Telegram from DC #1
My laptop has given its last gasp (again), so I'm down to borrowing Vanessa's kindly lent computer or my machine at work, which means that until I'm up and running again -- god knows when in the dark future that will be -- blog updates will be few and far between. Still, at the risk of being uninteresting, I wanted to transcribe the notes I took while in DC. The MLA was kind of amazing. I met a ton of our recently published authors, almost all of whom I liked and who seemed to like me. Maybe it was because I suddenly became the perfect saleswoman and smiled like my teeth were going out of style. I also saw a bunch of Columbia professors - my cuddly Austen professor, who lamented the posturing and costuming of the whole enterprise - some of whom I hadn't even spoken to on former occasions, but who seemed delighted when I introduced myself as a former undergrad. Nothing like college affiliations to bring out the parental instincts of a university professor -- to be honest, they seem so much more friendly and sincere when they know that you're not trying to get anything out of them, not trying to win favor and to sneak into their precious seminar lists.
The grad student enclave, however, was a whole other story. Seeing herds of young, fragile-looking academic types, with sallow faces and ill-fitting first suits, made me a bit nauseous. The whole thing is so staged for disaster. I mean, all these professors were talking to one another about the interviews they held for 'one' position, commenting on how their individual prodigies were faring at other universities, and generally decrying the job market. It's a pretty dreary thing; the kind of event that leaves battle scars trailing in its wake. I guess it was much easier to be on my end of the affair, selling books and talking about ideas and prospective submissions with eager new PhDs or ambitious young professors. Academics, with their blazers, unnecessarily obscure jargon, and generally weak social instincts, are still one of my preferred crowds. It's just weird to see the business of trading ideas and theories (though theory is dead, apparently) as a genuine business, one that grows more and more corporate in its rituals and protocol.
I went to two very cool panels - one on the idea of 'celebrity' as appropriated into a literary context, and one on the fate of New Americanism in the post-9/11 era. The latter was really intense, with DP and JA, two of the movement's 1983/1985 originators likening the historical backdrop of New Americanism's birth to our present cultural climate. They got very passionate about the whole thing, but the younger speaker on the panel - an assistant professor or PhD, presumably - was easily the most eloquent and rational. He abandoned ornate language and irrelevant terms, all those -isms and -ists that I found so annoying. I mean, honestly, I'm not the most learned person out there, but if you can't get me to understand the main point of your argument, who on earth can? The 50 specialists in your field? There's no better way to project intellectuals as being an isolated and snooty bunch than to encrypt simple ideas in grandiose terms. After all, why have a 10-minute speech when you can deliver an endless and obscure dissertation on cake decorating...
Anyway, the panel was really exciting, especially when a member of the audience took a speaker to task, dismissing New Americanism as an "imported" phenomenon, whereupon the speaker went red in the face and shrieked, "imported? what do you mean by that? are you a nativist?" It was better than watching Richard III. What fantastic entertainment.
Overall, I really enjoyed the whole thing, exhausting though it was. Plus it was great to stay in a hotel room, with a big, cozy bed and a private bathroom. I know there are all those disenchanting shots of people looking lost and lonely in sparse hotel rooms, but what's to bemoan about a well-made bed, good lighting, room service, and a functioning bathroom geared for your pleasure? I love my house in Princeton, but I'm always cold there, have a narrow bed with my old college comforter, the floorboards creak when anyone moves, and our shower is essentially a bathtub with three shower curtains draped around it. It's not quite luxury.
So all in all, MLA was a really great experience: eye-opening, exciting, funny, and demanding. Having people so delighted with our book display, asking questions about our upcoming list, and authors bringing their friends over to squeal over how 'well-designed the book on marxist revolutions in poetry' was, made me really happy. I guess I'm willing to forgive a great deal when it comes to peddling books and thoughts around; I think that both the people and the texts are rather a neat bunch.
12.31.2005
12.17.2005
Strike Out
Contrary to the social ease and savoir-faire that I daily project (of which you, beloved reader, are well aware), I made another ungraceful blunder this past week. It all began very innocently, when on Thursday evening, Christoph had some of his friends over for a drum session.
Now I’m not overly fond of all of the people who have at some point or another made an appearance in our house. Try as I may (and I don’t try too hard), I’m not particularly impressed by the undergrads at Princeton. I’ve met too many self-indulgent people who assume that they're really alternative, when in fact they’re really a bunch of preppy white boys who think Bob Marley was the dude. I’m not disputing that Bob Marley was the dude. I’m just saying that I went to high school with these kids, many of whom are genuinely kind and nice people, but who also make the mistake of assuming a status that distinguishes them from the rest of the anorexic, polo-wearing population. Even if you put up an African mask in your room or rock out on the bongos, it doesn’t mean that your values reflect a genuinely counter-culture worldview.
