Dolce mia vita sei

When English just isn't enough, Rachel:

Dolce mia vita sei,
lieto mio ben sarai....

Haven't You Heard

Haven't you heard my eyes already
Tell you what my tongue can not say,
That our eyes were made to be side by side
Looking at the world together when
They're not facing each other's looking in.

Happy Birthday, Rachel II

" ... living a life
I can't leave behind"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ1c9ErCn7w

"I feel fine. I feel good.
I feel like I never should.
Whenever I feel this way
I just don't know what to say
Why can't we be together
Just like yesterday....

Yes, I admit to myself
That if I hurt someone else
Then we'll never see
Just what we're meant to be."

Still, I love you, Rachel, and

"Everytime I see you falling
I get down on my knees and pray
Waiting for that final moment
You say the words that I can't say."

Happy Birthday, Rachel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0KlAHd7dGI&feature=related

Put to this in another tab and then come back and read this post
while you listen.

It's Strauss's Ein Heldenleben, and I heard this section from about
2:15 on in the Fritz Reiner CSO recording tonight on Exploring Music,
and it made me think of you, because I know you like it. (Of
course I was already thinking of you and thinking of your birthday.)
Still hearing it, I hoped you were listening, and we were enjoying it
together. You are a heroine to me, because you have opened your
life to beauty and have refused to just settle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BT3Q_BIIRJM&feature=related

Happy Birthday, Rachel, I love you.
I could never give you anything that compares
with the joy and new life you have given me.

Not a Day Goes By

Happy Valentine's Day, Rachel.
This song says it all, and then more
than I'd like to be honest.

I'd never add the bit about "paying."
I'm just grateful for every moment I've
had with you. It's all good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kMlQgyz834&feature=related

Fragments

What are these fragments
Of thought dropped into words
On a page?
Are they poems?
No, they're the working notes
Of an otherwise quiet passion.

Springlike

Today felt like a spring day,
Spring so wonderful outside you;
But so painful inside me, Rachel
Without you.
Without you, Rachel,
Part of me wishes it were always winter.

Dream A Little Dream with Yoooouu!

I'd love to feel
Your hand touching mine
And hear you tell me why
I must keep working on

And I'd keep you working on too. This song makes me dream
of you, Rachel. The whole idea of working and resting together
as the heart of a loving relationship. It's all I wish I could have
with you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1qIW1dLo4w&feature=related

I'd do anything to keep you singing, and
I know you'd do the same for my art.

I'd give this world
Just to dream
A little dream with you
On our bed of ....

Romantic Hour, Rachel

The Romantic Hour, Rachel,
Saturday Night set aside for
Thoughts of you.

The Reality Hour, Rachel,
Set aside for what I find most real:
Thoughts of you.

The Rachel Hour, Rachel,
What else do I have but
Thoughts of you.

Thoughts of you. Happy Time,
Saturday night alone set aside for
Thoughts of you,

But next Saturday is Valentine's Day,
Look out! How happy will it prove -
My intense aloneness with
Thoughts of you.


PS: I have to admit I fear Valentine's Day
this year. Just have to get through it,
I guess. Sunday Morning has never looked
so good.

One of my friend Hurt's strange little found photoworks
deals with Valentine's Day. He has written
in pencil these generous words over the image of
a joyful dancer, and I try to offer them in the same
spirit of generosity to you, my beloved:

It's Unfair AND Stupid
by Hurt McDermott

It's unfair & stupid
That manufactured holidays
Should have such a hold
Over us, but they do.

The more powerful the imagination,
The more vulnerable.

Oh be happy!
Be Happy on Valentine's Day
Without me.

Double Bind

Oh, Rachel, do you realize already I'm in love
with you. If I leave Leah, I'm afraid knowing that
I do love you will make you think I left her for you,
but if things were okay with Leah I wouldn't leave,
no matter what I felt for anyone else, even you.

And if I still saw you every weekday, I wouldn't
leave her either, because your being around made
our life bearable.

But it's becoming unbearable. It's true I'm in a
double bind. If I still loved Leah, I could deal
with my feelings for you, but Leah is angry
and disappointed with me to the point I can't take
it anymore. I was at this point when you came,
but you made me so happy, I could ignore it.

If I were stronger, I'd be the person Leah
wants me to be, which means giving up being
an artist. But I'll be an artist until I die.

If I hadn't met you, I could deal with the pressure
to leave Leah, and I won't leave her; but you are
there to focus my mind in all sorts of ways I
would not have chosen. Oh thank God for you,
Rachel, you have saved me, even if in a very
painful way.

Rachel and Poetry

One day back when Rachel was helping me get
better, and we were out walking on a cold day,
I quoted her the last stanza of this poem
by Yeats:

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

I had told Rachel the story of how Yeats loved
Maude Gonne and wrote her this poem,
and Rachel did not find the situation romantic.
She found it a cruelly devastating poem.
And of course I realized she was right. I had
been very influenced by my sophomore high
school English teacher - God bless you, Mrs.
Catran - who said to us, "How could any
woman reject someone who could write such
beautiful poetry." But Rachel saw it for
what it was a revenge fantasy of the rejected.

Still, Rachel, I think you could have a little
pity for those of us who love with no hope of
return. Accepting reality, we still want to think
there is something inside our beloved which
will always believe us to be somehow uniquely
special, if not the one.

The alternative is nothing less than unbearable.

I've Never Met a Rachel Yet

I've never met a Rachel yet
Who knew she was named for
The most intensely loved woman
In all the Bible, and you're
No exception, Rachel.

