Great Paragraphs

From A History of Love, by Nicole Krauss

My heart is weak and unreliable. When I go it will be my heart. I try to burden it as little as possible. If something is going to have an impact, I direct it elsewhere. My gut for example, or my lungs, which might seize up for a moment but have never yet failed to take another breath. When I pass a mirror and catch a glimpse of myself, or I'm at the bus stop and some kids come up behind me and say, Who smells shit?--small daily humiliations--these I take, generally speaking, in my liver. Other damages I take in other places. The pancreas I reserve for being struck by all that's been lost. It's true that there's so much, and the organ is so small. But. You would be surprised how much it can take, all I feel is a quick sharp pain and then it's over. Sometimes I imagine my own autopsy. Disappointment in myself: right kidney. Disappointment of others in me: left kidney. Personal failures: kishkes. I don't mean to make it sound like I've made a science of it. It's not that well thought out. I take it where it comes. It's just that I notice certain patterns. When the clocks are turned back and the dark falls before I'm ready, this, for reasons I can't explain, I feel in my wrists. And when I wake up and my fingers are stiff, almost certainly I was dreaming of my childhood. The field where we used to play, the field in which everything was discovered and everything was possible. (We ran so hard we thought we would spit blood: to me that is the sound of childhood, heavy breathing and shoes scraping the hard earth.) Stiffness of the fingers is the dream of childhood as it's bee returned to me at the end of my life. I have to run them under the hot water, steam clouding the mirror, outside the rustle of pigeons. Yesterday I saw a man kicking a dog and I felt it behind my eyes. I don't know what to call this, a place before tears. The pain of forgetting: spine. The pain of remembering: spine. All the times I have suddenly realized that my parents are dead, even now, it still surprises me, to exist in the world while that which made me has ceased to exist: my knees, it takes half a tube of Ben-Gay and a big productions just to bend them. To everything a season, to every time I've woken only to make the mistake of believing for a moment that someone was sleeping beside me: a hemorrhoid. Loneliness: there is no organ that can take it all.

If you can't say it at Christmas, when can you, eh?

"With any luck by next year
I'll be going out with one of these girls.
But for now let me say,
without hope or agenda,
just because it's Christmas
(and at christmas you tell the truth)
to me, you are perfect;
and my wasted heart will love you
until you look like this.
Merry Christmas"

Emanations on Love

Because sometimes you're so sick of trying to define it yourself, you let the poets, the musicians, the novelists, the artists do it for you:

- I want to live in a musical because all it takes is a harmony in a duet to fall in love.
Me

- When you love someone but it goes to waste. Could it be worse?
Coldplay, Fix You

- Ive looked at love from both sides now. From give and take, and still somehow
it's loves illusions I recall I really don't know love at all.
Joni Mitchell, Both Sides Now

- In your life you meet people. Some you never think about again. Some, you wonder what happened to them. There are some that you wonder if they ever think about you.And then there are some you wish you never had to think about again; but you do, you always do.

- Love is a battlefield.
Pat Benatar

- The course of true love never did run smooth.
William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream Act 1, scene 1, 132–140

- There are times when I hate you, but I don’t complain cause I’ve been afraid that you would walk away.
Beyonce, Broken Hearted Girl

- The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
Eden Ahbez

- What did my hands do before they held you?
Sylvia Plath, Three Women

- I love you for not only what you are, but what I am when I am with you.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Love Letters to her brother, Robert.

- Night after night you say you move on tomorrow, tomorrow. Now, what's holding you back? I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.
The Sounds, Night After Night

- Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.
Matt Groening.

