Ballad Of An Old Friend
Some day I hoped we would be able to reward ourselves with these old familiar pleasures, instead of trying to forget the future and to fade, camouflaged, into the backdrop of the past.
Some day I hoped we would be able to reward ourselves with these old familiar pleasures, instead of trying to forget the future and to fade, camouflaged, into the backdrop of the past.
I realize that I have been so in love with him, and so afraid of that feeling, that I was unable to actually see him, to see what was in his eyes, to imagine they could express anything good, anything serious, anything real.
We’re free, at least for a few more days, but we don’t seem to know how to let loose the way the teenagers do, the way we used to. We find it harder to lie, harder to conceal bad deeds.
Here’s a way to get over someone: live a monastic existence, appreciating the wideness of an unshared bed, and write songs or books or unclassifiable material about them until the material itself becomes more interesting than the person ever was.
Listening to the same music over and over is closing down, opening little windows of the self only to the parts of the world one likes best: bits of the past, certain people, certain feelings.
My life was a mess. It helped to hear a person confront his own mess, a row of fallen dominoes, to the backdrop of such transportive and sad music.
Our friendship might be too precious to disrupt, but the pain of not disrupting it is intolerable.
I knew how deep his mind could really go: these languorous weeks and the music that he’d chosen to accompany them had proven it. And I knew how deep I could go, and I wanted him to know.
There is an order here — the shifting tides, the stubborn shooting stars — and however it works, whatever is controlling it, doesn’t need our help.
There should be no expectations of you and me beyond what is possible for us here: the use of the senses over the use of the mind. Brain over mind, body over civilization.