Dear An-na-b-elle Jo-nes,
I love you. My story is one of a boy who could find infinite beauty in any little thing; your story is one of a girl who couldn’t. It’s true you loved to collect beautiful things: paintings, sketches, sculptures, books, leaves, pressed flowers, black and white photographs, glass bottles, driftwood, quotes, last words, butterflies and so many other things. You thought beautiful things made you more interesting, you were wrong, Anna. You were all I ever needed. I find myself wishing you would have been a collector of life, stealing all its moments and putting them in a collage that would hang on the wall of your heart. You could have looked at it every day and learned that it too was a beautiful thing. I could have made you love it, in time. In time, two words, I and you, could have, should have become I love you. I like to think that you wanted to collect life, so you put in a jar beside your bed, on the windowsill, so it would soak up the sun and energy, build up its strength. Every day you would water it, speaking to it like you would speak to me and it would grow and thrive. One day however, July 7th 2007, you walked into your room and the jar was smashed, a million little cosmos, your universe, lay in shards on the hardwood floor, a million little inarticulate “loves” all dead. Under your care, the life inside the jar had grown too big to be contained and had escaped from the confines of glass. I like to think that you tried to fix it but found that you just couldn’t. Why didn’t I tell you that life doesn’t belong in a jar? It was this that made you, it was this that made you, it was this that made you jump-wasn’t it? Your collection of life was greater than life itself and you couldn’t handle it. So you jumped off the most beautiful pier into the turbulent waters below. It was storming that day Anna, there was lightening. Did a bolt shock the water as you plunged deeper and deeper- illuminating your raven hair with an eerie glow? Why didn’t you come up for air? Maybe the waves were too strong and you just couldn’t. You never said goodbye and you took away my ability to ever say goodbye again. I am not sorry for you, I am sorry for me. You were so selfish and inconsiderate and enchanting and I loved you anyways- why wasn’t that enough? I gave you so much; I tried to make myself enough. I would have put your jar back together, I would have stitched it together with good intentions, with iron wires I would have sewn, with strings of love, with complementary cords of grace and goodness; I would have cut my hands on sharp glass edges gladly. All for you, Anna; everything for you- at what point did you do things out of blind love for me? I just want to see you and touch you and hear you, just be near you for another day, week, month, year, decade, five decades, one hundred years. One day, one more fucking day, you could have waited, you could have committed your first and only act of love, done something you hated for me but you didn’t because you weren’t that person. That night when you learned life was either too big or too small, we had just come back from the beach; you always loved watching the storms roll in, so we lay on our backs and watched the darkness approach. We had gazed at the pier in the distance; you were particularly taken by it, taking picture after picture- you were always the photographer and never the one photographed. We drove home in the pouring rain and as I pulled up to your house, you leaned into me, pressing your lithe frame against mine (I can still feel it; your final imprint) and you kissed me, pulled a veil over my eyes with your kisses, you whispered, “Happy Birthday” into my ear. I was twenty two. You kissed me for a very long time; pausing to look into my eyes, touch my face, inhale the scent of my neck, flutter your eyelashes along my temple. I should have known what goodbye tasted like. You squeezed my hands and got out of the car. I could hear you singing “Yesterday.” I waited until you unlocked your door and you turned around once you were inside; god, it was dark in there and your last gesture was lost into the labyrinth of your home. Did you blow a kiss? Wink? Let tears fall? Why did I miss that last moment of you- or did I just miss you completely?
Dominick
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
The Extraordinary Story of A Boy and A Girl- Chapter One
She whispered, "Where are you going when you die, Sasha?"
"Not heaven."
"Why not?"
"I just know."
He should have said,"Because there is nothing to believe except you."
He was running. He was running. He was running, along the border. Breathing hard, alive, heart thudding against his pale bony chest, alive, alive and shouting! Fists punching the air! There must be some way outta of here, said the joker to the thief...
A-MARY-CA!
A-MARY-CA!
A-MARY-CA!
He was scaling the fence, flying. All around him was her. His shirt was caught in the barb wire, it tore at his large hands, ripped at his Western shirt. He was leaping, soaring, his feet crumbled against the ground, an explosion shocked the air. All around his was darkness, except for the red flowers bursting underneath his eyelids. He lay in the cool grass, silently chanting.
A-MARY-CA.
A-MARY-ca.
A-MAry-ca.
A-mary-ca.
a-mary-ca.
