more nights I couldn't fall asleep trying not to think about you than those I fell asleep thinking of you

For Love

BY ROBERT CREELEY 1926–2005

for Bobbie

Yesterday I wanted to

speak of it, that sense above   

the others to me

important because all

that I know derives

from what it teaches me.   

Today, what is it that   

is finally so helpless,

different, despairs of its own   

statement, wants to

turn away, endlessly

to turn away.

If the moon did not ...

no, if you did not

I wouldn’t either, but   

what would I not

do, what prevention, what   

thing so quickly stopped.   

That is love yesterday   

or tomorrow, not

now. Can I eat

what you give me. I

have not earned it. Must   

I think of everything

as earned. Now love also   

becomes a reward so

remote from me I have

only made it with my mind.

Here is tedium,

despair, a painful

sense of isolation and   

whimsical if pompous

self-regard. But that image   

is only of the mind’s

vague structure, vague to me   

because it is my own.

Love, what do I think

to say. I cannot say it.

What have you become to ask,   

what have I made you into,

companion, good company,   

crossed legs with skirt, or   

soft body under

the bones of the bed.

Nothing says anything   

but that which it wishes   

would come true, fears   

what else might happen in

some other place, some   

other time not this one.   

A voice in my place, an   

echo of that only in yours.

Let me stumble into

not the confession but   

the obsession I begin with   

now. For you

also (also)

some time beyond place, or   

place beyond time, no   

mind left to

say anything at all,

that face gone, now.

Into the company of love   

it all returns.

For and From Dr. C

Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 11:11 PM
Dear Dr. C, 

Thank you so much for coming for the Vox concert tonight! You were right there, front center, and you were the person whom I could sing my heart out for. :)

I am very sorry for not keeping in touch with you lately, but I want to let you know that I love you and will miss you tremendously. I am so lucky to be taught by you. 

I will carry your contagious energy and laughter to Dartmouth!

Love,

Hannah 

Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 11:27 PM

Hannah,
I was so honored to be at that concert!  We have such talented students at LFA, I am amazed that you all do all that you do in school, then belt out those songs at the concert.  Very impressive Hannah.  Don't worry about not stopping by, I see you around and feel your presence all the time.  :)    You are one of those students who I will REALLY miss, more than words can describe.  That is the bad part of the job, getting close to students, then saying goodbye.  But we have another month to chat.  You should concentrate on your classes, AP tests and having fun with your friends.  I am looking forward to the end of the year festivities.  Enjoy these last few weeks because they will go by fast, and there are a lot of special moments that I want you to remember.  So take some time to absorb it all.  You are a one in a million student Hannah!

xox

Dr. C.

I would wake up the next morning and find a new bruise. A blue spot on my left wrist.

Say Yes

Writing, according to Tobias Wolff, is an "essentially optimistic art," for

the very act of writing assumes, to begin with, that someone cares to hear what you have to say. It assumes that people share, that people can be reached, that people can be touched and even in some cases changed. ... So many of the things in our world tend to lead us to despair. It seems to me that the final symptom of despair is silence, and that storytelling is one of the sustaining arts; it's one of the affirming arts. ... A writer may have a certain pessimism in his outlook, but the very act of being a writer seems to me to be an optimistic act.

I reread "Say Yes." I understand so much of it now--even the cryptic ending makes sense, how Ann tells her husband to turn off the light and she walks about the darkened room as "a stranger," how her husband is left nameless.

April 2, 2009

I felt an intense, urgent need to copy down a passage I was reading from Milan Kundera's Identity.

He rose and went toward the half-open door of the bathroom. There he stopped, and like a voyeur avid to steal a glimpse of some intimate scene, he watched her: yes, it was his Chantal as he had always known her: she was leaning over the basin, brushing her teeth and spitting out her saliva mingled with toothpaste, and she was so comically, so childishly focused on her activity that Jean-Marc grinned. Then, as if she felt his gaze, she pivoted about, saw him in the doorway, flared up, and ultimately let herself be kissed on her still quite white mouth (Kundera 34-35).

