Burn / Reverse / Mail

9.8.2000

Becoming obsessed with a movie shot in flickering, jilted black and white, very abstracted characters, beautiful and terrifying in turns, the sliding cameras and droop-mouthed actors in their staticky French. "Jules and Jim" directed by Truffaut, champion of la Nouvella Vague. This is significant because I can't remember the last movie I saw and liked...
(s c 11:03 PM)

8.29.2000

Sometimes I'm terrified. Of boys. Of what they can do, their magic and beauty and power to completely devastate you.

I'm not there (yet/now), but I've been there before and I've seen it happen to other girls, just wrapped up in the glow, vulnerable with an appreciation for art and addiction to love.

I'm afraid of falling in love.

And I'm a nihilist.

I'm sorry, baby.
(s c 4:08 PM)

8.27.2000

Now it's 12:15 a.m. and I don't think I've ever felt this lonely. It's clear out and warm, and breezy, and the sky is colored like water. I am having beautiful lonely dreams full of echoes. I imagine I'm strolling around Old Wethersfield, which is still and quivering in the summer, in twilight and midnight and hours too magical too imagine. I'm lying on my back in the grass and my hair all spread out like beautiful serpents and I'm looking up at this infinite night like the sea, glittering with desolate bars of brightness - lighthouses in the desperate solitude. I imagine I have wreathed dandelions in my hair and pink flowers behind my ears, like the one you picked for me from the side of your driveway, that time you cried in my arms. And I see you coming quietly around the curve of your street, and you stop, bicycle wheels still gasping, and the front of your shirt damp from sweat and your face cool and slick, and you take me in your glowing white arms and kiss me because that is all you can do. (You are so in love with me that you won't ever let go, and you will do anything to make me happy and stay by my side and fervently, feverishly love and admire me for the rest of our lives.)

It is ridiculous. And that's why it's a dream.
(s c 3:49 PM)

8.26.2000

It's a consuming, devouring sensation, love like I want to taste every part of him, sometimes. But watching him, his hair whiffling in the wind, soft and downy, his eyes closed like smiles, I'm content, I'm more than content...
(s c 3:38 PM)

8.24.2000

And the air is reedy, parts like scratchy
Silk.   You are moving, bent elbows, a
Pearly ghost in the dark.
Your breath unsettles snowflake windchimes
Jellied tinkling in the air, like frostbites.

  The night sky is coming unglued
  Pulling ponderous thick-stranded tufts of
  Fog over the Cove.
                 Sunday.
        Two hours before sunrise.
Your hands open to uncurling heaven.
All smeared over with shadows and
   clotted charcoal-colored light.

Trees bent
   Unscrupulously imitative of gnarled
And thorny old men
  With smoky mouths and
Tongues.
  Cryptic pulse of nicotine alarm-lite
     Muted and imaginary in the shade.

And while we ignore it, the
Highway roars, all full of
  Sparking trucks and gloaming.
    Mazes of tree branches overhead.  - (We are shivering
Like feverish angels on your coat lain out thin and gleaming with cold.) -
  "Like petrified lightning," you say.

  And then, "It's another way to stay warm."
            Arms tangling in sleeves
            Limp and forlorn limbs.
      The sun gone, sky blinding, and
      In this gray plainness, the creases around your eyes
      Are stark and grainy, your fingers warm, subtly sweat
      Around my knuckles. Kisses dribbling down your
      Chin, pink-marked in the silver day.