- Baby I can see your halo. You know you're my saving grace.
Beyonce, Halo

- Take it from me cause I've found, if you leave it, somebody else is bound to find that treasure that moment of pleasure when yours it could have been.
Jimmy Buffett, Happily Every After

- I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride. So I love you because I know no other way than this..
Pablo Neruda, Sonnet XVII

- I show you my love by giving you a portion of my life that i can never get back
YaizaH

- In love you pour so much of yourself into one thing, you want it so badly and you focus on nothing but love, and you give and give, until one day you discover you can't give anymore and you're left with a bitter cynical husk.
Ryan McClean

- For where thou art, there is the world itself, and where though art not, desolation.
William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part II, Act iii, Sc.2

- I don't get many things right the first time. In fact, I am told that a lot. Now I know all the wrong turns, the stumbles and falls brought me here.
Ben Folds, The Luckiest

- Now I don't wanna beg you baby for something maybe you could never give. I'm not looking for the rest of your life I just want another chance to live.
Patty Griffin, Rain

- If you don't know what it feels like to have someone you love put a hand below your bottom rib for the first time, what chance is therefor love?
Leo Gursky, The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

- Love's an excuse to get hurt. And to hurt.
Bright Eyes, Love I Don't Have to Love.

- I've got faith in you to lose yours in me. Like you say though before you go
"I should probably be letting you go."
Buddy, 11/22

Great Paragraphs

Sort of a composite paragraph from Holly Millea's piece on Michelle Williams in the current (April) issue of ELLE magazine. Heartbreaking, poignant, sincere--unbelievable. If I could publish the whole article, I would.


This reminds her [Michelle Williams] of a favorite poem she discovered, "when I was, like, really skimming the bottom. I was in this hotel and I reached over into the bedside table for, I don't know what--a phone book, some matches, the Bible, something--and inside it was an old copy of The Paris Review. And the first poem was by this guy named Galway Kinnell. And I read it and I felt safe and understood by the world for the first time." So much so that she's become a Galway groupie, attending his readings. She even wrote him a letter. "There's this one poem called 'Little Sleep's-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight.' It's about being a parent--I loved it even before I had a kid--and the last lines are:

When I come back
we will go out together,
we will walk out together among
the ten thousand thing,
each scratched in time with such knowledge,
the wages
of dying is love.

"For a long time the last line utterly mystified me. The wages of dying is love? Like, the price of dying is love? The cost? No. For dying you're paid in love. Because you have to die, you get to experience love. Finally decoded!" She sighs. "You're going to die when you read this poem. He places so much esteem and knowledge in the face and the body of the newborn.

....

In New York, less than an hour later, the news broke. And after a week of grieving silence, she released a statement to the world, which read, in part, "My heart is broken. I am the mother of the most tender-hearted, high-spirited, beautiful little girl who is the spitting image of her father. All that I cling to is his presence inside her that reveals itself every day." How old must she feel now?

Williams has told us how Galways Kinnell's poem ends. Here's how it begins:

You scream, waking from a nightmare.
When I sleepwalk
into your room, and pick you up,
and hold you up in the moonlight, you cling to me
hard,
as if clinging could save us. I think
you think
I will never die, I think I exude
to you the permanence of smoke or stars,
even as
my broken arms heal themselves around you.


Love.
Seth

Fighting the Impossible: The Conservatives Never-Winning War

No doubt many of you have seen the video above. I've been passing it around and posting all over Facebook. But if you haven't seen it, here is your chance. Watch it. Absorb it. Then read the following essay written by my (very straight) friend Eric Mueller. After some minor edits on my part, I think we came up with something kind of poignant.


Fighting the Impossible: The Conservatives Never-Winning War


Eradicating all of the Jews is possible. Exterminating every last Muslim on Earth is possible. Killing every single last Asian person on this planet is possible. Even Caucasians are numbered…

There is a clear and defining moment when a race or a group or even a belief is wiped out for good. At that precise moment they are gone off the face of the Earth forever, basically extinct. With that in mind, hate groups targeting certain races or beliefs have some merit, I suppose. At least they have realistic goals, because the above-mentioned moments are actually attainable. One doesn’t need to cite the Holocaust or the atrocious genocides in Uganda or the Sudan to understand that eradicating a group of people based on something like race, which is genetic but also to a degree anatomical, is entirely possible. The dinosaurs died out. Dodo birds were poached to extinction. What makes any other race so safe?

