Curious

A year ago, we were whole.

Now, I'm a piece of a story 

which will never be finished

Sweet, soft happiness

blissful little creature

so fast and so 

suddenly lost.

Sincerely, yours

Roland Barthes writes that every love letter is written to someone, and it's true that you have been a frequent guest in my texts. At the time of dedication, it's an intimate act, an embodied part of the on-going dialogue between my inner-most self and you-in-me. And in returning to the site of text, I am resubmerged in its ritualized wishing-into-being, I am affectively returned to my relating to you, even if you are no longer the same you, even if I no longer long for you. 

Talking to someone in your mind only works insofar as there is still hope. Why would I write to a you who is not intimately known, being discovered with baited breath or wondered about? Except in memory, where you remain in the realm of the potential and I do not have to deal with what you became to me later. Disgusted. 

You are a golden, sunlight-on-cornfields force who makes my world bright. 

You are a darkness that swallows everything and leaves a trail of sweet sighing emptiness inside my mind palace. I don't go there often anymore. The walls are closing in on me and I'm not so drunk on what I might become as when I'd just discovered all of it. 

Sometimes you are me. Little young me with twinkles in your eyes and a thousand crowns to spend exactly how you want. I carry her safely tucked away in a pocket of wool behind my ribcage.

Really, obviously, you are always me. I am made of yous, as well. And I feel you, when I read the spaces where your name could never have been written, even when I don't always remember what it would have been. I feel you. 

And I cover you in wool and carry you, safely, sleepily, inside me. 

I take myself apart, 

and put myself together again.

All the time

for you. 

I am Narcissus, on a life-long search to find myself beautiful,

and you are the depths where I do. 

"Pain is no longer beautiful," he says, and gives me a diamond ring for goodbye. 

Nighttime

Honestly,

If we would write books together, good ones, I would give up absolutely anything. I mean,
I'll have to keep you chained in the house,
because you drop little pieces of my heart wherever you go;
you don't pay attention.
But that should be doable, right?
For books, I mean, babies.
They'd look like the both of us. I think they'd have your passion and my mournful eyes.

"The night changes something in all of us, and the world looks different. Little details stand out which are normally hidden, and unsure of what we see, we become more guardedly fearful of what others might want. The quality of night isn't limited by time or the movement of the planets. You can carry it in your heart. There are people who live out their entire lives as though they were always in darkness."

The Relationship Game: It's getting real

“I just have to accept that I’ve fallen for you quite a bit.”

Once the words are out, they aren't so easy to take back. You didn't even really mean to say them, they didn't take shape in your head before they rolled off your tongue, and now they're here. How will you react?

• Cautious acceptance. You are not quite ready for another love, but sometimes you have to take what life offers if you don't want to lose it. Turn to page 55: New beginnings.

• Almost immediate regret followed by months and months of denial interrupted by jealousy and bouts of passionate enthusiasm. You are gambling with happiness, but doesn't that make it more exciting? Turn to page 87: "Maybe that means that you can handle me."

• Feelings change. Avoid seeing your partner for an extended period of time, focus on other things, and write someone else when you're feeling itchy for a Friday night fuck. You're too young to settle down, and she will heal in time. [Game over]

I killed myself as creator

I taught myself to love loneliness because I had no choice, and it gave me talent, drive, and ambition. With time I lost the need to love it, and I forgot to practice. When I find myself alone, I am now afraid. I know not what to do or where to put my hands.

I am too much and I feel every sharp edge with a keen pain bordering on pleasure, and I drag myself along walls to make sure I sense every change in texture. I collect moments. I trace lines in bodies I care for to remember how they are built and claim people's bones for myself. I crawl close to you and stare intently with my mole-girl eyes at your chest to imprint on my mind the pattern of your body hair and the little cluster of stars just under and a little to the left of your heart. Or the scars on your knees. Or the deep pin-hole wells of emptiness scattered in your irises.
I get anxiety attacks that can only be cured by:
remembering I am my own person and can take back my life and "promise no one has to die"
your calm voice telling me that everything will be okay
getting the fuck away from everything.

I am too much and I hate it. I will buy a new suitcase (Expensive. Red leather, vintage) and pack down all my feelings and desires and expectations and hopes along with the ripped-off keys of my keyboard and get the fuck out of here. The blank page'll take the too much until just I am.

I have been loved by something strange and it has forgotten me. 

Your hands are coarse, you have stars on your chest.

If that night in Berlin was the only thing I ever got from us, it would still be enough. I was weightless and you were the world. 

You never did read The Necrophiliac. I guess it was a strange gift to win over a new over with. Trust me, it really is a very beautiful book.

No one has been as beautiful to me as you, and no one has looked more like a monster. You appear to me as in visions, and we have walked together in myths spun while we moved, I still see the thread in your hands. You smell like a dying man, you know. Or one returned from death. Is that why you steal? 

"I never loved you," you said. But you see, I know that you did. 

It's my story too.

by Marta Sokołowska, martaso.carbonmade.com/

Choose your own adventure: The Relationship Game

Distraction
After the 5 hour argument you go out to do some shopping. You’re still hungover. For some reason or other you don’t see the car approaching until you're halfway across the street, but suddenly it’s roaring towards you at 200 an hour. It’s swaying, like the driver can’t decide what to do.

