Nostalgia

It's just stuff really, and it can set me off mid-sentence. A rearrangement of stuff is needed. These unprompted Via Dolorosa need to stop- these freighted objects that mysteriously appear in my way between the hopeful morning and shivering midnight. These happenstance sufferings of radio and silence.

Adam's Curse
WB Yeats


We sat together at one summer's end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, 'A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.'

. . . . . . . . . And thereupon
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake
There's many a one shall find out all heartache
On finding that her voice is sweet and low
Replied, 'To be born woman is to know-
Although they do not talk of it at school-
That we must labour to be beautiful.'

I said, 'It's certain there is no fine thing
Since Adam's fall but needs much labouring.
There have been lovers who thought love should be
So much compounded of high courtesy
That they would sigh and quote with learned looks
Precedents out of beautiful old books;
Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.'

We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time's waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.

I had a thought for no one's but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we'd grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.


I miss grocery shopping. I miss all the crap she'd buy. I am 26 living in my parents basement with no higher skills than the ones I employ as I write this and I live also amongst the discarded shoes of my former love, or not really former, but of my love, that is no longer mine; I attempt to write this poison out of my system as quickly and often as I can, the misplacement of that damn augustana song may require hundreds of words to displace in my mind, and heaven forbid I have a swedish fish in my pocket. I told the lady down the street she needn't give me them anymore- I just throw them out now. I once texted a bit of the poem above to her. To be honest, I had sent or quoted that poem, incompletely, at plenty of girls before then, and yet only she got back to me with the following lines. And that had to do with a little part of my loving her. It's nostalgia. It's nausea, needless and noxious.




And then it's the dreams. I dream Brideshead. I dream over and over again. I dream a story that begins on a drive to New Hampshire with a call and I do not stop dreaming it. I wake and choke back tears and curl myself tight and will myself to sleep, will it so hard my eyelids hurt and my back shivers like a coil, break myself back into sleeping again. And if that doesn't work, theres always Chapter 7 waiting like a spider, it's fangs dripping. You just alight on that web an you're stuck.



I crave silence and dreamless nights.