, dark. No one will call. Couples never call.
How many more like me? Like me, right now. Next door? A block away? Should I look for them? Will they look for me? Who is fooled? Who is fooled?
I am fooled. Sometimes. Sometimes.
Bar-gazing now. Corona, Stella, something I can’t read, Amstel Light, Guiness, something else I can’t read. Have ordered many of these for others before. What’s touching their lips now while I remember bringing something to their lips? But not even. They have no faces. I don’t know who they were.
Dewars, J&B, Johnny Black, Johnny Red, Glenfiddich. Same, same.
Too intense to be out alone. Not for me, I am fine. But for the others. It’s a small bar. I am distracting. They’re living life-light. For this minute anyway. I remind them of the pen writing furiously inside them. Of their eyes intensely focused, of other days, when there was nowhere else for thoughts to go.
Don’t want to start writing about you.
Don’t want to start writing about you.
Need to pee.
Have peed.
Sensation. Is that hunger?
I think I’m having a good time, actually. It’s the writing, feel very centered and honest. Truth has its victory and I get to feel connected and unneedy of more than my own words. Have texted Vinnie. He is single and broken hearted. Is that why?
Third Chivas. Why the hell not. Is that hunger?
The difference between up and down is a single thought. More important than anything else is understanding why that is. Nancy. She’ll tell me it’s all nothing. My own figments taking over. She’ll try to set me back on a truer path. A truer path. A truer path. Funny how I want that path and don’t. Funny how I associate it with nothingness, but also the everything that will eventually come.
The bartender is called Robert. Musician. Masseur. Been searching for ten years. Still doesn’t know. Still doesn’t know.
Bar phone rings. Robert says, “Hello Desmond.” You pick up your phone too when you’re working. You do too. Did your phone ring tonight, baby?
Is everything I write actually to you? Bombay Sapphire. Tanqueray. Yeah. Think I might be hungry. Bus boy doing pull-ups on the bathroom doorframe. “Next one’s on me,” says Robert. May be a long night. Maybe Pier 63 afterwards.
Things getting more distant now. Does it really matter what has transpired?
Here I am. Guess so.
Bathroom again.
Hanif Kuerishi. The soulfulness I cannot reach.
230 Park Avenue South. Is it mine? Is it mine?
Will you come there, baby? Will you come, there? Will we understand each other on their 20 year old couch? Will their 20 year old speakers play our song?
Vinnie hasn’t written back. Maybe he’s happy now.
I wonder if I would make a good movie moment. I wonder if I would be the comedy, or the tragedy.
Better drink up. Better drink up. Bus boy lighting candles. Four jars, match burning too fast, two jars done, third - just, fourth candle now, but he’s not going to make it. There’s always another match. So why do we let ourselves burn, to make the first one feel like it lasted?
Don’t want to strike again. Don’t want to strike again.
And if you walked in now? Well, nevermind.
Knob Creek. What the hells is that? Maker’s Mark. Jack Daniels.
And I’m wondering, I have the hiccups now, are you behind every effort? Are you the impurity that makes no thought clear?
I have the hiccups now. Desmond (who’s arrived) says, “should I scare you?”
Yes, please scare me. Scare me more.
February 10, 2007
fears of our fears
In the confusion of survival it’s hard to decipher where in our drive our fears end and our sincerity begins. Our fears, possessing the sometimes haunted house that we call body, that we call mind. Our fears, so interwoven and hungry that their roots creep deeper into our primal soil while their leaves sprout higher into camouflaged gardens, true cause inconceivable to effect, and so never connected by our consciousness of the daylight hours; kept at bay by wisdom not welcome in the years passing by too fast.
But our third eye knows all, our sixth sense, our heart of hearts, our fears of our fears. An ephemeral finger points a steady hand at unsteady dreams. An unwanted vision deposits wanted clues. An uninvited truth runs its finger down our backs and our hair stands on end. A shiver passes but doesn’t leave. “That cold wind,” we say. Desperation is quite the storm. Brewing deep below the ocean where memories like creatures survive with no light and are sustained with food that would kill anything trying to live life on the surface.
