i came across this picture on flickr. it's not mine, taken by Ray Zimmerman, but it made me smile and i had to share it.
Elvis Presley - She's Not You
Her hair is soft and her eyes are oh so blue
She’s all the things a girl should be,
But she’s not you.
She knows just how to make me laugh when I feel blue
She’s ev’rything a man could want,
But she’s not you.
And when we’re dancing
It almost feels the same
I’ve got to stop myself from
Whisp’ring your name
She even kisses me like you used to do.
And it’s just breaking my heart
’cause she’s not you.

MAP SHOWER
For Marcia
I want your hair
to cover me with maps
of new places,
so everywhere I go
will be as beautiful
as your hair.
For two nights in a row i fall asleep at 5am and wake up at 9:30. My bones ache. I have aslo developed a fondness for small individual serving size bottles of pellegrino mineral water. I could buy the larger bottle and pour it in a glass but somehow the sheer ease of grabing a tiny bottle and drinking it appeals to me immensly.
I could have easily written the postcard. Though i'll never truely know if her response would have been so similar.
how odd to find such parallels in the universe.
It made me weep. quietly. for a few seconds. mostly because i felt like it. mostly because at the end of the book i realized that without a doubt you only fall in love once. The tough textured skin, of where the scars she inflicted on me are, will never be soft again. Those scars that i stubbornly, masochistically tore open so many times over the course of a year. Man!, I must have torn them open once for every time she dove into her own debauchery. For every time i read about it.
Well that skin...that tissue...tougher and wiser for wear will never be as untouched, and somehow the next woman who loves me will run her hands over their weathered surface and grin the quiet grin of someone who carries her own scars and knows. She'll have to, it will be only way she can love me.
for the moment though i wonder if in the years that this novel sat on my book shelf, if in the year that that bookshelf was our bookshelf, or in the months that my book shelf was with you, if in that time you ever read it or if i ever told you how much the book moved me as a naive 16 year old romantic?
I am, i fear, afraid, terrified, of what I've craved the most.
one can never fall in love again, for the first time.
first love is naive, there is only the most abstract understanding of how vulnerable you truly are.
first love is for children and fools.
Love, with a capital "l" love like in harsh French movies or a Patrick Marber play,
this is the love of the courageous, the slightly masochistic, the knowingly foolish.
this is the trembling possibility that occupies my mind tonight.
I'm re-reading a book "the hottest state" by ethan hawke (yes that ethan hawke)
it is a book I've loved, for years, it is a book i read before i knew about first love, and it is a book about first love. I remember reading the book, a book that within its first few pages informs the reader that this love story will end in heartbreak, i remember that i used to read it with a palpable anticipation. I would devour each page that unfolded their love story for me.
I didn't know enough then to understand the word "heartbroken" it was an abstract, no more understood than death.
But tonight, as i read it again i realized my heart was gently pounding, perhaps merely tapping against my chest, in awful anticipation. Because when i read this girl, Sarah, i know not only that she will break his heart, hurt him, but i understand why and that makes it all the worse.
and so i am in that spot. somewhere across an ocean is a possibility, one that i would have once dove into, blindly, foolishly, and whole. It is this possibility that scares me. Because i know what it means, and my heart, my battle wearied heart, is cautious, and would like to live in world where there are some guarantees, or at the very least a warranty if things should go wrong.
i don't live in that world. i live in a world where on a good day i decide i will reach out to this possibility and see if she's reaching back.
I am sitting in a white room. on a white bed. with lighting that i can change to either blue, red, green, or a combination of the three with a remote. It’s a hotel in Barcelona.
I’m tired. i spent the day walking around being a tourist. I realize now that i hate being a tourist. i hate going to museums and taking mediocre pictures of things that have already been photographed for $50 photo books under much better lighting conditions. I like having gone though. I like having the recollection of the place. I like saying i have seen such and such painting or sculpture in person, but i don’t feel any more enriched or moved by the situation. 9/10 it all hangs out in short term memory and then fades.
I am tired and i am also suddenly faced with the reality that i don’t know what i am going home to.....(4 and a half hours later) i am going home to find a mechanic. There’s a few things that need fixing