A love story and a journey. About the healing and transformative power of art and of love, and of the importance of faith in our lives….. please feel free to read and send me a comment. Amanda Bransgrove.
T is for Cathedral.
For Talin. My living cathedral who inspired this.
“Words were originally magic…By words one person can make another blissfully happy or drive him to despair.”
–Dr Sigmund Freud
“The world is so complicated, tangled, and overloaded that to see into it with any clarity you must prune and prune.”
–Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night A Traveller
PROLOGUE
I have a photo of us. Us.
One of a very few that I have from back then.
It was on your birthday. The day we went to the hedgemaze. Remember?
You were wearing your Chanel horse bracelet. And a tshirt of a ribcage, with a heart trapped in it.
I never thought about that tshirt til now. What that really meant.
Were you aware of what your t shirt spoke so loudly?
I have sat here now pondering this photo for days.
We are both wearing caps, which I suppose is nothing unusual. It was sunny that day. For May.
We ate dips and drank wine and walked around the hedgemaze.
We took photos of ourselves. Holding the camera out in front of us, guessing where to hold it to capture us both.
But this photo of us is so strange.
You have your hand over your face, pulling your cap down, and I am just on the edges, squeezing to be included.
It’s how I always felt.
Always, with you. On the edges of you. Never with you completely.
And there it is, your heart, red and trapped, inside a bony cage, printed bright red on your black t shirt.
And both of us, anonymous, hats down over our eyes.
Hiding ourselves.
But you know what?
I am smiling.
I am.
But I know if you could see my eyes, you would see I have been crying.
I don’t cry about this time anymore. Not at all.
My heart is free, of that I am sure.
My story to you is testament to that.
I hope you have thrown out that tshirt.
Trapped hearts don’t sing. Or write. Or paint. Or dance.
Or love.
Do they?
Part 1
KICKING AGAINST THE PRICKS
I’m writing you a story. I’m writing because I don’t know the future.
I’m writing a story of you because I don’t know the future of you.
Of us. You say.
Us.
I forget.
How quickly I forget.
Forgetting is my art.
And later, when I have forgotten, you remind me.
You said you would write me a story.
It’s true.
I said I was going to write an allegory for you. For us. A story, an account of past events.
Of yours, and mine.
Telling of a time we shared.
True. I had said that.
But must I start today?
Do I have to start today?
Yes, today, you say.
Just write the facts.
I laugh.
Rest assured, I’m sticking with the facts.
Come closer.
Let me tell you something.
STORIES
I’m writing stories to weave the threads between passion and loss.
My forgetting and my memories. Imagination and stories are all I have.
But it’s all true, isn’t it? You ask me.
Of course it is, as I write it all down.
This will help, I tell myself. It will.
Memories are my currency so I write them down, on paper, where I can store them safely. They are less likely then to be damaged, corrupted, altered.
I’m trading memories for time.
It’s my life, as I remember it.
Forgetting is my art that shapes my memories.
This is my truth.
All of it, packaged up and handed to you.
My story of you and I.
Of us, you say.
Of course.
Of us.
Us.
CANT GET YOU OUT OF MY HEAD
There’s a dark secret in me
Don’t leave me locked in your heart*
You won’t tell anyone about us, you won’t, you said, you won’t.
I just want to scream from the rooftops.
I want to paint it on walls.
I want to graffiti your garage door with it.
How I feel about you.
I can’t get you out of my head.
And we can’t get out of each other’s beds.
Set me free.
Set me free.
*Kylie Minogue, Can’t get you out of my head
I pour myself another drink.
Part of you pours out of me.
I sit down to think.
It’s all about you.
Line after line.
I can’t get you out of my head.
TODAY
I wanted to kick myself in the head today. To stop my stupid thoughts from cycling around and around. A mental velodrome. I hold out my feet to trip myself up. Or at least slow myself down.
Last night I dreamt I was on a plane. Going somewhere for work. I wanted to cry. Run away and hide. Disaster was all around me. However, I couldn’t run. I was in a foreign country and had things to do.
I am in a foreign country with you. Not with your body and mine. They work quite perfectly together. But your life and your love is a foreign place to me. I have no visa and no passport.
No ticket there.
I am invisible, even if I do cross that border.
I walk up to your front door. I imagine there is a guard there. Uniformed.
