Nocturnal

The God who is Love
Promises but one thing,
I will not forget you.

Our deepest fear
Is to be forgotten
By those we love.

And I am very afraid.

E pur io torno

E pur io torno, qui linea al centro,
qual foco sfera e qual ruscello al mare,
e se ben luce alcuna non apare
ah, so ben io, che sta il mio sol qui dentro.

(And so I turn back, a line to its center,
A spark to its source and a brook to the sea,
And even though the light does not appear,
ah, still I know well, that my only sun lives inside. - my translation)
- - Gian Francesco Busenello
- -L'Incoronazione di poppea

Situated at the center of a circle,
No matter in which direction you run,
You run into the same rounded line,
The same boundry.

My memory of you
Bounds me in its circle,
And it often causes me joy,
Such joy, for such a few moments
But a little farther out,
The painful desire to see you again
Bounds my world,
Circle encircled in a circle of...
You finish the thought,
But anyway you finish it
I am bounded in by

You who are not there.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve, night of mystery,
Almost midnight - but wait!
Those can't be the bells yet...
Is it on the roof...?
Could it really be Santa Claus?
Ho! Ho! Ho!
And every peel sounds, to me,
Ho-peless, hopeless, hopeless.

Holiday Shopping Guide

My nomination for an overlooked classic
Hollywood holiday film this Chanukah-Christmas is
There's Always Tomorrow, directed by Douglas Sirk.
It's also a great last minute gift buy; not only does it
star Barbara Stanwick, one of the two
indispensable Hollywood Stars (Bette Davis
of the languid eye-lids being the other
of course), but it stars my favorite fatally entwined
film noir couple, Barbara Stanwick-Fred MacMurray,
not to mention the smouldering Joan Bennett,
who played my favorite film mother ever in That Reckless Moment.

In any case, it's the best film I know of about
loving one while being trapped with another.
It's also the one film I know about a toymaker
in which the filmmaker doesn't infantalize himself.
It's not explicitly a holiday film, but toys and
Christmas go together, so there you are.

What Must Be Remembered

What you'll never know, you'll never know,
And what I must remember, I must remember.

I have to remember I'm not the first
To have had to live without the love
Who enlivened her life with life.

Others have survived carrying the weight
Of what's not there. Others have kept
Finding themselves repeating underneath,

I miss you, Rachel, oh how I miss you,
Oh how you'll never know how I miss you.

Return

It would be nice to be needed by you.
I have many needs, so many I had
When first we met, and you met
Every one of them, you met them all
Except one - you never needed me,
Never even a little, in return.

Yes, it would be nice to be needed
By you, but I could be happy
Passing you day by day,
Returning smile for smile,
And knowing I had,
Even a little, brightened your day

Not Night, Night

Day, not night, formed the background
When first I noticed that your eyes
Shine more brightly than any star.

I could take your picture,
I said innocently enough
And suddenly -
How could it have taken me so long!
So long to notice the beauty
Reserved in your eyes.

And as long as you stayed
With us,
They illumined my life with joy,

And now:
They shine more brightly than ever
Against the dark night of your absence

Moro, Mia Vita

The author of this text
"Dovro dunque morire?"
set here by Giulio Caccini,
is Ottavio Rinunccini,
the first great artist of opera.

As the character dies,
she says to her love,

"Oh grief unheard,
Must I then die, knowing I can't
Say to you, I die, O my life?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnqGttNBTS0

Of course I can't listen to this without
thinking of you, Rachel, afraid I'll never
see you again, afraid you'll never know
what you meant to me.

Stillness

I am hoping a work of art
Will draw you back to me
And bind us two together
In a feeling outside ourselves,
In that stillness called beauty.

Beauty belongs to no one,
And is not open to all;
And art can not change the world,
Every serious artist knows;
But if we - parted - could come
Together if only part to part,
If only in that frame, then

It would be still,
Still enough for me.

Penelope & Rachel

In all the great stories of love persevering
Over time, there are two varieties,
Male endeavour and female patience,
Penelope aloof among her suitors,
Stringing her tapestry to express her love,
And unstringing her art to protect it.

Who knows, Rachel, what your namesake felt
Those fourteen years of Jacob's work
She had to wait through
To finally feel his by now rough hands
On her waist - she who made him weep!
With desire the moment, the first moment
He first laid eyes on her eyes.

