Playing Hard to Get

http://thoughtcatalog.com/tatiana-perez/2013/08/the-science-of-playing-hard-to-get/

An easy read on playing hard to get.

Reminds me of a quote from the book "Our Tragic Universe" by Scarlette Thomas: “I realized that when someone plays hard to get, they are making themselves into a character in a story, and they chose the story that leads to the outcome they want. If a woman puts a dragon between herself and the hero, it becomes an obstacle to be overcome. If she goes and knocks on his door and says ‘fancy a bunk up?’ she becomes a slut: basically a conquest with no obstacles and therefore no value. It was like people wanted to put everything in a story because otherwise it wouldn’t make any sense” (278).

Let's Talk a Little About Psychoanalysis

Everyone has a movie that they can't get tired of watching. I have two of them on my list: Pulp Fiction and Like Crazy. The latter is less known and, if you know the story, you'd probably find it underwhelming: a couple striving to maintain a long distance relationship.

Despite the exquisite cinematography and the radiant chemistry between the actors which transcends a lack of dialogues, what I love about the movie is the piercingly heartbreaking ending displayed in an extremely minimalistic, subtle way: the couple finally reunited, found themselves in the shower together, and after replaying in their heads a mosaic of memories from their past, they looked at the person in front of their eyes, loosened the embrace, and the girl walked away.

It is an unexpected ending to some, knowing that the couple has endured longings for each other for years to finally be united. However, among the people I've talked to, those who have experienced long distance relationships seem to relate to the decision made by Anna and Jacob, the characters in the movie. One conversation I had with a friend who had studied Jung's psychoanalytic theory shined a light on why relationships, especially the long distance ones, don't work out the way we expect them to.

Some background: archetypes, according to Jung, are structural components of our psyches. One of the four components, anima/animus, is the feminine portion of a male's personality, or the masculine portion of a female's personality. Men and women tend to repress their anima/animus, and instead these split-off qualities form a complex that tends to be reflected on others. In other words, men and women see a part of themselves on others that they themselves have repressed, if they do see these lost qualities on another person, they tend to be attracted to him or her because this person makes them feel a sense of wholeness.

In the movie, Anna and Jacob have gone through long periods of time without seeing each other. What maintains their relationship is their perceived images about one another, with Anna becoming the object of projection of Jacob's desired qualities that he himself had lost, and vice versa. So eventually when they meet again, the reality unmasked and they see that the other is no longer the person who lives in their imagination.

Credits to: Justin Haver

Piece about the Cinematographic History of Kissing

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/14/magazine/a-brief-history-of-kissing-in-movies.html?_r=0

I found any articles exploring the history of mundane trivial details in everyday life extremely interesting. Because these everyday happenings, although not as spectacular as historical events, are deeply rooted, they reflect the fundamental features of a particular period of time.

I've learned a little about the history of movies and cinema in my media class: The first cinemas in the United States are called nickelodeons--movie theatres that cost a nickel. They are scattered around commercial streets where working class people are active. The 15-20 minute programs consisted of even shorter movie clips were extremely popular because they were silent, catering to different language speakers including immigrants. They also provided a less crammed, more comfortable and relaxing environment from the difficult working and living conditions of the day. Reflecting to the parallel history of kissing on screen discussed in the article, the public setting, the length requirement, and the audience of the films are all contributors to the comic feature of the first kissing scene.

Movie industries then went through an extension to more affluent, middle class audience. Thomas Edison's motion picture patent company The Trust, which more or less had a monopoly in the industry started to favor exhibitors in middle class neighborhoods. This means that the movies themselves would represent a middle class culture.

Along came the age of television starting from the 1940s. As more people started to watch TV, movie attendances fell. Post-war population's migration to the sub-urbs had also reduced cinema developments. Movie makers started to strategize for higher attendance level by providing what TV can't offer: for example, sex and violence--it is apparent in O'Hara's poem that movie was a source for "darker joys", which he implies was unattainable in ordinary households.

I believe that in the past as much as today, love is an inspiring, universal theme, thus explained the sometimes cliched, yet inexhaustible use of lip-mushing scenes on every big screen.