The guard says to me when I knock on your door:
Name?
And before I can answer.
Reason of visit?
He stands large, immobile. Blocking the door. Stomps his boots on the ground.
His uniform, impeccable. He is here only for me.
Why else would they need a guard?
This is their house.
The guard disappears.
Now it’s the door-bitch at the nightclub on a rowdy Sunday morning. 2am.
Who the hell are you?
She’s holding a clipboard I am guessing contains a list full of names.
None of them mine.
She looks at me. Vacantly. Uncaring.
I am not correctly dressed.
There is no dress code for this venue that would be appropriate.
I may as well be naked.
And soon, we both, no doubt, will be.
No outfit would prepare me for this though.
Even if I had put another hour into getting ready, I wouldn’t be ready for this.
Not this.
I peer over her arm to the clipboard. There is one name on it. One page. Under a large heading.
It says:
NOT ALLOWED IN:
And there it is.
My name in capital letters.
Unmissable.
You open the door. And I tumble in.
In here, I disappear.
Except under your eyes.
You are the only one who sees me. It’s the only way it can be.
Door closed behind me. In here I am safe I tell myself.
Making sure you have locked the door properly, we embrace.
I look down at myself and my arms and hands aren’t there. I can feel them doing things – holding a tea mug, leafing through a magazine.
But I can’t see myself.
Invisible me.
I tried to disappear from you last weekend, remember?
I sat by myself and worked myself into a state, where my feelings where pushed down into the size of a twenty-cent piece, and I squeezed them into my palms.
Clenched fists, I rang you and said I need to talk.
You came over as soon as you could.
You, ever thoughtful, ever caring, even brought me food. It’s a traditional Armenian dish you said. Traditional, I thought. I didn’t know there was breaking-up dish.
I wish I were Greek. I could smash all the dishes and call it good luck. Instead my housemate would slap me and say you are mad.
I am mad.
I was mad.
But when I tried to talk to you all I could do was ramble. Incomprehensible.
The more I spoke the less sense it made and you sat there, perfectly understanding.
How do you do that?
Perfectly understand me?
When I am so, so confused.
You simply said, I understand. And kissed me. Quietly, gently. telling me to stop trying to explain. It’s going to be ok, you said.
We were sitting on my leather sofa. My hands in my lap. Your hands on my face.
I am a twisted ball of string in your kitten paws.
I am a two-year-old child kicking the walls merely for the sound it makes. And then, for the sound it makes others make.
Stop it!
I love the sound of other people yelling at me occasionally, it excuses me from the need.
But you never yell. You just look at me. Eyes open. Ears open.
Me, I love creating drama.
Must be the thespian in me.
I’ve been called worse.
WHORE OF BABYLON
Yesterday at your house, your mum unexpectedly turned up at your front door.
I was frozen with shock. While inside, a burning stirring desire to run. But unsure whether running would simply attract more attention.
Has she seen me yet?
I stand still. Invisible? I wonder. I wish.
I’m a deer that’s heard a gun shot. Wanting to just bolt in any direction till I can’t run anymore.
Instead I stand there. Unmoving. Feeling frantic.
Deer in the headlights indeed.
Red laser sights honed on my guilty chest.
The strange thing was, barely an hour ago, I had asked you what would we do should someone turn up at your door.
We had been laughing.
Not to worry, you said. Dismissing my concerns with a wave of your hand.
It’s not like its written on your forehead : Slut. Home-wrecker.
We laugh.
Whore of Babylon, I said.
With MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH on her forehead.
I said, lets get this straight.
Even though there’s nothing straight about our affair.
I may be the slut. But you are the home wrecker.
We were hugging and giggling as I said this.
Both of us laughing at the severity of the words.
Maybe I will grab a marker and write it on my forehead, I said.
Go on, you said. Still laughing.
We both laughed even more then, as I looked around for a marker.
I couldn’t find one, you couldn’t keep your hands off me and we ended up naked in your bed.
Strange how quickly things change.
We timed it well though as by the time your mother knocked I was showered and dressed and the bed was remade.
Strange how quickly things change.
My first thought when I saw your mother was one of relief. At least it’s not your husband.
Lucky I didn’t write on my head, I thought.