Her voice gripped him. "No, Sasha. I can't."
"Not for love." He begged. It wasn't beneath him.
"No"
"America..."
"My names Mary." She walked away. He walked away.
The scarlet, ruby and blood orange flowers bloomed, evolved, swirled, mezmerizing him. All around him a sea, the tide bringing in the future, teasing him, the tide carrying the past out, to be lost and forgotten. Black flowers faded in and out of the kaliedascope, getting bigger, overwhelming the red ones. The sea, picked him up, he was weightless, he was free, at last gloriously free. He closed his eyes.Coffee. Listening to Bob Dylan in his room. Her fingertips gripping his as they slipped up the stairs, her laughter echoing, echoing. Her innocence. There's too much confusion I can't get no relief...
"I'll see you in America." She promised with hope dancing in her eyes.
"Yes. Yes. You will." He said to please her.
He lay in the grass, on the other side of the fence, broken and whole, his lips blue, parted and chapped with unspoken words. Melancholy floated down from the sky in little crystals, cloaking his body in a coat of sparkling white resplendent beauty. Immortalized; his hands forever cradling bits of brown grass he had pulled from the Earth, from Ukrainian soil. He tried to remember what that man had said, it was so powerful, so great and so terrible: "Free at last! Free! At last! Good [god?] almighty! Free at last..." He could still hear those static-tinged words sparkling through the radio.
"Does anything ever stop being beautiful?"
"Yes."
"When?" She crinkled her forehead.
"When you die."
"Isn't that when everything's the most beautiful?"
He didn't answer.
She was dancing circles in square, the Cathedral was her canvas. She painted her footsteps across it's minnerets. She was rearranging the babushka dolls, she was crying as she touched painting of Anastasia and he understood that her tears were not for the lost princess, but for Russia, he was watching her watching, she was smiling at the children in their red hats, she was taking a photograph of four women, the sun bouncing of their shoulders, arms and faces.
He was watching red flowers, his life, black flowers, he was saying goodbye, he was chasing after that train she borded, he was living, he was alive, he was dying, he was living, he was dying. The lines between the two we're blurred. He opened and closed his eyes for the first and last times.
He answered her question: "No and yes. No because it's the end and yes because it's the end."
She wrote in her journal that night. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." And she wasn't sure to whom she was apologizing.
There are many among us
Who feel that life is but a joke (ha-ha-ha)
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.
"Not heaven."
"Why not?"
"I just know."
He should have said,"Because there is nothing to believe except you."
He was running. He was running. He was running, along the border. Breathing hard, alive, heart thudding against his pale bony chest, alive, alive and shouting! Fists punching the air! There must be some way outta of here, said the joker to the thief...
A-MARY-CA!
A-MARY-CA!
A-MARY-CA!
He was scaling the fence, flying. All around him was her. His shirt was caught in the barb wire, it tore at his large hands, ripped at his Western shirt. He was leaping, soaring, his feet crumbled against the ground, an explosion shocked the air. All around his was darkness, except for the red flowers bursting underneath his eyelids. He lay in the cool grass, silently chanting.
A-MARY-CA.
A-MARY-ca.
A-MAry-ca.
A-mary-ca.
a-mary-ca.
Her voice gripped him. "No, Sasha. I can't."
"Not for love." He begged. It wasn't beneath him.
"No"
"America..."
"My names Mary." She walked away. He walked away.
The scarlet, ruby and blood orange flowers bloomed, evolved, swirled, mezmerizing him. All around him a sea, the tide bringing in the future, teasing him, the tide carrying the past out, to be lost and forgotten. Black flowers faded in and out of the kaliedascope, getting bigger, overwhelming the red ones. The sea, picked him up, he was weightless, he was free, at last gloriously free. He closed his eyes.Coffee. Listening to Bob Dylan in his room. Her fingertips gripping his as they slipped up the stairs, her laughter echoing, echoing. Her innocence. There's too much confusion I can't get no relief...
"I'll see you in America." She promised with hope dancing in her eyes.
"Yes. Yes. You will." He said to please her.
He lay in the grass, on the other side of the fence, broken and whole, his lips blue, parted and chapped with unspoken words. Melancholy floated down from the sky in little crystals, cloaking his body in a coat of sparkling white resplendent beauty. Immortalized; his hands forever cradling bits of brown grass he had pulled from the Earth, from Ukrainian soil. He tried to remember what that man had said, it was so powerful, so great and so terrible: "Free at last! Free! At last! Good [god?] almighty! Free at last..." He could still hear those static-tinged words sparkling through the radio.