Love's Metaphors

Anthropologists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson suggest that our thought patterns occur along the lines of certain conceptual systems. Sometimes these lines are not very obvious, and one way to figure out what they are, according to Lakoff and Johnson, is to look at languages, since talking and communicating is basically thinking. What they found through studying our use of languages is that, a lot of our concepts, displayed in our colloquial speech and written texts, are metaphorical. They are not just talking about the metaphors that we use consciously and purposely. They are talking about the ones that we don't notice. For example, some of the most common phrases we use when we talk about love are: I fall in love with him; I'm in for the long haul, I'm crazy about her. When we say these sentences, we don't think about the metaphorical feature they contain. But implicit as they are, these are the exact concepts that construct the way we perceive the subject matter of our speeches.

Let's look at the first phrase: I fall in love with him. The image of falling insinuates an involuntary characteristic of love. It happens accidentally, when least expected, like a hole in the ground. The direction in the act of "falling" also gives love a somewhat negative tenor.

The second example: I'm in for the long haul. Depicts love as a journey. There are some planning involved prior to the departure for a journey, but mostly the journey is unpredictable, and participants have little control over what is to come. This metaphor suggests a sense of passivity, and challenge since the journey is "long".

The message of the last metaphor: I'm crazy about her, is more obvious than the previous two. It not only implies that the people who chooses to engage in love made the decision without sense, but also suggests that the act itself is irrational.

Of course there are many ways to interpret a particular metaphor, there is no right or wrong way. What matters, according to Lakoff and Johnson, is how we act upon the basis of whatever inferences the metaphor suggests to us. Each person acts a different way because they interpret the reality through metaphors in a different way, therefore the reality is relative.

Bear in mind that this is just one of the social science theories about human understandings of the world, it is impossible to prove and hence not proven that our conceptual vehicles actually functions along the lines of metaphors. See the metaphor I just made there?



Source: http://pages.vassar.edu/theories-of-the-novel/files/2013/04/Metaphors-We-Live-By.pdf

Soul Mates v.s. Everlasting Love

An interesting article from nytimes that discusses the discrepancy between the idea of a "perfect match" and that of a lasting relationship.

The cliche of loving someone for who they are holds a great deal of truth in that love is organic, it demands more of us than simply to possess it, it requires cultivation and investment, acceptance and sacrifice. It's a working progress instead of a static condition, therefore if we don't put in the effort to maintain its wellbeing, it decays. The beauty of thinking of love as a journey is that we don't wait around to be struck by an unlikely serendipity, we take the power in our own hands, we prepare for and adjust to every rise and fall, and we feel deserving of it--now that reminds me of Alicia Key's song "un-thinkable". Below are the lyrics. Enjoy!

Moment of honesty
Someone's gotta take the lead tonight
Who's it gonna be?
I'm gonna sit right here
And tell you all that comes to me
If you have something to say
You should say it right now
(Drake: You should say it right now)

You ready?

Bridge:

You give me a feeling that I never felt before
And I deserve it, I think I deserve it
(Drake: I deserve it, I think it deserve it..Let it go)
It's becoming something that's impossible to ignore
And I can't take it
(Drake: I can't take it)

Chorus-Alicia & Drake:

I was wondering maybe
Could I make you my baby
If we do the unthinkable would it make us look crazy
If you ask me I'm ready
(Echo: I'm ready, I'm ready)
If you ask me I'm ready
(Echo: I'm ready, I'm ready)

Verse 2:
I know you once said to me
"This is exactly how it should feel when it's meant to be"
Time is only wasting so why wait for eventually?
If we gon' do something 'bout it
We should do it right now
(Drake: We should do it right now)

Bay, uh

Bridge:

You give me a feeling that I never felt before
And I deserve it, I know I deserve it
(Drake: I deserve it, I know I deserve it. Let it go)
Its becoming something that's impossible to ignore
It's what we make it
(Drake: It's what we make it)

Chorus-Alicia & Drake:

I was wondering maybe
Could I make you my baby
If we do the unthinkable would it make us look crazy
Or would it be so beautiful either way I'm sayin'
If you ask me I'm ready
(Echo: I'm ready I'm ready)
If you ask me I'm ready
(Echo: I'm ready)

Yeah, sing...

