One figures if there’s anywhere to comment on arty things indulgently it’s tumblr (because when it comes from the heart hey, who needs conventional spelling, and necessary vowels?) - so that’s exactly where I am! I’m trying this thing where I’m slightly more involved and reflective, maybe as a way of life generally, or maybe just as a way to avoid the vast amount of things I need to do soon.
I recently re-watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and I’ve realised, that on third watching, it really isn’t that good a film. It’s an excellent premise, excitingly conducted, and Kate Winslet is divine if a bit dated, in her millennia indie-quirkyness, but what fails clearly is the relationship itself - it’s one dimensional (Kate Winslet is cute but insane, Jim Carrey is quiet but nice, and draws so that immediately makes him interesting enough to warrant said feminine attention) and inexplicable, being either (once) completely godawful, or wonderfully wondrous, dashingly romantic and written in the stars. Now what exactly?
I wonder if that’s what we’ll remember about millennia films, or this specific current of them, attractive girls who waltz into celluloid and immediately hit you in the face with how special they are, in dress and address, and men who fawn and fornicate moodily to canned soundtracks or Coldplay equivalents, and plotlines which never really go anywhere satisfying or important much like the meandering of our lives. I wonder what the next version of film desirability will be, the tropes that will define the following snatch of years, and validate, vindicate or vex everyone subject to it.
Do you remember what I had
said to you, a year before? How could
I not love you? How could I
not? We had just met. You had
a birthmark the shape of Africa
on your chest; my heart had a
void in its vocabulary just the size
of your name. Love is so small. It
could fit into the hole in a bead, the eye
of a needle, and still not seal it.
It’s this world that is so huge.
-excerpt from “Water”, by Sharanya Manivannan
” . . some moment happens in your life that you say yes right up to the roots of your hair, that makes it worth having been born just to have happen. laughing with somebody till the tears run down your cheeks. waking up to the first snow. being in bed with somebody you love… whether you thank god for such a moment or thank your lucky stars, it is a moment that is trying to open up your whole life. If you turn your back on such a moment and hurry along to business as usual, it may lose you the ball game. if you throw your arms around such a moment and hug it like crazy, it may save your soul.”
Frederick Buechner
I have a reminder on my iphone set for every Sunday - “WEEKLY FAMILIAL LUNCH :D”. This involves waking up noonish (a glorious, glorious start to any day), all of us going out somewhere nice with excellent food, and walking about a bit after. It’s late afternoon by the time we get home, and I’m always too full for dinner.
Saturday night in New York is Sunday morning in Singapore, and if I could have anything in the world at this moment, I would like to have lunch in full languid tradition. I remember back when I was madly and badly in relationships, the entire family, plus romantic appendages, would be in attendance, and I think that could have been the happiest I’ve ever been, weekly even. I think on those afternoons I had everything - the boy, my folks, and often, sushi. What else could you possibly want?
So much of what we live goes on inside–
The diaries of grief, the tongue-tied aches
Of unacknowledged love are no less real
For having passed unsaid. What we conceal
Is always more than what we dare confide.
Think of the letters that we write our dead.
Dana Gioia
Desire
by Mary Mackie
in my dreams
I hold my lovers
next to me all at once
and ask them
what was it I desired?
my hands are full
of their heads
like bunches of cut roses
blond hair, brown hair, red, black,
their eyes are pools of bewilderment
staring up at me
from the bouquet
what was it I desired?
I ask again
was it your bodies?
did I hope by draping
your flesh over me
I could escape
boredom
loneliness
gray hairs shooting
towards me
from the future
like thin arrows?
did I think I could escape,
by taking your breath
into my mouth,
did I think I could escape
the responsibility
of breathing?
what did I desire in you?
sex
knowledge?
power?
love?
did I expect the clouds to
crack
and blue moths to fly out of the stars?
did I expect a voice
to call to me
saying
“Here at last is the answer.”
what
I yell at them
shaking my lovers
what did I desire in you?
their ears fall off like petals
they shed their faces
in a pile at my feet
their bewildered eyes
pucker and close
centers of fallen flowers
the last face
floats down
circling in the darkness
at my feet
what did I desire in you? I whisper
the stems of their bodies
dry in my hands
LONG DISTANCE
by Dana Gioia
Two weeks of silence broken by this call,
She holds the neutral phone against her cheek,
Hearing his whisper cross a continent.
Once words were never distant from his lips.
Now sound alone would stroke her like a kiss.
She could tell him everything in a touch
And read his certain answers in embrace.
But now his voice seems oddly out of place,
Almost anonymous, as if she overheard
A stranger talking on another line.
The conversation finished, phone in hand,
She wonders who has spoken, what was said?
Why is a lover’s touch most keenly felt
The moment it is first withheld? She sees
The miles between them stretch beyond her reach.
She would forgive him now if he were here
And fall into his soothing arms like sleep.
His arms would be her answers, uninquired.
But words are never as precise as touch.
Now words have no body to ask her love.
“There was a flaw in the cloth of her heart that was permanent and beyond repair. It was caused by a kind of emotional narcissism. Whatever she was feeling, she expected (and in many cases demanded) others feel as well. If she was madly in love, then the object of her affection had to love her back as truly madly deeply or else there was trouble and misunderstanding. If she was depressed, then without question the world was a black and cruel place. There was no coaxing her out of it or changing her mind. You were expected to avoid her or walk on tiptoes until her depression lifted and she blew the all clear. If she felt a relationship was over, she walked away from it as coolly as a gunfighter in a cowboy movie who has just shot his opponent in the heart.”
http://www.jonathancarroll.com/blog1/2010/04/carrollblog_424_3.html
The Loneliest Job in the World
by Tony Hoagland
As soon as you begin to ask the question, Who loves me?
you are completely screwed, because
the next question is How Much?
and then it is hundreds of hours later,
and you are still hunched over
your flowcharts and abacus,
trying to decide if you have gotten enough.
This is the loneliest job in the world:
to be an accountant of the heart.
It is late at night. You are by yourself,
and all around you, you can hear
the sounds of people moving
in and out of love,
pushing the turnstiles, putting
their coins in the slots,
paying the price which is asked,
which constantly changes.
No one knows why.
“We don’t always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly - as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth - the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives.”
John Irving
