it's 9:56 pm, on March 07, 2002 - flesh wounds.
~
I am still twenty, despite desperately wanting to wake up this morning and find out that I'd reverted somehow back to fifteen. I have still seen nsync. Both of these things are inconsequential except inside me, which is apparently the only place I worship. I got an email today, and more strings were cut. Last night, I wrote a letter, a very short letter, and I ended up crying more than a little. Anyway, the email went something like:It was JC, for me, and not Britney. I wrote about it in the poem, I don't know if you remember, or if you read it. but-- I saw them for the first time in August, two days after JC's twenty-fifth birthday, and at that first moment, I put my hand to my mouth and it stayed there. They were doing-- I don't remember what the song was. the sound turned to static for a little second, and JC lifted his left arm high over his head and his face was tight with concentration, and I thought, that's what I am. --I don't, I don't guess that makes sense. But that was my thought. I am what they are. holy humans. I don't know. But I was changed. am changed.
I know what you're feeling. It's not deconstruction. It's religion. It was inevitable, Lise, because we are religious people who don't believe in God. Christianity came along because the human psyche decided that it was tired of gods and monsters, and that it wanted to worship _other people_. It's not deconstruction. It only has blood, and it was supposed to have blood, the whole time.
I don't think that you ever believe any of the things I say to you. I don't think that you _listen_ to most of the things I say. That's the mean in me, when you see it. Your writing-- I love your writing, your style, and I really do think that you're brilliant. but I can't read your work, because there's a. thing. like, if there's no prose in the story-- the dialogue rings hollow. And when I'm reading that, what that says to me is that the only voice you hear is your own. And that reminds me of how I feel, when we talk sometimes. Because I feel like you feel that the only thing safe to worship is your own capacity to appreciate. Because everything else falls away. which might be true. Except, now we both know that even if we weren't here to bear witness to Lance Bass, to profile him and compare him and write his hypothetical mind-- he'd still be there. Dancing and singing and going to space. He would still be there.
I'm only saying all that because I think-- this progression into seeing the flesh of holy humans-- it's not a bad thing. It's the best thing. A cleansing thing. It's where the living people are. whatever the fuck it is, it's not deconstruction.
And all of that is valid, and truth, I think real truth. Except, religion. I think religion is deconstruction, making a whole thing into its parts.
~*~
What strings have been cut today that weren't cut yesterday.
First, the idea that my dialogue is false: I know this. the only voice I feel capable of believing is my own. I think, at twenty, I'm no longer willing to accept this as the childishness I'm due. At twenty it isn't the childishness I'm due. It's childishness long past due.
This idea, that the only thing I feel safe worshipping is my own capacity to appreciate. I think that's a brilliant way of putting it. I think. I think. I am. Even words are reaffirming.
Second: of course I remember that poem. I reread it yesterday, and it wasn't giving any answers. not that I expected it to. But of course I remember it.
Third: last night, I wrote a letter. It started with the line "I keep rereading bits and pieces of "a separate peace" and wondering if I'll end up ever being good at anything." self-absorbed. Self-pitying, perhaps. I don't know why I keep rereading "a separate peace"; maybe to get a hint of how I should be, rather than this.
The line from Knowles I keep coming back to, as the letter says, is the one about winter loving you; and rather, if you love something enough it'll love you back, in whatever way it has to. It also says, four or five times, "There's nothing I have to give". At twenty, voices that are all my own don't count, and I don't have anything else. people agree. so.
it's like that time, in my room, when paris read something I did, I think. Just a little. more than a little. that kind of sting.
I'm not going to send this letter. It's a nothing, a flesh wound maybe.
~*~
I have to write on-the-line slash for the 21st. Being able to write anything would be a start. That thing, where I can't come up with dialogue. It's bleeding into anything else.
So I'm rereading this line, I feel like you feel that the only thing safe to worship is your own capacity to appreciate, and I get in my head, "if you feel like I feel, I got the antidote, women wave your pantyhose, sing the chorus and it goes"--
Which is eminem, bitching about how everyone wants to be like him. and the media. and the sound. and the media. and the sound.
There is nothing I have to give. that, even, sounds presumptuous.
~*~
In a completely related but much happier note, thank god for Sheila. She is just the coolest cat.
--I can't help rereading this email. River and Al have now both said the same things, and more than once. I almost, I almost want to write Lance out of that, but I can't, I can't. I won't. --I can. I won't.
I think I dreamed about Lance last night, but now that I'm thinking about it, I can't remember.
~
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