Ok, all of that came out of nowhere. Anyway, Christoph had his friends over, and we had a jolly nice evening. Vanessa and I drained a bottle of wine, Christoph and Samir were playing the drums and tambourine, and we were very happily chatting. Then Mike and Chuck joined us and things livened up even more, especially as we continued to drink glass after glass. People were quietly tapping at the drums, someone was strumming a guitar, and I, of course, began to talk about poetry. Soon we got into this interesting conversation about the Victorian poets, and Joyce & Hemingway, etc. I had been reading some stuff earlier in the evening, and Vanessa, acting out on what I secretly envisioned, grabbed my enormous book out of the kitchen and cudgeled Christoph into reading – Tennyson’s “Ulysses.” Soon we had collected a stack of poetry, and each one of us read something while someone played an instrument in accompaniment. It was quite wonderful at points – though I’m very sensitive to hearing pieces that I love read aloud by others. Sometimes you’ve made something – especially poetry, in my case – so much a part of yourself that hearing someone else re-appropriate it in their own voice feels like a violent blow. But I got over it. Amongst all of this, we were smoking a small amount of herb and getting both high and tipsy.
At 2:40, Vanessa decided it was time to go to bed, and that’s when the dynamic shifted. I was nervous then, as the only woman around, but I love people and new situations and am generally curious to see what will happen, so I figured I’d stay a little while. Suddenly, I found that one of the other guys had supplanted Vanessa on the couch next to me, and was generally sprawling all over the place. While this was fine, it did strike me that for a well-endowed couch, we were rather closely bonding in the physical sense. But I didn’t think anything of it, until we suddenly reached a point wherein this kid pointedly cut off my laudatory comments on his girlfriend’s singing talents by declaring her the “EX-girlfriend.” I was rather shocked at the very meaningful way in which he said this (though he was stoned, perhaps everything becomes more declarative when you’re stoned?), and I mumbled something about how I was sorry for always putting my foot in my mouth, blah blah, whereupon he very sweetly said, “no, not at all,” and patted my thigh. Now I’m all about hugging and patting and touching people’s shoulders when I’m comfortable, but there was something more charged in his gesture than I liked. I guess the thing is that as with Blaine, when I assume that people are in serious relationships or incapable of being interested in me, I’m pretty open and affectionate with them. Maybe too open. But I do get nervous when I feel a lack of private space and my skittish tendencies start to kick in.
So for the next 30 minutes, I found myself edging ever-so-gradually toward the end of the couch, wondering why on earth boys think that breaking a musical phrase down to its structure and tonal arrangement could be remotely gripping, and plotting my final escape. In my defense, it was going on 4, and none of the rest had to be up by 7:30 for work. I just didn’t see fit to prolong the evening any further, so I rose from my seat, skipped across the room, thanked everyone for a great evening, and sort of bolted upstairs. Now in my mind, I thought I made a modest and unassuming exit. But the next morning, Christoph criticized my propensity to do these things, citing that I mentioned my “boyfriend” as I exited, as if to bury any potential brewing in that room in the deep, dark ground.
!!!! I guess the question on my mind is, “what the fuck boyfriend is this?” I don’t think I said anything of the sort. But, as I was told, the problem is these mixed signals I seem to issue. I mean, I love intellectual (fore)play – it’s what drives me to get into conversation with people in the first place, with both men and women. But as Christoph noted, not everyone starts reading love poetry in French, or reciting lines like “Body of my woman, I will persist in your ache,” out of the blue. I don’t do these things in order to win any favor. It’s just what I think, and the pleasure is in sharing a moment with other people who get it too. It's not a come-on.
I don’t really know what do about it. Intellectually, I’m all about the mutual stimulation. Emotionally and physically, I need a solid foundation of trust and comfort. Sure, I say this after letting that guy – Aubain? – kiss me all along my body, in public, while I laughed. But the point is that it just wasn’t the right space for any kind of physical intimacy. In a different context, had there been another woman in the room, or had we not had everyone's focus on us, I would definitely have been less stiff. I would have probably slouched into the couch and deliberately perpetuated the mood, just wanting to see where it would lead. Because attraction itself – as a palpable phenomenon – is incredibly enticing.
