Sleeping next to someone is the one of the most intimate things in the world. More intimate than having sex, or eating a meal, or crying, or confessing. When we sleep, we let our brains leave the tightly constructed grids we've created to control our deepest inclinations. When we sleep, secrets spill out of our skin and unconscious thoughts dance across our eyes. We cannot even compose our bodies, make them do what we want them to do. Instead we lay there, sprawled, tossing, slack-jawed, with strange, deep sounds coming from within our lungs. They sound like a car engine. When we sleep, we are vulnerable.
Sleep next to another person. Wake up a minute before them. Watch their eyeballs shift. Watch their chest rise. Watch the little ticks in the minute muscles of their left hand. Watch their mouth open, their teeth click. Watch them in the one state where they cannot control your perception of them. Learn everything and anything there is to know about them. Understand what they fear and what they love and how that looks.
And then watch them wake up. Watch them remember that they are alive and watch them recall that there is a world and a life waiting for them and watch them reconcile the way they felt when they were sleeping with the way they feel now and watch them realize that it's morning and the sun is up and watch them reassemble that grid and watch them turn to you and smile and think to yourself that you were the first person they saw on this day and be happy.
And then tell me that there's something more intimate than that.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Write what you know
They all tell me to write what I know. I wish I knew more. Everything I've written has been other people, other stories, far far away from my own life. Because I'm sick of thinking about what I know. I've spent my whole being living in my head. Now even the sweetest memories have dust on them; all of them worn out like a shirt that's been through the washer too many times.
I know what it feels like to be a girl. I know what it feels like to be in love. I know what it feels like to have someone reach into you and see you. I know what death looks like. I know what life looks like. I know what sex feels like. I know what heartbreak feels like, too: those minutes when you're all by yourself and you let out those first few wails like some sort of grieving banshee and all of a sudden you're where you said you'd never be, on the floor alone—pathetic, so alone.
But there's so much more that I don't know. Like what it feels like to be a boy. Like what it feels like to be denied a basic human right. Like what it feels like to pull your life out of your chest and look at it. Like what it feels like to say the words "fuck you" and really mean them.
I want to know these things that have never happened to me. I want to take different voices and make them all talk through me like some kind of spirit. If I write about the unknown for long enough, maybe I can know something new, something better than what I am now.
But even while I write this, I know I am cheating myself. There's a reason we write what we know. We've spent enough time turning our own knowledges around in our heads that when we finally decide to put them to words they come flowing out with purpose, like they were always meant to be on that page. And it means so much more when we're done, doesn't it?
I know what it feels like to be a girl. I know what it feels like to be in love. I know what it feels like to have someone reach into you and see you. I know what death looks like. I know what life looks like. I know what sex feels like. I know what heartbreak feels like, too: those minutes when you're all by yourself and you let out those first few wails like some sort of grieving banshee and all of a sudden you're where you said you'd never be, on the floor alone—pathetic, so alone.
But there's so much more that I don't know. Like what it feels like to be a boy. Like what it feels like to be denied a basic human right. Like what it feels like to pull your life out of your chest and look at it. Like what it feels like to say the words "fuck you" and really mean them.
I want to know these things that have never happened to me. I want to take different voices and make them all talk through me like some kind of spirit. If I write about the unknown for long enough, maybe I can know something new, something better than what I am now.
But even while I write this, I know I am cheating myself. There's a reason we write what we know. We've spent enough time turning our own knowledges around in our heads that when we finally decide to put them to words they come flowing out with purpose, like they were always meant to be on that page. And it means so much more when we're done, doesn't it?
Saturday, May 21, 2011
these days the people I love are spread so far apart
I have written down so many pretty words for you. I mean to give them to you wrapped in a bow like Christmas morning, like your smile like Christmas morning, but my fingers fumbled with the Scotch tape and it's all wrong now. We've lived so many pure moments, and in each moment I thought, just for a second, that I could finally reach back and give you these words and these feelings, pass them from the cup of my palms to yours like river water. But when I'm laying next to you and you have said so many beautiful things to me and it is the right time, the exact-on-the-dot-right-on-time time, I falter and I forget and I doubt. Because maybe if I never give you these pretty words I can keep them safe. Because if you were to lose them, or throw them away, or break them, I don't know what I'd do.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Saturday
One time we all went to a river in Virginia. The sun was sweet and hot and we were flesh-naked and all so beautiful. We jumped into the water and I was surprised by the current, fast and bold. I thought I might never climb up the bank and the water would take me down past the fishermen and the water bugs and the tiny frogs, under the bridge and away from everyone like Osiris floating down the Nile. I grabbed a tree, though, and scratched myself— but finally my foot dug into the honey mud and I pulled myself up a bank and I couldn't breathe because my lungs were too filled with happiness and relief and fear.
And Chris said that this was the first time in a long time that he had actually felt like he had done something real. Something alive. And we jumped back into the river. But I knew the current now and could get to the other side back to the sand. And then we sat and we covered ourselves in mud and we laughed and we looked and we breathed and we floated. When it grew late we reluctantly left perfect piece of river where we had recovered our pulses and made our way up a mountain, singing all the while, reveling in our new-found infinity.
One time we went to Ryan's mystical house on a mountain. And we ate a dinner where there were only good, rounded silences with remnants of smiles from the conversation that had just finished. When it got dark, we made a fire in the backyard and we talked about our favorite vegetables, and horror movies, and sex. And it was safe and daring all at once and there was nothing false about it. Because we all cared about every second. Because every sentence was important. Because the fire was warm and orange and purple and because Haggis had a cold dog nose and fur you could bury your face in and because we could see stars that don't exist anywhere else, not in the same way, not really.
When we fell into bed exhausted by our lives there was no room for pre-sleep worrying because the day had been good. And that's all anyone ever needs.
And Chris said that this was the first time in a long time that he had actually felt like he had done something real. Something alive. And we jumped back into the river. But I knew the current now and could get to the other side back to the sand. And then we sat and we covered ourselves in mud and we laughed and we looked and we breathed and we floated. When it grew late we reluctantly left perfect piece of river where we had recovered our pulses and made our way up a mountain, singing all the while, reveling in our new-found infinity.
One time we went to Ryan's mystical house on a mountain. And we ate a dinner where there were only good, rounded silences with remnants of smiles from the conversation that had just finished. When it got dark, we made a fire in the backyard and we talked about our favorite vegetables, and horror movies, and sex. And it was safe and daring all at once and there was nothing false about it. Because we all cared about every second. Because every sentence was important. Because the fire was warm and orange and purple and because Haggis had a cold dog nose and fur you could bury your face in and because we could see stars that don't exist anywhere else, not in the same way, not really.
When we fell into bed exhausted by our lives there was no room for pre-sleep worrying because the day had been good. And that's all anyone ever needs.
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