love.

   ==   == =// The weight of the world //= =// is love. //= =// Under the burden //= =// of solitude, //= =// under the burden //= =// of dissatisfaction //= 

=// the weight, //= =// the weight we carry //= =// is love. //= (excerpt from "Song" by Allen Ginsberg)

== "Faint Music" <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; text-align: left; display: block">   == //Robert Hass//

**Maybe you need to write a poem about grace.**

When everything broken is broken, and everything dead is dead, and the hero has looked into the mirror with complete contempt, and the heroine has studied her face and its defects remorselessly, and the pain they thought might, as a token of their earnestness, release them from themselves has lost its novelty and not released them, and they have begun to think, kindly and distantly, watching the others go about their days-- likes and dislikes, reasons, habits, fears-- that self-love is the one weedy stalk of every human blossoming, and understood, therefore, why they had been, all their lives, in such a fury to defend it, and that no one-- except some almost inconceivable saint in his pool of poverty and silence--can escape this violent, automatic life's companion ever, maybe then, ordinary light, faint music under things, a hovering like grace appears.

As in the story a friend once told about the time he tried to kill himself. His girl had left him. Bees in the heart, then scorpions, maggots, and then ash. He climbed onto the jumping girder of the bridge, the bay side, a blue, lucid afternoon. And in the salt air he thought about the word "seafood," that there was something faintly ridiculous about it. No one said "landfood." He thought it was degrading to the rainbow perch he'd reeled in gleaming from the cliffs, the black rockbass, scales like polished carbon, in beds of kelp along the coast--and he realized that the reason for the word was crabs, or mussels, clams. Otherwise the restaurants could just put "fish" up on their signs, and when he woke--he'd slept for hours, curled up on the girder like a child--the sun was going down and he felt a little better, and afraid. He put on the jacket he'd used for a pillow, climbed over the railing carefully, and drove home to an empty house.

There was a pair of her lemon yellow panties hanging on a doorknob. He studied them. Much-washed. A faint russet in the crotch that made him sick with rage and grief. He knew more or less where she was. A flat somewhere on Russian Hill. They'd have just finished making love. She'd have tears in her eyes and touch his jawbone gratefully. "God," she'd say, "you are so good for me." Winking lights, a foggy view downhill toward the harbor and the bay. "You're sad," he'd say. "Yes." "Thinking about Nick?" "Yes," she'd say and cry. "I tried so hard," sobbing now, "I really tried so hard." And then he'd hold her for a while-- Guatemalan weavings from his fieldwork on the wall-- and then they'd fuck again, and she would cry some more, and go to sleep. And he, he would play that scene once only, once and a half, and tell himself that he was going to carry it for a very long time and that there was nothing he could do but carry it. He went out onto the porch, and listened to the forest in the summer dark, madrone bark cracking and curling as the cold came up.

It's not the story though, not the friend leaning toward you, saying "And then I realized--," which is the part of stories one never quite believes. I had this idea that the world's so full of pain it must sometimes make a kind of singing. And that the sequence helps, as much as order helps-- <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; text-align: right; display: block"> <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; text-align: right">
 * First an ego, and then pain, and then the singing.** <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; text-align: right; display: block"> <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; text-align: left; display: block">

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; text-align: right; display: block">An excerpt from __The Great Gatsby__
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; text-align: right; display: block"> F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Oh, you want too much!" she cried to Gatsby. "I love you now - isn't that enough? I can't help what's past." She began to sob helplessly. "I did love him once - but I loved you too." Gatsby's eyes oped and closed. "You loved me //too//?" he repeated. "Even that's a lie," said Tom savagely. "She didn't know you were alive. Why - there's things between Daisy and me that you'll never know, things that neither of us can ever forget."
 * The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby.**

==<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; text-align: right; display: block">**<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center; display: block">"Tennessee Waltz" - Sam Cooke ** == ==<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; text-align: right; display: block"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center; display: block"> == <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; text-align: left"> media type="youtube" key="mpxo7oDxyQM&hl=en" height="354" width="423" <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; text-align: left">

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; text-align: left">
<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; text-align: left"> <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; text-align: left">

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif">
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif">J.D. Salinger

"<span style="font-family: georgia,bookman old style,palatino linotype,book antiqua,palatino,trebuchet ms,helvetica,garamond,sans-serif,arial,verdana,avante garde,century gothic,comic sans ms,times,times new roman,serif">I was half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know //where// the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can." <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; text-align: left"> to the love connection (hah, get it?)...

to the next wall...

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; color: rgb(18, 27, 175); text-align: center; display: block">

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; color: rgb(18, 27, 175); text-align: center; display: block"><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; text-align: right; display: block"> <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; text-align: right">   <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; text-align: right; display: block"> <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; text-align: left; display: block"><span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; color: rgb(18, 27, 175); text-align: center; display: block">**"All our young lives we search for someone to love. Someone who makes us complete. We choose partners & change partners. We dance to a song of heartbreak & hope. All the while wondering if somewhere, somehow, there's someone perfect who might be searching for us."** - The Wonder Years