I sound like a fool – but it’s hard to hit a balance between enjoying attraction and wanting it to stay at a safe level. I hate myself for being skittish, but I also want to laugh when I hear things like, “men always have an agenda.” Do they think we don’t? Because to put it mildly, most women I know aren’t at all the demure kind. I almost “always” have an agenda, and you’d better believe I’ll toy with the idea of executing it. I don't love those gendered constructions people throw around. Why would you conclude that identity isn't an amazing and fluid thing, that women can't be brutal and men can't be gentle? Aren't we all a bit of both?
Contrary to the social ease and savoir-faire that I daily project (of which you, beloved reader, are well aware), I made another ungraceful blunder this past week. It all began very innocently, when on Thursday evening, Christoph had some of his friends over for a drum session.
Now I’m not overly fond of all of the people who have at some point or another made an appearance in our house. Try as I may (and I don’t try too hard), I’m not particularly impressed by the undergrads at Princeton. I’ve met too many self-indulgent people who assume that they're really alternative, when in fact they’re really a bunch of preppy white boys who think Bob Marley was the dude. I’m not disputing that Bob Marley was the dude. I’m just saying that I went to high school with these kids, many of whom are genuinely kind and nice people, but who also make the mistake of assuming a status that distinguishes them from the rest of the anorexic, polo-wearing population. Even if you put up an African mask in your room or rock out on the bongos, it doesn’t mean that your values reflect a genuinely counter-culture worldview.
Ok, all of that came out of nowhere. Anyway, Christoph had his friends over, and we had a jolly nice evening. Vanessa and I drained a bottle of wine, Christoph and Samir were playing the drums and tambourine, and we were very happily chatting. Then Mike and Chuck joined us and things livened up even more, especially as we continued to drink glass after glass. People were quietly tapping at the drums, someone was strumming a guitar, and I, of course, began to talk about poetry. Soon we got into this interesting conversation about the Victorian poets, and Joyce & Hemingway, etc. I had been reading some stuff earlier in the evening, and Vanessa, acting out on what I secretly envisioned, grabbed my enormous book out of the kitchen and cudgeled Christoph into reading – Tennyson’s “Ulysses.” Soon we had collected a stack of poetry, and each one of us read something while someone played an instrument in accompaniment. It was quite wonderful at points – though I’m very sensitive to hearing pieces that I love read aloud by others. Sometimes you’ve made something – especially poetry, in my case – so much a part of yourself that hearing someone else re-appropriate it in their own voice feels like a violent blow. But I got over it. Amongst all of this, we were smoking a small amount of herb and getting both high and tipsy.
At 2:40, Vanessa decided it was time to go to bed, and that’s when the dynamic shifted. I was nervous then, as the only woman around, but I love people and new situations and am generally curious to see what will happen, so I figured I’d stay a little while. Suddenly, I found that one of the other guys had supplanted Vanessa on the couch next to me, and was generally sprawling all over the place. While this was fine, it did strike me that for a well-endowed couch, we were rather closely bonding in the physical sense. But I didn’t think anything of it, until we suddenly reached a point wherein this kid pointedly cut off my laudatory comments on his girlfriend’s singing talents by declaring her the “EX-girlfriend.” I was rather shocked at the very meaningful way in which he said this (though he was stoned, perhaps everything becomes more declarative when you’re stoned?), and I mumbled something about how I was sorry for always putting my foot in my mouth, blah blah, whereupon he very sweetly said, “no, not at all,” and patted my thigh. Now I’m all about hugging and patting and touching people’s shoulders when I’m comfortable, but there was something more charged in his gesture than I liked. I guess the thing is that as with Blaine, when I assume that people are in serious relationships or incapable of being interested in me, I’m pretty open and affectionate with them. Maybe too open. But I do get nervous when I feel a lack of private space and my skittish tendencies start to kick in.
So for the next 30 minutes, I found myself edging ever-so-gradually toward the end of the couch, wondering why on earth boys think that breaking a musical phrase down to its structure and tonal arrangement could be remotely gripping, and plotting my final escape. In my defense, it was going on 4, and none of the rest had to be up by 7:30 for work. I just didn’t see fit to prolong the evening any further, so I rose from my seat, skipped across the room, thanked everyone for a great evening, and sort of bolted upstairs. Now in my mind, I thought I made a modest and unassuming exit. But the next morning, Christoph criticized my propensity to do these things, citing that I mentioned my “boyfriend” as I exited, as if to bury any potential brewing in that room in the deep, dark ground.