Do you understand what I am saying yet?
Fears of our fears. This is all that can awaken in us the desire to be awakened. Rising like an unforeseen wave to deform sandcastles built too close to stormy waters. Performing a striptease with our gaping neglect of dormant dreams. Neglect revealed through confusion, revealed through epiphany, revealed through tears, revealed through the silence at the end of a day where nothing made sense, and feels like it never will again.
But our third eye knows all, our sixth sense, our heart of hearts, our fears of our fears. An ephemeral finger points a steady hand at unsteady dreams. An unwanted vision deposits wanted clues. An uninvited truth runs its finger down our backs and our hair stands on end. A shiver passes but doesn’t leave. “That cold wind,” we say. Desperation is quite the storm. Brewing deep below the ocean where memories like creatures survive with no light and are sustained with food that would kill anything trying to live life on the surface.
Do you understand what I am saying yet?
Fears of our fears. This is all that can awaken in us the desire to be awakened. Rising like an unforeseen wave to deform sandcastles built too close to stormy waters. Performing a striptease with our gaping neglect of dormant dreams. Neglect revealed through confusion, revealed through epiphany, revealed through tears, revealed through the silence at the end of a day where nothing made sense, and feels like it never will again.
January 21, 2007
letting go
I have to let it go, my anger. There it goes. It’s going. I can see it, a little wobbly, maybe, a little unsure where to go, exactly. First time on your own is always hard, I whisper, but keep putting one angry foot in front of the other, my friend. I think we’ve grown apart, you see. Hard as it is, there’s someone out there who needs you more than me right now. So off you go. Ciao, old pal. Adios and all. I’ll see you around. Maybe even tonight. Maybe sooner than we think.
January 15, 2007
Repeat Into Silence
(June 13, 2004: from the Starbucks series)
She walked into the café and all the twilight strangers felt an enormous sadness enter the room. A heaviness they knew came from the outside, unmistakably not their own. It had a universal quality, the final disillusionment of human hoping, and so it resonated, yes, but it was not their day to enter the existential vacuum. Their thoughts thick but fragile like the froth in their cups, they raised their eyes and met each other in the air, sympathetic, searching, building walls around themselves. One by one they saw her, she removed her hat, her sunglasses, and they found her eyes, the deepest of wells, red and blue, puffy and determined to hold on to reality. She found a table and sat down carefully, overly conscious, overly composed. She saw only what she needed to. The chair to ha,ng her coat on, the bench for her bag, the spilled sugar on her table to brush to the floor, replace with her computer, the 'on' button, the blank page and the keys. A quick breath and she started to type. The twilight strangers had forgotten about her already. Their thoughts had turned to themselves. And this is how it is, she knew. In cafes. In love. It was 12.20 a.m. and she was hungry. She’d just finish this sentence and have a look at the menu, which the waitress had placed behind her computer while she typed and without her noticing.
Repeat Into Silence is the story that she wrote...
Repeat Into Silence
He looks at me with his love-brown eyes. A straight face at first, his eyes in deep conversation with mine, we're saying everything we have always said, and how it will be forever that these words exist between us.
And then a quick smile dawns over his cheeks, and mine follow like a wave that flows from his heart to mine. And there's nothing that I can say, except for "marry me." And nothing that he can say, except for "no." Except that he could say "just tell me why," and I could say, "because my world will not have it so."
And there's nothing more I can explain, and a void opens up inside me and slips its shadow over all the love that drowns in me every day, as if it did not die yesterday too, and as if I do not die in his presence, and in his absence, and in my solitude since I left him behind to find a road that does not open before me.
"There's nothing more I have ever wanted and nothing I have been able to want since," my wounded truth sends into his almost closed believing.
"But yet," he says, "you cannot choose me to love every morning and all the following day?"
"I have chosen it," I say a thousand times.
"But you cannot do it in this life, in our real life, outside of your heart, outside of your poems?"
