misery and splendor by robert haas

Summoned by conscious recollection, she
would be smiling, they might be in a kitchen talking,
before or after dinner. But they are in this other room,
the window has many small panes, and they are on a couch
embracing. He holds her as tightly
as he can, she buries herself in his body.
Morning, maybe it is evening, light
is flowing through the room. Outside,
the day is slowly succeeded by night,
succeeded by day. The process wobbles wildly
and accelerates: weeks, months, years. The light in the room
does not change, so it is plain what is happening.
The are trying to become one creature,
and something will not have it. They are tender
with each other, afraid
their brief, sharp cries will reconcile them to the moment
when they fall away again. So they rub against each other,
their mouths dry, then wet, then dry.
They feel themselves at the center of a powerful
and baffled will. They feel
they are an almost animal,
washed up on the shore of a world--
or huddled against the gate of a garden--
to which they can't admit they can never be admitted.

mildly drunken post

I feel like I take up too much space, sometimes, like I have too many things, write in letters too large, everything expanding expanding expanding until all I want to do is shrink. To live without comparison, without parallels, alone in a bed where no one can tell me I am too large or that I am taking up too much space. That's how I sleep when I'm not alone--curled on my side, arms clutched in. I'm afraid to take up space.
I've been drunk for a week straight, staying up too late, mixing Jack and wine and gin. I don't know how to say anything, anymore. How to say No, or I'm going, or even better, Why. I'm angry, but I don't know who at. Or what.
Now, to bed.

Everything is moving terribly fast and slow at the same time. I'm starting to pack, have finished exams, getting ready to say goodbye. I've been drinking copious amounts of alcohol and spending as much time as possible with people. Over the last week,

I've bought a ton of new music, all different kinds, and it's a good soundtrack for the leaving. "Painting by Chagall" by The Weepies is one of the best songs I've heard in a long time:

I am humbled in this city
There seems to be an endless sea of people like us
Wakeful dreamers, I pass them on the sunlit streets
In our rooms filled with laughter
We make hope from every small disaster

Everybody says "you can't, you can't, you can't, don't try."
Still everybody says that if they had the chance they'd fly like we do.

to be young (is to be sad, is to be high)

There's something magic about saying 'I love you' for the first time to someone. My family says it often--not that that detracts from the meaning, just that I'm comfortable saying it. We say it at the end of almost every phone call and spontaneously, simply when the heart can't hold in the feeling anymore. And I love that my family is so comfortable. Saying 'I love you' to other people, though, that still scares me a little, even when I mean 'I love you' and not 'I'm in love with you.'

Last night I said 'I love you' for the first time to a friend of mine, Gabe, who understands all of my silences. And he said it back.

A friend from high school, someone I did theatre with but wasn't very close with, committed suicide earlier this week.

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This is how grief brings us down, slowly, a rough cancer taking the place of all our other organs and joys. There is a sudden seize, how could we not have seen? Our lungs catapulting together, heart crushing, spine twisting. We can't share this grief, this weight rotting out our bones. All we can say is I love you and I'm sorry and none of those things will make us whole.

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If we all took our blackest days and strung them across the sky, well, then I couldn't show you the moon, love. Please, pull back those things drying so long on the line: I'd like to feel you, a shell around my back, banisher of night-terrors, and I, would like to show you the moon, because there's nothing left to say.

"there's a moment--there's always a moment, 'i can do this, i can give in to this, or i can resist it.' i don't know when your moment was...

...but i bet you there was one." -closer

Everything has gotten colder--every morning I wake up to frost, if not snow, and the pond outside my apartment is frozen over.

My parents came over for Thanksgiving, and I cooked for them, my flatmates, and Mr D. I think it may have been my favorite Thanksgiving yet--there was wine and nothing felt stressful or upsetting.

I've been working hard and then playing hard. Saturday night I went down to Edinburgh and went dancing with a group from St Andrews. We went to a Céilidh, which is like Scottish folk dancing--a live band calling out the dance moves, switching partners and clapping.

The working hard is good, too, when I can actually make myself sit down and do it. My [history] writing is getting better (even I can tell the different between what I wrote two months ago and what I'm writing now).

I'm trying very hard not to think about going away. It's not that I don't want to go home, but that I've found another home. That moment, when I fell in love with Scotland, I think I know when it was. The first time I was in Edinburgh, I met a group of Aussie guys who took me under their wings for a few days. One of the those days, we climbed to the top of Arthur's Seat, which is just on the edge of town, a small mountain. I'd been sick for so long, I never thought I would make it to the top. It started raining just as we sat down to look at the view. Joel, the one who listened to all the same indie-folk that I did and made me laugh, lit me a victory cigarette and we all sat there in the drizzle, looking out into a bunch of clouds.