When you left me, you took the dances and the music and the ghosts.
Nobody told me you could do that.
Friday, June 27
Monday, June 23
You think you're feeling better. You think maybe you're finally starting to get over it. And then one night you're riding your bike home from Eastlake and you're happy and singing that song that always gets stuck in your head and suddenly you're choking; you overwhelmed with sadness your lungs seize up and hyperventilation kicks in and your vision is blurry from the hot tears raining from your eyes and you fall off your bike and land in a blackberry bush, where you will sit and sob like a sad sucker. And you can't believe you still feel this way after 63 days. And you don't think you'll ever feel better.
Wednesday, June 18
By Jonathan Goldstein
It inspires me. It crushes me.
Man is two. He is holy, but he is also a scumbag. He is a sentimentalist, but he is also a murderer. He is one, but he is also many. Perhaps he is not just two. He is more than two. Perhaps thirty or so. The great tragedy of life is that we only have one; one life to be this or that. Yet within us we hold many selves, all of whom want to live equally.
If only we could subdivide like an amoeba and have one half go into work while the other half wanders the streets writing poetry on park benches. One self to absent-mindedly play with a letter opener during an endless PowerPoint presentation while another self dances on the windowsill. One self that nods politely at a stranger's story on the bus about the best chicken sandwich he's ever eaten while the other self kisses the bus driver on the lips.
We are walking, talking piñatas; plump with unnourished desires and every desire is an unborn self. Pardon my saying so, but this is a kind of personal weight that you cannot rid yourself of in a gymnasium with the rigorous passing of a medicine ball.
And so we read books and go to movies and live vicariously through the people on the screen, who shine twenty feet tall in the darkness. It's why we dream at night. In dreams we are basketball stars with the power of flight. In dreams the soul paints impossible pictures of endless possible worlds. The idea of reincarnation is reassuring, this idea of unending potential selves launching into perpetuity, for while we live this life, we are doomed to forever be one lonely self.
When we were children we knew that there were many people who lived inside of us. We donned masks and put on strange clothing. We allowed these other selves to speak through us in high-pitched voices. Everything around us was more than what it seemed. The hole in the laundry room wall was a portal to a dimension full of Keebler elves and the red Smarties were pills that cured bullying. The family cat wasn't merely a cat -- we dressed it up in bonnets to bring out its inner milkmaid. And we ourselves were the seeds that would one day sprout into large, multi-petaled things.
As adults we imagine what we could have been, what we might have been, if only we had been loved a little more, breast-fed a little longer. There is, in each of us, a feeling of untapped hidden possibility; potential selves that, given the chance, could've loved more boldly, spoken the truth more plainly, and perhaps even chewed less loudly.
We hunger for new forces to enter our lives, to take hold of our hands and stop us dead in our tracks with words that recognize and explain not only who we could have been but who we still can be, as though all of our possible worlds were as plainly obvious and present as the voice on the other end of the telephone line.
Man is two. He is holy, but he is also a scumbag. He is a sentimentalist, but he is also a murderer. He is one, but he is also many. Perhaps he is not just two. He is more than two. Perhaps thirty or so. The great tragedy of life is that we only have one; one life to be this or that. Yet within us we hold many selves, all of whom want to live equally.
If only we could subdivide like an amoeba and have one half go into work while the other half wanders the streets writing poetry on park benches. One self to absent-mindedly play with a letter opener during an endless PowerPoint presentation while another self dances on the windowsill. One self that nods politely at a stranger's story on the bus about the best chicken sandwich he's ever eaten while the other self kisses the bus driver on the lips.
We are walking, talking piñatas; plump with unnourished desires and every desire is an unborn self. Pardon my saying so, but this is a kind of personal weight that you cannot rid yourself of in a gymnasium with the rigorous passing of a medicine ball.
And so we read books and go to movies and live vicariously through the people on the screen, who shine twenty feet tall in the darkness. It's why we dream at night. In dreams we are basketball stars with the power of flight. In dreams the soul paints impossible pictures of endless possible worlds. The idea of reincarnation is reassuring, this idea of unending potential selves launching into perpetuity, for while we live this life, we are doomed to forever be one lonely self.
When we were children we knew that there were many people who lived inside of us. We donned masks and put on strange clothing. We allowed these other selves to speak through us in high-pitched voices. Everything around us was more than what it seemed. The hole in the laundry room wall was a portal to a dimension full of Keebler elves and the red Smarties were pills that cured bullying. The family cat wasn't merely a cat -- we dressed it up in bonnets to bring out its inner milkmaid. And we ourselves were the seeds that would one day sprout into large, multi-petaled things.
As adults we imagine what we could have been, what we might have been, if only we had been loved a little more, breast-fed a little longer. There is, in each of us, a feeling of untapped hidden possibility; potential selves that, given the chance, could've loved more boldly, spoken the truth more plainly, and perhaps even chewed less loudly.