!!!! I guess the question on my mind is, “what the fuck boyfriend is this?” I don’t think I said anything of the sort. But, as I was told, the problem is these mixed signals I seem to issue. I mean, I love intellectual (fore)play – it’s what drives me to get into conversation with people in the first place, with both men and women. But as Christoph noted, not everyone starts reading love poetry in French, or reciting lines like “Body of my woman, I will persist in your ache,” out of the blue. I don’t do these things in order to win any favor. It’s just what I think, and the pleasure is in sharing a moment with other people who get it too. It's not a come-on.
I don’t really know what do about it. Intellectually, I’m all about the mutual stimulation. Emotionally and physically, I need a solid foundation of trust and comfort. Sure, I say this after letting that guy – Aubain? – kiss me all along my body, in public, while I laughed. But the point is that it just wasn’t the right space for any kind of physical intimacy. In a different context, had there been another woman in the room, or had we not had everyone's focus on us, I would definitely have been less stiff. I would have probably slouched into the couch and deliberately perpetuated the mood, just wanting to see where it would lead. Because attraction itself – as a palpable phenomenon – is incredibly enticing.
I sound like a fool – but it’s hard to hit a balance between enjoying attraction and wanting it to stay at a safe level. I hate myself for being skittish, but I also want to laugh when I hear things like, “men always have an agenda.” Do they think we don’t? Because to put it mildly, most women I know aren’t at all the demure kind. I almost “always” have an agenda, and you’d better believe I’ll toy with the idea of executing it. I don't love those gendered constructions people throw around. Why would you conclude that identity isn't an amazing and fluid thing, that women can't be brutal and men can't be gentle? Aren't we all a bit of both?
12.13.2005
The Nutella Monologues
So many things are spinning through my head right now: Christmas cards, weekend parties (so many! I guess my ratings are going up!), talking to Steph on Sunday, getting tipsy on sidecars with Abby, the Christmas pornography special, eating a vat of ice-cream after waiting 4 hours for a meal, being a dork with Christoph at the yoga marketplace, baking key lime pie in winter (so seasonal! so apt!), Brokeback Mountain (brutish and beautiful, I cried during the sex scene; there was something so urgent about it), etc. I have a feeling everything's going to implode tomorrow, but right now I feel weirdly giggly. I think the Nutella has gone to my head. Can you OD on hazelnuts?
Oh, and there was that moment when my friend gave me his address in San Marino, and I shrieked, "dolphins, right? there are dolphins?" and he said, "Dan Marino??"
Or today when I referenced Ebonics (actually meaning "phonics") in a very serious conversation about disabled children. Yup, class all the way...
So many things are spinning through my head right now: Christmas cards, weekend parties (so many! I guess my ratings are going up!), talking to Steph on Sunday, getting tipsy on sidecars with Abby, the Christmas pornography special, eating a vat of ice-cream after waiting 4 hours for a meal, being a dork with Christoph at the yoga marketplace, baking key lime pie in winter (so seasonal! so apt!), Brokeback Mountain (brutish and beautiful, I cried during the sex scene; there was something so urgent about it), etc. I have a feeling everything's going to implode tomorrow, but right now I feel weirdly giggly. I think the Nutella has gone to my head. Can you OD on hazelnuts?
Oh, and there was that moment when my friend gave me his address in San Marino, and I shrieked, "dolphins, right? there are dolphins?" and he said, "Dan Marino??"
Or today when I referenced Ebonics (actually meaning "phonics") in a very serious conversation about disabled children. Yup, class all the way...
Avatar
"In Hindu mythology, Aditi was the goddess of the boundless sky; the original, ultimate mother. Her name means "free from bonds", "the unfettered" or "limitless", and the Vedas hint that she was once all-encompassing. She undoubtedly pre-dates them, and was once the goddess of the past and the future, the seven dimensions of the cosmos, the celestial light which permeates all things, and the consciousness of all living things."
At last a description worthy of me...
"In Hindu mythology, Aditi was the goddess of the boundless sky; the original, ultimate mother. Her name means "free from bonds", "the unfettered" or "limitless", and the Vedas hint that she was once all-encompassing. She undoubtedly pre-dates them, and was once the goddess of the past and the future, the seven dimensions of the cosmos, the celestial light which permeates all things, and the consciousness of all living things."
At last a description worthy of me...