"I cannot," I do not say but say nothing meaning the same.
"And you cannot explain why," he says not even asking.
"I cannot" I repeat into the same silence, a place that once roared with my voice and my excuses and my begging for forgiveness and chances, a place we eventually evacuated and that I now carry with me everywhere, making me as meek and barren as the smoldering hope in the ambers of these daydreams.
"Then," he says, "we will be always apart and never together, and you will always be alone and I will soon pull the shroud over your impossible presence in my life, which will be rewritten without you."
Frozen and buzzing I turn from these ghosts in the empty seat before me, and I do not know whether to breathe again, or how to live, except for in these imaginary conversation between you and me, in this café and so many others, full of people living their lives while I make up stories so I can still feel you in mine.
She walked into the café and all the twilight strangers felt an enormous sadness enter the room. A heaviness they knew came from the outside, unmistakably not their own. It had a universal quality, the final disillusionment of human hoping, and so it resonated, yes, but it was not their day to enter the existential vacuum. Their thoughts thick but fragile like the froth in their cups, they raised their eyes and met each other in the air, sympathetic, searching, building walls around themselves. One by one they saw her, she removed her hat, her sunglasses, and they found her eyes, the deepest of wells, red and blue, puffy and determined to hold on to reality. She found a table and sat down carefully, overly conscious, overly composed. She saw only what she needed to. The chair to ha,ng her coat on, the bench for her bag, the spilled sugar on her table to brush to the floor, replace with her computer, the 'on' button, the blank page and the keys. A quick breath and she started to type. The twilight strangers had forgotten about her already. Their thoughts had turned to themselves. And this is how it is, she knew. In cafes. In love. It was 12.20 a.m. and she was hungry. She’d just finish this sentence and have a look at the menu, which the waitress had placed behind her computer while she typed and without her noticing.
Repeat Into Silence is the story that she wrote...
Repeat Into Silence
He looks at me with his love-brown eyes. A straight face at first, his eyes in deep conversation with mine, we're saying everything we have always said, and how it will be forever that these words exist between us.
And then a quick smile dawns over his cheeks, and mine follow like a wave that flows from his heart to mine. And there's nothing that I can say, except for "marry me." And nothing that he can say, except for "no." Except that he could say "just tell me why," and I could say, "because my world will not have it so."
And there's nothing more I can explain, and a void opens up inside me and slips its shadow over all the love that drowns in me every day, as if it did not die yesterday too, and as if I do not die in his presence, and in his absence, and in my solitude since I left him behind to find a road that does not open before me.
"There's nothing more I have ever wanted and nothing I have been able to want since," my wounded truth sends into his almost closed believing.
"But yet," he says, "you cannot choose me to love every morning and all the following day?"
"I have chosen it," I say a thousand times.
"But you cannot do it in this life, in our real life, outside of your heart, outside of your poems?"
"I cannot," I do not say but say nothing meaning the same.
"And you cannot explain why," he says not even asking.
"I cannot" I repeat into the same silence, a place that once roared with my voice and my excuses and my begging for forgiveness and chances, a place we eventually evacuated and that I now carry with me everywhere, making me as meek and barren as the smoldering hope in the ambers of these daydreams.
"Then," he says, "we will be always apart and never together, and you will always be alone and I will soon pull the shroud over your impossible presence in my life, which will be rewritten without you."
Frozen and buzzing I turn from these ghosts in the empty seat before me, and I do not know whether to breathe again, or how to live, except for in these imaginary conversation between you and me, in this café and so many others, full of people living their lives while I make up stories so I can still feel you in mine.
January 13, 2007
the disenchanted ones
I walk into a party and know I should be observing the youthfulness of social chatter and bonding of minds over the clinking of glasses. But instead I scan the room for the outsider elements, feel myself seeking out the estranged emotions in the room, the one’s who prefer to stay in the shadows, the flicker of isolation in a red and tired eye, those who are bored despite distractions, and hungry despite the chips and dip. I walk into a party and instantly look for the disenchanted ones. The pensive amongst the merry, the modest amongst the needy. And I always find them. And they always find me.
