2011

A year of waking up to thoughts of you. Thoughts of those sun-lit days of long ago, days brimming simply and seemingly with undoubtable promise, diamond-bright moments where time had no meaning and every breath was your name. When I thought two people could never have been happier, with you and by me, partner to partner. A year of long afternoons of grief and staring blankly at the light pouring in through the leaves outside my window, and dappling my bed, and my body, bathing in this softly, slowly fading pool of light, forgetting about the hours slipping past while thinking in wonderment how the last five years have gone by, just like that. A long, silent, still, stagnant year of mornings turning into afternoons turning into long-drawn, cold, quiet nights filled with little else but this indescribable, harrowing, pain-wrought alchemy of sadness, helplessness, exhaustion, and crushing, crushing, loss. May next year be a better and happier one. And for all.

__

It takes forever to forget the past. And then longer again to see that forgetting the past is a vivid illusion. ...

In my mind, I said: 'Conor is gone, but the Lord is here. My life will pass and I will never taste a kiss on my mouth again.'

-- Andrew O'Hagan, Be Near Me

heavenly questions

How could I say we wanted nothing else

And nothing less and nothing more than this,

To find each other's spirit's melting point

And changing states, never such nakedness

Between such two, my bluest veins to kiss,

Never such certainty, the selfsame quest

Not to possess, but to be known; to know;

Not needing it confirmed, confirming it.
And in a place arrived at on our knees,

He tugged my face to his, as if he took

His own life in his hands; all gentle ways;

A lifelong quest for you; and won't let go

Unless you leave your fingerprints on me;

A gaze returned, the softest counterblow;

And gathering my hair in gentle fists,

Persuasion's force with no one to persuade,

Only persuading hairpins from my hair,

Their falling on the floor, a plunder-gift;

And nothing lost, but found and found again;

And not conquest, but everything in play

Given, not taken; taken anyway,

And not to keep in any case; but kept;

Possessed, but not in order to possess;

Selfsame, self-owned, self-given, self-possessed,

And all in play. But conquered nonetheless.

-- Gjertrude Schnackenberg, Heavenly Questions

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What reconciles me to my own death more than anything else is the image of a place: a place where your bones and mine are buried, thrown, uncovered, together. They are strewn there pell-mell. One of your ribs leans against my skull. A metacarpal of my left hand lies inside your pelvis. (Against my broken ribs your breast like a flower.) The hundred bones of our feet are scattered like gavel. It is strange that this image of our proximity, concerning as it does mere phosphate of calcium, should bestow a sense of peace. Yet it does. With you I can imagine a place where to be phosphate of calcium is enough.

-- John Berger, And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos

why.

why.

why is the measure of love loss.

why is the measure of us love.

love.

loss.

measure.

why.

wintersong

Thinking about you fills me with an incredible sadness. Beyond these words, beyond words, a firmament of grief.

pal o' me heart

At Swim, Two Boys is I think the most wonderful novel I've ever read. A tender tale of Doyler and Jim, an epic story of Ireland and love. Vivid, lyrical, glorious prose. Very. glorious. prose. Very heartwarming, very heartbreaking, and very, very beautiful.

*

'Do you miss him?'

Doyler sighed, and with that breath spilt all the tide of his loneliness and fears. 'I miss him, aye,' he said. 'He was pal o' me heart, so he was. I try not to think of him, only I can't get him off my mind. He's with me always day and night. I do see him places he's never been, in the middle of a crowd I see him. His face looks out from the top of a tram, a schoolboy wouldn't pass but I'm thinking it's him. I try to make him go away, for I'm a soldier now and I'm under orders. But he's always there and I'm desperate to hold him. I doubt I'm a man except he's by me.

*

It is hard not to fall in love with Doyler, with this gem of a heart, with this breathtaking declaration of love.

王菲 | passenger

We pass an overhead bridge. There are more to come. It is such a straightforward journey, we shall arrive before we know it. I am sitting in your car, listening to the songs playing on. We are happy. Then the first lamplight. What are you thinking about? That singer has a happy voice. Sitting in your car, listening to the songs playing on. I as not unhappy. Those white clouds has a tinge of sadness; the blue sky a bit of grey. I am to be reaching home. I as the first passenger of your car. I am not unhappy. The sky is now blood red. The stars are now silver and ash. And where is your loved one now?

memory like a prayer

Memory does not fade. It can be put away, it can be discarded. It can be forgotten, it can be remembered. Like a story from somewhere, flashes across time. Long ago re-appearing like this moment, like this night. Don’t say a word. Let the final scenes of the movie fall away. The traffic from the city streets quiet down. The last of the evening in your breath. Don’t say a word. Don’t let go of that evening, embers on your lips. In the blaze of the moment, the architecture of your face, cleft, scar, the ash-blue tincture of your eyes, memory does not fade. It remembers, like separate worlds meeting. I leaned over. Like separate worlds meeting. Don't say a word. Let the night be quiet. I leaned over. I kissed your lips and pledged myself forever.

