The Song

I am perched on a stool at the piano bar.

 

My eyes wander like the tremulous after-tones

of notes plunked out in pleasing sequences –

Wandering down cobblestones worn smooth by sandals

into small terra-cotta hills,

Wandering past the purple haze of thick cigar smoke

and women clucking sugary bits of gossip

as they stir, in cream, their dreams.

            The notes reverberate off the walls of a narrow street

to mingle with taxis and vespas and footfalls

and a delicate click of knitting needles as

a woman, scarved, brings them back into the bar

with a half-completed shawl she tries to sell me.

Notes so ephemeral, they curl around the tongues

and hums of shy undiscovered singers.

 

This song becomes their song,

unsung but known,

a conversation they have had many times before

and so, when the topic again arises, is

dismissed with a wave of the hand and an

“Así es.”

So while everyone else seems to be doing things fun and exciting and life-changing, I am snowed in my house in Connecticut with a serious case of writer's block and no desire to research jobs.

Upon leaving for break it was suggested to me to submit my final essay for my Negative Capability class for the Sherr Essay Prize. It needs a lot of work, especially the beginning. But I certainly could use a hundred dollars, so a few hours' editing shouldn't bother me.

I spent Wednesday and Thursday of this week back down in Allentown, and wandered aimlessly around Philly and talked to Greenpeace workers and ate falafel and sat in a coffee shop on South Street and read Justine and got cold and had a nice warm arm put around me and a nice glass of wine put in me. I cried upon having to come home. My face was gently wiped clean, and my mouth gently and compassionately kissed, and I drove silently through the cold night.

I am in love despite myself. He just interests me far too much. He is someone I want to figure out. I want him to lead me around and I want to be able to watch where he is taking me. I want to be more clever for him, and more independent for myself. I want to teach him things. I like when he tells me I am kind, and that my influence on him is positive. I like when he sings, and when he looks to me for recognition for the things he does well.

I am desperate for touch. I want his arm around me while I sleep. I want my head on his thigh while I read, or close my eyes after one beer too many, or while I sigh myself into comfort. I want to dance with him.

I want to write him letters.

It is hard to be up here alone.

A list of things I am looking forward to reading over the break:

Anthology of Sean O'Casey plays
Life is a Dream
The Joke
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Madame Bovary
that book Amy got me for my birthday, name forgotten,
Beer in the Snooker Club
The Norton Book of Literature, Volume D


Hooray.

A list of things I need to do over break:

Research and apply for jobs.
Get cover letters and resumes prepared and finalized.
Get letters of recommendation.

It's scary to think that in five months I will have a job. Or not.

When I become stuck intellectually and socially, but mostly when I become stuck in love, I tend to move.
Each place is bigger in some way than the last, each more expansive. My next move, for instance, will be either to New York or to a foreign country. I do it in that distinctly snobbish American desire to 'find myself', or at least find something outside myself that I can grab a hold of and sink into and distract myself from, well, the uncertainty of myself.

Kundera calls it a system of betrayals, each needing to be bigger than the last. But in the end, where can you finally run? Death is an inevitability, in which one can neither embrace it too soon nor deny it too long. We write to distract ourselves from that dirty little secret.

That writing is beautiful in that it is an innocent and sometimes naive white lie.