good lord this day has gotten away from me. i have done a ton of writing, just none of it is blog-worthy. lots of long emails. lots of thought about projects and ideas that arent mine. i dont have the wherewithal to come up with something this evening. seth and i stayed up till 3am talking about the house idea and making a timeframe of getting things done and then we were up at 9am having breakfast with the fam before work. and tonight im running lines with paul.
so ill give you a choice:
you can either read my friend j. hunt's blog from last week that has spurred some amazing discussion (some of which is mine) about experimental music and the place of art in entertainment *here*, which i have been thinking and talking and writing about a lot and i highly recommmend, or you can read an excerpt from something i was writing in october (part of which i put on facebook back then), below. (or both)
...i was excited to soon have time alone with her and I basked in the similarity of feeling coming from her in the way she drew me in--to confidences, to the couch, to her gaze. Oh, those eyes. The word hungry was never far from my mind when I looked into them. She seemed to want to satisfy some deep unquenchable hunger simply with looking. It seemed she could feed whatever part of herself was so needy by casting her eye upon anything, the city streets, the ministry buildings, the stellar graffiti, works of art, but it seemed people filled her up quickest and most satisfyingly. And i felt as tho it was increasingly at me, and into my own eyes that she wanted to look—to be fed upon. And it was at once both a pleasurable sensation, to have such a concentrated gaze turned your way, and a bit painful, as if she was able to search out and peer into the deep things inside me that one tends to hide from others' view. As if parts of your childhood you thought you'd outgrown showed up in the way you reached for the sugar to put in your tea. And she'd make an infinitesimal gesture or noise when she detected it, one of delight at the discovery, but smacking a bit of triumph, and one that made the subject immediately feel so very exposed. Ravaged, almost. Which, for me, was delightfully gratifying, as I hadnt truly been seen by another person in a very long time. Before traveling I had been living at my parents house in my own hometown, where every single person had known me from a tot and half of them saw my father when they looked at me, the other half saw my brother or mother. And diana and I have known each other for so long we dont even have to look to know what the other is thinking or feeling. And simply by virtue of being a tourist in many places in europe, certainly the ones you dont have language skills in, you are almost always made invisible. So, to be regarded with such fixity of purpose, even if that purpose was unknown and coming from a veritable stranger, was shockingly, and possibly dangerously, delicious. Like a well-mixed manhattan made from such smooth whiskey you might not even notice its power after a few.
I feel like I spent most of my time with her watching her struggle to figure out how to be so deep inside herself and yet to reach out to another person, and waiting to see how far she would then be able to let me in. it was like watching a young child learn to walk, but this wasnt her first time in courtship. I knew for a fact she had been with others before me. Nonetheless, like a child's first, each step was approached tentatively, but once the movement was made, the resolve to see it thru was firm. And once a step was taken it took a while to approach the next one. Which was fine with me, because it was fascinating to watch her work up to each one. I actually enjoyed it immensely, and the anticipation was great. The steps were just very small and I knew I could not make any of them for her, especially because I wasnt always sure exactly what they were going to be. The thing that kept me from being impatient was that she would never step backwards. Once we got to each level, she was happy to indulge in it with abandon. When we started holding hands, she couldnt be near me without doing so. Which was marvelous because she was an incredibly good hand-holder. That might sound odd, but even the simplest things can give one fabulously sensual pleasure. The thing that got me was when she would do it with two hands. She would come up next to me and slide, say, her left hand down my right wrist and along my palm so I would splay my fingers for hers to interweave themselves with mine, and then we would be quietly holding hands, at our sides, (her shoulders were shorter than mine so her hand was on the bottom) and this would be quite enjoyable in and of itself. but then she would shift herself slightly to stand just that much closer, and a fraction behind me, so our hands were bumping her left thigh, and then she would lean in just a bit and reach with her right hand around my arm, tracing the inside of my elbow, slipping her fingertips under my shirt sleeve, to cup my bicep with her palm, her long fingers reaching to the tender inside of my upper arm, her thumb gently rubbing my deltoid. (I am an extremely thin man, it is not as if these muscles were at all large or well defined. But she knew how to caress them to bring all of my attention to each one of them.) Sometimes she would do all this while resting her chin or temple on the very tip of my right shoulder. And all the while we would be standing in front of a work of art, or an exhibit case at a museum, thinking of nothing but each of the few and specific places our bodies were touching. It was exquisite.
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