This scene, as I interpret, is love in everyday life than can be, should be seen among us. We forget too soon that love does not require or expect or demand much. That love is just like Jean-Marc, initially anticipating his love to be romantically erotic and then finding her somewhat funny brushing her teeth, finally giving her a kiss. This love, I love.

Bel Canto, Chapter One

There so taken by the beauty of her voice that they wanted to cover her mouth with their mouth, drink in. Maybe music could be transferred, devoured, owned. What would it mean to kiss the lips that had held such a sound?

Ann Patchett, Bel Canto

The book whose first sentence is my favorite: "When the lights went out, the accompanist kissed her." The author whose friendship with Lucy Grealy struck me in her memoir Truth and Beauty. 

I had wanted to read this book for a long time. I had kept it guardedly on my bookshelf as a reminder, like a reservation for a dinner table. And all this time I had saved it, but for what? I had gifted it to Katerina a couple years ago, by the first paragraph I had judged it a good book--she would like it, it's about music and love and why, it's the winner of the Pen/Faulkner Award. Katerina is a musician, Russian, neuroscience major--she wrote back and told me she loved it. And I am loving it. 

The chapters are long, about thirty pages each, containing voices, many spoken, one sung. Nevertheless I can hear them, not only in English but in Japanese and French and Spanish and Russian and Italian--and in music. On Gen's voice Patchett writes: "It was not a musical voice, and yet it affected him [Mr. Hosokawa] like music." Perhaps the translator's music-like voice comes from his linguistic ability--a different language like a different key.

English must be in E major. Sing with me. 

December 24, 2010

     Dear Paul,
     I am writing to you because I don't know you. Hence my courage. You are somewhere inside my head. Perhaps if I am lucky, you are inside this very world. I could be anyone. You don't have to believe me. I am a poet, not a songwriter. But I wrote a song. It's a duet. You should sing it with me. But you can't yet because the music's unwritten. The composer and I are still working on it. His name is David. He's quite brilliant. He's the one who inspired me to write a short story about you. You're real in the sense that you are a relic of my fabrication. You're not supposed to be real, but you are because you exist in my own reality. You're there but I don't know where I can find you. Are you the one who gave me "delusional" in my dream? I turned that word inside my head a million times trying to understand whatever meaning it held for me. I did not succeed but that doesn't matter because--I don't know--it's meaningless to brood like that. I beg your pardon. You never gave me "delusional," you gave me "delusive." I can't believe my own confusion. Coffee doesn't taste like anything anymore. Do you still read her letters and keep them? I can't think of much else to say. Thank you for everything else. Be my "else." I'll be your everything.

"...death is like that (I can see); it happens every day, but when you see the mourners, they behave as if it were so new, this event, dying--someone you love dies--it has never happened before; it is so unexpected, so unfair, unique to you. ... Why can't everybody just get used to it? People are born and they can't just go on and on, and if they can't go on and on, then they must go, but it is hard, so hard for the people left behind; it's so hard to see them go, as if it had never happened before, and so hard it could not happen to anyone else, no one but you can survive this kind of loss, seeing someone go, seeing them leave you behind; you don't want to go with them, you only don't want them to go." 

Jamaica Kincaid, My Brother

Music, When Soft Voices Die

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap'd for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822

Mary Shelley's husband.

I wonder if he wrote it for his wife. The brilliant woman whose hand wrote Frankenstein at eighteen. What must it have been like to ask for the hand of a writer. 

Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets.

Paul Tournier

Quote from William P. Young's The Shack. Paul Tournier was a Swiss physician, called as twentieth century's most famous Christian physician. 

