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Unbelievable
Dec. 6th, 2004 10:51 amThis is from greatpoets.
Address to Winnie in Paris
by Sarah Manguso
( Read more... )
http://www.livejournal.com/community/greatpoets/702555.html?mode=reply
Up last night talking to Chris. Irritable this morning. Lonely, too. This poem just hits the right place, and I love the formatting on it. The lines are so flowing, such lovely potent English.
Songs are still hitting me hard. I used to ride out these emotional times happily with Kynnin; particularly I remember one time when we curled up together in the bedroom on blankets on the floor watching Schindler's List, and the light was orange. We never finished watching Schindler's List. My mom came to pick me up for the night -- that was before I was allowed to stay overnight at boys' houses. It was such a close, precious moment, though.
I just don't get that close to people anymore.
In the car the other day, talking to Melissa, I said: Once Kynnin was on Commercial Drive and he got double-rearended: someone hit the woman behind him, who rolled forward into him. They all got out, and the guy who'd hit them said, let's go around the corner out of traffic and exchange information. Of course, the guy drove off while Kynnin and the woman went around the corner. They didn't get the license plate.
And that, I said, is the difference between he and I. He's learning not to do that, learning not to trust people as much, and me, I'm learning that it's occasionally okay to trust people.
Somehow, though, learning that in some ways I'm right and no one is 'trustworthy', they can only be trusted to do some things some times, kind of breaks my ability for deep intimacy. I can't let go of future absences, future emptinesses, future too-busies and don't-cares, enough to be wholly and completely there -with- them. I retreat into my own head a little, keep a little distance now, and look: when I do it my life is easier and happier, I think.
Tillie made mention of a shirt for me: emotionally unavailable men make me hot. No one is always emotionally available to -me-, though; they have their lives that eat them up, wives which take up emotional energy or exams which take up time and attention or whatever, but of course sometimes people who have interesting lives are not available. So the question then is, what is acceptable? What is this supposed to look like?
The answer is that I don't know. I'm not unhappy now, and I'm frequently happy, but I find myself so frequently nostalgic. What Kynnin and I could have right now is not what I want. What we did have is not something that, I think, real people with lives can have. I miss that, though.
I guess this is grieving the loss, finally. I keep wanting to talk about it, and everything that happens to me these days feels like a pale shadow of then.
I'd thought that, in Chris, I'd end up dating someone as intense as myself and thus retrieve some of that intensity of relationship that Kynnin and I had. It doesn't quite work that way, though. Bah, I'm getting into subjects that words have trouble covering. It sounds wrong, up there. What I'm trying to say is that only time and mutual experience breeds familiarity, and the time when experiences were happening so fast and yet we had the luxury to devote so much time to each other and make it a shared time, that is over. And who am I kidding? That sort of seven years' togetherness is only created with seven years, anyhow.
I wish there had been something really -wrong-. I wish it had ended in a bang rather than a whimper. I wish I was still in the angry phase. I wish when I'd seen people from high school the other night that two of them hadn't said they were sure we'd get back together. I wish he wasn't dating Mouse. I wish this was behind me. I wish... well, I can't wish it didn't happen, but it's so much a part of my identity. So much of my life was with him.
I wish love was a commodity that, when you had too much of it, you could package it and sell it so needy children or uberrich yuppies could get it for Christmas and you could get some spare cash.
Address to Winnie in Paris
by Sarah Manguso
( Read more... )
http://www.livejournal.com/community/greatpoets/702555.html?mode=reply
Up last night talking to Chris. Irritable this morning. Lonely, too. This poem just hits the right place, and I love the formatting on it. The lines are so flowing, such lovely potent English.
Songs are still hitting me hard. I used to ride out these emotional times happily with Kynnin; particularly I remember one time when we curled up together in the bedroom on blankets on the floor watching Schindler's List, and the light was orange. We never finished watching Schindler's List. My mom came to pick me up for the night -- that was before I was allowed to stay overnight at boys' houses. It was such a close, precious moment, though.
I just don't get that close to people anymore.
In the car the other day, talking to Melissa, I said: Once Kynnin was on Commercial Drive and he got double-rearended: someone hit the woman behind him, who rolled forward into him. They all got out, and the guy who'd hit them said, let's go around the corner out of traffic and exchange information. Of course, the guy drove off while Kynnin and the woman went around the corner. They didn't get the license plate.
And that, I said, is the difference between he and I. He's learning not to do that, learning not to trust people as much, and me, I'm learning that it's occasionally okay to trust people.
Somehow, though, learning that in some ways I'm right and no one is 'trustworthy', they can only be trusted to do some things some times, kind of breaks my ability for deep intimacy. I can't let go of future absences, future emptinesses, future too-busies and don't-cares, enough to be wholly and completely there -with- them. I retreat into my own head a little, keep a little distance now, and look: when I do it my life is easier and happier, I think.
Tillie made mention of a shirt for me: emotionally unavailable men make me hot. No one is always emotionally available to -me-, though; they have their lives that eat them up, wives which take up emotional energy or exams which take up time and attention or whatever, but of course sometimes people who have interesting lives are not available. So the question then is, what is acceptable? What is this supposed to look like?
The answer is that I don't know. I'm not unhappy now, and I'm frequently happy, but I find myself so frequently nostalgic. What Kynnin and I could have right now is not what I want. What we did have is not something that, I think, real people with lives can have. I miss that, though.
I guess this is grieving the loss, finally. I keep wanting to talk about it, and everything that happens to me these days feels like a pale shadow of then.
I'd thought that, in Chris, I'd end up dating someone as intense as myself and thus retrieve some of that intensity of relationship that Kynnin and I had. It doesn't quite work that way, though. Bah, I'm getting into subjects that words have trouble covering. It sounds wrong, up there. What I'm trying to say is that only time and mutual experience breeds familiarity, and the time when experiences were happening so fast and yet we had the luxury to devote so much time to each other and make it a shared time, that is over. And who am I kidding? That sort of seven years' togetherness is only created with seven years, anyhow.
I wish there had been something really -wrong-. I wish it had ended in a bang rather than a whimper. I wish I was still in the angry phase. I wish when I'd seen people from high school the other night that two of them hadn't said they were sure we'd get back together. I wish he wasn't dating Mouse. I wish this was behind me. I wish... well, I can't wish it didn't happen, but it's so much a part of my identity. So much of my life was with him.
I wish love was a commodity that, when you had too much of it, you could package it and sell it so needy children or uberrich yuppies could get it for Christmas and you could get some spare cash.