12.10.2005
Freshman Year
Earlier this week I told a colleague from work that the winter landscape was exacerbating my melancholia. The upshot of this was that he laughed his head off and I went back to photocopying my manuscript in silence. I realize that these statements are sort of on par with those high-drama moments that characterize the first (and, let’s face it, second, third and fourth) seasons of Felicity that I religiously watched in high school. But like Felicity, I meant it with ringing sincerity.
Working for the three editors I currently assist just hasn’t been going well for the past month. I’ve been riding through incredible shifts of emotion, panicking about small crises and having continual breakdowns in private at work and at home. One of the worst parts about this is that despite being a very vocal person, I tend to shut down on the communication lines if I’m really really upset and feeling challenged. The difficulties at work began to creep into every nook and cranny of my life, prompting me to consider the merits and weaknesses of my character and behavior. I began to complain in fits and starts, projecting the idea that I couldn’t stand work, when really, I do – I enjoy what I do, but I’m not doing the job for which I was hired. I guess one of the problems is that I’m so new to the professional world. I never feel quite certain of what my rights are, and I suspend my feelings too easily on things that aren’t even emotional to begin with.
Anyway, lately I haven’t felt much like talking to people who aren’t involved in my life. It always came out as a failed attempt – a long rant or, worse yet, a lament that provoked no response from the listener. And there’s nothing worse than indifference or dismissal from people you’re turning to. Because it’s actually rather serious since my work is the only reason I’m even here in the first place. I can’t think of my life without my job because that would entail me living with my parents, and I just cease to exist as a person in that context. Yesterday I realized, in a breakthrough fashion, that I was transferring all my frustration and unhappiness about work into more personal channels, perceiving relationships as being more troubled than they are.
The point of writing all this is really for myself. I think I’ve been trying too hard to phrase things in a way that courts other people’s attention, or letting myself down in an attempt to meet their needs. I’m giving up on that. I don’t know what’s going to happen at work. Next week I have a meeting with a few supervisors to discuss what we can do going forward. It’s the best news I’ve had in a long while at work. Because at least it means that they too realize that I’m horribly overstretched right now, that it’s not just me being incompetent or inefficient. There’s nothing worse than feeling that you’re ill-suited to the most basic of jobs; that you, by your very nature and mental framework, are incapable of succeeding.
Christoph and I had a good talk about it on Thursday. He has defined my attitude as one of ‘rational cynicism.’ Sometimes it’s good to have an optimist with you at dinner every night; it helps to put the day into perspective. Periodically I feel like a freshman again. Things are just so new, so bizarre; the smallest decisions seem so charged. Is there a freshman year to the rest of your life? Sometimes I feel like this is it; that I almost never existed as an independent being before I moved to Princeton. It’s funny to realize that whenever you change your location, you can bear all your history around with you, but it’s really only in small flashes that it remains relevant. I wonder whether the Princeton chapter has the same substance as my 1st year at Columbia, whether it will share that compound of being at once unremarkable but vital. I guess that's why I started this blog in the first place. Because I don't think your formative years - formative moments, really - should go unnoticed or inarticulated.
Earlier this week I told a colleague from work that the winter landscape was exacerbating my melancholia. The upshot of this was that he laughed his head off and I went back to photocopying my manuscript in silence. I realize that these statements are sort of on par with those high-drama moments that characterize the first (and, let’s face it, second, third and fourth) seasons of Felicity that I religiously watched in high school. But like Felicity, I meant it with ringing sincerity.
Working for the three editors I currently assist just hasn’t been going well for the past month. I’ve been riding through incredible shifts of emotion, panicking about small crises and having continual breakdowns in private at work and at home. One of the worst parts about this is that despite being a very vocal person, I tend to shut down on the communication lines if I’m really really upset and feeling challenged. The difficulties at work began to creep into every nook and cranny of my life, prompting me to consider the merits and weaknesses of my character and behavior. I began to complain in fits and starts, projecting the idea that I couldn’t stand work, when really, I do – I enjoy what I do, but I’m not doing the job for which I was hired. I guess one of the problems is that I’m so new to the professional world. I never feel quite certain of what my rights are, and I suspend my feelings too easily on things that aren’t even emotional to begin with.
Anyway, lately I haven’t felt much like talking to people who aren’t involved in my life. It always came out as a failed attempt – a long rant or, worse yet, a lament that provoked no response from the listener. And there’s nothing worse than indifference or dismissal from people you’re turning to. Because it’s actually rather serious since my work is the only reason I’m even here in the first place. I can’t think of my life without my job because that would entail me living with my parents, and I just cease to exist as a person in that context. Yesterday I realized, in a breakthrough fashion, that I was transferring all my frustration and unhappiness about work into more personal channels, perceiving relationships as being more troubled than they are.
