"I know this much, is all," Franny said. "If you're a poet, you do something beautiful. I mean you're supposed to leave something beautiful after you get off the page and everything.The ones you're talking about don't leave a single, solitary thing beautiful. All that maybe the slightly better ones do is sort of get inside your head and leave something there, but just because they do, just because they know how to leave something, it doesn't have to be a poem, for heaven's sake. It may just be some kind of terribly fascinating, syntaxy droppings--excuse the expression. Like Manlius and Esposito and all those poor men."
~Salinger, Franny and Zooey

this beautiful world

(background: on my run sometimes I'll stop at favored park benches to look at the river/city especially at sundown. Tonight an adorable older man, with a bowtie, sat next to me. His opening line: My wife and I used to sit here nearly every night during the summer at about this time. we eventually got to the following; one of those perfect conversations with a perfect stranger that force you to fall in love with this perfect, even when it doesn't appear to be, world.)

Me: How did you know you were in love?
LovelyOlderMan: There was no other way to know Her. But I think I loved her before I ever even knew I did.
M: Did you ever believe you were in love before?
LOM: I thought I was in love with another. Kind, Sweet, very Pretty--the whole nine yards; we were supposed to get married. Then I saw Her cry.
M:
LOM: I never knew my heart could break so much or hurt so badly.
M:
LOM: 55 years and She stops my heart everytime. (chuckle) and she knows it. I'm wrapped around her little finger. (smile) but I get to hold it too, so it's ok.
M: Do you ever think what if you had stayed with the other girl?
LOM: My life might have been a lot simpler (chuckle). But then... She brings...she brought... Beauty to...everything. No. There would have been no life without Her. No...no life at all.

(maybe it's corny... maybe he's a crazy old man who made the entire thing up. or maybe he just belonged to a different time when life was... just lovelier. Either way, he was wonderful and that moment will remain perfect in my mind forever)

just illusions
there was a point in my insanity when i deeply believed you loved me. it was a test i had failed. the thing is i knew you didn't. but i had to believe. for me. it was great. great. it's an awful word. it's an ugly word. appearance wise. great. awful. it grates on your teeth like a first grade teacher who patronizes you with those little colorful stickers you are supposed to treasure and place on the inside cover of your notebook. everyone knows it was only the scented ones that mattered at all. but the non recieved their place and forced love as well. it's a joke. a trip. being a kid. pretending to be a kid when all you wanted to do was give the sticker to the giggly girl next to you and tell her that she clearly needed it more. unless it was something orginal, something creative. not words or facts memorized but i story released from your own heart and appreciated by another's ears. then a sticker was golden. only if from one respected. otherwise the preference would easily be a confused smile. that look like they couldn't tell just what to make of it. or you. that was worth a hundred stickers. a thousand. my entire childhood. you gave me that crooked smile. then you walked away. but there was pain there, with the accustomed thrill. maybe i had wanted you to. you know, read me between the lines. or maybe i just believed i did. it's just an illusion. it doesn't mean anything. just little pieces of adhesive paper, once in awhile they simply smelled better--but it made your world.

I love the word hysteria. It makes me picture a woman laughing--a laugh so powerful it begins in her heart but there can be barely contained or bared, so it erupts forth in insanity.

Female hysteria was a once-common medical diagnosis, made exclusively in women, which is today no longer recognized by modern medical authorities as a medical disorder. Its diagnosis and treatment were routine for many hundreds of years in Western Europe. Hysteria was widely discussed in the medical literature of the nineteenth century. Women considered to be suffering from it exhibited a wide array of symptoms including faintness, nervousness, insomnia, fluid retention, heaviness in abdomen, muscle spasm, shortness of breath, irritability, loss of appetite for food or sex, and "a tendency to cause trouble".[1]

Since ancient times women considered to be suffering from hysteria would sometimes undergo "pelvic massage" — manual stimulation of the genitals by the doctor until the patient experienced "hysterical paroxysm" (orgasm).

(Big thanks to our friends at Wikipedia)

Honesty.

so simple. but we hide it, even from ourselves

what's the point of living in a world where you refuse honesty even within yourself?

the whole world would change

maybe that's what we are so afraid of

We stood there, facing each other. It was raining harder now, and the big, fat drops were running down my face, and his too, as he loomed over me.

"Just say it." His voice was tight and his teeth were clenched and I could see the muscle in his jaw working.

"What?" I lifted my shoulders, cocked my elbows, raised my palms to the weeping sky. "What do you want me to say?" Trying hard for insouciance.

"You're sorry. Just say you're sorry."

"Sloan, it's too late for apologies-"

"Fuck you!" He slammed his fist into the brick wall next to my head. "Fuck apologies. I don't want apologies. I just want to hear it. I want to hear once that you are sorry, like you really mean it. No fucking excuses. No explanations. Just once, that you are as sorry as I am..." He was crying, I think. I was too. I sank back against the wet brick and covered my face with my hands, then slid down the wall, like a body shot through the heart.

"I'm sorry," I sobbed. "You don't know how sorry-"

And then suddenly he was all around me, gathering me up and crushing me against the wet brick, kissing the rain. And I realized I'd never been gathered up before, never been so broken apart or so recovered, and it was shocking, but before I could think about it, we were walking really fast through streets that flowed like a river, to arrive, dripping, at the stolid Peabody. Up the brass elevator, across the densely carpeted hall, to the door where I fumbled for the key (remembering the last time I stood at a door at the Peabody, fumbling for a key), but before I could think about it, the door swung open and Sloan backed me through, across the room, and onto the big, redeeming bed.

It wasn't easy. It wasn't like we made love and it was this enormous flood that washed away all our sins and insufficiencies, although from time to time that was how it felt. Rather, we had to negotiate a way through layers of nakedness and conjunction, stopping and starting, asking questions, filling in gaps and testing the waters. But we did it. Dove, then rose again to reach a plateau where we could rest, breathing deep and easy. Until another accusation surfaced. A doubt insisted on address. And so we would start again, and so we continued, off and on, all night, until morning.

My Year of Meats Ruth L. Ozeki

I miss your smile.
I miss your laugh.
I miss your eyes,
I miss your joy

But most I miss this little entity, it was everything that was you, that would drift around your entire being and when I was near fill in me.
I feel incomplete without it
severed into only half of me
bleeding outwardly
the longing hurts beyond everything
if continued the only me I ever knew would end
So this is goodbye, and for as long as I can keep it
this is goodbye forever
you won't understand
but just please let me go
please, entirely, let go