A fanatic

is someone who cares more about ideology than about ideas.

The Apocalypse

is never personal. It can no more happen to you than you can happen to a speck of cigarette ash.

It is not that the universe is incapable of malice. If it knew we existed it would despise us. Or pity us. But it's too busy to care.

I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares

The world is unfair, but impartial.

We are abandoned children. We seek conspiracy in the stars.

Betraying Chopin

"Don't remember the music;
remember it as something obvious
that you are compelled, doomed, to obscure
and complicate. You erase it twice.
The first time
as you listened, unable
to have it,
the second time
as you were unable
to remember it."

- Arda Collins, 'Not for Chopin' from It Is Daylight (Yale University Press, 2009)

On Cowardice

Cowards come back to a thousand lives.

The valiant stay dead.

Allegro Marcato

The handpump of history creaks in the night.

Death is sealed and hollow.

The taste of iron leaks into the water, like the voices of the lost singing under the music.

A rusted day gushes from the dawn.


(inspired by Honegger's Symphony no. 3)

Heartbreak - 1

The first time is easy. You gamble, you take the hit. You pretend that the pain is making you stronger. You wonder what you did wrong, though you secretly know the answer. You do not want to believe in inevitability. It all seems very romantic, a kind of validation, the comfort of knowing that what you lost was real. You tell yourself despair is a grown-up emotion. And you can't help feeling a little proud.

Hope

He hasn't lost it.

He hasn't. It's here. Somewhere. Underneath all this mess. It has to be. He saw it the other day. It couldn't simply have vanished. He just has to find it. Just has to look more carefully. It's sure to turn up.

At least, he hopes so.

A blurring of lines

This is what the whiskey helps with - not forgetting, but a blurring of lines.

Sip by slow sip the past comes back to him.

Everything glows. Sadness, like the light at sunset, touches all things golden.

If only there was something left to wait for.

After the fourth drink the old songs make sense to him. Lena Horne singing Stormy Weather. The sweetness of lost disturbances, of rooms through which no one moves.

He's had enough. He fumbles about for the bottle cap but cannot find it. He gives up, pours himself another.

His throat aches.

Dark outside now. He should turn on the light, draw the curtain. Instead he sits, watching the streetlight come through the window, the shadow of the wind chime on his bedroom wall.

Two wind-stirred figures, dancing delicately apart.

The search for transcendence

or

trying to put one over.

Concentric Paths

Thomas Ades Violin Concerto Op. 24

What, exactly, does time circle?

Scale after shimmering scale, the music a snake, feeding on itself.

The coin spinning to rest on the table has its own symmetry, its own precision.

An agitation building to silence.

The slower hand of the sunlight, the faster hand of the storm.

Stop.

If the machine has a soul it must be broken.

The bow runs across the strings like a knife across a thumbprint.

One Downsmanship

I step into the elevator behind you, wait for you to press your floor.

You hit 6.

I pause for a moment, then hit 5.

I try hard not to smirk.

The loneliest thing in the world

...is a wall standing by itself.

Interpretation

Does it still qualify as a nightmare if it makes you sad, but not afraid?

***

In the dream I'm meeting with my analyst and we have a breakthrough. I discover that for the last 25 years I've been repressing the memory of a tragic accident I had as a child. I can't believe I've been hiding this from myself all these years. It explains so much.

When I wake up I think - what was the dream trying to tell me?

***

I don't believe in psychoanalysis. Apparently, my subconscious does.

Coincidence

"This is no coincidence."

"You know, I was thinking the exact same thing."

Laugh about it, shout about it

Two elections.

Both marked by lackluster alternatives.

Both resulting in outcomes that are cause for relief, if not for celebration.

An embarassment of Rich

"Applied to a particular historical subject, the feminist passion yields conclusions which, however true, are extremely general. Like all capital moral truths, feminism is a bit simple-minded. That is its power and, as the language of Rich's letter shows, that is its limitation."

- Susan Sontag

Via Book Bench, a link to a glorious exchange between Adrienne Rich and Susan Sontag, which, in my opinion at least, Sontag (no surprise!) wins hands down.

Cause of death

"Loneliness is not a cause of death"

- Jean-Luc Godard, Made in U.S.A.

A consequence. Or a disguise.

Consciousness neither alive nor dead, like a cat with nine dreams.

A coward with nine deaths.

A murderer with nine wives.

Neither heaven nor hell but a beforelife, an irreconcilable solitude, time's reflection in a mirror that may or may not be your soul.

Not a cause, but a reason.

Cheating

Not cheating when you can is stupid. And getting caught irrelevant.

All that matters is that you not lie to yourself about it.

Prejudice

I told you they wouldn't understand. Not at first anyway. They're small-minded that way, the lot of them. Not bigoted, you understand - they mean well - just slow, and a little petty. They'll come around in time. Probably. And if they don't, well, that's their problem. You don't need them. Not really. It would be nice to have them on your side, but you don't need them. You don't. Oh, come on. You can't mean that. You've got to learn to stand up for yourself. For who you are, what you believe. You can't let them bully you. That's what they want, you know. They're refusing to understand it because they're hoping that if they don't understand it pretty soon you won't understand it either and it'll all go away. I don't mean they're pretending not to understand it, I mean they're choosing not to. And you've got to deny them that choice. You've got to force them. And you can do it too. I'm telling you you can. And besides, you'll have to now. So maybe this is a good thing, their not understanding it. Maybe it'll force you to grow up a little. Show a little backbone. Not just sit there sniveling all the time. What? You want me to lie to you, want me to treat you with kid gloves. Why? Because of who you are? Is that really what you want? Is that why you're doing this, because you want special treatment? I thought you wanted equality. I thought that was what this was about. Oh, all right. I'm sorry. I know you're having a hard time. I didn't mean to shout at you, I really didn't, it's just that sometimes...look, forget it. You know I'm on your side. You do know that, don't you? So what if they don't understand? Like I said, I'm sure they'll come around eventually. I just didn't realize it meant that much to you. I didn't think you'd be so upset. You shouldn't have told them if it was going to hurt you this badly. I told you they wouldn't understand.

The Game

This is the kind of thing they don't teach you at school.

All those years of waiting, hoping, wanting to learn how to play. And then you find out there are no rules, that there isn't even really a game. Just a confused back and forth with no one keeping score.

No way to tell if you're winning. Always afraid that you've lost.