Friday, March 24, 2006

talking to myself

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.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Perhaps high school love poems always feel heavy-handed because it is generally the particular high schooler's first encounter with love and it seems much more important and lasting than it does to the outside observer. Everything is relative? But since I was apparently born with this natural scorn for the high schooler...and the college student...basically for my fellow human, I always found them to be overbearing. And that is why I don't like poetry. The end.

Also, I'm sorry that the boy you like may or may not like you back. Life is hard. But I know the feeling, and it isn't very fun. The real end.

6:53 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

man, i'm out of the loop. who is the dude?

also, you must go dancing. tomorrow. tropicana.

5:43 PM  
Blogger J. said...

no one you know.

7:46 PM  

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