Wintersonian love

The woman I love rode this way, carried off by horsemen. If I do not find her, I will never find myself. If I do not find her, I will die in this forest, water within water.

*

It was Winterson who showed me something about love and passion. She revealed to me something of love’s nature. Love's nature and its exacting, beautiful forms through an exacting, beautiful prose. She showed me that love is exacting and beautiful. To Winterson, a precise emotion seeks a precise expression. Yet, she renders the ideal kinds love that many of us will precisely fail to attain, offer, and experience. Hers is a love of biblical proportions and Elizabethan tragedy powered by lyrical intensity. But is that not love? Yet, if we all lived and loved by Winterson’s standards, we might well end up mute and miserable, if not shattered. I understand that love is not the same for everyone; we love in our own ways and in the ways that we know. Instinctive and natural, we all can love as long as it’s true. Winterson demanded truth, and courage, and her language possessed a power and an intensity that helped me decipher my own feelings.

So that when I met you, her language became a language of recognition.

So that when I met you I felt you were my destiny, and this feeling has not altered.

When I met you, I found myself at a loss, and at a loss for words. I found myself chasing after the myriad echoes of your sounds. They were like butterflies. A bar of music. A run of colour. A line of poetry. Gone.

When I touch you, my fingers don't question what you are. My body knows who you are. You are a pattern to yourself. You are known and unknown to myself. You are a shape I understand. You are a private geometry that numbers mine. You are the place that I am. You are a stranger, a strange that I am beginning to love.

In your face, in your body, as you walk and lie down and eat and read, you have become the lineaments of love. When I touch you I touch something deeper than you. This touches something in me otherwise too sunk to recover.

Love without thought. Love without conditions. Love without promises. Love without threats. Love without fear. Love without limits. Love without end.

All human love is a dramatic enactment of the wild, reckless, unquenchable, undrainable love that powers the universe. If death is everywhere and inescapable, then so is love, if we but knew it. We can begin to know it through each other. The tamer my love, the farther away it is from love. In fierceness, in heat, in longing, in risk, I find something of love's nature. In my desire for you, I burn at the right temperature to walk through love's fire.

So when you ask me why I cannot love you more calmly, I answer that to love you calmly is not to love you at all.

The woman I love rode this way, carried off by horsemen. If I do not find her, I will never find myself. If I do not find her, I will die in this forest, water within water.

master and margarita

St. petersburg is your favourite city, you said, wearing an expression I can't quite describe. Or remember. A strange mix of awe, resignation, love. You said something about the architecture, and that I must visit some day. There're trams in St. Petersburg too, aren't there, I asked. You looked at me and nodded, wondering if I'd been there. I think Dostoevsky wrote about them in his novels, I said. You said you didn't like Dostoevsky. Too depressed and depressing.

Later I went online to have a look at your favourite city. Now I know what you meant by architecture. It was Vienna on a grander scale. I couldn't really tell from those photos, but I could see why you fell in love with it. I would too, I think, and now I badly want to go to St. Petersburg. Not just because of the city, but because of you.

I'll think of you whenever I traipse across a Russian square, or pass a village that is your hometown, or whenever I read a novel like Master and Margarita that you love but can't explain why. Neither can I explain why, and if I can't explain it, how can I know? I don't know, but I know I'll think of you whenever I remember you, your lips, your quietness, and how we drank to our health and happiness and fell into bed and everything was white and time left us and all around us was burning, and burning, and burning.

two januaries

eight years since I lived on that street, walking to the cafes, the uni, coming back from the city, alighting from the tram, coming home at night. that summer was a particularly enjoyable one. i had nothing to do but novels to read and cafes to go, every day, loving those aimless, reflective afternoons while eagerly waiting for the new term to begin. there was an album of songs then that i kept listening to, put on repeat and repeat and repeat so much that that summer became those songs. and for a long while afterwards, after summer had ended, after i'd left, listening to those songs brought me back to that summer and those breezy days. i walked past that street yesterday. i thought of those saturday afternoons years ago when i had nothing to do but novels to read and cafes to go and had all the time in the world on my hands. i put on those songs that accompanied that summer. the magic returned, that afternoon light, those colour of leaves, fragments of images of that time, those songs and her voice, and how those times are gone now.

new year's day

I stood in the gardens in the highlands. Child of this land, son of ancient kings. Coronation ode, Elgar. The tune. The march. Your face. It was New Year’s day 2011. The night was warm, and spread out before me, the stars.