2.07.2004

death of a happy ending, parts I & II

Part I. 

The sun is glinting off of the cars on the street, casting stars with a thousand prongs, not just four.  The tree branches hang down, breaking the panes into a thousand pieces, a hundred layers.  There's so much out there to see: the colors the pickets, the blades of grass.  The constant change, the growth, the decay; a new vision each time my eye raises to the window.  So much to see out of this one piece of glass.  And then, when you step outside!  This hole in the world becomes surrounded with life.  The action attracting the ears and nose, no longer engaging only the eye.  And as these senses hit hard, the wonder in a crushed blade of grass is lost to the sound of chatter.  The glorious swoop of the raven is lost to the smell of exhaust.  The roar of traffic drowns out the fragile dew sticking to the flowers.  How much I love to exhale and hear my breath, drifting with the clouds, creating my own soundtrack to the world.  The question of reality is one created.  Truth is beauty, maybe, but never heightens a romantic scene in the Sunken Gardens.  The truth is that the glory days of Virginia are over, and Williamsburg is full of traffic, and sirens, and tourists, and pollution.

So much for the glory of the window pane.
So much for the struggle of each blade of grass.
So much for lines jotted down by my unaffected hand.

Part II. 

The chorus from this morning's first song pounds in my head.  There is only one lyric.  "There's only one."  With all the bantering and battering going on this week, how am I to know?  There's the kiss, the slap, the blow, the know, and that makes more than one.  So, if there is one, what's the test, what's the catch, what's the worth?  Here I am, sitting here with this vague description of a specific situation.  Am I afraid that on paper everything will fall into place?  Hardly.  Logically, it's all a bad decision, but that's the beauty of women-- we're emotionally driven.  So where is this decision coming from?  I'd say the heart, but there's so much more to it than that: the head, the lungs, the skin, the liver.  I guess it comes down to my very pen.  I need challenge, pain, struggle, and suffering to write, but I need intellectual stimulation thrown into the mix to write well.  Here I am, and I'd say that I have love, security, and all those warm fuzzy feelings that come with a relationship that's not going anywhere, but I'm not content with being grounded; I want to soar, even if it means I have to fall.  There's nothing wrong with falling.  It's a chance to see the world from a different point of view.  So I guess it's my wings that are making the decision to seek out the sun, even if it means being scorched.  So I'll start with anything but the love, because I'm still going up, while the love's going down, and with our equal imperfection, it doesn't sit higher than anything else, but it's what I already know.  I came to college to learn--about history, about psychology, about beauty, about life, and yes, even about all the forms of love which I have yet to learn.  College is pleasure, freedom, haze, and clarity all at the same time.  And love?  Love is the presence and absence of these things, all at the same time.  Or maybe simply the elusive power that controls all of the rest from overhead, brilliantly dominant, but hard to grasp.  And is love in the hand really worth more than two in the bush?  Well, I'll let you know.


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