The Secret Interrogation
We talk often about love, for two reasons I think: first because it is so vital to us both, and we are both so good at it badly and so poor at it well; second, secretly, plausibly deniably, because we are negotiating terms, kicking the notion back and forth, trying to find a way to it or from it or someplace, at least, where it won’t dandle in the air like a sullen inscrutable road sign, pointing down fictive roads to uncertain destinations.
We both know our roles so well, by now, after years in the field — I the hot needle of inquiry, impetuous, certain, fretful, who will not be turned; you the calmer of the furies, cool, deft, implacable, who will not be penetrated. When emotion surges up we ride the swells in amazement, startled by the sudden water. It makes me wonder if the beach is surprised, anew every day, when the tide batters in.
I know you have loved, have been in love, have been near love, have been choked, insensible, besotted with it, as I have. I know you’ve loved full bore, with folly, with need, with abandon, with fire, without cause, with pain, with disastrous results, with a will that might have made you burst. I know you gave when the well was dry and fed water to parched ground, have been the shark as much as the chum. And and and. Like most of us, you are neither dirty nor clean. You’re a woman in the world.
What I want to ask is this: have you ever been loved, free for asking, with open hands? By someone who watches the morning on your face, the night in the hair dancing over your shoulders?
April 26th, 2006 at 10:15
Nothing to add, except that it’s a pleasure to be reading your well-turned prose again.
Missed you while you were away :-)
April 26th, 2006 at 19:03
I sort of felt like a spy reading this. It’s like coming across a secret love letter I wasn’t supposed to see. Even so, it’s beautiful. Incredibly, intensely so.
April 26th, 2006 at 19:41
Hey y’alls. Harvey, yes - it’s good to be back, and good to see your comment; my life has changed shape in the last couple of years, which means both that blogtime isn’t what it once was - there will likely be stretches of short entries backed by pictures, and more silences - and also that I’ve finally realized that those pants from college? They aren’t ever going to fit again.
Jams, thanks. In the tradition of grand tragedy, or is it comedy, I don’t think she really reads the blog. If she did once, well, I’ve been quiet here for a while. Odds are good she’ll never see it, until it’s irrelevant or redundant. Which, since it’s on the blog, it probably already is.
There will be stuff like this here from time to time; partly because I need to talk into the dark, and also partly because this is both mostly true and totally fictional. True in impulse, imagined in setting. I’m hoping it will loosen up some of the writing I’m supposed to be doing.
From when I started writing my very first prose, I always wrote uncomfortably close to the bone of the real. At school I once wrote a story for writing class about having an affair with my writing class teacher. I was a bit of a handful, see. Oddly enough, I was not asked to read that one for class discussion. Gofigger.
April 27th, 2006 at 22:25
Though I know you sometimes doubt it, I do wander by here from time to time, ever wondering if your quill will find its way back to ink. How satisfying to take in the blots, even if what I read is melancholy. And even if the sharp searching darts drop dull in the silence. A silence that she should know you yearn to fill. A silence that I would have her yearn you fill.