     He was looking at her frank forehead as she looked down at her watch to tell him the time. Except she laughed and told him how much of an idiot she was for having it on backwards so it would read upside-down. He didn’t think she was an idiot. He didn’t tell her that because she might take his perfectly neutral opinion differently. He thought of what to say to her, but he could not find the words because there weren’t any inside his head except her name. Lorraine. It was a rare name to have, he thought. Antiquated, almost. Her name reminded him of a rainy day that would be adequately gloomy for him to think of her, a day in which rain would fall on your window with that persistence and rhythm. Her forehead was frank. He watched her try to read her watch upside-down, turning her wrist the other way. Now she looked like an idiot, he thought. He wondered if he should laugh. He wondered if she would take his casual laughter differently. But what did it matter. He liked her enough to stare at her forehead. (She was staring at his hands as she feigned to read her watch. His hands were quite fine for a guy who rarely held a pencil. They reminded her of her father’s hands. She always thought her father’s hands were ugly. They were not the hands of a pianist. But she loved his scars. The old, discolored scar on his right wrist that she called a tattoo, the many charred marks on his fingertips that turned so many pages--the streaks and blemishes that stained his ugly hands were all beautiful to her. She loved most the scar that ran the length of his left fourth finger. The tendons are not right, he had told her. She remembered that it didn’t stretch completely so it hurt him to play. She remembered that it also held his wedding ring. The scars were gone now because her father was dead. Perhaps that was why she took things differently. Yes, his hands are quite fine, she thought. She missed her father.) He boldly took a chance and laughed. She looked at him. Why did he just laugh, they both thought. I’m an idiot. But what did it matter. She looked at him. 

     (It was eight eleven.)

Written for the Teen Woolf project for AP English Literature. My second A+. 

The Fountainhead

Both men disliked Roark. He was usually disliked, from the first sight of his face, anywhere he went. His face was closed like the door of a safety vault; things locked in safety vaults are valuable; men did not care to feel that. He was a cold, disquieting presence in the room; his presence had a strange quality: it made itself felt and yet it made them feel that he was not there; or perhaps that he was and they weren't (52). 

Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

Love the simile of Roark's face to the door of a safety vault. You would need a key to open it, or you would need to break the door. 

My goal is to get to page 315 where Jack left off. It's the last fold in the book. I'm on page 61. 

Summer: It just wasn't me that you were right about.

500 Days of Summer

Jane Addams

I do not believe that women are better than men. We have not wrecked railroads, nor corrupted legislature, nor done many unholy things that men have done; but then we must remember that we have not had the chance.

Jane Addams

For Chris

Where has that old friend gone
Lost in a February song
Tell him it won't be long
Til he opens his eyes, opens his eyes

Where is that simple day
Before colors broke into shades
And how did I ever fade
Into this life, into this life

And I never want to let you down
Forgive me if I slip away
When all that I've known is lost and found
I promise you I, I'll come back to you one day

Morning is waking up
And sometimes it's more than just enough
When all that you need to love
Is in front of your eyes
It's in front of your eyes

And I never want to let you down
Forgive me if I slip away
Sometimes it's hard to find the ground
Cause I keep on falling as I try to get away
From this crazy world

And I never want to let you down
Forgive me if I slip away
When all that I've known is lost and found
I promise you I, I'll come back to you one day

Where has that old friend gone
Lost in a February song
Tell him it won't be long
Til he opens his eyes
Opens his eyes

Josh Groban, "February Song"

I knew what it meant when I heard it. When I read the words. When I told daddy, Daddy,  this song is for someone lost. He must have died in February. And then last year when I lost Chris in February I understood what it meant for real.