However, when it comes to hate groups targeting homosexuals, I'm afraid I'm at a loss for logic. Homosexuals themselves are not going to change, if the last 5,000 years has shown us anything. Therefore what is the point of gay-hate groups? Is their goal is to eliminate the gay presence here on Earth? If so they are clearly biting off more than they can chew. To say it is a daunting task is an understatement, because the idea is nothing short of impossible. When we speak of total genocide, even that idea seems beyond possibility, due to the sheer numbers of individuals in race groups. But, if a group really dedicated themselves, who’s to say it couldn’t be done? If the annihilation is based solely on something physical, visible, the hunt itself is easy, and therefore well within the realm of possibility. However, when we try to apply the same laws to homosexuality, again, logic is lost. It goes without saying that every homosexual in existence is not or was not always open about or aware of his or her sexuality. Was Governor James McGreevy? Was Ellen Degeneres? Was the evangelist preacher Ted Haggard? Right—no. And two of them fathered children, meaning what? The trait was potentially passed and more homosexuals were, naturally, born. If they weren’t open throughout their lives, who’s to say they would be during an insurrection? Even if it was possible to identify and destroy every gay person in the world; a thousand more would be born the next day and a thousand more the day after that, and the day after that. Such an attempt would be futile and homosexuality would invariably continue to “spread.”

Gay, you see, is an equal opportunity impregnator. Gay has no bounds to religion or race. Gay is not some club you can close down, hoping its members disperse. Gay is not something that can be taught or untaught. There is no inquisition that will deter the Gays into becoming something they are not. Gay is not some problem that is going to go away with medication. Gay is as [non]curable as race, yet even then gay is more socially pervasive, erratic, unconquerable than race. At least race is predictable. I’ll even address those who will argue that homosexuality is nurtured or environmental. Where is the sense in that argument when seemingly perfect boys are girls are born in small, overtly conservative towns with absolutely no exposure to homosexual lifestyles yet they somehow “become” gay anyway? What is the variable in the gay equation that predicts the homosexual outcome? If you find it, let me know. But even if you do, it can’t obviously be human, so what’s next? Destroying anything that has the faintest scent of homosexuality? We might end up a pretty barren world after something like that. But of course this option would require vast amounts of resources that, quite literally, we as a species, at this point in time, cannot provide.

Who we are left with are those who claim homosexuality to be a choice. And to that I offer only this simplicity, as the idea of entertaining such an idea is far too inane: does a heterosexual choose to be straight?

This War has seen its peaks and valleys from both sides, but the major turning point happened long ago, I’m afraid. The gays have seen your rallies and have heard your speeches, your lectures, and your “message.” And they know you are afraid, even though you have no reason to be. They are listening and watching as you, interestingly enough, only preach to yourselves. “Preaching to the choir” is as good as doing personal inventory. You’re no longer out to “change” homosexuals, but rather try to rectify the “damage” this modern society is inflicting on your beliefs. It is as if you are checking in, so to speak, making sure you all still stand together on this issue while using God as a shield. God has been blamed enough throughout history without having this nailed to his good name. What possesses people to blame God for their hatred? Saying that you, personally, have nothing against Gays but God tells you to hate, therefore you do? Shame.

You are no longer trying to win this war but merely trying to stay afloat in a world that is everyday more accepting of them and less accepting of you. When an army is no longer advancing but in fact losing ground, there is a military term for such an event: retreating. So keep up your anti-gay slogans, your bigotry, your hate, your ignorance and your humiliation. Keep saying "it is a choice." Keep saying "it's God's will," and not your own, because we all already know the truth: it’s your side that is thinning in ranks, "changing", self-abating—it is your side that is ultimately going to lose.


So go ahead, fight. No one is going to stop you…we don't have to. It's now just a waiting game.

And that's how this War will end.

But A+ for the effort.

Before, I mentioned that it was impossible to kill all homosexuals. This is, in truth, wrong. Homosexuals share the same eliminating fate with another group of people on this planet.

Humans.

Now, we wait…

Valentine's Day Musings

It's fitting that I woke up this morning early, and surprisingly alert.