Not only would it prove hard to explain. But knowing me I would have spelled it wrong and not left enough room for home-wrecker.
It is a long word.
It’s a long hallway of doom to me right now.
Me, frozen to the kitchen bench staring down the hallway to your mother, who is blocking my only escape.
For sure, I would have got it wrong. I would have. In my excitement and silliness with you, written too quickly and spelled ‘slat’. Or ‘slet’. Fucked it up somehow.
Then while we sat drinking coffee with your mother, she would have thought to herself why does she have something written on her forehead?
And what does it say?
But being your mother she is compelled to politely ignore it.
You, quick thinking and quick-witted, could make some joke.
Pass it off, as she’s a creative type.
It’s easy to do.
Lots of things can be explained that way.
Accidentally wearing your jumper inside out.
Odd socks.
Shoelaces undone.
Messy bedrooms.
I’ve-just-been-fucked hair.
Lots of things.
Lots and lots of things.
But not all things.
Why does she act weirdly whenever I am around?
Why does she always leave before he comes home?
Why does she call you honey?
Why does she look at you in that way?
Why does she smile whenever you catch her eyes?
Not everything.
Not the way I feel about this.
Creative or not, I am desperately logical about this.
Hands clenched into fists.
Kicking against the pricks.
I have already broken the rules I made for myself. I have failed myself.
So to pay for my failure, I will stay angry somewhere inside me.
It’s my wall against the heartbreak. Not too angry though. Just a little bit of angry.
A twenty-cent piece big.
Just that much in my palms. And there, I know where it is.
I can hold out my arms and with hands turned upwards, examine it.
My guilty bloody wounds.
My punishment for my behavior.
Slut, home wrecker. You said it. I believed it.
Lucky I didn’t write it on my forehead – it’s tattooed on my hands.
Tattooed on that place where I touch you when you come to me.
But I am the one that walks away with it. It leaves trails on your body but it’s my bloodstains.
Unwashable.
Out spot out.
All of Neptune’s oceans will turn red with my guilt.
Surely, no measure of the milk of human kindness will forgive me this.
I awake.
Guilt grants little respite.
All morning, we text message each other. As usual. I can’t resist you.
I am desperately failing.
I am desperately failing resisting.
My own personal underground of failed resistance.
I tell myself I won’t see you tonight.
But where am I now?
Gun-shy and stuck here with you.
The only saving grace – my house is a bomb shelter as long as he doesn’t know my name.
And me a deer still, in your headlights.
A foreign brightness into my wild eyes. I cannot move.
You shine your light onto me and I stand and bask.
Pull you closer and taint you with my hands.
Falling together, love persists.
I can’t help myself.
So we help ourselves to each other.
Please, can I have some more?
Surely. There will be more.
ALIVE AND KICKING
I’m alive.
How do I know this?
I am breathing.
I am fogging up the window watching you leave. My breath condenses on the glass. And outside it’s raining deep dark rivers from the sky. The moon is three quarters full and I feel my half-life fading away.
I have a half-life of me plus you divisible by the times we spend together minus watching you leave and go back home to him.
Half-life only without you.
I want you to stay next to me. Sleep next to me, every night. For those precious nights we do steal together are so warm and easy, I don’t know why it isn’t always.
I want to take a lifetime of holidays with you.
Without you I don’t breathe properly.
Except in short sighs. And gasps.
With you I gasp and sigh but that because you touch me in ways I can’t tell of.
Silent inhalations of joy with you.
I watched myself be born through my grandfather’s camera.
Foggy and blurry pictures taken with a very old camera. My father wasn’t there because he was playing golf. I later found out from my mother he was sleeping with her best friend. Infidelity is nothing original. Nothing new.
Yet we always act shocked, surprised when we hear of it. Or engage in it.
As though we must be the first, the only and, for sure, the last.
For we will go down in a ball of flames.
A fire this hot and with nature’s forceps pulling at us.
My birth was also attended by a large group of medical students. I was born breech. Back first. Not ready to face the scholarly gazes.
I found out you came along three years after me. Same hospital.
You also were born with clipboard-carrying students watching on.
Is this why we both shy away from others?
To secretly meet?
Not wanting to have our behavior discussed anymore, or analyzed.
I am older than you and my memories are dark at the best of times. But seeing my own birth in my grandfather’s old photos has made it a separate experience from the me I am.†
I have no memory of this time. They are not my memories.
