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Every morning, and right before I go to sleep,
You say we haven't been close lately, I tell you
So many nights spent in your company, with our heads growing out of
When we fall asleep next to each other, I lay my head on the warmest part
Caroline H.
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A Word of Advice: Cauliflower Sticks to Pubic Hair
Most people I meet admit to having played some sort of slightly depraved childhood game, but I have never encountered a sport that left its players with as many emotional and internal scars as one culinary competition I dabbled in as a youth. My cousin Marty from Austin, Texas, a tiny boy with big dreams (he had once tried to mail himself to Disney World), was a true master of his dinner table tournament entitled "hide the silverware." When having a guest over for supper, an honor I was lucky enough to experience when I was six, he would pocket a teaspoon while winking at his company and ask politely to be excused to use the bathroom. As the meal progressed, he would perform the same routine with larger and larger objects. Steak knives, napkin holders, and chicken bones were all helpless in my cousin's cavities. This pastime of course was not simply for self-amusement; there was plenty of healthy childhood competition involved.
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As they walk,
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The door to this Lithuanian hotel is a pre-war gate, but it has turned gray like the rest of the country. It has a coat of arms at the top, but the family to which it corresponds has long fled in pursuit of something better. There is only a blind dog to greet wandering travelers, but even this creature has given up on life. The pigeons alight on his back and he does nothing to swipe them off. Inside, a large carpet, once red, spans the lobby. The woman behind the desk uses a broom to clean it twice a day because she hopes to maintain its luster. She has given up on the furniture, though, which is all too gray like the coat of arms and the dog. The couch is the only piece which is not uniformly gray because it spouts blue fluff from a large hole that consumes its middle. Occasionally, it rains fluff upon the adjacent armchairs, and once, the blind dog got confused and ate some. He didn't recover for a week. This hotel has one inhabitant, a man with a silver beard, who is writing an analysis of the carpet in the lobby. Initially, he was frustrated by the bloodstains on the sheets and the lack of heat, but now he has adjusted for the sake of his research. He is a man devoted to his work, but he is not entirely unhappy at the hotel. His room has wonderful wallpaper that tells the story of the Russian Revolution. The ceiling has a portrait of Lenin on it. When he wakes up in the morning, he gazes at that brave soul and it mesmerizes him. Even the bloodstains do not bother him anymore because he has realized that red is his favorite color. That is why he is so attracted to the carpet, which he studies daily and writes about in his gray journal. When the man with the silver beard is not working, he pampers himself. He has political disputes with the blind dog and he splashes icy water on himself in his room. It thrills him to bathe beneath Lenin's benevolent eyes. Sometimes, if he feels properly invigorated, he eats potatoes with the woman behind the desk. They enjoy each other's company tremendously because both love red and potatoes. They joke about how delightful it would be to have a red potato. As she laughs, the woman hopes that the man will take her up to his stained sheets. He hopes that she will admire his intellect, and so they are well matched. Usually, after dinner they move to the blue fluff on the couch and continue their discourse. At seven o'clock the lights come on, but the bulbs are so dirty that they only produce a gray dimness. The man and the woman stay in the lobby anyway because they are too enthralled by each other to leave. They remain squinting late into the night. |
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Smoke rises in bursts as
Wet and happy then
Where do we go?
Amidst the pigeons
Grant silence to
Was there
To Giudecca beyond
Can the eaves float
Passion flows
I walk
All of the prophets
As my moccasins
Stones cover our
As I shoot
Whereas now all
Via delle Ruote
To drink now, something
As I walk now,
And the solstice,
Rosy reality takes us.
And the summer
Coy, fragrant
Should I dance
Always laughing.
As I look for a smile;
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Rain had been coming like an uninvited guest for
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We went to see this movie that Peter thought looked interesting. It was called, like, Poems and Dishes or something. It was one of those really obscure movies that, you know, probably had some deep symbolic meaning or whatever. It was about this guy, and he's really attractive and everything, and he's real smart, so he could probably get a job anywhere if he tried, but he has this thing for dishes. Really! He's like, attracted to them or something. He lives in this loft, and it is totally and completely covered with all different types of dishes from different countries. There are dishes for different types of meat, and all of his friends have their own set of dishes to eat off of when they come to dinner, which isn't very often, because he scares them with the whole dish thing. There's this part where his girlfriend calls, and she's telling him that she loves him and that she's worried about him and everything, and that she doesn't understand the whole thing with the dishes. But while she's talking to him, he's licking the dishes, and touching them slowly and kind of sexually, and breathing really hard, and the girlfriend goes, "Ethan (that's the guy's name) are you listening to me or fucking with those stupid dishes?" and Ethan gets all mad because she called his dishes stupid, and he tells her off; he says that dishes are better in bed than she is, because she's nothing but an ugly old wretch, and hurts her feelings so much that she starts to cry, and then he hangs up on her. So, this guy is not all there. I mean, seriously. Meanwhile there's this girl named Addy who lives across the hall from him, and she's a writer. She's gorgeous in an offbeat-freaky kind of way, and she writes all this great poetry but nobody knows about it because she doesn't tell anybody. In fact she doesn't talk at all, until halfway through the movieyou think she's mute or something. Peter says she's mentally ill, because she was abused, and you know that because of a flashback she had, but I didn't get that from the flashback, I just thought she was a quiet kid or whatever, but Peter always understands complex shit better than I do. So she sees Ethan coming in and out every day, and you hear her thinking these poems that she writes about him. She thinks in the voice that she probably would have if she talked. She reminds me of this girl I used to know who would always be writing in her journal or whatever. She didn't talk either. I wonder if she's seen this movie. So one day Ethan's coming back from Crate and Barrel, right? Addy's coming back from painting in the park, and they're not watching where they're going, and they bump into each other. They have this moment where they're looking into each other's eyes, and Ethan understands her now, but Addy is so embarrassed that she knocked into him, she freaks out and commits suicide. There's no way for Ethan to know this, but he's sitting in his apartment, and all of a sudden he starts crying, and breaking dishes, and reciting the poetry she wrote about him, even though he's never seen it. Then she comes in (but she's dead), and they cry and break dishes together, and that's the end. Peter cried and said that it was deep. I don't really get it, but you know. Whatever. |
