about our outsides; for example, you are older than me, not by a lot. I think the gap in our ages bothers you a little, but I was never your student—I suddenly hear myself telling you that, and there’s no logic to it—only the urgent need to tell you immediately, in the water, that in front of almost every person, always, sometimes even with my son, I feel as if I am somehow the younger one, the one more lacking in experience, more milky, and you listen and immediately understand me, as if it is obvious that this is the first thing a man tells a woman when he meets her in water.
Listen, I have never written anything so odd, my whole body actually contracted and shook …
Where were we? Don’t stop now, don’t lose these inner tremblings; our breath, it slows slowly, but we still don’t move apart, we’re still touching, and looking into each other’s eyes; it is a quiet, direct look, completely simple, in the midst of all the complications of situations like these; it is
simple, like a kiss you give a child who comes to show you a fresh wound. It is heartbreaking, the thought that you can see into a grown-up person that way.
We’re not laughing anymore. There is a long silence. Almost scary. Want to detach and cannot. And in your eyes and mine, more and more curtains are parting, revealing the depths, and I am thinking how similar a moment like this is to a moment of disaster—nothing will ever be the same. And we’re terribly exhausted, holding each other to keep from falling, and see our story in a sort of strange and sad clarity. The words are not important anymore, and the language doesn’t matter either; it could be written in Sanskrit, hieroglyphics, the hieroglyphics of chromosomes: see me as a child, see me as an adolescent, see the man I am. See what happened to me on the way here, how my story faded—where do I start, Miriam. I always think that there is no fragment of innocence left in me. Yet I came to you in innocence—from the first moment I began writing you, my words to you came out of a place completely new to me, like sperm kept for only one particular loved one, and the rest emerging from some other part of my body. But you probably want to go to sleep now, and so do I, even though I don’t have a chance tonight, not anymore. Another moment, then. Help me to calm down, give me your hand, even a finger will do for me now; I need that now, right now, for you to be a lightning rod for me.
(Is that too much to ask from one person? At least stay until the ash from my cigarette falls.)
Say, did I read you right? That a triangle is not such a shaky structure? And in “some contexts” it might even be a solid, satisfying structure? Even enriching? And also very fitting to human nature, “at least to my nature,” you wrote, and great curiosity was roused among the brief and concentrated audience of your words …
Under the condition that it is equilateral, you added immediately, and all involved know they are sides of a triangle. (Are you scolding me? What have you already heard about me?)
It’s too late to go into this now, and the ash is shaking tremulously at the end. I’ll wait patiently for your answer; but know that I am amused to see how in a few strokes of your pen you have created a new and private
branch of science—poetic geometry. It is a pity, though, that you didn’t explain to me how it applies in life, this wonder you are wishing
(it fell)
May 30
I can’t get enough of looking. The photo of the shadow on the hills opposite and the jets of the five o’clock sprinklers wearing all their shine, and mainly the bottle (what a photo!), the broken bottle on the rock …
And that you got wet, Miriam, that you simply got up and walked into the cold shower, and stood in it for so long (I, by the way, couldn’t do it; in cold water I turn blue within seconds). What did you say at home later? How did you explain it? Did you bring clothes to
Listen, I have never written anything so odd, my whole body actually contracted and shook …
Where were we? Don’t stop now, don’t lose these inner tremblings; our breath, it slows slowly, but we still don’t move apart, we’re still touching, and looking into each other’s eyes; it is a quiet, direct look, completely simple, in the midst of all the complications of situations like these; it is
simple, like a kiss you give a child who comes to show you a fresh wound. It is heartbreaking, the thought that you can see into a grown-up person that way.
We’re not laughing anymore. There is a long silence. Almost scary. Want to detach and cannot. And in your eyes and mine, more and more curtains are parting, revealing the depths, and I am thinking how similar a moment like this is to a moment of disaster—nothing will ever be the same. And we’re terribly exhausted, holding each other to keep from falling, and see our story in a sort of strange and sad clarity. The words are not important anymore, and the language doesn’t matter either; it could be written in Sanskrit, hieroglyphics, the hieroglyphics of chromosomes: see me as a child, see me as an adolescent, see the man I am. See what happened to me on the way here, how my story faded—where do I start, Miriam. I always think that there is no fragment of innocence left in me. Yet I came to you in innocence—from the first moment I began writing you, my words to you came out of a place completely new to me, like sperm kept for only one particular loved one, and the rest emerging from some other part of my body. But you probably want to go to sleep now, and so do I, even though I don’t have a chance tonight, not anymore. Another moment, then. Help me to calm down, give me your hand, even a finger will do for me now; I need that now, right now, for you to be a lightning rod for me.
(Is that too much to ask from one person? At least stay until the ash from my cigarette falls.)
Say, did I read you right? That a triangle is not such a shaky structure? And in “some contexts” it might even be a solid, satisfying structure? Even enriching? And also very fitting to human nature, “at least to my nature,” you wrote, and great curiosity was roused among the brief and concentrated audience of your words …
Under the condition that it is equilateral, you added immediately, and all involved know they are sides of a triangle. (Are you scolding me? What have you already heard about me?)
It’s too late to go into this now, and the ash is shaking tremulously at the end. I’ll wait patiently for your answer; but know that I am amused to see how in a few strokes of your pen you have created a new and private
branch of science—poetic geometry. It is a pity, though, that you didn’t explain to me how it applies in life, this wonder you are wishing
(it fell)
May 30
I can’t get enough of looking. The photo of the shadow on the hills opposite and the jets of the five o’clock sprinklers wearing all their shine, and mainly the bottle (what a photo!), the broken bottle on the rock …
And that you got wet, Miriam, that you simply got up and walked into the cold shower, and stood in it for so long (I, by the way, couldn’t do it; in cold water I turn blue within seconds). What did you say at home later? How did you explain it? Did you bring clothes to
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