Two months, the end of November to the middle of January. Last week i started taking steps to deal with my mail in the interim. It is something I need. A chance to reset, perhaps.
I was sick today. The inner ear problem came up. I thought i had it under control, but i did swim, only 1800 yards but the pool was mrky and when i got out the inner ear thing was worse and it finally laid me out even though that is not good for it. I could not get up nor could i slleep though i waa exhausted and it was too early anyway.
I will not say that I have to have you. If I come now, immediately, then you will be there. Otherwise i will be alone with the terrors of the wilderness.
I have started the book, my appology. How do you say that in french, in latin, perhaps greek is the right language after all.
I am reading a book about people stuck in prisons, half alive, half dead actually, finding pleasures in life without being happy. This past 11 years has been a prison, the only joy has not been the thought of escape. No every moment with you, thinking about us together, even those where I spoke to you, those were joys, tarnished because you could not enjoy them like i did. Oh but if I could have given you that one thing that would have bound us,that even i could not have excused my way, thought my way out of. It was my strongest motivation at the beginning. I was the hope for that, surely no matter how old we both were, the love i felt was so strong it would have overcome whatever barriers nature had thrown up.
The desert is the place to go to pull my life into fucus, to confess and in that confession to be free, perhaps even free of this terrible love for you. The terrible loneliness of the desert, a demon to take on this demon in my life, in our life.
How it brings the genius, that is absurd, what little creativity there is, and poet, the same, not really a poet, a blowhard perhaps, out in me. Of course, my moment of genius seems to have passed, perhaps it never existed. There is support enough for its validity; but not enough to convince me of its tenuousness instead of tenacity.
"I dont think ive been perfectly happy at all since you went away. you cannot conceive how i suffered then." That is from the book I am reading. How it speaks to me, this horrible book, horrible book, with its horrible characters, horrible characters. And yet it speaks to me, am I not one of them, what I did to survive was to allow myself to love you absolutely, to set the world on fire with that love and watch it burn terrified, unhappy, and yet it was so beautiful, so desirable how could I put the fire out, how coudl I think about letting it go out on its own, how could I stop myself from piling on the kindling, the split pieces of our lives and finally the whole, living trunks that we so relied upon before tthe fire was started.
I was innocent, no not innocent, but without intention at the beginning, i did not know or believe how completely you gave yourself when you did, nor coudl i have imagined the size of the monster which lived inside of me, only wait for you to wake it up. And what i wanted to give you, i thought you needed. Oh, such conceit, to think i knew what you needed or that i could give it, but I did.
I wish you could see it here today. The beautifull weather, the bird singing closs by, the others in the disance. How clean it is, how much I cleaned banisters, table tops, even the top of the hot tub. Everything I did for the wrong reason, but it was for you after a fashion, if you were here, it is how we would spend our days, cleaning and then sitting together for days admiring our work. Or would we? Perhaps that is not who you are, it is who I am, at least sometimes, when I fix broken things, like I wanted to fix you.
The theme of the book is the author's ability to turn a phrase. That is what makes it a worthy book, certainly not the name, the name; not the horrible story or the horrible people that act it out. You read waiting for the next beautiful phrase, you don't live in the book. In these ways it is like us, horrible in some ways and much too lonely, but punctuated by such perfection of association that we read on, long after we know we should have put the book down and moved on.
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