And In The Rooms The Women Come And Go

Originally Posted Saturday, February 22, 2014

Life and desire return even though I am not completely back on my feet again.  A spark of life, the memory of enjoyment begins to torment me once more.  I can only think of "The Waste Land's" opening lines. 


April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

It is Spring here now and everything begins to bloom.  And today, there is a sparse, dead rain.  I can think of no better opening to an American poem (I'm sure to be challenged over and over again on that).  

Last night, after working in the studio on a night when I thought that perhaps I shouldn't, afraid that I would make myself sick again with anticipation and anxiety and worry, I came home at a reasonable hour, had some beer in front of the television while I decompressed (decompressing enough to fall asleep for an hour there sitting up), and then went to bed where I slept for another nine hours.  I woke up without wanting to get up, but getting up, I felt fine and perhaps stronger and began to feel the day emotionally thinking of things to do on a Saturday that are pleasant, things that have always made me happy, things that I have not done for some time.  To be among the weekend throng in beautiful places perhaps looking at an expensive watch (I don't wear them) and buying that Mont Blanc Meisterstuck rollerball that I have been wanting.  Such a thing is silly but symbolic, and we live by symbols whether we recognize them or not.  Perhaps, though, I will settle for breakfast at the little diner where I haven't been in over a month and a trip next door to the record store with the terrific book section.

(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)

That  picture, though. . . such a seeming richness of unrequited hope.  It is a symbol of the day, perhaps, an afternoon when nothing you had hoped for has been done, when the sun begins to set on all the earlier dreams of a weekend day.  One thing, though, a single thought, a single emotion.  There is no need to complicate things, no need to conflate desires and feelings.  I will pick out a single thing to do today.  Surely that can be done and done well.  The trick is avoid frustration without avoiding everything.

Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

But I am conflating poems here in disregard of my own dictum.  It is mid-morning.  The day has become a flat gray.  My emotions are so tied to weather.  How can I waver so much in the span of a moment?  

That fucking Eliot was a hideous man.  

But I think the picture is lovely.