We hunger for new forces to enter our lives, to take hold of our hands and stop us dead in our tracks with words that recognize and explain not only who we could have been but who we still can be, as though all of our possible worlds were as plainly obvious and present as the voice on the other end of the telephone line.
Tuesday, June 17
Monday, June 16
I have no way of knowing if a friendship between us is still something you want, though I suspect not.
Another letter never sent:
You called me on Friday night, claiming in your message that the reason for your call was simply to follow up on the status of the money order you mailed. You didn't have to call me to find that out and we both know it. In strict accordance with other recent actions, your calling me was entirely self-serving and I was livid that you tried to contact me. I'm still angry with you for doing this, but after some thought I realize that I'm also glad you did.
After you broke up with me you became different; you were cold and unfeeling toward me, but publicly you cast yourself as the victim, acting under the maxim "In matters of utmost importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing."
After I poured my heart out to you, spilling drops of pathos and anguish and so many liters of tears at your feet, you had the gall to respond with "I'm sorry you feel that way. Actually, no. I'm not sorry. It's a bummer that you feel that way." Those words represent but a few of the many harsh, impenitent statements tossed my way but remain the ones I think of most. The ones that frequent my thoughts and trouble my spirit. The ones that make me doubt my own judgement, my own heart, and the relationship I had with you which I previously thought had been precious to us both. You were a completely selfish and remorseless creep.
Your keen adaptability to my heart's demise sent a chill through my heart. A chill. Your actions lead me to believe that the person I was so apt to dwell on for thirteen months was a figure of my own imagination, not you, Kevin Neff. I felt I didn't know you and, furthermore, I had no wish to.
But then you called. The fact that you called under the thinly veiled guise of making sure I got the money I was owed gave me hope that perhaps what we had was real. For both of us. And although in the end you chose what you knew would be a fleeting, sexual relationship over what could have continued to be the most important friendship of our lives, I take some solice in the knowledge that the man who never looks back looked back, however briefly, and thought of me.
I'll ask you again not to contact me anymore unless it's absolutely necessary, especially not while I'm at work (a request you've needlessly disrepected several times). I don't know if I want to know you anymore, or if I ever knew you in the first place. What I do know is that before I make a decision on the matter I need to be sure I'm healthy in every respect, and I have a lot of work to do to get myself well again. Don’t misunderstand me, Kevin. I hate your breathing guts but I love you like I've never loved anyone.
You called me on Friday night, claiming in your message that the reason for your call was simply to follow up on the status of the money order you mailed. You didn't have to call me to find that out and we both know it. In strict accordance with other recent actions, your calling me was entirely self-serving and I was livid that you tried to contact me. I'm still angry with you for doing this, but after some thought I realize that I'm also glad you did.
After you broke up with me you became different; you were cold and unfeeling toward me, but publicly you cast yourself as the victim, acting under the maxim "In matters of utmost importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing."
After I poured my heart out to you, spilling drops of pathos and anguish and so many liters of tears at your feet, you had the gall to respond with "I'm sorry you feel that way. Actually, no. I'm not sorry. It's a bummer that you feel that way." Those words represent but a few of the many harsh, impenitent statements tossed my way but remain the ones I think of most. The ones that frequent my thoughts and trouble my spirit. The ones that make me doubt my own judgement, my own heart, and the relationship I had with you which I previously thought had been precious to us both. You were a completely selfish and remorseless creep.
Your keen adaptability to my heart's demise sent a chill through my heart. A chill. Your actions lead me to believe that the person I was so apt to dwell on for thirteen months was a figure of my own imagination, not you, Kevin Neff. I felt I didn't know you and, furthermore, I had no wish to.
But then you called. The fact that you called under the thinly veiled guise of making sure I got the money I was owed gave me hope that perhaps what we had was real. For both of us. And although in the end you chose what you knew would be a fleeting, sexual relationship over what could have continued to be the most important friendship of our lives, I take some solice in the knowledge that the man who never looks back looked back, however briefly, and thought of me.
I'll ask you again not to contact me anymore unless it's absolutely necessary, especially not while I'm at work (a request you've needlessly disrepected several times). I don't know if I want to know you anymore, or if I ever knew you in the first place. What I do know is that before I make a decision on the matter I need to be sure I'm healthy in every respect, and I have a lot of work to do to get myself well again. Don’t misunderstand me, Kevin. I hate your breathing guts but I love you like I've never loved anyone.
Friday, June 6
Don't misunderstand me
I hate Kevin's breathing guts, but I love him more than I've ever loved anyone.
Thursday, June 5
The ones you love don't have to love you back
When you're young they fail to tell you
Just say that you're so smart and you're so special
They take your heart and then they break it
And they take your skull and then they shake it
But they're never gonna tell you from the start
Yes, the world is gonna break your little heart
Just say that you're so smart and you're so special
They take your heart and then they break it
And they take your skull and then they shake it
But they're never gonna tell you from the start
Yes, the world is gonna break your little heart
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