Hook:

Why give up before we try
Feel the lows before the highs
Clip our wings before we fly away
I can't say I came prepared
I'm suspended in the air
Won't you come be in the sky with me

Chorus-Alicia & Drake:

I was wondering maybe
Could I make you my baby
If we do the unthinkable would it make us look crazy
Or would it be so beautiful either way I'm sayin'
If you ask me I'm ready
(Echo: I'm ready, I'm ready)
If you ask me I'm ready
(Echo: I'm ready, I'm ready)
If you ask me I'm ready
(Echo: I'm ready, I'm ready)
If you ask me I'm ready
(Echo: I'm ready, I'm ready)

From: Metrolyrics.com 

What is A Thing that Can Put a Man to Death and Also Bring Him Back to Life Again?

My World Politics professor ended the class in tears. We had talked about the advent of the fourth stage of humanity: the technological/digital age (it us up to us to define the term, he said), and that we are the first human beings to live in a world where time and space are compressed to the point that they do not constitute a minor barrier in the process of globalization. He demonstrated this by showing us a video clip of street musicians from all over the world collaborating on the song "stand by me" simultaneously through airwave. This is a side of the globalization story that is so refreshing and on point, it filled us with tears of hopefulness, especially having just learned about the deprivation of the poor states by the dominant states, as well as the astronomical wealth inequality. My professor said that what moved him about the video was that it portrays something beautiful created by the cooperation of ordinary people with talents, instead of those in power, and by doing so demonstrated what can potentially spark from the marriage of technology and however much human agency we as ordinary people hold.

This reminds me of a play by Sarah Raul that has been one of my constant source of inspirations. It's called "In the Next Room, or the vibrator play". The story is set in a time soon after Edison's discovery of the application of electricity, and it stages a battle between technology and human emotions. It revolves around the question presented in the play in the form of a riddle: what is a thing that can put a man to death and also bring him back to life? Some say it's electricity, while others say love. The main character, Dr. Givings, is fascinated with science and technology and uses one of the earliest electronic appliances, later identified as the vibrator, to treat patients with hysteria. While reading the play, I found myself impressed with the great technological leap at the time, in contrast to the bizarre belief that women's emotional instabilities are caused by bad fluids in their wombs. The doctor's expertise in the latest technology and his belief in traditional, conservative family values reflects an imbalance between technology and cultural progress. In the play, the imbalance is mediated by the doctor's stay-home wife, who is unknowledgeable about science but constantly raises profound questions about human relationships, socially-constructed norms and gender roles. The play ends on a hopeful note with the couple's passionate embrace in the snow, symbolizing the harmony between science and humanity.

Both the music video and the play give us a sense of hope and empowerment in the age of technological advance. Technology doesn't have to be be cold and intimidating as long as our cultural intellect and moralities are on par with it. To borrow my professor's words, globalization isn't an intimidating process, it started since the beginning of humanity, when one person desires to connect and understand another.

It Takes Two to Tango?

As a beginner tango dancer, I am fortunate enough to be instructed by a dance teacher who emphasizes the gender roles and partnership communicated by the dance form as well as he does the techniques. I recently stumbled upon a blog post about the "gender roles" in tango, which represents a more traditional view on the roles of each partner collaborating in a tango dance. This view is very much at odds with the feminist culture, and tends to evoke biased opinions on tango as a dance form. The blog suggests a very patriarchal stance of the art form, in which the male is solely responsible for the situation and "protects" the female, while the female "completely surrenders". This is not only misleading in terms of the concept behind tango, but may also result in erroneous practices of techniques, where the follower leans her weight on the leader and the leader's movements are robust and rigid. In reality, the follower, generally performed by women, balances on her own feet, sets boundaries between herself and the leader, and controls the pace of the dance. My instructor makes a very vivid analogy between leader-followership in tango and the magician and his female partner. The audiences sees that the magician "makes" the girl disappear and reappear, when the whole show is an illusion. She is the one who does all the work, and he gets all the credit. She willingly surrenders the applause to him while she gets the thing that she wants the most--beauty. This is precisely the beauty of tango. The leader leads with no more effort than standing on his two feet and walking, but the audience sees that he makes the dance happens. She, who can dance just as effortlessly without him, is made beautiful by altruistically dethroning herself.