Dear Chris, this is the day I cried for you in the car and on the bed staring into the ceiling until I fell asleep and when I woke up, nothing felt different because you were still dead and I was still alive. But I want to wake up with a dream of you. An uncalled memory of you. You were really the only close guy friend I had. I don't know what I meant to you, but you mean so much to me. Thank you for being in my life. I am fortunate to have known you for the few years I knew you. And I know this is a letter without an address. And I know you can't read a letter without an address, but Chris, I want to revive you in this ink. Can I? Annie Dillard said, "write as if you're dying." For the life of you will I write to my death. I remember you showing your Notre Dame letter to me in the science wing hallway and you were smiling with this happiness I would only come to know a year later when I would get my own. Thank you for sharing your smile with me. I could go on and tell you too late of the things I should have thanked you for. I have no picture of us together. I didn't give you much save for the hugs and laughter. You have given me so much--tears, yes, in thinking of you, in missing you--but you have given me gratitude for the little things in life that matter. I wish I could write better than this for you. It'll sound so strange but I am thankful for your death as much as your life. I don't know--I don't know if you or anyone would understand what I just wrote. But it's true. That Thursday when I saw you last, I wish I spent more time with you. I wish I hugged you longer. If I had known, I wanted to say, "Please don't die." I wish I could have stopped that train for you. Do you know what is stranger? Yesterday at the memorial service I didn't cry. I don't know if that was right or brave. Perhaps it was wrong and cowardly. Or even indifferent. But Chris, this is my fear. I am afraid that I am forgetting the fear of forgetting you. Because I don't want to forget you. I am afraid I moved on too fast. I want to hold on to the tears for you. I know it's okay to cry. I don't know if it's okay not to. I want you to come back, come to school tomorrow as an alum. Call my name at the end of the hallway so I can turn around and see you, run to you and give you a flying hug. Please? Because I would like to call your name back at the end of the hallway for the sake that you are standing there. Instead here I am, standing for you. 

500 Days of Summer

Summer: I just... I just woke up one day and I knew.

Tom: Knew what?

Summer: What I was never sure of with you. 

Watched 500 Days of Summer last night again. It's such a lovely film that beautifully escapes cliche. I wish it were a book. 

I suddenly remembered the time you had cheerios. You helped me carry something to Field and I gave you a high five. That was last year. I forgot to thank you.

Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 6:26 PM, Me

I only walked you to the dorms carrying your books because you made it seem like I had to, I was in a good mood, and I had nothing to do. But if you were to ask me to help you with your books right now, I'd do it because I want to. 

Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 6:56 PM, David

That's so sweet of you David. I should ask you to carry my books sometimes. And I should continue to offer you cookies. 

Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 9:35 PM, Me

Sweet. If girls think it's sweet when people say things like that, I should say more stuff like that to girls.
Some day I'll take your cookie.

Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 9:57 PM, David

Say, "I'd do it because I want to" to girls and they will believe you sweet. But David, I said that because it's true. You're sweet in a childish way like Paul. I love Paul. I want to marry him if I could. I want him to walk out of the page, forget his wife, and we can have a lovely life overlooking the lake sipping tea and talking. Except I would have to make Paul talk because he doesn't talk very much.

Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 10:52 PM, Me

Great! I'll put that down in my list of things to say to a girl. Thank you.
You should find a dude like Paul and marry him. Or just marry Jack so things are a lot easier. Less searching. 

Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 11:16 PM, David

All this in one day. 

Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 11:40 PM, David

The girl who almost gave me a heart attack probably thinks I'm a stalker. 
There was that one time at lunch she was sitting at a very far table. She was facing away from me. I was looking at the back of her head. 
Eventually, her friend who was sitting across from her told her to turn around, and she saw me. 
I quickly looked away, but I'm sure it didn't work. 

Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 11:40 PM, David

Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 2:16 PM, Me

“The geography of the brain ought to be taught in school, like the countries of the world. The deeply folded cortex forms the outer layer. There are the twin hemispheres, right brain and left brain. (We may be of two minds.) There are the four lobes: frontal in front, occipital (visual cortex) in back, parietal (motor cortex) on top, and temporal behind the ears. There’s the limbic system (seat of emotion and memory) at the center. There’s the brain stem, whose structures keep us awake (required for consciousness) or put us to sleep (required for regeneration of neurotransmitters).” --Priscilla Long, “My Brain on My Mind,” The American Scholar