The all-too familiar feeling of abandonment
scratches listlessly against my ears.

You are already bringing down the walls
of a fortress I didn't have time to build.

There was something overtly uncautious about the way your hands slid over my skin.
There was no light in the room,
it was too early even for the sun.

Nobody could hear our dreams.
How do you stop dreaming and remain human?

It was an eternity that we have known each other.
But it felt like we had never spoken
or perhaps we never listened.

Our deaf ears had reasons of their own.
And now we deftly cling to syllables that seem nonsensical.
We turn to stanzas that do not rhyme.

My hesitation is louder than our deafness
My hurt beats faster than our hearts

I do not know how to run,
I only ever learned how to stand
Still against the non-sunlit room
Still against the rivalry of sisterhood
Still against the arguments that rise from your lips
Still against your kisses that pour against my tougue.

Junot Diaz's new book is coming out soon. This week, in fact. 

This Is How You Lose Her features nine stories by Junot Diaz, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao in 2008. At the center of each story is Yunior (making his third appearance in Diaz's work), a Dominican American stud who, despite his macho exterior, aches to be loved. At first blush, this slim volume lacks the ambition and scope of Oscar Wao, a condensed pop-culture epic. But Diaz has done an extraordinary thing here: He has taken Yunior's heart and battered it every which way to show how love--romantic, physical, or familial--can affect even the most masculine character. The final story, "The Cheater's Guide to Love," features the collection's stickiest line: "The half-life of love is forever." Diaz compares heartbreak to radiation, its strength decaying exponentially over time. You can bury it underground and try to forget about it, but it never goes away entirely. --Kevin Nguyen

This morning:
- what got me out of bed, to my delight, green tea blend in place of the usual English black tea
- an unanswered call to my mother
- Clory Martin crooning about Austin
- soul food for breakfast, which was late enough to be lunch, which included grits (which we spooned the butter out of) and waffles and pork chop and amazing potatoes
- trying to wash away the headache that is throbbing, and the webs of sleepiness that wash over my body
- reading interviews with Borges.

Jorge Luis Borges being interviewed by Stephen Cape, 1980:

SC: Do you think of words as having effects that are inherent in the word or in the images they carry?

Borges: Well yes, for example, if you attempt a sonnet, then, at least in Spanish, you have to use certain words. There’s only a few rhymes. And those of course may be used as metaphors, peculiar metaphors, since you have to stick to them. I would even venture to say — this of course is a sweeping statement — but perhaps the word ‘moon’ in English stems from something different that the word ‘luna’ in Latin or Spanish. The moon… the word ‘moon’ is a lingering sound. Moon is a beautiful word. The French word is also beautiful: ‘lune’. But in Old English the word was ‘mona’. The word isn’t beautiful at all, two syllables. And then the Greek is worse. We have ‘celena’, three syllables. But the word ‘moon’ is a beautiful word. That sound is not found, let’s say in Spanish. The moon. I can linger in words. Words inspire you. Words have a life of their own.

SC: The word’s life of its own, does that seem more important than the meaning that it gives in a particular context?

Borges: I think that the meanings are more or less irrelevant. What is important, or the two important facts I should say, are emotion, and then words arising from emotion. I don’t think you can write in an emotionless way. If you attempt it, the result is artificial. I don’t like that kind of writing. I think that if a poem is really great, you should think of it as having written itself despite the author. It should flow.

…

SC: The Hopi Indians are used as an example many times, because of the nature of their language, of how language and vocabulary thought-

Borges: I know very little about it. I was told of the Pampas Indians by my grandmother. She lived all of her life in Junin; that was on the western end of civilization. She told me as a fact that their arithmetic went thus. She held up a hand and said, “I’ll teach you the Pampas Indians’ mathematics.” “I won’t understand,.” “Yes,” she said, “you will. Look at my hands: 1, 2, 3, 4, Many.” So, infinity went on her thumb.

the Tango space is a cautious one for me, now. for many reasons.
sometimes I feel as though it is a series of scenes from Waking Life, and not only because Glover Gill scored the soundtrack.
I have disjointed conversations in between disjointed dances,
tango tango vals tango tango milonga.
TTVTTM they say,
and .


Every since I met L, I have wanted to read his poetry. Poetry books are stacked everywhere in his apartment. I am hesitant to post this here because this is his, and it is for an Intended audience. but as this place has been a collection of notes that explode with inspiration for me, I am putting it here for safekeeping and contemplation.


Preparing to Cabaceo, by L. Kwan


I am taller than most parked cars in my neighborhood
whose city blocks take
about two thoughts to stride across.
The amount of time I avoid a stranger’s eye contact
comes close to four steps,
then I peer up again to inspect the bungalows and cottages
dressed in leaves of ivy, glassy from too much light.

At times the sun is very warm upon the asphalt,
though often the coastal fog has nightly crept beneath the bridge
and driven attractive, young people indoors.
We are all average and the men roughly weigh
within twenty pounds of each other which is comforting.
Music is playing for one half of the room
to watch the other half dance.
The women lose themselves among talk of other women
because what is beautiful remains a debate in this era
of recession, while the young men busy themselves with side-stares
as their beards grow hoary and their drink glasses
empty beneath broad-hazy grins.
The syrupy air in these rooms smells of medicine and sometimes
nobody is looking to be healed,
causing a reluctant abandonment into the cold.
Outside the stars have come out
with the primitive force of prophecy, bones strewn about.
I breathe quieter than half the population
as I continue over the crest of Dolores towards home.
Thinking of one thing at a time before each red light enlarges in my vision,
I keep a good pace by myself.
Every so often a young woman also stops at the crosswalk
and leans her frame on the roughness of the lamppost.
I am smoother than most stones against her hand.

My favorite response so far to my now-obsolete online dating profile:

"I don't believe it."

“I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish.”

- Simone de Beauvoir 

(from addie)

the mornings here:

the light through the windows is grey. 

the ceiling fan turns quietly. 

the blankets have gotten hot from the night time heat. 

the light dapples across the couch in the living room. 

my black tea is unsweetened. 

it was a dreamless sleep. 

Note to self: pop up shows 

who puts the heart in your heartbreak?