Credits to: Daniel Trenner

Short Story Recommendation

Tenth of December is a collection of brilliant short stories by George Saunders, where characters are put in complicated situations in which their raw humanities are exposed. Perhaps the most proclaimed or controversial story from the whole collection is "Escape from Spiderhead", in which the protagonist Jeff, a prisoner, is used as a lab rat to test out chemicals that can generate some of the most powerful emotions like love. The story explore the question of whether there's a force more powerful than love within us, and the answer is positive: the protagonist's will to do no harm is stronger than his love for his own life, it transcends any individual personal bond. Saunders choose to tell the story from a former convict's point of view perhaps to show that the love and sense of responsibility for humanity, especially after one's witnessed his own potential for violence and evil, is more powerful than any emotions.

Read the story here and share your thoughts. 

The "Feminism" in "50 Shades of Grey"

Being in a liberal arts college that encourages diversity and open conversation, I found that the opinion on some subject matters are pretty one-sided. For example, almost all of us deem romance novels as trashy and useless. The chintzy colors of the covers signal a section of the bookstore that a member of the academia want to avoid. Romance novels are looked down upon because the subject matter is women-oriented, and it often reflects a traditional, sexist gender dynamic. But media scholar Janice Radway have done serious research on this literary genre that's devalued as not so serious. (p. 278, Croteau and Hoytes, Media/Society)

In her book "Reading the Romance", Radway explores the act of reading romance novels. She found that the readership of romance novels mostly consist of women who're small town housewives, who abide by the more traditional gender roles. For them reading romance novels is a way to take breaks from housework as well as their realities. These women are rooted for the fictional heroines emotionally and finds comfort when they live vicariously through characters who get all their emotional needs satisfied. Reading romance novels is therefore an expression of women's dissatisfaction of their role as mothers/wives. It is not entirely an outright protest against their roles as much as a literal as well as figurative escape.

Beau Sia and the Authenticity of Place

This poem by poet Beau Sia reminds me of the concept of "the authenticity of place" that my friend had introduced me to a while ago. She explained to me that information about a memory are stored in our brain in nodes that connect with each other, so a place where we went on a date with our significant other is always going to be a part of the memory associated with the relationship we have. A place is a witness of my relationship with my boyfriend, and it is also the witness of other people's relationships with their loved ones. By acknowledging our individual memories as part of the collective memory, we feel as if the memory was more real, more tangible, and we feel connected to the big picture.

Beau Sia came to my school a couple of weeks ago to perform, he was very humorous, talented and his works touched us with honesty and tenderness. One of my favorite things that he said during the performance was: "The power in a relationship does not come from dominance, it comes from connection."

Love is NOT Color Blind

http://cholakovv.com/en/blog/2450

This article discusses a topic that me and my fellow Asian women sometimes shy away from talking about. I've heard many comments along the lines of: "I've only dated white men." But that was usually quickly backed up with: "I went to a boarding high school in a town that was predominantly white." None of us are willing to surrender to the idea that we are part of a social phenomenon that's becoming progressively visible. Junot Diaz had concluded this phenomenon in a bitingly honest way: "We'd like to think that we just fall in love, when in fact, we often fall in love along the terms of the racial economy." His statement may cause different levels of discomfort, but I don't think his intention is to shame us. It's important to keep in mind that like those black children choosing between black dolls and white dolls, we weren't making convoluted calculations when choosing to who to fall in love with. The rule of attraction is cultivated within us before we are given the power to make decisions. The cultivation theory in media studies suggests that the longer one spends to watch TV, the more likely he/she is prone to believe the social reality portrayed in the television. It's worthy to note that the theory is not talking about any particular TV show, it is talking about the long term effect of being exposed to the TV world. For viewers like us growing up in a media environment where very few TV shows portray Asian men as masculine and desirable and most heros are men, it is not surprising how our personal taste is gradually altered. While it's very hard to change what kind of people we're attracted to, I suggest that we can start the change with watching TV shows that has a more realistic and tolerating standard of beauty, and we can also be more conscious when choosing TV shows for our kids.

We're All Cellmates in the Prison of Love

Here's a song worth contemplation by the band The Civil Wars, made up with duo partners Joy Williams and John Paul White. I absolutely love the lyrics to this song, in the second verse, Joy sings:

I wish you'd hold me when I turn my back, 

And then John follows:

The less I give, the more I get back. 

