I used to have these two blog rules: 1. Don't get serious. 2. Don't get boring. Skimming through the past 6 weeks, I seem to have abandoned both.
I was talking to a friend two nights ago, about poetry -- about how a high school poet often believes that he or she can discuss "love" in a meaningful way, and how that is so often fallacious. Still, I wanted to know, just theoretically, "Why isn't it meaningful? How is that I can read this poem about raspberries and carpets (I had been reading him a poem) and not find it trite? But then there's this high school business about 'Oh I love him so/Why can't I let him go,' and my gag reflex goes off. I mean, it's love that should be the meaningful thing, right?
His answer was, "It's just too heavy-handed ..." I don't remember what else he said, only the word "heavy-handed."
He had closed his eyes when I was reading him the poem -- "To Go To Lvov," by Adam Zagajewski.
He has this sense of balance and propriety that I just don't have, this intuitive understanding of the delicacy between too much and too little. He might err on the side of too-little -- in my version of reality, that is. But I certainly, always err on the side of too much, and this is in all realities.
Maybe I'm writing this because I fell apart today, in that quiet way when one decides to go to bed, for no reason, in the middle of the day -- for the entire day. And that is too much, I think. Maybe I'm writing this because I'm not-so-secretly, somewhat in love with this friend (who thankfully does not read this), and I often have an uncomfortable sense of crowding him, and I'm ashamed of it. He never asked for this much of me, but I press it upon him. And he takes it, because again, he has that strange sensitivity about what is needed. And --
This, as well, is too much.
