Wednesday
May142008
Something I'm working on
Wednesday, May 14, 2008 at 07:07PM
Communication
It struck me driving over the bridge toward home—
the lights of the city! The dark water!
Oh, how the clouds reflected all the hazy light pollution,
made me feel small and adventurous
and alone, and like if I spoke
to the city itself, it might reply.
I turned to my new love in the passenger’s seat
and tried: “I just got this feeling of…
of yearning.”
“Of what?”
“Yearning. Like a…like a longing for something. For a life
I don’t have. Or something.” I felt foolish.
“I know a cure for that!” he proclaimed.
“But I don’t want to be cured. I like this, this
lonely melancholy. Do you see?”
He didn’t. I tried again.
“You know when you’re hiking somewhere beautiful, alone?
That pretty loneliness you get?”
“I think I know what you mean. Being alone in nature.”
“Yes, but it’s a feeling of being just outside of a magic life.”
He looked at me blankly.
“I guess I’m not explaining it very well. I was just wondering if you ever feel that way.”
“Maybe you should write a poem,” he said.
It’s like that time when you were nine and you spoke to trees, thinking they were wiser than you, and patient. It’s like the first understanding that your parents’ wooden chessboard, that inert object, is older than you. It’s like that time you cried outside at night and the wind answered, tickling the back of your neck and the new hairs prickling out of your armpits. It’s like the first boy/girl party in seventh grade that went late into the night, and the music was loud and some people were holding each other for the first time, and it was dark and you didn’t belong. It’s being very human which means wanting something so badly it feels good just to want it, that satisfying hole, that nerve-wracking hunger. I am, therefore I need. Something. It’s just like being alive. Like that time you were alive.
-Alissa
It struck me driving over the bridge toward home—
the lights of the city! The dark water!
Oh, how the clouds reflected all the hazy light pollution,
made me feel small and adventurous
and alone, and like if I spoke
to the city itself, it might reply.
I turned to my new love in the passenger’s seat
and tried: “I just got this feeling of…
of yearning.”
“Of what?”
“Yearning. Like a…like a longing for something. For a life
I don’t have. Or something.” I felt foolish.
“I know a cure for that!” he proclaimed.
“But I don’t want to be cured. I like this, this
lonely melancholy. Do you see?”
He didn’t. I tried again.
“You know when you’re hiking somewhere beautiful, alone?
That pretty loneliness you get?”
“I think I know what you mean. Being alone in nature.”
“Yes, but it’s a feeling of being just outside of a magic life.”
He looked at me blankly.
“I guess I’m not explaining it very well. I was just wondering if you ever feel that way.”
“Maybe you should write a poem,” he said.
It’s like that time when you were nine and you spoke to trees, thinking they were wiser than you, and patient. It’s like the first understanding that your parents’ wooden chessboard, that inert object, is older than you. It’s like that time you cried outside at night and the wind answered, tickling the back of your neck and the new hairs prickling out of your armpits. It’s like the first boy/girl party in seventh grade that went late into the night, and the music was loud and some people were holding each other for the first time, and it was dark and you didn’t belong. It’s being very human which means wanting something so badly it feels good just to want it, that satisfying hole, that nerve-wracking hunger. I am, therefore I need. Something. It’s just like being alive. Like that time you were alive.
-Alissa
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