• Stop dead in your tracks, hoping that the car will have time to move out of its trajectory towards you. [the car is too close to you to avoid hitting you as you are standing there, frozen, in the middle of the street. The impact kills you. Not instantly, but close enough. You never get to say goodbye but at least you were thinking of him when it happened. Game over.] 
• Run forward, in the same direction you were walking. [you narrowly escape the horrible collision to find yourself panting on the sidewalk, a kind pedestrian asking “are you okay? That guy drove really fast!”] 
• Run back in the direction you came from. [get hit by another car and cause a series of crashes as you are still in traffic and several cars are approaching on this side of the street after the light has switched further up]

I'll kidnap you

and take you to the amnesia island

where we can live happily ever after

in ignorance.

...

This is a new type of being in love. In my first months of discovering you, you became a flickering light, an increasing compulsion to stray from the lines, a craving for ice cream with honeyed almonds. You were building curiosity, excitement, and the joy of a secret yet to be revealed. I fell into you a bit like I imagine one falls into psychosis; without realizing it at first, and then discovering and having to somehow deal with the complete reorganisation of reality. Before, I never knew that there were sharks living behind bathroom mirrors, but now that I had seen them, there really was no denying them. With you in it, the world was made anew as it had always been. There was fear and struggle, but ultimately it was never a question - of course I had to love you.

This time it's different. This is the second stage of insanity. This is where I start to forget which parts of the mess of glass and wing-dust and gentle electric currents are you and which are me. It isn't really important to me either, for it isn't about falling anymore. I accept now that the sharks are probably just a result of brain signals gone haywire for biological reasons, the reproduction of the species, etc, but just as an adult who has come to realise that God is mostly made in man's image and still chooses to believe, I don't care about that. I like those sharks. I like you. From a stage of becoming we have moved into being, and it's just as exciting, just as rich. This is about rising.

"'I have been loved,' she said, 'by something strange, and it has forgotten me.'" 

... 

"the night has been going on for a long time."

 - Djuna Barnes, Nightwood (1936)

Soey Milk: "Earthlings." Oil and twigs on canvas, 2015.

Recently been dreaming of another love, eyes meeting across a room, black, short curls, and a dance. "I can't lead," but she doesn't mind. Blaming Doctor Who and the girl with a star in her eye. Be careful with your culture consumption. 

Super over it.

ny fiktionsform

første og eneste samtale mellem fremmede på okcupid:

...and she was loved so much in the other world that everything else melted away and became like a dream, a memory only.

I am in love with someone who repeatedly explodes my world into an unintelligible amount of tiny shards. It is painful and also stupid to be this close to reality.

Maybe send help?

stilhed

Prøver at trække ord ud af ingenting (indledende jeg sænker altid en sætnings værdi fra potentiel til faktuel). Nu har jeg jo en faglighed, der skal be- og udnyttes, så jeg sætter mig til at tvinge et eller andet frem, så jeg kan blive færdig og komme ud i livet (hvilket er sygt problematisk fordi jeg virkelig meget er mere i live nu end nogensinde før og overvældet og medrevet, og det virker sådan ret som om de to tidsstrømme i min eksistens er gået i uorden og det ene spor kører meget hurtigere end det andet, selvom det egentlig slet ikke skulle kunne lade sig gøre), et eller andet, der skal være inspirerende og fængende og feberhedt på den der samtidigt objektive, akademiske måde. Så jeg sidder på kontor på Vesterbro klokken 10.50 onsdag inden påske, alene, med 28 bøger som The Sun is God, Ancient Mystery Cults og The Shape of Fear for at skrive noget om troen på sløret og den store Pan og den uendelige symbolstrøm (Umberto Eco-style) i 1890'er kultur, lige før verden endte og solen for altid gik ned over des Abendlandes (jeg vil gerne lære tysk bare for at kunne læse Spengler), og det er sindssygt spændende på en totalt uvedkommende måde, som om det ikke rigtigt er mig som læser, men en skal af noget, der ligner mig, en anden, hvor uncanny, mens indholdet har gang i guderne (dem vi selv fremkalder til eksistens gennem insisteren og som gør, at jeg f.eks. altid bliver unaturligt draget til det sted, hvor mine længslers mål står og kysser en anden, også når det egentlig er cool, og at man med en vis ro kan tage chancer efter noget særligt slemt er sket) må vide hvad indholdet har gang i, selvom man kan gætte med vis præcision. Måske jeg simpelthen bare ikke evner at være forelsket i flere retninger på én gang, mit sidste større projekt lykkedes trods alt måske nok netop fordi jeg var blevet forladt og en romance mellem gusten, gammeltestamentlig femme fatale og afhugget hoved i særlig grad vækkede kærlige følelser hos mig da, og for øvrigt stadig gør, det er vrøvl, det havde intet at gøre med det, nej, men jeg ved ikke hvorfor der kun lyder et ekko, når jeg prøver at tænke eller hvorfor intet sætter mig i brand, andet end dine hænder.