It's fitting that I had a good breakfast.

It's fitting that I had enough hot water to last an entire shower.

It's fitting that I found an outfit (quite a good one) in less than 10 minutes.

It's fitting that I left my apartment by 8:30

It's fitting that the sun is shining bright after two days of abysmal weather.

It's fitting that the trains were on time.

It's fitting that this day has started without issue, without drama, without something to make me remember what day it actually is. Nevertheless, I did remember what day it actually was as soon as I woke up this morning. Considering how much I hate today, how much I have hated today for the last 6 years, you'd think I would make myself forget today, but, you know me, the emotional masochist, so I won't ever forget it, only abhor it.

Friends have pointed out this year as a seemingly different Valentine's Day for me given circumstances, and, largely, they are right. This year is different. Unlike college, in which every February 14th was spent alone, or my senior year when I had someone but couldn't actually be with them, or last year when the one person I wanted wasn't available--emotionally, physically or geographically("but don't worry, you'll have him next year," I told myself)--this year is different because, though I won't have someone today, I'll have someone tomorrow, which is almost better in a way, because I need today to be what it's always been. I fell into the Valentine's Day rut years ago and never got out. In fact, after a while I just stopped trying. The digging and clawing against muddy, unsustainable walls that only pushed me deeper into an emotional furrow became quickly futile, and I had to realize that Valentine's Day just sucks. Routine got the best of me and rather than try and make the day into something it has never been or won't likely be in the future, I just resigned myself to letting it be a day I hate. So, today, call me a creature of habit. A Pavlovian manifestation. One who hates today because he can't remember what it felt like not to hate today. Of the few formulaic patterns in my life, this is one that, for now, will play out as it always has: I will operate today under somewhat robotic direction, with my chin up, my eyes forward, marching steadily through the gifts, the romantic dinners, the stolen kisses, the holding hands, the uncontrollable grins, the sex, the loathing, the sadness, the crying, the memory, and the desire to have what you can't until it has finally passed, and I can rest assured that for another year I won't have to remember how utterly failing Valentine's Day has been.

To love.

Seth

Great Paragraphs

The Fountainhead. Part II: Chapter VII

Her voice had the sound of efficiency, obeying an order with metallic precision. "I want to sleep with you. Now, tonight, and at any time you may care to call me. I want your naked body, your skin, your mouth, your hands. I want you--like this--not hysterical with desire--but coldly and consciously--without dignity and without regrets--I want you--I have no self-respect to bargain with me and divide me--I want you--I want you like an animal, or a cat on a fence, or a whore...

You know that I hate you, Roark. I hate you for what you are, for wanting you, for having to want you. I'm going to fight you--and I'm going to destroy you--and I tell you this as calmly as I told you that I'm a begging animal. I'm going to pray that you can't be destroyed--I tell you this, too--even though I believe in nothing and having nothing to pray to. But I will fight to block every step you take. I will fight to tear every chance you want away from you. I will hurt you through the only thing that can hurt you--through your work. I will fight to starve you, to strangle you on the things you won't be able to to reach. I have done it to you today--and that is why I shall sleep with you tonight...

I have hurt you today. I'll do it again. I'll come to you whenever I have beaten you--whenever I know that I have hurt you--and I'll let you own me. I want to be owned, not by a lover, but by an adversary who will destroy my victory over him, not with honorable blows, but with the touch of his body o mine. That is what I want of you, Roark. That is what I am. You wanted to hear it all. You've heard it. What do you wish to say now?"


"Take your clothes off."

Great Paragraphs

Consider this the first of a series of blogs I will be posting on great paragraphs I find while reading. Below, the first, and not likely last, from The Fountainhead.