The point of writing all this is really for myself. I think I’ve been trying too hard to phrase things in a way that courts other people’s attention, or letting myself down in an attempt to meet their needs. I’m giving up on that. I don’t know what’s going to happen at work. Next week I have a meeting with a few supervisors to discuss what we can do going forward. It’s the best news I’ve had in a long while at work. Because at least it means that they too realize that I’m horribly overstretched right now, that it’s not just me being incompetent or inefficient. There’s nothing worse than feeling that you’re ill-suited to the most basic of jobs; that you, by your very nature and mental framework, are incapable of succeeding.
Christoph and I had a good talk about it on Thursday. He has defined my attitude as one of ‘rational cynicism.’ Sometimes it’s good to have an optimist with you at dinner every night; it helps to put the day into perspective. Periodically I feel like a freshman again. Things are just so new, so bizarre; the smallest decisions seem so charged. Is there a freshman year to the rest of your life? Sometimes I feel like this is it; that I almost never existed as an independent being before I moved to Princeton. It’s funny to realize that whenever you change your location, you can bear all your history around with you, but it’s really only in small flashes that it remains relevant. I wonder whether the Princeton chapter has the same substance as my 1st year at Columbia, whether it will share that compound of being at once unremarkable but vital. I guess that's why I started this blog in the first place. Because I don't think your formative years - formative moments, really - should go unnoticed or inarticulated.
12.03.2005
5AM postscript
I shouldn't be up right now, but I am. I somehow made it over to meet Heath and Clara last night and stumbled back not too long after. I feel tremendously dull for being so tired on a Friday night, not to mention so easily wiped out by 2 glasses of wine. 2 glasses! But those days of a comfortable wine haze are long gone, my friend. It feels like winter, no getting past it. As Karin & Lina said, the winter of our discontent is here.
Tonight I'm going to the opera to see "La Boheme" with Karin. I'm pretty excited; I've wanted to see this for a few months now. Afterward, I'm supposed to go to a party at AmCaf. Oh god. I brought my pictures of senior year back with me from home last weekend. It's a bit sad to look at them and see what we were up to...all those appletinis and dirty martinis (yuck) and G&Ts...I miss it.
I shouldn't be up right now, but I am. I somehow made it over to meet Heath and Clara last night and stumbled back not too long after. I feel tremendously dull for being so tired on a Friday night, not to mention so easily wiped out by 2 glasses of wine. 2 glasses! But those days of a comfortable wine haze are long gone, my friend. It feels like winter, no getting past it. As Karin & Lina said, the winter of our discontent is here.
Tonight I'm going to the opera to see "La Boheme" with Karin. I'm pretty excited; I've wanted to see this for a few months now. Afterward, I'm supposed to go to a party at AmCaf. Oh god. I brought my pictures of senior year back with me from home last weekend. It's a bit sad to look at them and see what we were up to...all those appletinis and dirty martinis (yuck) and G&Ts...I miss it.
12.02.2005
A Letter
I've had two large glasses of shiraz and am already a little silly. I half want to cry and half want to laugh off the past few days. I need to stop reading the speech of aristophanes from the Symposium; it's depressing the hell out of me. Christoph is playing bizarre spanish jazz next door.
Cummings says:
the trick of finding what you didn't lose
(existing's tricky:but to live's a gift)
the teachable imposture of always
arriving at the place you left
and Yeats says:
But boys and girls pale from the imagined love
Of solitary beds knew what they were,
That passion could bring character enough.
But I have no answers; nothing to say, really, except that the wine was sweet, that I've had a tough week. And I like Spanish jazz and you, reader.
yours in affection,
Adithi
I've had two large glasses of shiraz and am already a little silly. I half want to cry and half want to laugh off the past few days. I need to stop reading the speech of aristophanes from the Symposium; it's depressing the hell out of me. Christoph is playing bizarre spanish jazz next door.
Cummings says:
the trick of finding what you didn't lose
(existing's tricky:but to live's a gift)
the teachable imposture of always
arriving at the place you left
and Yeats says:
But boys and girls pale from the imagined love
Of solitary beds knew what they were,
That passion could bring character enough.
But I have no answers; nothing to say, really, except that the wine was sweet, that I've had a tough week. And I like Spanish jazz and you, reader.
yours in affection,
Adithi
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