Forgetting is my art.
I am alive.
Alive?
This is what I have been told.
The doctor told my mother don’t put a notice in the newspaper. Don’t celebrate.
She’s too little, born too early, not strong enough.
Strong enough for this though. But I know you doubt that. You think that I am weak headed because I am weak hearted for you.
Weak headed because I can’t stick to my own rules because it’s so easy to slip under sheets with you. Irresistible you. It’s too uncontrollably passionate between us.
Too quickly. Too fast.
Our love is both a steam train and a racing car.
A bulldozing-bullet-train-roller-coaster.
Buy your tickets at the gate.
I am riding it with you.
I would be lying if I said I don’t love this ride.
I bought tickets for us both, a long time ago. I didn’t tell you then because I didn’t know it at the time, and neither did you. It took us about twenty-four hours before we both realized.
Twenty-four hours is not long to prepare. Within twenty-four hours of knowing each other we were in bed together.
The train took off not with a loud horn blast and fanfare, but edged its way quietly one long morning while we, in quiet repose, lay together.
Our mouths almost touching.
Almost.
Our lips millimeters apart.
Millimeters.
Your warm breath mixing with mine. Your head sharing the pillow with me. The heat building between us, the beads of sweat slowly forming a wet film between us. I was photographing you with my body. Making imprints of you on me. My skin a spectroscope of you on me. My body will always remember this time. Not as something and something separate. But as present.
Embodied.
There is no fog when we lie together.
Skin hair mouth legs feet. Touching.
We look up and all we see is clear blue skies.
Curuleus.
Desert cerulean skies.
Cloudless.
I drew you a picture for you of a desert sky. Remember? For your birthday.
Orange sand, red dunes against a central Australian sun.
Blue skies cloud-free except for a tuft of white that lasted all of ten seconds.
The heat draws all moisture away from everything here in the desert.
Even a cloud is sucked up into the light of day quicker than you can say Robinson Crusoe.
You are my Treasure Island, love.
My trove.
I am stranded with you and digging your depths. All of you a treasure.
Your name in Armenian means precious and that’s exactly what you are to me.†
Together we will be shipwrecked. Marooned. But as long as I have you I am not lost.
You will be my map and I will be your territory.
Together we can protect each other, slay dragons, and raise our flag.
I am not seasick but lovesick. It’s obvious this, no?
And if can’t have you, then what? What?
I had a girlfriend once who refused to ever drive a car or be a passenger in one. They are the cause of global warming she told me. The Cause. She would walk alongside me while I wound down the window and chatted to her while I drove, walking pace beside her. The cars behind us tooting and yelling.† We could never go very far together.†
Can we catch trams I asked?
In the place where I live trams are the currencies of the city. Crises-crossing back and forth across any which way.
Surely we can take a tram?
No, she said. They use coal from big dirty mines. Throwing plumes of black smoke into the sky.
She said I will ride my bike or I will walk and if I cant make it we will have to be apart.
So shall it be.
Cars are not my preferred mode of transport but I believe that for love there are some indiscretions we can’t avoid.
You asked me last night, what do you want me to do?
I said nothing.
Then amended it by saying that’s not true.
I want you to be true to yourself and nobody else. Not even me. I rush the words out of my mouth. I want to be fair. I want to be, I want. I.
I can’t.
I can’t take any responsibility here.
I offer advice. Predictable. Placating.
Be true to your heart and if you can do that I have done my part.
No responsibility. I won’t step into this and ask for what I want.
I won’t. I can’t.
I refuse to be the straw to that unfortunate camel’s back.
Put me in a drink and down me in one slurping gulp, suck at me and pull on my hair but don’t blame me for what decisions you make.
Make any decision but make it with love, I said, and things will work out fine.
Make strong decisions based on your heart’s wishes. I said.
Placating, predictable. Meaningless.
I am rambling. Surely you can see this.
Advice is so easily given. So rarely understood. Even by the giver. Especially by the giver.
I am an artist. I live a life where my emotions are my only compass.
Who the hell am I to give advice?
I wish I had said nothing.
I tell myself to shut up. Stare at my hands in my lap.
I’m no seaworthy captain. Not of any boat but my own.