Sometimes, not often, he sat up and did not move for a long time; then he smiled, the slow smile of an executioner watching a via victim. He thought of his days going by, of the buildings he could have been doing, should have been doing and, perhaps, never would be doing again. He watched the pain's unsummoned appearance with a cold, detached curiosity; he said to himself: Well, here it is again. He waited to see how long it would last. It gave him a strange, hard pleasure to watch his fight against it, and he could forget that it was his own suffering: he could smile in contempt, not realizing that he smiled at his own agony. Such moments were rare. But when they came, he felt as he did in the quarry: the he had to drill through granite, that he had to drive a wedge and blast the thing within him which persisted in calling to his pity.

The Truth Stings

Anger, pain, frustration, depression, hope, reconciliation, reluctance, regret--all in one email. The truest I've ever been with someone else and myself. Because everyone needs painful reminders in their life.

So this is now my third and final attempt to send this email, as well as my final edit. I now have to add yet another introduction because things have obviously changed since the first time I wanted to send it and since the second time I wanted to send it. But, I'm going to leave it all as is because I think that it's important that all my emotions are laid on the table, otherwise they are going to continue to eat away at me. I was really hoping to tell you this, or at least give you this email in person so you could understand exactly how I feel and then we could talk about. And, yes, I do understand how early you work and I'm not holding a grudge against you or anything, but I couldn't let this wait until after Christmas because I needed to get it off my mind before I head home to try and enjoy myself with friends and family. In turn, I guess I should apologize to you for throwing all this at you before you do the same, because it's going to mean different things for each of us. But, nevertheless, I just had to do it. If we talk about this later, then we talk. If we don't, I understand. In time we hopefully will.





I know that now, a week later, this email may seem after the fact, but I certainly couldn't have predicted what was going to happen last Monday with --. In any case, I could have easily let this slide, and allowed things to subsequently take their course as they seem to be doing. But, as you know, I am never one to leave things unsaid. As such, I'm going to leave the email I wrote last Monday as is and let you try and read it as it should have been read after the weekend of -- birthday party. It may seem hard to understand what I'm saying retrospectively considering what's happened since then, but I need you to know that what happened with -- bears no effect on what I need to tell you. What happened with him was a crazy and surreal experience, but it is also just that, an experience, and I don't want what follows to seem cheap or contrived, because it is every bit as true and poignant as it was last Monday. So, in so many words....


Of course this email is once again going to start with me saying I don't know how to start a conversation like this. You are, undoubtedly, a little tired of this shit by now--me coming to you with these emails of outpourings of emotion and feelings, but this will be the last for a long, long time.

Though I feel like most of the time I'm pretty good at internalizing my anxiety, yesterday I think I was obviously wearing my emotions on my sleeve. If you didn't notice I'm surprised, but chances are you could tell that after you told me you were dating someone I became withdrawn and noticeably affected. I wish I could say that I didn't care, and that I was happy for you. I wish that I could talk to you about it as a friend. And I wish I could say that I'm over you--but I'm not. And, because I'm not, and because I have become very self-destructive in trying to deal with our relationship and how I feel about you I have to let you know that I can't see you anymore. You're probably thinking that I am being over-dramatic and emotionally hyperbolic, but I think this is the only way that I can attempt to salvage any sort of relationship we have or will have. I just can't watch you date someone else, not yet at least. Because it simply reminds me of something we never had but I so desperately wanted. And after you told me that he was upset you were with me I also realized that I'm not going to become that person in your or anyone else's life. It's just an equation I can't be a part of, knowing that every time we hang out there is someone else who is being made upset by it. And, if we remained "friends," that is a position I would always occupy in your life considering our history, no matter who it's with. I would always be a threat, a sort of temptation I guess, that could compromise both of our relationships because you would of course have the same role in my life. No matter who I'm with, being around you will always remind me of whatever it was that we had and that I still want. So, like I said, in order to overcome all of this I have to work to move you into a realm of friendship, and there is no way I can do that unless I have the adequate space and time to get over you.

