is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Past Loves, A Series in no Particular Order.
A number of years ago (in days of yore such as 2003, 2004), I was alone and not feeling very hopeful about romantic relationships. So I decided I would do my best to remember some things worth remembering about the people who or circumstances that had disappointed me. I wrote a series of vignettes about moments in time where love left an indelible impression on me, such that I could never wish for a time machine to rewrite history�this is a tremendous accomplishment of productive self-cruelty that ultimately uplifts, such as I learned, very deeply and with considerable effort, from Nietzsche. I then published the vignettes scattered throughout the review section of h2so4 over a number of years, under one of my pseudonyms (Anne Senhal. Not sure if I have ever publicly owned up to that one, but there it is). This has not been such a good week for me, it turns out, and I found myself turning back to these writings. As I revisited them I kept being tempted to revise them, but I did not�that would clearly violate the spirit of the project. So here they are, an offering for you, should you wish to take it. Some things are not lost. What I have to figure out now is whether I have anything to add to this from the past five years.
....
Here is a filmic image: one rainy night in Donostia in the Basque country, we found the frame of an umbrella tossed in the trash outside a bar called Uda Berri Berri, opened it up, and walked around the whole town arm in arm slowly, and talking, as if the umbrella were keeping us dry. People rushing to get out of the rain kept stopping/staring or laughing at us. Then we sat under a bridge and smoked hash. We were, after all, in Spain. My love of him exists outside of time, as in a utopia. It is both the most and the least real.
He invited me over for dinner; I said I couldn�t, I had to go to the public library after work that night. He said, �Well, when you get there, look up the book you�re currently reading in the Library of Congress listings.� I asked, �Why,� etc., and he insisted that I just do it. Later that night, upon arriving at the library I did as I was told, and sandwiched in the page where my book was listed (it was Middlemarch by George Eliot, in case you are wondering), I found a note. It suggested that I find a certain piece of music in the Music Room, by a certain composer part of whose last name is the Latin word for LIFE. Upon locating the music room I looked up Vita in the card catalog and happened across Vivaldi. I searched out the recording on its shelf, and hidden behind it was a mixed tape of music, a note, and a short story, all very beautiful, and all made and left for me. These things do really happen.
It is entirely possible to stumble on the path to commitment. Only the committed can really hesitate, and know what it is to hesitate. The wanderer stumbles from one course to the next, equally open to each, without hesitation, never making the choice. I made mistakes. But I chose you.
The complexity of his arcane philosophical concepts became all the more compelling when viewed against the simplicity of his beliefs about love. I worried that he and I had gotten together too soon after my break-up, that people would suspect foul play, despite my having done everything �in the right order.� All he said�and he said it only once�was: �But you�re with me now, Anne.� And he meant it elementally. You. Are. With. Me. Now. � Anne.
He once wrote this to me: �Quod scribas mihi licit meam cupiditatem sicut avem volare; sed quod tibi liceat te ad Lutecian volare? Maneo and excpecto sicut flamma. And hopefully not like Vladimir or Estragon/Tarragon�� All lovers have their own language, even those who speak only English.
My confidence was such at that time that I never thought he would consider me. In fact I thought he thought me quite silly. I found out years later that one of my favorites from among his poems was about his disappointment that I would not consider him. Sometimes when we think we know most we know least.
We are friends now and we have never �officially� been lovers but he has said some life-transforming things to me like, in a whirl of people, a moment of absolute quiet pulled out of the loudness of the surroundings: �You melt me.� On another occasion, he said: �Don�t you see that no one can stop looking at you?� It wasn�t true, but he thought it was, and that meant everything.
Every single time I saw you it made my heart jump outside of all time, as if nothing else mattered in the world. I was never allowed to say this love out loud because you were not free to live it with me. To this day every time I see you my heart jumps to some location I can no longer imagine. And to this day I am not allowed to say our love out loud. For some reason I still want to thank you.
Although I have now learned definitively (or, because of the past, I�ve finally absorbed the truth I�ve resisted admitting) that you and I are no couple, still, my every encounter with you is a catharsis. How could it be that every time is so surprising? You are an �ideal,� to be thought of as a modern should think of ideals�something that can�t be attained and is almost ugly if viewed too closely. Not that I don�t love you. I do. In all its shades of meaning. And I even think that no one in this world sees your beauty�and your genius�quite as thoroughly as I do.
He said: �Do you want to just disappear with me right now?� And I did. It was a beginning.
I�m way too old for you, plus: insert one million other problems here. But, sitting next to you, I feel like you and I are the center of the universe, more alive than anyone else, and, better, everyone else does what they do only because of us. A rare feeling, never to be taken for granted. Maybe just sitting here is enough?
You know, I was young and I thought I was radical. He taught me that there are things worth conserving. One cannot begin by destroying everything unless what one seeks is only destruction.
Underneath those clothes was such a perfect, muscular male body, like a gift kept hidden until it was time for gifts. And it was as if he only became his true self when he was naked. Along with the clothes came affects and anxieties. Shed the garments and so went the affects. So strange how much protection we all need.
We were walking along the river, silently, both of us wishing we were touching, that kind of heaviness or thickness of mood or atmosphere where every physical gesture seems at the same time out of control and overdetermined. We almost made it all the way back to our rooms, done for the day. But we each glanced back over our shoulders at each other as we stood at our different doors, looking for our keys. You seemed to travel seven feet in no time at all.
It hurt me that you wouldn�t choose me. I just couldn�t see how you could choose what you chose. My mistake was in thinking that it hadn�t been difficult for you. That you hadn�t also wished things were otherwise. Sometimes I am made to see how simple-minded I am about these things. You wanted to be with me. Why could you not be? But things are rarely that simple. I know.
11:35 a.m. - June 27, 2010
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