désir.

I keep longing, and struggling, to commit to this practice. I am not sure why. It’s not that I don’t write–to merely stay sane I feel countless black-paged journals with line after spidery line of thoughts not fit for this realm, and my graduate program sucks hungrily at whatever ink is left inside me–and it’s not as though my silence here precludes me from participating elsewhere in the written online world. It’s not as though I feel guilty for the sake of my readers, who were always few and far between, and whom, I’m sure, gained and continue to gain far more from my personal letters to them than the guarded thoughts I cautiously try here. It’s not as though I harbor aspirations of discovery, or dreams of broader influence. It’s not as though it’d be the first time I’d abandoned–even outright deleted–a blog.

And still, still, I keep longing. I think some days of this site as an entity or work with an autonomy somehow beyond me. I carved out the space (or what is the literal equivalent to this metaphor when it comes to the forging of something such as this online? I imagine the legal terms to which I vaguely recall agreeing; I imagine the electrical necessities of near-infinite programmed processes; I imagine certain instructions saved, amidst and next to how many millions of others, on some anonymous unvisited server; I imagine all this might very well be in my imagination) years ago, and these days it gathers only virtual dust. I would chide myself if I did the same with any other project. Perhaps it makes sense that my fingers keep crawling back here.

I’ve spent the past week at the keyboard, though, or, rather, torn between the computer and too many dog-eared and bookmarked texts. I have two mid-length papers left to complete for the quarter, and I still feel so out of practice when it comes to scholarship and academic writing. The words flow–the words always flow–but I’ve no organization system in place and my memory is unfortunately fickle; the amount of time I’ve spend frantically scouring books for a passage I’m convinced is essential to my argument, but whose author I can’t begin to recall, is laughable.

Perhaps I should just use this as a repository for such various excepts: two birds, one stone, etc. I know enough of birds to know they eat stones, though, and right now these two birds are fighting over the one small stone of me.

intérieur.

Some things spiral outward. I imagine the petaled flourish of a flower, or an ever-unfolding Nautilus shell. I imagine widening black-lashed sky-blue eyes, or an opening hand. I imagine women. I imagine time.

I, though, am destined to be not among them. My mind turns counterclockwise, circling inward, always, in a dizzyingly endless fall. My heart is hopelessly knuckled. For as long as I can remember, I’ve curled inward instead.

Often I’ve wished I were otherwise. The world outside is a beautiful one, after all, and the richness and insanity of it too sweetly glorious not to explore. The world outside, surely, is more strange and amazing than the one scurried safely within. Still, no matter how frequently I whisper this, and no matter how desperately, little in my stubborn psyche changes. I prefer, it seems, the particular. I prefer that which only I can see.

I am not sure why.

Are not we all observers? Tonight I ate octopus and talked to a strange photographer about glass sculptures and discovery and light. The hour was ringed with poetry, and yet there were no poets present to transcribe it. With the eye of a Cyclops I watched the evening pass, and with a Cheshire smile I sat, and when at last the rain saved me I gratefully and gracelessly escaped. I observed this, but hesitate to explain it. I wanted only to circle inside.

Some things spiral outward. I am not one.

ravissement.

It’s raining here. It’s raining here, and I am drowning in soon-due papers, which gives escaping into unassigned text an obvious appeal. So much has happened since I last wrote, and so very little, and I am writing more because I miss the commitment than the correspondence.

Since I last wrote I’ve moved. Since I last wrote I’ve started a doctoral program. Since I last wrote I’ve flown too many miles, and wished otherwise. Since I last wrote my hair has dutifully continued to grow and my skin has become imperceptibly more papery and since I last wrote I have become comfortable again wearing glasses. Since I last wrote the Rapture may or may not have occurred.

This must be how life passes, and how, in the end, we die. Sometimes this does seem, really, to be the best of all possible worlds.