A lot of people relate to these two lines, and what I found interesting is that this is one instance where the "prisoners' dilemma", one of the most well-known game theories comes into play.

For those of you who are new to the prisoner's dilemma, I'm going to briefly explain it in the context of this song: Joy and John both love each other, but there's no way they would know if the other shares reciprocal emotions. Here's John's rationale: if him and Joy both confess their loves, they fall in love and live happily ever after; if he confesses his loves and gets rejected, he will suffer intense heartache and Joy will triumph in the tugging war of love; if neither of them confesses, they will part ways brooding over what could've been. Suppose that Joy has the exact same rationale, the two of them will eventually choose to stay silent in attempt to protect themselves even though confessing their loves for each other will make everyone better off. In other words, in such a situation one will always come to the conclusion that the more less one gives, the more one gets back.

I hope my off-the-topic analysis hasn't ruined the song for you yet. This is one of my favorite songs, enjoy!

It is More Than Kissing

I have to disagree with one of the commenters of this article: "Kissing is one of those things, the more you think about it, the less appealing it becomes." In my humble opinion, the more you think about a habitual, mundane practice, the more bizarre it seems. Think of any practice we perform everyday: brushing our teeth with a minuscule cleaning brush, and disposing our wastes on seats with an open hole, in the same room where we cleanse ourselves... This is one of those article that breaks a familiar subject down to tiny pieces and putting each of them under microscope lenses so that when you eventually zoom out to look at the whole picture, it's completely contorted. I could never look at kissing the same upon reading this article, but it doesn't mean I'm any less into it. What about you?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/10/11/231458850/what-humans-can-learn-from-a-simple-kiss

Interesting Piece about Human Sexuality

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/is-monogamy-unnatural3f/5516302#transcript 

 

Click "download audio" to listen to the piece or click "show transcript")

This is an interesting cross-cultural/species examination of human sexuality. Although I am a little critical about some of the points he made: 

First, although monogamy is a social construct, it is as deeply engrained in us as our nature as a species. Our nature as a species and our "nature" as a product of the society usually come hand in hand. My professor has told us to be very careful when using the term "human nature" for that reason: it's very hard to draw the lines between "human nature" and "cultural nature". So while saying it is our species' nature to be highly sexual, we should also keep in mind that abiding by social rules is also natural to us since it increases our chances of survival. It is perhaps equally as hard to disobey monogamy as it is to practice it. (the level of difficulty measured by different units.)

And I think the reason women tend to cling to a relationship while men tend to easily give it up is more or less a product of the patriarchy. I hope don't need to explain that one...

Lastly I think the idea that family is the most stable unit of society is changing now. People like to have certainty about their partners' sexual and emotional availability. But if that solidarity is wrecked we can always go out and find other people to sleep with. It'll just take more work. I would like to promote empathy among every sexually frustrated individual because the rest of the world is on the same boat as them, desperate of getting laid.  

The take home message should be get over yourself instead. 

How Do I Know I Love You?

I was engrossed in my book while a painfully mundane old school love song came up on the radio. The first two lines went: "Don't know much about history, don't know much about biology". I rolled my eyes at the degree of cheesiness and predictability of the song which was very much reminiscent of the cheesy and predictable sandwich I just stuffed my face with. As I attempted to reacquaint myself with the intellectually engaging entertainment I had in hand which I so obnoxiously believed that would set me apart from people represented by whomever had sung the song, it suddenly hit me that the lyrics of the song actually delivers a message that, much to my surprise, resonates with the chapter I was reading in "Love's Knowledge by Martha Nussbaum". 

In celebration of my rare Eureka moment and for your readers' entertainment, I'm going to shortly summarize this chapter in "Love's Knowledge" through a scrutiny of the song that, under blithe research, is titled "Don't Know Much about History" (I know, as if the corny musicianship and lyrics doesn't already do the song justice). The lyrics of the song:

"Don't know much about history
Don't know much biology
Don't know much about science book
Don't know much about the French I took

But I do know that I love you
And I know that if you love me too
What a wonderful world this would be"

involves two kinds of "knowledge", the intellectual knowledge which we learn from history and biology, and the impressional knowledge which the immediate reality afflicts upon us. The song suggests that even though one knows nothing about the scientific method of approaching subject matters, he/she is still able to know where his/her own heart lies. How? The Stoic philosopher Zeno explains that what composes any of our knowledge of the outside world is a bunch of perceptual impressions. Because these impressions are brought about by reality itself, one can be certain that they are veracious. This certainty enables us to know our own heart, and it serves as the basis of the development of sciences.

