eros, logos: my fake plastic love

Thursday, April 19, 2007

my fake plastic love

this is old, from last year, 2/24/06. I do have a new post but this is related to it. I'd write differently now, but this is what it was.

I loved the words you wrote to me
but that was bloody yesterday
I can't survive on what you send
every time you need a friend...
Billy Bragg, New England

I'm tired. I'm so fucking tired. I'm tired of struggle. I'm tired of fight. I'm tired of "being strong" when the truth is, we are all of us strong. We are strong--which really just means we endure--because there is no choice.

I am especially tired of this phrase: "but you are so much stronger than her"
(it should be "she", I always want to say, but I don't.)

and how strong is any "she"? Only as strong as she has to be. Like all of us.

That's when you exist and persist and live, you live on. Not because you are stronger or better, but because there's no other option. Life its own imperative, I am , I am, the heart beats; the blood pulses, the lungs fill, regardless of our wishes, and this is their relentless and remorseless rhythm: I am.

I am tired. I'm tired and it hurts me. It hurts me so deeply to ask for any kind of help, practical, financial or emotional help.....It hurts me worst of all, to expose myself and my vulnerability, my need. It hurts me to ask for anything.

It hurts me to be wanted for part of me, and not all. It hurts me to be a standin for the loved one...
I get the ones who are attracted to me physically and are also afraid of me, who want not only sexual validation but also some other: who want me to read their novel, their paper, their dissertation, their screenplay--they want this, they want my approval. They want my permission, it seems like, and my validation--my mind's attention for however brief, as though my opinion should matter---Why? No one's opinion matters, apart from your own. In art and intellect this is true--why the need for my stamp? When I don't need that of anyone, permission to write or to think or to be.

But it's also true that I avoid these people now---now that I am single, I avoid those male friends who are also. I also avoid those who are married, but who I know very well, or I suspect strongly, will want more now.
They also don't want me, not entire. I look like the real thing, I taste like the real thing--I'm their fake plastic love.
And it wears me out.

Yet I don't want more. I don't want a relationship; I am still in love with someone, and he no longer exists.

And when his simulacrum calls me--when this you that is reduced and debilitated, laid waste by your disease, this you that is all that is left of you, this you--- this English voice that recalls to me still the man I loved and who loved me, this voice, the one that called my name when he came, the voice I trained and broke from its constraints, the one I taught to say I want to fuck you when your inhibitions made it so difficult for you--this British RP voice that speaks so passionately and naturally of ideas and that I trained and taught to give similar freedom to speaking of passion, of the body--
When you call me I fall.
I love.
I am undone.
Even now. Even now when we are not lovers and you are not the man I loved so passionately, even now when your illness means you are no longer he, even now when it has taken you under, even now when your brilliance and all of you is turned inward, is bent on self-destruction, your critical and keen mind, all your considerable powers focused on anatomizing your failings, the mind its own worst enemy, darkness visible--
even now I see you as you were when you were whole and happy and loved me, and I loved you.

And I cannot be free. Even your shadow, this automaton, this reduced thing that you now are, it is not the man I loved, but it is so much more than anyone else, and where shall I find that again? I can not. I cannot talk to you, I avoid your calls, I ration you, but only because I want so badly to speak to you.
It cuts me.
It wounds me.
It hurts me but I know--I know that you would keep me in this way, this half existence, that this is all you want from me...You want the 5 hour phone call every night, You want me still as I was and am, your best friend, your other self, your other mind, your soul.
You want me still, to tell me your deepest thoughts, your self, your childhood, your life, and also everything you are thinking of or are reading, you want still the pingpong of bouncing all your ideas off me, you want me to do that, it is natural for us--I'm the only place now where you can let loose your verbal pyrotechnics, the only one you can talk with where you are again like that man I fell in love with, sharp, witty, acute--yourself again.
And so you talk to me of everything, politics, art, literature, music, philosophy-- I start a list once after a call of what we talked about and I have to stop, it's ridiculous, no one will believe it if I put it here, the topics we cover in one conversation.
And if I falter, if I tire, if my attention seems to waver, now this simulacrum comes back--you apologise for being boring (you who are never boring), you blame your illness and the ill self speaks, you say you are stupid, boring, trite. You who can never be any of those things, even now! And how that hurts me for you, that you should think yourself so incapable.
You ask so little, in one way, my friendship-----But this is also all of myself, that you ask. That I give.

Everything, My heart, my mind.
You are part of me, you tell me. I know I am.
But now---

Now it feels to me as if all of me is given to you--all of me. And I cannot bear this, that I am only part of you while it feels as if you were still the whole of me--the root of the root and the tree of the tree. And it probably hurts you--I know it does, that I will avoid you for a week, will not return your calls.
It's never deliberate.
I don't think: don't call him until a week has passed, and so on.
I find it impossible to speak with you, and not because I do not want to.

It's because when I do speak with you, you alone still hold my self entire, that small bird laid bare and beating in your hands.

posted by O @ 08:22


6 Comments:
At 19 April, 2007, Anonymous said… I can't respond. I am too busy weeping. O, you pierce my heart, with every word. At 20 April, 2007, Sweet Suzi said… Such raw beautiful naked emotion. I feel privileged and humbled to have read this. At 20 April, 2007, Evil Minx said… "I find it impossible to speak with you, and not because I do not want to.... you alone still hold my self entire, that small bird laid bare and beating in your hands." In this closing sentence you encapsulate all of your power, and the fragility behind it, and send shivers down my spine. I recall the first time you posted it being entranced by the lyric at the start (Billy Bragg is on my top 5 "to do" list) and then reading what you had to say and being completely overcome by your words and feelings. As, indeed, i am now. Brava. At 25 April, 2007, Anonymous said… I saw two shooting stars last night I wished on them but they were only satellites Is it wrong to wish on space hardware I wish, I wish, I wish you’d care At 27 April, 2007, Tom Paine said… Old post, no matter, it's good to have you back among us. At 13 April, 2008, Anonymous said… At the risk of seeming trite and trivial, because I loved reading the post and all that was expressed in it, I wanted to comment that I have hardly heard of old Billy since my time at Uni in the 90's when I saw him in concert somewhere, I had that song on a cassette, bootleg the Bragg or something. I always thought he was really damn good and too good for the small success he achieved. Thank you for reminding me.
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