Slow Poison

ENTRY # 87 Married for 8 years. Together for 13 and a little more. And today, we are learning how to talk to one another. So hard to break out of our set call and response. Easier to be silent, than to speak aloud. So hard to trust that words falling from my mouth will be the right ones…or maybe that there are no right ones. Some words just need to fall out, or if they remain, poison the body. We are learning to how to talk to one another. And feeling is returning, but not the feeling Id expected. Its there under the surface, looking for words and a way to escape. Not nice feelings. They want to spill over. And they give me hope. Because, by god, Im alive.

Comments

-j-, jmcmurtrie@hotmail.com, 24.24.41.238, 1060274453, 2004-05-16 20:41:18, Its odd to go to your blog to see what is going on in your head. Part of me reads it as an observer, that I am not part of it – like a soap opera. Then the reality hits that its us your writing about and its tough to get that jolt, tough to see that reality. I think sometimes that its stuff that should not be put out in the ether but then as I read it – I dont care what others interpret from your blog – as were all part of a larger community. Each with similar feelings, anxietiesand problems. Its no longer personal if everyone goes through there own versions. Maybe there are folks out there reading this and rooting for success (or failure).

Elouise, ero@it.rit.edu, 24.24.41.238, 1060286474, 2004-05-16 20:41:18, Thats exactly it. Its a story. Writing it down, it becomes simultaneously larger than reality, and more real – because its a shared thing. Its the readers reliving or vicariously living it. Its fiction, removed by at least an order by words. Abstracted and remade in someone elses head. Abstracted for me too. I get to look at these entries later like a soap opera. Im hoping Ill know what the heroine should do, and Ill tell her so- when I get it.

ray orkwis, raymondo@cec.sped.org, 206.181.168.3, 1060287566, 2004-05-16 20:41:18, Intoxication means to be poisoned, and we know how nice it feels to be drunk sometimes. Someting in the brain — is it the brain, or is it the heart — loves that pain. What would pop music or the blues be without drunkeness? Think of how many thousands of songs. Right now Beth Orton comes to mind, because of poison (and her flipflop of Frankie & Johnnie): * * * God Song by Beth Orton My house was built for loving not a theatre of warI take the poison for the cureBut hes my man and Ive been doing him wrongYeah hes my man and Ive been doing him wrongAnd Im praying for the strength not to carry on Ive watched and learnt to lead a decent lifeBut meanwhile Im dying insideCos hes my man and I keep doing him wrongYeah hes my man and Ive been doing him wrongBut Im praying for the strength not to carry on I was built for loving not playing at warAnd I leave justice in the good hands of the lawBut hes my man and Ive been doing him wrongYeah hes my man and Ive done him wrongBut Im praying for the strength not to carry on * * * In reply to -j- : The part of us that wants to touch regardless of medium of response (its all electricity anyway), will reach out for light for contact, no? We do public communication a disservice to think its other than entirely personal. We do private response a disservice to think that its other than something first held in common then mutated. Samuel Delaney called it “the perceptual angle of distortion” and its why we always keep putting out pictures of ourselves in words and music and why we keep taking them in from others. We never get it right we never get it right, goddammit, we havent gotten it right yet. And thats the beauty, because its what gets us drunk on poetry, on pop culture, on any light in the darkness. Our roots instinctively keep reaching. I remember once as a kid putting Mr. Potatohead in a drawer once (back when you used real potatoes) and forgetting about the poor guy until about a month later I opened the drawer and he had surrounded himself what had grown from his eyes. Didnt think it at the time, but that was a kind of poetry, too. Seems thats what were doing here, in our own drawers, sending out feelers until one touches what feels right.

Adam, adam@bwerp.net, 129.21.168.9, 1060295756, 2004-05-16 20:41:18, Communication can be so difficult. So many things that should be said, but are kept inside. So many things that I want to say, but instead think, “Its not a big deal. Id rather put up with it than point it out to her.” So many times I wonder, would she tell me if I did something wrong? I want this hard-to-explain level of mutual understanding that Ive been lacking. I would describe it as, “You left a mess in the kitchen, but if I bring it up you wont get upset, and youll still know I love you more than anything. This is just me being open about the little things, keeping them from festering into big things.” Its not romantic, but I would take comfort over romance any day.

Elouise, ero@it.rit.edu, 24.24.41.238, 1060297457, 2004-05-16 20:41:18, All the little things, left unsaid, accumulate like dust. Over time, the layers get so thick, they harden. If I could step into a time machine, Id say “You left a mess in the kitchen…”

Cath, cii@it.rit.edu, 129.21.217.25, 1060297539, 2004-05-16 20:41:18, Adam, Comfort can also be romantic. The jolt comes when two people arent on the same plane. I am a tell the little things so they dont fester” kinda girl. But if my partner does not share that philosophy, the dance becomes a delicate skate across increasingly-thinning ice. It collapses, and one tries to rebuild. Sadly, the rebuilding efforts can sometimes mean that the foundation is cracked and becomes less and less stable each time the relationship crashes through. Words help. If both are not same, words become the venue for lending time to phrase things just-so to ensure no hurt feelings and to detach from the pain or discomfort.

ray orkwis, raymondo@cec.sped.org, 206.181.168.3, 1060357387, 2004-05-16 20:41:18, Funny about that cosmic plate of shrimp, no? Im enjoying how this blog strand is moving into the area of marriage and whats said and not said within that unit and from Arts and Letters Daily I come across a review from the New Yorker of a book called “Against Love” in which the reviewer begins by quoting John Miltons address to Parliament defending divorce (actually, decrying the strictures of enforced marriage). She quotes Milton — ¶In God?s intention, a meet and happy conversation is the chiefest and noblest end of marriage.? — and points out that by conversation he meant living together. If you look it up, youll see that the word does connote close association (from the Latin “versari,” to live). I recommend the essay for anyone who wants to think about marriage and Marxism or who wants a bit of cultural critique of the interdictions that come into play (“do I dare speak of the dirty dishes,? etc.). It?s longish, but here?s the url for interested parties:<a href=”http://www.newyorker.com/critics/books/?030811crbo_books”>http://www.newyorker.com/critics/books/?030811crbo_books</a> I loved the comment made by Cath that comfort can be romantic, the implication being over time what might have seemed boring or unnecessary at first becomes essential to a living relationship. That?s how I read it, at least. The final paragraph of Rebecca Mead?s review takes this theme a bit further and I quote it here: ¶ ëFalling in love is the nearest most of us come to glimpsing utopia in our lifetimes (with sex and drugs as fallbacks),? she writes. But what if utopia was not merely glimpsed in the heady, vanishing moment of falling in love but was actually the project of enduring love? What if the expression of that love was the ongoing construction of a better world in domestic microcosm§of Milton?s meet and happy conversation? Rather than seeing each individual marriage as a cog in a tyrannical industrial machine that manufactures large-scale social docility, we might re-reread Marx to come up with an alternative understanding of how the language of work might relate to the language of love. Perhaps love isn?t necessarily the alienated labor of the factory floor. Perhaps it can be the kind of work that Marx argued was displaced by the inhuman character of industrialization: the meaningful, satisfying work of the farmer or the artisan who remained organically connected to the fruits of his labor, and who was ennobled by this effort. Conducted with imagination, the labor of this love might be so gratifying as to be indistinguishable from play.? What better antidote to a slow poison than the slow, organic tonic of honest conversation?

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