Why is knowing the distinction between intellect and knowledge important? I'll share one of my own experiences: last week my friend told me that he was struggling with his relationship, in which he wasn't sure whether he should give up on his girlfriend who always blew hot and cold. I advised him to "do a cost-benefit analysis"on staying with his girlfriend. I now realize the problem with what I suggested was that the use of the cost-benefit analysis, one of the most commonplace assessment methods in our intellectual tradition, is a form of self-deception. It distances us from feelings we're afraid of, and makes us think that we're in control of a situation we're not. We often fail to recognize that these very feelings, unquantifiable under the lenses of reasoning, are the gateways to knowing our own heart. In fact, the Stoics explain that it is not only the gateways to knowing, it is knowing. Love is not waiting there to be revealed, it is in fact constituted by the emotions and sufferings that we have to go through. Especially that of suffering, since it is simply the most overwhelming.

In other words, my friend can know whether or not he loves his girlfriend enough to be with her, even if he's illiterate, by simply being susceptible to the depth and significance of his own feelings.

On Richard Siken's Poem

I just spent two hours listening to a friend's romantic episode. I don't watch a lot of movies but I always get intrigued with real life stories about love. My faith in the validity of true love has never been weak but every time I hear such a love story, it gets fortified a little more. She had told me that despite the many validations her guy had given her, she was still worried that her anxiety disorder will impede the progression of the relationship. Her worries reminded me of a poem written by Richard Siken, which poses a similar question about the roles we play in relationships: are we the princesses waiting to be saved, the heros fighting to death, the dragons who destroy everything, or the writers whose omnipotence our relationships depend upon?  Here goes the poem: 

Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out

BY RICHARD SIKEN

Every morning the maple leaves.

                               Every morning another chapter where the hero shifts

            from one foot to the other. Every morning the same big

and little words all spelling out desire, all spelling out

                                             You will be alone always and then you will die.

So maybe I wanted to give you something more than a catalog

         of non-definitive acts,

something other than the desperation.

                   Dear So-and-So, I’m sorry I couldn’t come to your party.

Dear So-and-So, I’m sorry I came to your party

         and seduced you

and left you bruised and ruined, you poor sad thing.

                                                         You want a better story. Who wouldn’t?

A forest, then. Beautiful trees. And a lady singing.

                  Love on the water, love underwater, love, love and so on.

What a sweet lady. Sing lady, sing! Of course, she wakes the dragon.

            Love always wakes the dragon and suddenly

                                                                                               flames everywhere.

I can tell already you think I’m the dragon,

                that would be so like me, but I’m not. I’m not the dragon.

I’m not the princess either.

                           Who am I? I’m just a writer. I write things down.

I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure,

               I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow

         glass, but that comes later.

                                                            And the part where I push you

flush against the wall and every part of your body rubs against the bricks,

            shut up

I’m getting to it.

                                    For a while I thought I was the dragon.

I guess I can tell you that now. And, for a while, I thought I was

                                                                                                the princess,

cotton candy pink, sitting there in my room, in the tower of the castle,

          young and beautiful and in love and waiting for you with

confidence

            but the princess looks into her mirror and only sees the princess,

while I’m out here, slogging through the mud, breathing fire,

                                                               and getting stabbed to death.

                                    Okay, so I’m the dragon. Big deal.

          You still get to be the hero.

You get magic gloves! A fish that talks! You get eyes like flashlights!

                  What more do you want?

I make you pancakes, I take you hunting, I talk to you as if you’re

            really there.

Are you there, sweetheart? Do you know me? Is this microphone live?

                                                       Let me do it right for once,

             for the record, let me make a thing of cream and stars that becomes,

you know the story, simply heaven.

                   Inside your head you hear a phone ringing

                                                               and when you open your eyes

only a clearing with deer in it. Hello deer.

                               Inside your head the sound of glass,

a car crash sound as the trucks roll over and explode in slow motion.