January 5, 2007
mists & mirages
Saskia resurrected this from the surreal mists and mirages of history this morning via email. I wrote this six years ago, sitting at Valeska on 2nd avenue one unusually warm evening early in the year. my computer was a large black chunky heavy thing that i threw into a dirty orange shoulder bag bursting at the seams and lugged with me to whatever exposed, inspiring corner of my mad city called my name.
Years later now, and so true all over again. More true now than ever. More true even than it was back then.
one true thing about my spirit
How is it that feelings of loss and pain are always accompanied by feelings of pure love not for a person or a situation or an idea (that has touched me and taken a room in my mind for its own visions) but for life just life And how is it that I am so taken with this love with what this love does for my soul and how that love is in fact my spirit and that as much love as there is in my spirit is as much love as I have to give And does this mean that I will always have strength to remain my better self as things fall all around me because in the falling I see love and in the debris I find hope and in the carnage I smell love's hope still fresh and looking for life?
Years later now, and so true all over again. More true now than ever. More true even than it was back then.
one true thing about my spirit
How is it that feelings of loss and pain are always accompanied by feelings of pure love not for a person or a situation or an idea (that has touched me and taken a room in my mind for its own visions) but for life just life And how is it that I am so taken with this love with what this love does for my soul and how that love is in fact my spirit and that as much love as there is in my spirit is as much love as I have to give And does this mean that I will always have strength to remain my better self as things fall all around me because in the falling I see love and in the debris I find hope and in the carnage I smell love's hope still fresh and looking for life?
October 27, 2006
couple at the next table
And so she starts saying "maybe you are right."
Maybe you are right that the monsoon doesn't close roads. Maybe you are right that we should have gone right instead of straight. Maybe I should have used tumeric instead of chili powder.
And through his inflating sense of manhood and victory, he fails to sense the dark and lonely foreboding in her surrender.
Maybe you are right that the monsoon doesn't close roads. Maybe you are right that we should have gone right instead of straight. Maybe I should have used tumeric instead of chili powder.
And through his inflating sense of manhood and victory, he fails to sense the dark and lonely foreboding in her surrender.
Erez and Ilana...
On September 7, 2006, Erez and I got married. It was the best party I have ever been to. Our friends and family were absolute rock stars, and on this night they shined, and we shined because of them.
The rest of the photos can be seen here. Our amazing love story is there in our eyes.
(editor's note: The rest of our story, of which there will be no more photos, may be told here one day. But not yet.)
...but right now, a month and a half after i stood under the huppa, danced in the nighttime water with my best friends, welcomed hundreds of people, new family and old family, to the colors, sounds, people and love of my life, now, one and a half months later, it feels like too much of a story to tell. so, for now, our wedding will remain unblogged.
i'm now in Nepal, having spent about 3 weeks in northern India on what some might call a honeymoon, but we just call a great big trip through south east asia on our way to Australia to start a new life.
what follows are some of my posts, hand written in my travelling note book (thanks Eleanne), from the past weeks.
July 4, 2006
if tomorrow
will you come tomorrow?
my brother is here for a few days. i'll come next weekend.
next weekend.
yes, is that alright?
yes. but i don't know. you better call first. i'm doing radiation now.
oh, of course. is it going well.
very well.
that's very good.
yes.
so i will see you soon.
yes, but you should call first.
i promise i will call.
it's better with you than without you.
i am with you.
seeing you helps my heart.
my heart too victor.
smile your sparkling smile for me.
please don't die.
my brother is here for a few days. i'll come next weekend.
next weekend.
yes, is that alright?
yes. but i don't know. you better call first. i'm doing radiation now.
oh, of course. is it going well.
very well.
that's very good.
yes.
so i will see you soon.
yes, but you should call first.
i promise i will call.
it's better with you than without you.
i am with you.
seeing you helps my heart.
my heart too victor.
smile your sparkling smile for me.
please don't die.
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