Sail to me freely and we will find new lands.
But steer your own course towards me.
There are coral reefs and sharks abound.
Go steadily and never lose sight of the shore.
Sure is something I lack and it seems to be contagious.
FENCE SITTING
Pirates we are. Looting and pillaging each other.
Today it’s raining, again. I am grateful for the peace and quiet of home. No one home but me. I love my world here. My boat surely anchored and safe from bad weather.
Till you come around.
Then it seems everything rocks and creaks and squeaks and threatens to break.
I am breaking myself in half to be with you.
Split off into two. One half loving you the other trying to run away. Contained by my skin I am full of friction. Two tectonic plates slowly inevitably drifting closer to each other. You know what happens when they collide?
Earthquakes.
My Richter Scale rockets mile high.
I am shaking to be with you. Shaking. Worried about who is going to clean up in the aftermath.
I was told once that the safest place to be in an earthquake is the doorway or a fireplace. I don’t fancy burning to death while the world falls around me but everyone remembers Joan of Arc now, don’t they?
The famous Maid of Orleans.
Do I want to be remembered? Do I?
I am made for great things my teachers always told me. But all I want to do is stay indoors, write my thoughts and wish for you to come over.
And as for standing in doorways? It’s neither in nor out is it?
I have never been a fence sitter.
And to stand in a doorway is merely blocking someone else’s escape.
I will stand then, while the world around me shakes.
And me with it.
At the mercy of the forces of nature.
Mother Nature is one formidable foe.
I don’t intend on winning against her.
But surviving, living, breathing, while the dust settles.
The strangest thing is, I am curious to see what things will look like at ground zero.
It’s that odd thing about human nature-our ceaseless curiosity.
You say to me, we are just exploring, aren’t we? It isn’t a question. Not really.
The way you emphasise exploring makes it sound glorious, adventurous, and sound.
Definitely seaworthy.
I love using the word explore, you say, it makes everything, anything excusable.
Devoid of consequences.
You sound out the word again. E-X-P-L-O-R-E.
I’m E X P L O R I N G you say.
You look at me smiling. Happy.
You are crazy, I think. But say nothing.
You can’t see the fighter jets, the flares, the tracer bullets, overhead, warning us, can you?
Can you feel the plates moving closer?
Can you?
And if not, why not?
When we first met I came down with a cold. Nothing serious. But I needed two days in bed. We still managed to make love even while I ran a fever. Unstoppable us. †It made being sick a joy. Who would have thought that? Not me. Now it’s you who have a fever and you are far away and there’s nothing I can do. My heart is play dough for your needs. Soft malleable play dough.
Pull me and push at me. Shape me.
I once had a friend who could make the most amazing things out of sand. When we went to the beach she spent all her time molding huge goddesses out of sand and seaweed.
And they always had huge vaginas.
Is it because you are a lesbian I asked?
No, she said. Its because I want everyone to realize its a woman and not be able to mistake it for anything else.
Not some pretty tailed mermaid who has only boobs, your sculptures.
I want it all to be there. Huge. Enormous.
The first thing people notice, she said.
Eventually people started giving her money for the sculptures she was making anyway just for fun. Eventually she just decided to stay there. Right there on the beach.
You can do that in Australia.
We have miles and miles of coastline with no one about.
So she set up a tent and lived there.
I couldn’t deal with the isolation. And then the tourists.††And then sand flies. And only two seasons. Hot. Or, Hot and Wet.
I came back to my city where there are four seasons. But I’m starting to think there are five with you.
Summer Autumn Winter Spring.
And Lovesick.
SUMMER
Summer in Australia is white hot blinding and glorious.
Dry and with a heat that drives you to the beach on car seats that burn and ice-cream melting on your shirt.
Summer is the time to wake up and call your friend saying I’m coming to pick you up in half an hour. Wear your swimmers.
In the heat everything slows down and all I want to do is listen to reggae and smoke cigarettes while lying on my back, sunglasses on, and feel the heat slowly burning through me.
I love the heat.
I love the heat because I can tell myself in 6 months it will be so cold I wont be able to stand outside for more than five minutes without shivering.
Today I can’t stand for more than thirty seconds on the hot pavement without my feet burning.
