Stephen McCauley, in True Enough: "'If you can't have the person you love, you might as well take the booby prize and have the person who's in love with you.'": Andy K. We were each, at various times in high school, the booby prize. On one notable occasion when I was incomprehensibly intoxicated I stayed at his house (I'd been visiting a friend in Mpls and she ditched me for a guy - ! - and Andy was kind enough to let me crash at his place), I was passing out on his bed (he slept on the couch) and before I'd let him leave the bedroom I tearfully moaned, "You're the shell on my egg!" What a nightmare of a memory.
Elizabeth Berg, in Never Change: "'I hate it when this happens. I hate it when you say something wrong, and suddenly you're in this hole you can't get out of. And everything you say to try to convince someone of the truth just makes you sound like more of a liar.'" Andrew M. My first manager from Kaplan, one of the best friends I could ever hope to have. Somewhere along the line I lost control of things and I don't know if I'll ever manage to make sense of them again. I miss him more than I could ever explain.
Cathy Coote, in Innocents: "I felt I owned the big hand I held, the big body to which it was attached, the rough cheeks which needed shaving every day, the deep voice. The strength of your desire made you mine." This one is both sad and funny: Jim-the-child-molester. When I worked at IGA and was 17, there was a guy working there named Jim. He was very intense and always looked at me (just me?) in a way that seemed somehow more 'intrusive' than other people could look. He asked me out one day, seemingly out of the blue. One night we were at the walk-up apartment that he shared with another guy, Kurt, whom I'd known forever and who seemed uncomfortable with my presence but who Jim didn't seem to want me to be around. We were talking about something totally innocent - graduation, maybe? - and I said I would graduate in '88. He said he'd graduated in '78. I asked how old he was and he said, "27". "YOU'RE 27?!" "Yes." "What would my parents say? What would your parents say if they knew that you were dating a 17-year-old?" Because he knew, you see, how old I was, all along. "My parents don't have anything to say about it; I'm an adult and make my own choices." While he made that speech, I was stalking across the room and twisting the locks - the deadbolts and the doorknob - to make my dramatic exit. Only I didn't know the combination to which locks were open and which weren't, so I was stuck. He had to let me out. But I left, and I was disgusted, and I never went out with him again. And I know that I wasn't the last 17-ish girl he dated - eeeeew.
Joan Silber, in Lucky Us, p. 122: "I had never been secretive before, but my double life felt natural to me. I had a hidden existence anyway, didn't I...." BJP. Some secrets have to remain secret. But this, too: John Bossy, in Christianity in the West, 1400-1700 (I know, that's weird): "... adultery [is] not a case of the ambiguities of love, but a particularly nasty form of theft." And this: Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (c. 35-c. 100): "A liar should have a good memory."
Elizabeth Evans, in 'A New Life,' in Suicide's Girlfriend, p. 114: "I thought about that a lot in the years after, how the littlest thing could make all the difference, turning your head this way instead of that at one moment in your life could decide who you married or whether you lost control on a curve and so on." Blake N. My first real boyfriend, if you think of 'real' in the sense of...well, that way. I was driving to (my neighborhood) from the Valley with Joel K (Andy's brother) on a sunny March - April? - day. Right after school, my senior year. And as we crested a hill and came around a curve, there was a vision on a ten-speed in front of us. I nearly swerved into the bluff when my lower jaw fell off my face. "Who is that?!" "That's Blake." It was obviously meant to be; we stopped and talked with him then. Joel introduced me, which in retrospect is surprising since they didn't like each other at all. I ran into Blake at the mall that night and we made plans to go to a movie that weekend. The next night we ran into each other again. Neither time did we have any prior knowledge of the other's presence before arriving. Our relationship made me very happy. He was grounded from almost the first night. I lost my head over him, and several friends, and neglected to go to my senior prom. All because Joel and I happened to be on that one weird country road (where we almost never were) that day (at a time of day when we were almost never out driving), and Joel agreed to introduce me to someone who he didn't think was good enough for me. Meant to be.
John Burnham Schwartz, in Claire Marvel, p. 301: "The only good thing about your not being here is you can't leave." I can't explain this yet, but it means something. This too: Jens Christian Grondahl, in Silence in October, p. 237: "What was it about her that made her such a watershed? ... Was it our mutual love of Mark Rothko and Morris Louis, her way of intuiting what I was going to say about them and about everything else we discussed because each of us had thought and felt the same thing? Was it the remarkable, finely tuned, undisturbed, and noiseless wavelength where we had found each other so easily, because for years we had transmitted on the same frequency without knowing it?" And this: Robb Forman Dew, in The Evidence Against Her: "He felt a powerful lurch of being suspended briefly in a moment that is perfect." This, too: William Shakespeare:
To me, fair friend, you can never be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Such seems your beauty still.
And this: Anne Lamott, in Bird by Bird, p. 98: "Sometimes you run into someone, regardless of age or sex, whom you know absolutely to be an independently operating part of the Whole that goes on all the time inside yourself, and the eye-motes go click and you hear the tribal tones of voice resonate, and there it is -- you recognize them."
Prince, in "Automatic": "I love the way U kiss me, not with your lips, but with your soul" Paul R. I think he actually said this to me once at a high school dance. I don't even think I laughed out loud, which is making me laugh out loud while I type this.
William Shakespeare, in Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene ii, lines 198-210:
I fear him not.
Yet if my name were liable to fear,
I do not know the man I should avoid
So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much,
He is a great observer, and he looks
Quite through the deeds of men. He loves no plays
As thou dost; he hears no music.
Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort
As if he mocked himself and scorned his spirit
That could be moved to smile at anything.