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Experience is Lacking—
O something never happens
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My father is a clockmaker. As he bends over the delicate mechanisms, his glasses are about to slip off his nose and his long beard always gets in the way. He is tall and gaunt; bending down he looks like an old tree beaten down by the rain. My father's fingers are long and skillful: they assemble the cogs and the bolts with unimaginable precision; one millimeter off, and the clock would not function. Someday I will have a beard as well. I already have the glasses, but they are too large for my face, while my father's are miniature and elegant. Everything's too big on me; the clock in my room is like a little closet, and every hour it makes a hollow sound which makes me shudder. It is made of gold, and has many statues of women and men with sad faces on it. I've asked who they are, and my father said, "They're saints." The only thing I know about saints is that they're dead. The groan that comes out of their bodies every hour is very frightening. The clock takes up half of the wall; my father made it and gave it to me on my birthday when I turned nine. It must have been a great honor, but the clock is dreadful and the thought that many men and women have such sad faces makes me cry. I have hated clocks since then, although I greatly respect my father. There are thirteen clocks in my house: all of them start ringing in a chorus every hour, and I feel like I'm surrounded by ghosts, each speaking in a different language. I can never concentrate on anything because of the constant ticking of the clocks. In an encyclopedia I've seen a picture of a naked man tied to a stool and on his head drops of water falling, one by one, to make him feel pain. That's exactly how I feel. I never tell my father, though. I did once. He didn't answer me but muttered something about advertising his works. My father always uses words that I don't understand; maybe when I get smaller glasses, I'll be able to understand things a little better. And a beard, too. I forgot the beard. All the statues on the clocks are "saints." Their hands are in the air and their mouths are half-open; they have huge eyes. The saints remind me of my mother, who died last October. Her eyes, too, were full of suffering And how father cried! We went to church that day. I didn't want to go to church, or anywhere. I wanted to sit at home and cry and watch the leaves falling. I don't think my dad wanted to go either, but he had to, and so did I. That's what most people do to make sure their dead will be honored and safe on their way to Heaven. There were a lot of saints in church. It was cold and I was wearing shoes that were way too big on me and a shirt that let in the wind. Some people in black robes were singing; it smelled queer and when I went to say good-bye to my mother, I got this feeling that I cannot describe. When I looked into her face, I saw that she was no longer my mother. She looked like my mother, but didn't have the most important characteristic of my mother, and I couldn't figure out what it was, either. I was scared, and then I understood that what was lying in front of me in the wooden box was a thing. Yes, a thing. And I understood that if I said good-bye to "the thing," I would be a traitor in front of my real mother, and that would anger her. She's taught me never to pretend; I never have. Not only that; I felt that I had to inform everyone of the fact that it was a thing they were singing to, a thing that they were crying for. I was very confused and scared, for how could people as sensible as my father be so misled? Nevertheless, I felt a need to speak, and when everyone asked me why I was taking so long, I told them the reason. My father was angry with me, and told me that I was a disobedient child. But I could not pretend that it was the thing that taught me, the thing that cared for me, the thing that fed me. I simply couldn't. Father was angry and said harsh words to me as we walked home; in the evening, though, before going to bed, he apologized to me and we cried together. It felt good, but I never got to say good-bye. Father didn't explain anything to me; he never does. When I grow up, I will choose a profession in which I can explain everything to everyone. That way people will not be confused, there will be no misunderstandings, and people will be happy. Then I will be happy as well. But my mother was no better at explaining than my father, and yet she was happy. She was a dancer and loved the sea; I am unfamiliar with either of these things—they remind me of the stars, beautiful and remote. I've had a lot of dreams where I was dancing on the sea, like St. Peter walking on water. My mother descended from the sky and taught me how to dance; we were dancing together, and beautiful multi-colored fish with sad eyes came out of the deep and danced with us. Our bodies were light as air and changed shapes every time we took on a new pose. We were free and happy, infinitely happy. When I wake up from these dreams, I hear the clocks strike and start crying. The only thing that father has ever explained to me is how to read time. Apparently he felt that that was the most important thing that he could ever teach me. I didn't think so. Time has never helped me in any way: when I am happy, the last thing I want to know is what time it is; when I am unhappy, time makes me think of Father's clocks, which, in turn, make me think of my mother, and that adds to my grief. It is time that has bent my father's back and made his head almost completely gray. It is time that makes it harder and harder for me to remember my mother's face as the days move on. It is time that is making me grow up without the answers to most of my questions. It is kind of strange that it is time that I understand the most: how to make time, how to waste time, how to kill time, how to keep time. In the middle of the night you could wake me up and I'll tell you what time it is, with an error of five minutes. It has become ingrained in my being like air; even in the loudest noise I can discern the ticking of a clock. What is strange is that when I try to kill time, I am the victim. My only consolation is that I have a perfect sense of rhythm, and maybe could be a dancer like my mother when I grow up. When you dance, you are Time's slave and master at the same time; the timing must be precise, but the movement is timeless. Yesterday I told my father that I need more knowledge of things. He looked me in the eye, and said, "It will come in time." I believe him. It will come in Time. |
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Our thoughts
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Advice for Adolescent Boys of Any Age
Nothing lovely is forbidden
Now I know there are those who say:
But I say, on the other hand,
Do not go lightly in your chase
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