Bad Things to Good People

Months of peace--almost a year of months--have festered into one giant, blinding ball of itchiness, and all I want to do is call almost everyone I have ever slept with and at least one I haven't, and flirt with them until I feel better. About what I do not know. Sad (or maybe happy) to say, no one has been with their phone/at their computer/knocking on my door, and so I am left with my unrest.

This stems I think almost entirely from the prosaicness (prosaicity?) of my current relationship, and the fact that this morning I made the mistake of pulling down some old poetry and reading it, poetry that I had once read with someone with whom I was a little absurdly in love.

Maybe it's just me, maybe it's the time of my life, where I haven't quite locked up all my loves forever, but that feeling you get when you revisit something that was once significant and still holds meaning--it's one of the most uncomfortable feelings in the world. Suddenly, just like that--one minute I'm reading Rumi, the next I'm back on Northside watching him play a djembe by his car and wishing he'd never leave.

I'd almost forgotten what it was like, to love someone like it was the only point in life. To physically hurt when they were not near. To see them in everything, to feel their love in a completely disembodied way--from a tree, a drive down Mayfield, the smell of lavender, a few guitar chords.

In my head, all my great loves (and I've had a few) get mixed together, and I end up with a kind of seamless montage of highlights: a first sight in October sunrise. Swedish music. the smell of sweat and clean cotton. a feather bed. the curve of a jaw. a camera lens. snow in Lakeview Cemetary, although this always gets mixed up with the Magic Place and all I remember is the feeling--laughing for joy, full of the wonder of life and people.