I couldn’t know her well and yet I did know her well. Not facts and figures, I was endlessly curious about her life, rather a particular trust. That afternoon, it seemed to me I had always been here with Louise, we were familiar.
Written on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights.
London is perpetual; a constant streaming present hurrying towards a receding future.
Art is a way into other realities, other personalities. When I let myself be affected by a book, I let into myself new customs and new desires. The book does not reproduce me, it re-defines me, pushes at my boundaries, shatters the palings that guard my heart. Strong texts work along the borders of our minds and alter what already exists. They could not do this if they merely reflected what already exists.
He liked city walking. He didn’t want to have to go to that place called countryside to take a walk. He wanted to stuff his hands in his pockets, set his internal compass vaguely east or south and wander till he was tired enough to get the bus home.
Her hair cinnabar red, her body all the treasures of Egypt. There won’t be another find like you Louise. I won’t see anybody else.
I am desperately looking the other way so that love won’t see me.
I know it is your voice in the corridor but when I run outside the corridor is empty. There is nothing I can do that will make any difference. The last word was yours.
I could gamble on another night, reduce myself a little more, but after the tenth night would come the eleventh and the twelfth and so on into the silent space that is the pain of never having enough.
It is the poet who goes further than any human scientist. The poet who with her dredging net must haul up difficult things and return them to the present.
The body can endure compromise and the mind can be seduced by it. Only the heart protests.
Sanity is the thread through the labyrinth of the Minotaur. Once cut, or unravelled, all that lies in wait are gloomy tunnels unfathomable by any map, and what hides there is a beast in human form, wearing our own face.
What is desire? Desire is a restaurant. Desire is watching you eat. Desire is pouring wine for you. Desire is looking at the menu and wondering what it would be like to kiss you. Desire is the surprise of your skin. Look – in between us now are the props of ordinary life – glasses, knives, cloths, Time has been here before. History has had you – and me too. My hand has brushed against yours for centuries. The props change, but not this. Not this single naked wanting you.
What you risk reveals what you value. In the presence of love, hearth and quest become one.
I know the calcium of your cheekbones. I know the weapon of your jaw. I have held your head in my hands but I have never held you. Not you in your spaces, spirit, electrons of life.
Contentment is a feeling you say? Are you sure it’s not an absence of feeling?
It is not always possible to forgive oneself. And sometimes you make a choice to do something, knowing that you must do it, and that forgiveness is impossible.
I am not a machine, there is only so much and no more that I can absorb of the misery of my kind, when my tears are exhausted a dullness takes place, and out of that dullness a terrible callousness, so that I look on suffering and feel it not.
This is where I disagree with the philosophers. They talk about passionate things but there is no passion in them. Never talk happiness with a philosopher.
Isn’t there always a history to the story? You think you’re living in the present, but the past is right behind you like a shadow.