“No More”
Vonnegut on TV [Timequake]:
“In the early days of television, when there were only half a dozen channels at most, significant, well-written dramas on a cathode-ray tube could still make us feel like members of an attentive congregation, alone at home as we might be. There was a high probability back then, with so few shows to choose from, that friends and neighbors were watching the same show we were watching, still finding TV a whizbang miracle.
We might even call up a friend that very night, and ask a question to which we already knew the answer: ‘Did you see that? Wow!’
No more.”
§
I slept, but my heart was awake.
~SONG OF SONGS
§
“O Nightingale, thou surely art
A creature of a fiery heart.”
~W. WORDSWORTH
Proximity Problem
Nothing seems permanent here anymore – things and people and my relationship to them. My future with them feels slippery. Things happen, they could go away at any moment, and often do.
I should start saying to people and things, before there is distance:
“Thank you for the pleasure of your proximity. I hope we meet again.”
You
It’s all about places with you
Not who you’re with
It’s all about revelry
Not relationship
I am an accessory for your charm
Not a partner arm in arm
It’s all about what others see
Not about intimacy
You want only yourself
Never me
“Nothing else really counts at all”
“That’s the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they’re suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That’s why the things that are worst to undergo are best to remember. But when that child gets buried away under their adaptive and protective shells—he becomes one of the walking dead, a monster. So when you realise you’ve gone a few weeks and haven’t felt that awful struggle of your childish self — struggling to lift itself out of its inadequacy and incompetence — you’ll know you’ve gone some weeks without meeting new challenge, and without growing, and that you’ve gone some weeks towards losing touch with yourself. The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn’t live boldly enough, that they didn’t invest enough heart, didn’t love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.”
§
Somewhere between the thought and word
There’s a lot we leave behind
Somewhere between the meat and bone
There’s a lot we take for granted
“She took a knife for me.”
I was passing by and saw him. He was sitting where he had sat all day, doing his thing. He was too drunk to recognize me again. The last time he was like this, his heart was twisting again because of her – she was always a complication. I asked him how he was doing.
“She broke her back.” He said with despairing eyes.
“What? How?” I wasn’t expecting that.
“She fell 15 feet. Broke her back! She’s in the hospital now. I have to go to Austin and take care of her.” He started weeping. “Fuck! I was headed north! I was on my my way. Now I’ll have to push her around in a wheel chair. Probably for two months, or longer? While she’s screaming at me! Fuck! I was about leave! Going north, man!”