Monthly Archives: November 2013

this:

this is what i said, and he had a valid reason to feel slighted. soon these moments won’t be easy to spare.

i took a nap in the middle of the day because i couldn’t shake a feeling. no matter how hard i tried to will myself into a different state, i couldn’t draw the energy; i didn’t know where to draw the energy from, i was just not convincing enough. i decided to sleep. i knew that in those hours of sleep i wouldn’t be feeling the feeling i was feeling—it would be at bay, relegated to the state of wakefulness that i had escaped from. i knew suspension would offer me something else; a substitution of feelings, a change in spirits. in sleep i could be safely relieved from that which overpowered me.

i slept.

(when dreams are nightmares, there is an opening for perspective. sometimes wonderful intensities live on and spill over to wakefulness. other times there are no dreams at all, but time spent pausing is a reward in itself.)

i woke up, the feeling somewhat tamed. the sun had already set, but i made myself coffee. i had a second breakfast. i fed the cat, and i stepped outside.

these:

the dissolution of boundaries.

the weight too heavy for a frail finger to hold.

the burning smell of a wooden door.

the vines climbing up the walls.

the children whispering underwater.

i am reading this book and i feel you reading this book with me. i am with you at a time that has already passed, yet there is no lag at all. you have read this book once, before me. your eyes have shuffled through the words; the fragments that are strangers to me are passing acquaintances to you. you have walked with them. you have a warm memory of them.

it is not the most important book to you, but it could be an important book to us. i picked it up and chose it; you lent it to me.

i can feel you and i can see you feeling the words on the pages, as i feel them through me, through you. some pages touched you more than others, some you skimmed over in moments of distraction. i can feel the contraction in your lower abdomen at the sight of certain sentences. i know it as though it is mine, but it is not. this wistful longing, the not knowing it would ever happen to you but the careful hoping—it is all yours.

i can feel you feeling the words and i cannot help but feel like a voyeur meddling in your sacred grounds.

you are a tender soul, generous and aggregated. i am often guilt-ridden at the thought of tearing a hole in your heart.

(chaque jour je reconnais l’idée d’un lendemain.)

the truth about novembers: they are not really there. they do not really exist. they have no flavour, and they do not care for sweet and spicy things.

novembers are an excuse for our memories to sway and to revel in deliberate amnesia. we go through lives scarcely remembering anything of the hours of those days. what has ever happened in cold november nights that was worth remembering? i had a hiccup once. i walked in the streets of vienna. i worked many long hours, most likely. i drank red, red wine in a bid to facilitate the arrival of so-called holiday spirits (though my favoured ones were ghostly, admittedly). many hearts were broken then—the hearts of faux captains who never learned to sail; the hearts of languid linguists prone to vertigo; the terminal hearts of animal lovers. recovered hearts were broken again. some hearts disappeared, and most hearts never returned. manifestly.

no, nothing ever quite happens in november. in november we put off for later, we postpone and we provide rain checks not out of caprice, but by reason of actual rain. we don’t gather ’round, though we probably should, as our warmth depletes in communal ways. instead we turn on many lights and forget the brightest one of all ever scorched our skin or dried the earth.

november is autumn’s last sigh when it has long decided it no longer wanted to live. it is the forgotten month between falling leaves and first snows, the scapegoat of our seasonal ailments. it is our listless abandon between heavy sheets and cushioned hips. it is a yawn with no relief. it passes through and leaves nothing behind. it is the unmistakable fog above water that wishes to freeze, and we never regret it.