Such men as he be never at heart's ease
Whiles they behold a greater than themselves,
And therefore are they very dangerous.
Mrs. Margaret K, my 10th grade English teacher. She led me, without realizing I was being led, to a head-over-heels adoration of Shakespeare and poetry and the written word in general. I'd always loved to write, but she made me really, really love to read. I'll never forget her, or this.
Phyllis McGinley - A Choice of Weapons
Sticks and stones are hard on bones.
Aimed with angry art,
Words can sting like anything.
But silence breaks the heart.
My sister.
Edna St. Vincent Millay:
For warmth alone, for shelter only
From the cold anger of the eyeless wind,
That knows my whereabouts, and mainly
To be at your door when I go down
Is abroad at all tonight in town,
I left my phrase in air, and sinned,
Laying my head against your arm
A moment, and as suddenly
Withdrawing it, and sitting there,
Warmed a little but far from warm,
And the wind still waiting at the foot of the stair,
And much harm done, and the phrase in air
John "Lamb" N. We worked together at IGA. (Sensing a trend, anyone?) We made an error once. Traded friendship for something far less important, in a house in the middle of a parking lot. I wonder where he ended up?
Walt Whitman: "Have you learned lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who reject you, and brace themselves against you? Or who treat you with contempt, or dispute the passage with you?" Samuel O, former Professor of Intellectual Property (including Copyright, Trademark and Patent), at N I U College of Law. While a difficult man, and an extremely demanding professor, he is also one of the best teachers I have ever had. He scared the hell out of me and was really intimidating, but I was rarely more proud than when I earned A's in his classes.
Lin Yutang: "If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live." T.O. She can't let herself do useless yet. It's the area of life in which we are the most different.
Edna St. Vincent Millay:
Well, I have lost you; and I lost you fairly;
In my own way, and with my full consent.
Say what you will, kings in tumbrel rarely
Went to their deaths more proud than this one went.
Some nights of apprehension and hot weeping
I will confess; but that's permitted me;
Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keeping
Rubbed in a cage a wing that would be free.
If I had loved you less or played you slyly
I might have held you for a summer more,
But at the cost of words I value highly,
And no such summer as the one before.
Should I outlive this anguish - and men do -
I shall have only good to say of you.
SP, of "Midnight" by Yaz fame. Same old story. Lines 9-12, particularly.
Kirk M. Sorenson: "When the horse is dead, get off." Emily. There's a very bad, hilarious story here that I swore I wouldn't tell. It's about Henry. Damn it.
Edna St. Vincent Millay:
You were, of course, not there.
And I of course wept, remembering where I last had met you,
Yet clawed with desperate nails at the sliding dream, screaming not to lose,
since I cannot forget you.
I felt the hot tears come;
Streaming with useless tears, which make the ears roar and the eyelids swell,
My blind face sought the window-sill
To cry on - frozen mourning melted by sly sleep,
Slapping hard-bought repose with quick successive blows until it whimper and
outright weep
My cat, M. She died when I was 20. It's not as if I could have saved her life, but I had the opportunity to see her one more time and I didn't. Not that I knew I'd never have the chance again, but, I never had the chance again. And I woke up in tears for weeks, desperate for the opportunity to make things right.
Unknown: I'm sorry you are wiser.
I'm sorry you are taller.
I liked you better foolish.
I liked you better smaller.
Cindy B. She was extremely petty.
Franklin P. Jones: "Wearing shorts usually reveals nothing about a man so much as his indifference to public opinion." John the philosopher!
Marlene Dietrich: "It's the friends you can call up at 4:00 AM that matter." And Len Wein: "A true friend is someone who is there for you when he'd rather be anywhere else." J. Funny how you can meet someone in the strangest of ways and know that they're golden. And just hope that they know that you're there, too.
Unknown: "He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet." My thesis advisor! He's all wings. Impractical bastard. This, too: James Joyce, in Ulysses: "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." Tee hee.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790): "Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing in the tempting place." and the corollary, T.S. Eliot: "There is no greater treason than to do the right deed for the wrong reason." My Constitutional Law professor, Prof. S, offered an A for the semester to anyone who could identify the source of "that" quotation. I did so the next day. I got an A in the class. Coincidence? I don't think so....
Sebastian Brant (c. 1458-1521): "The world wants to be deceived." Russ.
Garrison Keillor, in Lake Wobegon Days: "Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have got it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known." T.O. This is perhaps my firmest, fondest wish for her - to be happy first and foremost, and to be fulfilled. The rest is gravy, baby! I'm struggling not to give advice, but maybe Helen Keller can get away with it: "When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us."
Jenny McPhee, in The Center of Things: "'There's murder in every intelligent woman's heart.'" Brian-the-Army-guy!
Ann Wadsworth, in Light, Coming Back: "But [she] is gone. She woke me from a life of sleep, and now I discover I have no reason to stay awake." 2:00-Man. Someone who, in a former life, would sneak out of his parents' house (where he was perpetually grounded - no, not Blake - and run across town to where I lived, so he could sneak into my apartment or house (he did this over a period when I lived at 3 different places) and sleep with me. Yup, sleep. Zzzzzzz. Me under the covers, him on top. Me unclothed, him clothed. It was the sweetest thing. But this reminds me of him, too: Alessandra Montrucchio, in Cardiofitness, p. 90: "...what's beautiful isn't moral." Not that I believe the quote - it's more of a reminder of the book.
I hadn't really intended this to go this long. It's an example of how much words and writing mean to me, though. And I've somehow managed to blow an entire evening on it. Editing after work, after my haircut, tomorrow. Dedicated; yeah, right.
I leave you with a thought that will perhaps remind you of someone: "Some people drink from the fountain of knowledge. Others merely gargle."
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