             Hello darling, sorry about that.

                                                       Sorry about the bony elbows, sorry we

lived here, sorry about the scene at the bottom of the stairwell

                                    and how I ruined everything by saying it out loud.

            Especially that, but I should have known.

You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together

            to make a creature that will do what I say

or love me back.

                  I’m not really sure why I do it, but in this version you are not

feeding yourself to a bad man

                                                   against a black sky prickled with small lights.

            I take it back.

The wooden halls like caskets. These terms from the lower depths.

                                                I take them back.

Here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed.

                                                                                               Crossed out.

            Clumsy hands in a dark room. Crossed out. There is something

underneath the floorboards.

                   Crossed out. And here is the tabernacle

                                                                                                reconstructed.

Here is the part where everyone was happy all the time and we were all

               forgiven,

even though we didn’t deserve it.

                                                                    Inside your head you hear

a phone ringing, and when you open your eyes you’re washing up

            in a stranger’s bathroom,

standing by the window in a yellow towel, only twenty minutes away

                           from the dirtiest thing you know.

All the rooms of the castle except this one, says someone, and suddenly

                                                                                              darkness,

                                                                                     suddenly only darkness.

In the living room, in the broken yard,

                                  in the back of the car as the lights go by. In the airport

          bathroom’s gurgle and flush, bathed in a pharmacy of

unnatural light,

             my hands looking weird, my face weird, my feet too far away.

And then the airplane, the window seat over the wing with a view

                                                            of the wing and a little foil bag of peanuts.

I arrived in the city and you met me at the station,

          smiling in a way

                    that made me frightened. Down the alley, around the arcade,

          up the stairs of the building

to the little room with the broken faucets, your drawings, all your things,

                                                I looked out the window and said

                                This doesn’t look that much different from home,

            because it didn’t,

but then I noticed the black sky and all those lights.

                                           We walked through the house to the elevated train.

            All these buildings, all that glass and the shiny beautiful

                                                                                             mechanical wind.

We were inside the train car when I started to cry. You were crying too,

            smiling and crying in a way that made me

even more hysterical. You said I could have anything I wanted, but I

                                                                                      just couldn’t say it out loud.

Actually, you said Love, for you,

                                 is larger than the usual romantic love. It’s like a religion. It’s

                                                                                                 terrifying. No one

                                                                                 will ever want to sleep with you.

Okay, if you’re so great, you do it—

                        here’s the pencil, make it work . . .

If the window is on your right, you are in your own bed. If the window

            is over your heart, and it is painted shut, then we are breathing

river water.

            Build me a city and call it Jerusalem. Build me another and call it

                                                                                                                 Jerusalem.

                            We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not

what we sought, so do it over, give me another version,

             a different room, another hallway, the kitchen painted over

and over,

             another bowl of soup.

The entire history of human desire takes about seventy minutes to tell.

             Unfortunately, we don’t have that kind of time.

                                                                                                 Forget the dragon,

leave the gun on the table, this has nothing to do with happiness.

                                        Let’s jump ahead to the moment of epiphany,

             in gold light, as the camera pans to where

the action is,

             lakeside and backlit, and it all falls into frame, close enough to see

                                                the blue rings of my eyes as I say

                                                                                                   something ugly.

I never liked that ending either. More love streaming out the wrong way,

             and I don’t want to be the kind that says the wrong way.

But it doesn’t work, these erasures, this constant refolding of the pleats.

                                                            There were some nice parts, sure,

all lemondrop and mellonball, laughing in silk pajamas

             and the grains of sugar

                              on the toast, love love or whatever, take a number. I’m sorry

                                                                                  it’s such a lousy story.

Dear Forgiveness, you know that recently

                     we have had our difficulties and there are many things

                                                                                                  I want to ask you.

I tried that one time, high school, second lunch, and then again,

             years later, in the chlorinated pool.

                                      I am still talking to you about help. I still do not have

             these luxuries.

I have told you where I’m coming from, so put it together.

                                                            We clutch our bellies and roll on the floor . . .

             When I say this, it should mean laughter,

not poison.

                  I want more applesauce. I want more seats reserved for heroes.

Dear Forgiveness, I saved a plate for you.

                                                  Quit milling around the yard and come inside.