"Does anything ever stop being beautiful?"
"Yes."
"When?" She crinkled her forehead.
"When you die."
"Isn't that when everything's the most beautiful?"
He didn't answer.
She was dancing circles in square, the Cathedral was her canvas. She painted her footsteps across it's minnerets. She was rearranging the babushka dolls, she was crying as she touched painting of Anastasia and he understood that her tears were not for the lost princess, but for Russia, he was watching her watching, she was smiling at the children in their red hats, she was taking a photograph of four women, the sun bouncing of their shoulders, arms and faces.
He was watching red flowers, his life, black flowers, he was saying goodbye, he was chasing after that train she borded, he was living, he was alive, he was dying, he was living, he was dying. The lines between the two we're blurred. He opened and closed his eyes for the first and last times.
He answered her question: "No and yes. No because it's the end and yes because it's the end."
She wrote in her journal that night. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." And she wasn't sure to whom she was apologizing.
There are many among us
Who feel that life is but a joke (ha-ha-ha)
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Keep Me Where the Light Is
It makes me cry, she said with her eyes tracing the brownblack swirls on the desk. Do you ever cry when you read a book, she asked.
No, never. There just books. The boy answered this so quickly, so surely, that for a second she forgot the charms of his smile.
Why not? What if they're sad? Tell me you cry boy, make yourself real to me, vulnerable, make yourself real to me, cry, cry, be sad, there are so many ways to be sad in this world that you're always going to be sad in some way, beautiful boy, if you're broken I can be unatatched, I can be broken too, pretend, pretend.
Because I'm a man. Again, a swift answer, grinned off his face, a trophy answer, pride.
You have never read or seen or held something so beautiful and yet so awful only to realize it was only yours for a moment, then it became someone else's beauty someone else's awful, its beauty and it's awfulness is what makes it yours, it's so like you, so beautiful and so awful, so great and terrible, it cannot possibly belong to anyone, yet you want it, desire it, lust after it, ohgod, you have to have it, and that distorted not-anything-like-love feeling, well you've got to have it too.
She wanted to make him understand about this book and about so many other things he wouldn't understand. But she couldn't, he wouldn't ever know how the book had left her. Like a kite that realizes the sky and the wind just aren't good enough to fly in today she relished in her new vaugeness, her unsure childlike precociousness, ohgod ohgod ohgod, she needed him, a kite needs the wind...to fly. If only she wanted to, she didn't want to fly, crashing was far more glamourous. Can you feel the ground when your head's in the clouds?
Of course you are. She laughed into the thought of his arms and their names carved side by side on tree trunks. She laughed because she was comfortable.
She laughed for all the times they would never have.
Another clean getaway...
No, never. There just books. The boy answered this so quickly, so surely, that for a second she forgot the charms of his smile.
Why not? What if they're sad? Tell me you cry boy, make yourself real to me, vulnerable, make yourself real to me, cry, cry, be sad, there are so many ways to be sad in this world that you're always going to be sad in some way, beautiful boy, if you're broken I can be unatatched, I can be broken too, pretend, pretend.
Because I'm a man. Again, a swift answer, grinned off his face, a trophy answer, pride.
You have never read or seen or held something so beautiful and yet so awful only to realize it was only yours for a moment, then it became someone else's beauty someone else's awful, its beauty and it's awfulness is what makes it yours, it's so like you, so beautiful and so awful, so great and terrible, it cannot possibly belong to anyone, yet you want it, desire it, lust after it, ohgod, you have to have it, and that distorted not-anything-like-love feeling, well you've got to have it too.
She wanted to make him understand about this book and about so many other things he wouldn't understand. But she couldn't, he wouldn't ever know how the book had left her. Like a kite that realizes the sky and the wind just aren't good enough to fly in today she relished in her new vaugeness, her unsure childlike precociousness, ohgod ohgod ohgod, she needed him, a kite needs the wind...to fly. If only she wanted to, she didn't want to fly, crashing was far more glamourous. Can you feel the ground when your head's in the clouds?
Of course you are. She laughed into the thought of his arms and their names carved side by side on tree trunks. She laughed because she was comfortable.
She laughed for all the times they would never have.
Another clean getaway...
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