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I've realised that I don't have many friends who read. But for what it's worth, I'd like to share here a monologue I found at the National Library's reference section. I actually hand-copied it in my notebook because I liked it so much, but didn't have a Cashcard I could use to zap it. Of course, writing it so painstakingly provided me with the illusion that it was something I'd written myself. : ) Well, yeah. Literature won't save your soul (Brian will know this...and so will Adam, Yaokang, Josh, Jason, How Wee, Rizal, Fared, Alin, Pern Yiau, Azman, Pierre, Pang, Qianxi, Yisheng, Alvin, Derek, Minn, Tim...) but it will quietly suggest to you that you have one. Blue Fir Trees by David Cale I will never forget you on the patio next to that lake in the New Hampshire, doing the Jane Fonda workout to a Philip Glass record. How the wind blew the music across the lake. The blue fir trees surrounding the water barely moving at all. There was one cloud in the sky. Stretching your pale limbs into unnatural positions and holding them there. I read it somewhere that when the body dies, the soul leaves through the top of the head. I remember seeing my grandfather's body laid out in my grandmother's room and thinking his body looked like a shell and automatically wondering, Where's the soul gone? and instinctively looking up at the ceiling as if I was going to see it hovering there. I will never forget the times I craved you. Couldn't get enough of you. Wanted you so bad it made my stomach ache. The times I was embarrassed by your displays of physical affection. Worried about how it would look. Embarrassed to be wanting you, or something. Feeling that you weren't pretty enough and that was ludicrously some reflection on me. Or that you were too effeminate, and that was somehow incriminating. I used to dream of being driven at night by some anonymous driver. Along an American highway. No words. Just to be staring out the window like some Garbo creature. Moody and silent. Deep inside myself. When we drove through Pennsylvania that night I thought, This may not be it, but it's pretty close. In the night the lake looked like it had died. You wondered if what you wanted in another person is really what you would like to be yourself. The trees made sounds. When you shouted your voice echoed in the mountains. You could duet with yourself. I will never forget flying in that plane over Boston in the middle of the night, with a black coffee in one hand trying to figure out how I could feel something so strongly then stop feeling it altogether and considering it was gone for good. I will never forget the look on your face when you told me how you felt and how I couldn't speak, how the words wouldn't leave me because I felt absolutely nothing. I didn't realise I had such a vicious streak till you were kind to me. I will never forget how soft the skin on your back was. I will never forget how you laughed at everything I said. I will never forget how I never believed you when you said I looked good or what I did was good, thinking that you were so in love that you would say anything to please me. That your opinion was invalid. When nothing makes sense there's always sense of humour. I will never forget that joke you told me about Ginger Rogers. When asked how much she weighed, Ginger replied, "145 pounds, 133 without makeup." How every time you told it you cracked yourself up. I will never forget how one of your teeth was blue. I will never forget how when you danced, it looked like someone had taken you over. I will never forget meeting your mother for the first time and the look on her face that seeing the two of us together was in some way confirming her most unsettling suspicions. I will never forget how meticulous you were. I will never forget that horrible cologne you wore. I will never forget those kids yelling 'faggot' at you on the street. I will never forget you saying very quietly, 'ignore them'. I will never forget seeing you in that anonymous hospital. Laying in the bed with your eyes focused on something that I couldn't see. I will never forget you laying there asleep. Still with your eyes wide open. I will never forget after visiting you in the hospital how I sobbed uncontrollably on the telephone and felt relieved afterwards that I could feel something for someone other than myself. I will never forget not being able to leave that room because I knew I wouldn't see you again. But I will never forget when you finished doing that exercise all those years ago. How the music still kept playing. You came up behind me. Touched my neck oh so gently with your lips. Standing there. Miles from anyone. The blue fir trees still. The water quiet. The one cloud moving very slightly. Our chests rising. Hearts floating across the lake. Over the trees. Up into the single cloud. How it moved into the distance still beating. And you whispered: 'When it gets late tonight. I want to take you swimming in the dark. It's something you've never done. It's something you'd like to do. I know a lake...' Post a comment in response: |
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