"The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
~ Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell To Arms



"Our lives disconnect and reconnect, we move on, and later we may touch one another, again bounce away. This is the felt shape of a human life, neither simply linear nor wholly disjunctive nor endlessly bifurcating, but rather this bouncey sequence of bumping into's and tumblings apart."
~ Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet



Saturday, September 12, 2015

Songs and Memories






In his bed half sleeping and barely, briefly feeling something again for a moment. A scene from a novel. A script playing on the stage of his memory. Words and light fusing into a moment, "...all parts of the body must be ready for the other, all atoms must jump in one direction for desire to occur” spoke the English Patient long ago. 

He remembers uttering other words. When he felt something. When he risked being alive. When he was not afraid of living. 

When he said on a September night, 

I hear
"For Emily Wherever I May..."
And you are
Singing me to sleep
Bidding me to dream
Of, "... you warm and near..."
Sweetness of your voice
Poetical cadence of words
I feel your breath
As you whisper
"Oh, what a dream I had..."
Our eyes meet with a glance
I feel your fingertips touch my soul
I taste the softness of your lips
Your hand was in mine
"...we walked on frosted fields of juniper and lamplight..."


And when she was still alive. When he could still hear her voice. When she risked leaving her demons behind. 

She replied in a whisper, “continue please” with a smile and music in her eyes.

He said, “I found you warm and near.”

She moaned, “I kissed your honey hair with my grateful tears.”

Quickly and softly speaking she said, “I’ll finish…oh I love you…”

He gets out of his bed and makes a drink. He walks into the dark room of his existence and sits down to taste the gin and the lime and the coldness of the ice swirling with the tonic. Yesterday was different he thinks. More words come in the night like they always do. Warm comfort of solidarity in old words of the Baird,  

“She should have died hereafter;  
There would have been a time for such a word.  
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,  
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day 
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools 
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! 
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player 
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage 
And then is heard no more: it is a tale  
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 
Signifying nothing.”



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