Blinded by tears, her eyes
Swimming out of focus into pure color,
He kissed her once and never kissed her
Again through fourteen years. Oh lucky Jacob,
I've never kissed you once even, and
(This haunts me) I could have hugged you
When my brother died but didn't.

You have not given me permission
To wait patiently for you.
You have not promised, have not said
Anything about coming back,
So alone I must persevere after you.

Just

It would be fine, Rachel, just fine,
If I were to die for you;
It'd really be so -
If I just had any hope, Rachel

Any hope you'd ever know.

Insomnia

I'm lying awake again, thinking of you.
Tonight I've given in and taken something.
I'm just going to keep listening to this over
and over until the drug kicks in and I fall asleep:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-4JDUkCUWU

I imagine like everyone else, I'm drawn to the one line:
"I'll love you like I love you, and then I'll die."

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

The words in Arcade Fire's Wake Up
represent the typical young person's
chauvinism towards the old. If the old
feel less it's only because their hearts
have been forced to realize that
life is too painful to take in fully.
Rachel once said to me, The moment you
love, you're unlimited.

I wanted to answer,
"The moment you love, it's your suffering
which is unlimited."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-wEBmLht5g


But what does it matter what the words
to this song are, the important thing
is that the "OHHHHH" of the chorus expresses
better than anything else how Rachel fills
up my heart.


I am a musician and poet,
I write prose easily,
My work is full of felt life,
I have received citations
for my acting, sometimes
moving my audience to tears,
I am handy with a camera,
I consider myself
an absolute mistress
of all stagecraft;
Until I met you
I was able to draw
out any emotion by hand;

But now I have met you,
And I have no means at all,
No means at all
To express how I feel.

CHICAGO

How is it you're still alive,
Your vision still swimming with beauty,
And yet you haunt me?

Oh, Rachel, Chicago,
Knowing you're still here - somewhere,
Though I never see you....ahh,
The truth is the streets of Chicago
Are more alive than ever
With pain,
and the most painful truth is this:

She of the luminous eyes
Does not love you.

God Bless You, Rachel

Oh God bless you, Rachel,
But God don't let you forget me.
Let there always be at least
One more time for me to cross
The threshold into your mind,
Like that ghost of the future
In that book you read by my beside
Who promises to visit his love
Always one more time before dying.

Home For The Holidays

I'll Be Home For Christmas
played on the loudspeaker
while I waited - hard pressed -
in line for my needed coffee;
I never felt so trapped.

In trouble, Rachel:
No doubt any longer I'm in trouble;
And I even think you'd care
If you had a thought to spare
For the patient you cured
Right out of your life.

In trouble, Leah and I:
I'm a disappointment to her,
Her disappointment, a trap for me.
Who can live being her beloved's
Disappointment?

Who can keep loving?
Yet there's one I love,
And I'll never disappoint,
Even if she should ever
Think of me again.

Rachel of the Windows

I call you Rachel of the windows,
Because your eyes were always, for me,
The windows to a better world.

Darker with the Day

The exquisite Nick Cave catches the mood exquisitely.

Get ready to be ravished emotionally:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEiqtpLr6b8

At Least

At least I never told you I loved you,
So neither one of us need be embarrassed
If a stray thought of me should
Stumble into your unguarded mind.

THANKSGIVING

A year makes quite a difference. Last year on Thanksgiving, when Leah's Mom asked me whether you were going to get married, I said I didn't know, stopped breathing and had to excuse myself. (Leah's Mom wasn't always cool about Leah's & my deal, so I didn't want to give her any ammunition.)

But here it is, nearly midnight on Thanksgiving - a year later - and I'm thinking of you, wishing I could have any sort of relationship with you, any at all, and yet I'm breathing fine even though you're more gone than ever.

If time has not eased the pain of my hopeless love for you, at least it has strengthened my heart in dealing with it. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't you with another which was such a blow to me, it was you being so lost to me. But this Thanksgiving, I'm marvelling at how chance brought us together - just close enough for me to lose my heart to you, and yet just far enough apart that I could never come any closer.

And this, for the ardent lover (and what else am I, even if undeclared) is the exact most painful distance she can live from her beloved. I know you can come no closer, still I pray you'll go no farther away.