walkingshadow (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
walkingshadow) wrote2002-06-09 03:53 am
walkingshadow) wrote2002-06-09 03:53 am
metaphorical aching and physical abstractions
Steaming radiators and shaking hands and laughing for hours. Accumulated stress landed me with a headache the other night that was surprising, but not much of a hardship; sharp, clean pain, a localized and almost pleasant presence while I drank water, ate a cookie, loitered online.
Tonight's headache isn't really worse, but it's bigger, more diffused, and throbbing, dull and heavy, the way smog would feel if it were more solid and wedged between my eyes and brain case. It shifts when I move, bulging with uneven pressure, liquid in a half-full bottle sloshing slowly. That's what enough crying does. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood with parents and Marian, and it wasn't Patriot-caliber bawling, but it left me drained. Line most likely to have undone me: "Daddy, were you loved enough?"
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
And yes, I'm re-reading Jenn's latest opus which only and always makes me chant T.S. Eliot, who always makes me empty. Jules called for a quick poetry reference confirmation yesterday (this is the way the world ends), and I mentioned to my mother that The Hollow Men is one of my favorite poems. I don't remember what she called it, but it was something like sad or depressing or grim, and it is, the disillusionment of a generation, but that's not the reason, or the only reason, that I love it. It's a dying ache every time I read it, the kind that makes me want to write poetry for the rest of my life, makes me want to never try because everything I do is always so hopeless in the face of lines like that. Lines that twine around my windpipe and squeeze, just viciously enough to make me choke, lines that curl off the page like smoke and hover in the air while I stare and hesitantly reach out to touch. Smoke dissipates, but the scent is sharp, and lingers, settling into clothes and hair and the lining of my lungs, haunting. Some poetry makes me want to close the book every few lines just to catch my breath. Awe and jealousy together make my chest tight, and some kind of completely unfounded pride always makes me couple the one with the other.
John Keats: "I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest."
Jenn makes me ache on her own, of course, the helplessness of irony and miscommunication, and I'm writhing on the floor, wanting them to do it over, wanting to make them see. I've moved to the floor, where there's more room. My next computer will be a laptop. Dark futurefics make me listless, or maybe it's the hour, just the night come crashing in.
Tonight's headache isn't really worse, but it's bigger, more diffused, and throbbing, dull and heavy, the way smog would feel if it were more solid and wedged between my eyes and brain case. It shifts when I move, bulging with uneven pressure, liquid in a half-full bottle sloshing slowly. That's what enough crying does. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood with parents and Marian, and it wasn't Patriot-caliber bawling, but it left me drained. Line most likely to have undone me: "Daddy, were you loved enough?"
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
And yes, I'm re-reading Jenn's latest opus which only and always makes me chant T.S. Eliot, who always makes me empty. Jules called for a quick poetry reference confirmation yesterday (this is the way the world ends), and I mentioned to my mother that The Hollow Men is one of my favorite poems. I don't remember what she called it, but it was something like sad or depressing or grim, and it is, the disillusionment of a generation, but that's not the reason, or the only reason, that I love it. It's a dying ache every time I read it, the kind that makes me want to write poetry for the rest of my life, makes me want to never try because everything I do is always so hopeless in the face of lines like that. Lines that twine around my windpipe and squeeze, just viciously enough to make me choke, lines that curl off the page like smoke and hover in the air while I stare and hesitantly reach out to touch. Smoke dissipates, but the scent is sharp, and lingers, settling into clothes and hair and the lining of my lungs, haunting. Some poetry makes me want to close the book every few lines just to catch my breath. Awe and jealousy together make my chest tight, and some kind of completely unfounded pride always makes me couple the one with the other.
John Keats: "I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest."
Jenn makes me ache on her own, of course, the helplessness of irony and miscommunication, and I'm writhing on the floor, wanting them to do it over, wanting to make them see. I've moved to the floor, where there's more room. My next computer will be a laptop. Dark futurefics make me listless, or maybe it's the hour, just the night come crashing in.