I am standing outside the convenience store waiting for you to choose an ice-cream. Hopping from foot to foot. I can feel my feet swelling. Blistering my skin. My soles reacting against the intense heat. Bulging. Filling with fluid. Trying desperately to protect me from getting burnt.
Which one should I get?†You yell at me. Holding up two different kinds of ice-creams.
I don’t know I say. Impatient. Hot.
Get both!
I feel stupid in my green bikini. I’m hopping up and down like some summer lephrechaun.
Away from the beach this outfit is always inappropriate.
Both? You say. And again.
Both?
But I can’t eat two!
But you are eating at me. And I am eating away at you. And I am being eaten up.
Two? Only two?
Get three then, I yell through the closed glass doors.
The store attendant previously buried in a magazine, looks over at me. Surprised.
It’s only ice-cream, I think.
Staring embarrassed at my blistered feet. My face hot too, like my red feet.
When we are at the beach you reach over and start licking the tiny splash of ice-cream that had dripped on my chest. You giggle.
I didn’t think I could eat two you say.
And now I want more!
I always want more with you, I say.
I can’t get enough of you.
I can’t.
One two.
Me and you.
Three ice-creams isn’t even close to enough.
But three of us? You, me and him. Is one too many.
AUTUMN
Autumn is my favourite season. I love to ride my bike around taking photographs of trees. In the city where I live, the leaves are colors I usually only see in rows of oil pastels and in rows of paints.
Cerise gold tangerine ochre copper apricot saffron pink cyclamen vermilion rose coral magenta.
Sunset-colored leaves.
Sunrise-colored leaves.
The beginning and ending of each day. The prettiest times.
Autumn is a time when nature is at her peak. The trees are one day green, the next turning, and before you know it, aflame with colors.
The sunset captured on a tree, in it’s leaves.†Fixed into something I can touch. It is a color fire I can crash into with my bike wheels making a satisfying crunch, and watching those carefully swept up piles of leaves scatter thoughtlessly back to where the tree threw them.
Trees don’t care about where their leaves fall. If they did, the piles would be neat and ordered. Possibly colour-coded like some Andy Goldsworthy sculpture.
Nature is cleverer than you or I. I believe that. I do.
Formidable.
Highly intelligent.
And insanely powerful.
Autumn throws me around, moves me, more than any other season.
The cold frost in the morning when only weeks ago it was summer, relentless.
It’s those surprisingly sudden cold mornings and getting darker earlier evenings.
The trees gradually preparing themselves for the winter stillness.
And winds unlike any other whip my city into a frenzy in autumn.
Wishing the trees to throw all their leaves.
Quick, quicker! The clouds are coming. Bringing storms and sleet.
Quickly throw away your leaves, the wind warns. Or I will make you!
I wish I could make you throw things away. Like that part of your life that keeps you far away from me. You never wear your wedding band anymore but it’s there. Always dividing us. A ring around you, keeping me that far away from you. Just that far. Just enough.
One autumn Sunday we walk along the river that dissects my city. We wear jackets with the buttons done up right up to our chins. The wind is so cold it whips around us trying to cut into us, to find any way in.
I am walking in silence. Loving the windstorm in my ears.
You grab me and turn me to look at you.
Your eyes are green with one slightly darker then the other. When you grab me to look at you, all I could think of was David Bowie. I don’t know why. In desperate moments sometimes I just want to make jokes or quote song lyrics.
I think of that line in David Bowie’s song ‘Changes’. I want to tell you about it. It’s distracting I know but somehow relevant. I’m notorious for talking when I shouldn’t be. Movies, museums, nervous moments.
I recall the lyrics to the song. I had it written in my diary in high school. It was relevant to me when I was young. I was, like everyone around me, an angry teenager who wanted desperately to change things around her. I was too full of hormones, too well informed and too powerless. An unfortunate mix.
Now I wish I was less informed. Ignorance really is bliss. I pretend you aren’t married every day we spend together.
Everyday bliss this.
And song lyrics in my head.
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They’re quite aware of what they’re going through
Strangely though, for some reason I mistakenly had always thought it was ee cummings that wrote that. Not David Bowie. I blame my English teacher for being too contemporary.
You are talking to me.
‘What did you say to me?’ I ask.
‘Changes. Ch-ch-changes’ rings through my head.
Ch-ch-changes.
Turn and face the strain.
