as an aside · 30/05/2010 08:04 pm by Bron
You write me from Vietnam, and I love that, our random postcards, your Voight-Kampff doodles. I can see you there, attacking the food and the culture. You say, as an aside, travelling without you is superwierd, and I think- are you trying to say you miss me? maybe. but you’re probably just saying- travelling without me is superwierd.
On my birthday, you send me Dave Berman’s “Self-portrait at 28”. And I struggle as always to make sense of this, except for the ending, which loses gravity here taken from the whole:
I walked out to the hill behind our house
which looks positively Alaskan today
and it would be easier to explain this
if I had a picture to show you
but I was with our young dog
and he was running through the tall grass
like running through the tall grass
is all of life together
until a bird calls or he finds a beer can
and that thing fills all the space in his head.
You see,
his mind can only hold one thought at a time
and when he finally hears me call his name
he looks up and cocks his head
and for a single moment
my voice is everything
I find it so beautiful and heart-breakingly sad that I am in tears. I can’t imagine you knew it would affect me like that.
I remember a time on the shink when it was apparently 15 degrees outside.
Then I take you to see Grace, and her voice makes me shiver. I have no idea if our old habits are still dying hard. But you put your arm around me as we walk down the street.
Friday I drop by (I might have said on my way home, but we both know it isn’t true). I can almost see the night’s trajectory. White shirt. Red wine stains.
We kiss, but I can’t ignore that I know what this is to you and I can’t do it anymore. I must be masochistic. You say nothing, and I am left reeling again.
The next day the rain clouds over the ocean are dark, and we sit in the car at first. You say you don’t know what’s going on in my life, and that it’s not your place to know.
And so it seems, the “I” is a pretty heavy concept.
I am trying to get at something
and I want to talk very plainly to you
so that we are both comforted by the honesty.
It’s one of the few things we have left.
I cannot deduce. (Though I try). I cannot know without asking. And even then I’m likely to still misunderstand.
The circles of our selves rarely satisfy all the needs of others in the venn diagram of relationships.
