silverrevolver

Literature vs. life. I have been spending much time with a writer who writes political novels under the pen name "Francis McCay". When I first read her writing I was struck by the delicacy of her words. My ego poked (an egoists hates the idea that anyone is better at anything -- Falacy one), I scrutanized her poems, reading and re-reading. Last week we shared a beveridge and had a discussion about literature, a powerwalk marathon discusion; long winded at a constant level of moderate intensity. We were discussing Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet." She said to me, "Writing is the reason I get up in the morning, I feel like it is my purpose." Flabergasted. Understand; writing is just another means to an end, no more. Cooking is also a means to an end. Ask me, "To what end?" To live better! No more need be said. Reading her poems again, as well as an except from her novel I was struck with the realization; she has polish (where my writing does not) but her ideas are as yet immature and she takes things so seriously. I tried to make her laugh, but it was like chipping away at a chasty belt with nothing but a lamb-skin condom. Someone (though I forget who) once said, "The first step on the road to wisdom is an acknowledgement of your own ridiculousness.

I am a hare's (that's right, a rabbit!) breath away from finising Lawrence Durell's "Alexandria Quartet" and I am struck dumb by the literary collosous he has constructed. What is love? What is truth? What happens when you come to understand that what you imagined to be the truth of your love affair is revealed to be a lie? Then an impartial world-truth that destroys the second truth you imagined in the uncovering of the lie. How do you move on? The last volume is falling apart and I leave behind little scraps of brittle, old paper everywhere I go, confetti that I leave marking the trail for those who follow. I carry with me a booklet of cds I burned for someone very dear to me (although I imagine I am no longer dear to her), lacking the nerve to drop it on her doorstep. Her truth is that I am an insane fucked up boy who needs years of therapy for her to consider me healthy enough to be a, "friend". Perhaps true, or perhaps I need to be the bad guy for her to seperate, vindication makes one sleep well at night (alas I have no such luxury). For me that is an insane sanction and it seems to me her friendship a conditional commodity(falacy two!). I think two people fell apart, and one cannot rebuild in the midst of the rubble. We are probably both right, until the world reveals both our mendaciousness. I feel as if Vishnu is playing tricks on me, spinning the mandala wheel one way, my body the other so I can catch a glimpse but the vison is dizzying. The strength to perservere, to survive is easy for me, always has been; subsistance and comfor seems to be the difficult part. Until next, remember: posession is nine tenths of the law.