I’m lost now. Lost in a timelessness. You are looking at me but I am seeing nothing.
My thoughts now turn to ee cummings. I wish I could quote him to you now. I’m sure it would cheer you up. Later I will write it down on a piece of paper for you and leave it for you on your desk when you are out of the house. For now, I imagine the joy when you find it.
I love leaving you little notes. It’s a secret joy of mine.
To write my thoughts down and leave them for you. Indelible now, captured on paper.
For you to keep.
Little pieces of me.
My words.
They are the closest thing to having me when I am not around. They are the closest thing to me.
I can’t offer you much on my salary. But what I give you, when I do, is all of me.
You have me.
Ee cummings
i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite a new thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh . . . . And eyes big love-crumbs,
and possibly i like the thrill
of under me you quite so new.
Delicious, I think about ee. Delicious.
DEEElicious.
I read about this psychological disorder called erotographomania. The obsessive desire to write love letters. I discover that this man once that wrote over seven thousand love letters to his wife, written and sent, over five years. That’s about three letters a day, sometimes four or more.
I return to my study. Where I am alone. Where I can enjoy autumn’s winds from the quiet warmth of my home.
I can’t get you out of my head.
I write to you. A love letter of my own fashioning. I’m listening to Nick Cave, the quintessential love song writer. Tragic and gloomy. Love is, to him, a psychological nightmare of exultant proportions. I remember you saying to me once, you said, I would run to him without a moments hesitation. Something about him, so irresistible.
I quote Nick Cave for you.
“Love songs are life lines thrown into the galaxies of the divine by a drowning man.”
You are no man I want to tell you. Yell at you.
It’s not really the point.
But it’s illogical to fight you leaving me to go back to him.
But, if it works. I will try anything if it gets me results.
I think to myself, will a lifeline to you in the galaxy of the divine save us?
I keep writing my love letters.
It’s the only joy I have in this galaxy.
Alone.
WINTER
Why not? Why not? WHY NOT? Why not? Beautiful. *
*Timothy Leary’s last words.
Why not. Indeed.
You love those two words, you tell me.
It’s your answer to everything.
Run away with me, I say
Why not, you say.
Let’s move to New York together.
Why not.
Barcelona?
Why not.
Marry me?
Why not.
Are you leaving him?
Why not.
Are you doing the washing today?
Why not.
Are you going to mop the floor?
Are you going to cook tonight?
Are you are you are you?
Why not why not why not.
From the mundane to the moribund, why not works.
It works. It’s not a question nor a statement but somewhere in between that hovers daringly from pointless to poignant. I can’t argue with ‘why not’. Still the floor is un-mopped and the wedding unplanned. We are still in Melbourne, not New York or Barcelona.
And it’s winter now.
Winter is a time of sacrifices. Bold and beautiful barren times.
When the earth smells damp moist and fecund
Of morning walks, misty and cold
The gardens rich in browns, wet and green,
The compost is happy this time of year
Worm-filled it’s food for birds who insist on sitting on top of it
Pulling through the vegetable matter and scattering soil
Looking for worms.
Find them, find them, say the birds to each other.
Chirping.
The bare trees hold their angry arms up at the sky.
Clenched into leafless fruitless fists.
With long accusing fingers.
Thrust upwards.
Even the trees seem discontent this year.
Weeks upon weeks of winter.
Time stretched out before them.
Winter always seems such a long three months.
I am walking down my street.
Fists jammed in pockets hooded jacket and boots.
Trams rattle past me. Ding. Ding.
The concrete pavement matches the sky.
Grey, chilled day.
Neutralising me.
All the leaves of autumn have disappeared.
Broken down to dark matter, that absorbs the sun.
I go to the newsagents, to flick through magazines and look at pretty things.
Pretty things always cheer me up.
I find a poster that says:
Je me sentais triste
Je suis parti faire des courses
J’ai achete uni affiche
Je l’ai accrochee au mur
Je me sens encore triste
“I was feeling sad
I went shopping
I bought this poster
I hung it on my wall
I still feel sad”
I take it home.
Blu-tac it to the wall. Above the toilet.
Everyone who urinates there comes out looking melancholy.
Sad this time. Sad sad time.
I am learning to know the truth.
Eliot was right.
Human kind cannot bear very much reality.