I love the name Rachel;
I love the many personalities
You command in your hair;
I love your gaze, and I love
The color of your eyes
Which I know so well
But could never name.

Song For Leah

I posted a song by Yo La Tengo for Rachel
the other night, here's the flipside song by
the same band for Leah. Yeah, I know it's
unfair, but no one's paying attention to this
site anyway; it's a steam valve, not a real blog.

Make sure to check out the lyric on the side.
It's a list of the ways the singer disappoints
the one she's singing to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ak660F1_neY

Sorry, for disappointing you, Leah, I don't
know how much longer I can keep squeezing
the Sugar Cube.

Rachel Out In the Cold

Oh, Rachel, I know you don't like
being out in the cold. I hope
this warms you up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLxcMr9Kv1g&NR=1

I love you so much. I can find no
words of my own. You always
make my life better, but sometimes
I can't take the irony that we were
put just close enough together in time
and space for it to sometimes be
unbearable that we can't be together.

Saturday Night Secret

It's Saturday Night again, the night I spend socially though
alone with thoughts of you. I've never been one for pop psychology,
but I'm hoping this movie, The Secret, about the law of attraction
turns out to be onto something. According to this silly movie,
our thoughts attract reality, which I hope is true, because when
I think of us together, this is what I picture:

Nothing romantic or passionate, I can clearly see us standing
side by side, just happy to be together. You have a smile on
your face, a big one, and we're facing the world together.
And you, who always seem alone to me in the photos I see
of you with other people, you are no longer alone.

Catalog Aria

Rachel, lately I've found myself cataloging
Images of you, your smile; your laugh,
Oh God, how I love your laugh with that bit of surprise
It always contains; your unique gaze - has anyone else
Noticed this but me; the way you wait; the way
Your hand touches your face; your face, so beautiful;
Your openess to beauty; your complete lack of pretension;
Your love of Mahler's orchestration; your ego which should
Be so much bigger; the way you eat as a true companion,
Your good-humor and undying cheerfulness,
The troubled sleep you took in my bed once when I
Nursed you and fed you lunch before sending you home;
Your determination in the face of puzzles and models;
Your hair of the many faces, your face of the such constancy;
Your way of patiently moving your look over to me
As if you know I've been waiting, and your eyes come,
Without hurry, without resentment and with generosity.

And then there are the images of moments
Imagined and longed for but never realized:
You curled up next to me through a night
When for once I don't sleep as to not waste
The comfort of being next to you,
Rather than not sleeping from
Wondering if you ever think of me?
I imagine the meals I would cook for you.
I imagine the changes in your life,
The travels to Italy and New York together.

So many other things.
So much nicer to imagine them than
To wonder if you ever think of me?
Do you ever think of me?

Rachel, Redeemer of Banal Pop Music

Rachel, there are songs out there I just
wouldn't like - in fact I don't like - but
there's a line or something which captures
my feelings for you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwJtKava4Wo

This James Taylor song just wouldn't do it
for me, but he sings

Everytime I see your smiling face, I have to smile myself.

And this is so true of me. I often think you could never
know me, just because you cheer me up so much. When
you're not around, I'm much less happy. Wonderful you.
I still can't really enjoy the whole song, but I'll still play
over and over the one line in my head while walking down
the street.

And here's a song I know Rachel doesn't like,
but for me though I want to believe but can't
in the lines:

And all the roads that lead you on are winding
And all the lights that light the way are blinding

as if they might someday lead to Rachel and myself
being together, there is one line that makes me cling
to this song, which I never liked until one lovesick
day by a skating rink, I heard it and linked it to Rachel,
especially the line I can't help but find true:

I don't believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hzrDeceEKc

Saturday Night With Rachel Somewhere Else

Oh Rachel, My Sylvaine,
My Only Beloved Rachel,
Your name sets the meter for my poetry;
And I set aside my Saturday nights
To be without you,
To be intensely without you.

Oh Rachel, all other times you are
In my mind and in my heart,
Because thoughts of you will be there
And I can do nothing but submit
With the love which makes my mind so
Hospitable a home for thoughts of you.

But Saturday nights - all alone and yet
At my most sociable! - I have to write you,
Either in my notebook, or on this screen,
Or on scraps meant for burning.
When you came to call me back from death,
I saw I liked you, but I did not suspect
The Love to come. When I first realized
I loved you, I felt no urgency. It was a crush,
Surely it would go away. But then I realized
Soon you would go away, and I panicked
Into the most desperate love,
The love where I still live now.

Could I live without you?
Truly I did not know.
Truly I do not know now.

I wrote over and over in my notebook,
Don't tell Leah
Don't tell Rachel
Don't tell your family
Don't tell your sister
Tell this notebook.

Write! I wrote. Writing has been the way
For me to keep to myself all the thoughts
Which must be stored in secrecy.
Yes, I write to not be read, and yet if only ....

But it will never be:
Lucky I guess, and so
Saturday Nights I write.

The Very Thought of You

During the day, there are so many
Distractions from you, and yet
You are always waiting right there
When my mind returns to its center.

At night, it's impossible to believe
We will not finally end together, knowing
We were made one for another in some
Unknown form or some unexpected familiarity.

Friday Night, Restless Days

I saw you again last week.
It was so easy, I invited you,
And you came, and you smiled,
Your eyes shone, and it was
Easy and free and just the same
As it used to be, and our eyes
Held steadily jut before you left.

Oh, but was it a mistake? Cause
Ever since, my heart's been breaking
At an increasingly painful speed.

No, it was no mistake. If I can't hold you,
Then I need to hold to your absent gaze,
And onto the pain which disturbs
My nights and gives life to my days.