he said, "i've been thinking lately about people like dorothy wordsworth who lose touch with reality later in life, who sort of slide into dementia. i have all the signs of schizophrenia except the hallucinations. i'm actually afraid of hearing or seeing something now, everyday, as i walk around ( Read more... )

dating a doctoral student in history seemed a good idea, but he started with rome very soon after they sat down, and had progressed in an unbroken monologue, based on some as yet unwritten law of narrative inertia, at 1930s paris. "i bet you didn't know," she said too loudly, and then to a sudden silence, "it's a little known historical fact that ( Read more... )

"fear of ghosts," she said, "belongs to the solitary, alone in their beds or huddled on floors, and so too, then, does memory belong to them."

dear livejournal i am drunk again and how are you ( Read more... )

why do we remember what we remember? she danced in the space between furniture in the afternoons, after the dumpsters were collected and before the evening traffic.

and then he said, "i'm convinced now that our seemingly north-american relationship is grounded in the japanese sexual tensions of starzinger, which we both watched with pillow-hair when we were 10."

she borrowed his book during class and used an ordinary pen to put a round, perfect dot in the corner of a random page, a small mark for him to see, or not to see, from her, a dot which spoke of things round and perfect, things left unsaid.

up 5am with fear of ghosts, slow to fade, hiding too warm under blankets, a childish fear replaced as the sun rose by the very adult fear of sleep deprivation.

from far above, it's only the new building's bone-yellow wood, slowly growing each morning like the geometric threads of ice in my balcony puddle, that makes me notice the uniform dullness of the bare trees and houses, of the damp streets, and of my november itself.

"the truth is," she said, "i can't write anymore because i find it hard to think, or smell, or feel. i've gone deaf. i have seizures. i bleed in spurts from my eyes and under my fingernails. why, just the other day, while making tea, my soul blanched, powdered, and whirled out the window like scattered ashes."