If you feel like you've been blind-sided or cheated or mislead or whatever, I understand. But, --, after months of being wrought emotionally by this it is the only thing I can do to get over you. Me saying this probably even seems really contradictory considering I have met someone, but that is even more reason that I have to quit you, because if I don't I'm going to take -- for granted. He is an unbelievable person and I can't string him along while I am still so attached to you with the hopes that something could develop between us. That just makes him an innocent victim in this whole thing and I don't want to be responsible for hurting someone like that. And I need you to know that I didn't actively seek him out, but when that relationship just fell in my lap I had to explore it, because I couldn't wait on you forever. I was prepared to wait a long time, and I already have waited a long time, but it was becoming clear, and it has since become even clearer, that I was waiting for something that wasn't going to come. So I just threw myself into that relationship hoping that it would help me get over you, but, the fact of the matter is, I still think about you when I'm with him. And that is unfair to him and to you, because I won't use him as a rebound or just a distraction because he deserves more than that. Moreover, I can't continue to treat you the way that I have and I need to apologize to you for certain things that I have done or said. I was so embarrassed yesterday when you told me you were seeing someone just because of how I had obviously propositioned you to sleep in my bed with me with the hopes that something would happen. Despite --, I took command of that situation and made the decision to come on to you, and then you tell me you are seeing someone and I realized I had completely misjudged the situation and basically made a fool of myself. And then I just felt so stupid for what I've been doing and who I've become throughout all of this. My actions have become inexplicable, even to myself, and if there is anything I hate more it's not being in control, especially of my own body. I know you can't and really aren't supposed to control emotions, but they have become such a detrimental force in my life that I have no choice but to at least try and harness them so that they don't crumble everything around me.

I don't mean to come off as accusatory, because this is largely my issue. But I also don't think anyone is without fault. Considering this isn't the first time we have addressed our relationship, it might seem redundant to bring it up again--but even after I told you last time how much I liked you and you responded and told me how you felt, I still feel like it was unresolved. Especially because of the way we still carried on our relationship in a very similar manner as it was before, just without the sex. But you can't deny that there was a palpable sexual tension between us when we were together and though we had labeled ourselves as friends, it still felt like there was something more going on. But maybe that was just my wishful thinking, and if it was, it just proves that I obviously have some work to do. And if it wasn't, then it still stands that it's unhealthy for us to be around one another unless we are actually going to be together.

I don't know how you are reacting to this, but I don't want you to think I am being insincere or harsh, because this is truthfully the hardest thing I've ever had to do. As I sit here writing this my hands are shaking and I'm fending off tears because I never ever wanted to lose you. And I hope I don't. Though it's hard for me to even fathom what it would be like to not basically be in love with you, I pray that I can get to that point, because I'd hate to live the rest of my life without you in it. The way I see it, you and I are unequivocally bound to one another just because of what we went through together. You basically held my hand as I came out to the world and decided to be who I have to be in order to be happy, and I am forever indebted to you for that. I can't say if you feel the same because you are obviously on a different side, but, because of how you helped me, I know that I'll always have a place for you in my heart, and once someone gets in they stay forever.

All of that finally being said, I have to say goodbye to you for now. It kills me --, absolutely kills me to do it. You're always going to be the one that got away, and I honestly think we could have had something great. But, if it wasn't mean to be then what can you do but move on? Hopefully with enough time and enough healing I can have you back in my life in an appropriate way that is beneficial to both of us. I'm so sorry -- and I mean that with the utmost sincerity. I'm sorry for the past and I'm sorry for whatever political mess this will cause in the future. The last thing I want to do is jeopardize anyone else's relationship whether it's yours or mine or even -- and --. So where things go from here I can't really say...we just have to let time do its thing.

Please, please take care of yourself. If you begrudge me that is fine and entirely expected. Be angry and upset and critical or even apathetic--but just know I have to do this, --. If I want to survive I have to.

With deepest love,
Seth

Dear Marc Jacobs....

Stop being naked all the time.

We get it--you started working out and have a marginally good body.

Guess what: You aren't the only one. In fact, despite your efforts, you don't look like, say, Chris Evans, who has every right to be shirtless at all times.

Get over yourself. I mean, seriously. We like you for you clothes, and could really care less about you physically.

And, let's be frank, your face is kind of busted. Whaaa Whaaa.

Yours,
Seth