White Crane Spreads Its Wings and Folds Them

Last night, we cleaned the house. Erin needed me. I was supposed to do the dishes and finish everything that needed to be done. But I went outside to take out the trash before I did anything else. Then,

the clouds were moving across the sky, so, so fast
and there was much gray and cold
It bit across me like pleasant teeth of the world and I died in glory.

There were sounds, too, sounds like water moving
with twelve hundred shapes of noise
like tiny triangle pieces that flicker across the eyelids

My body was hot from the inside out,
not with flames, but glowing, like iron in a forge
and here it was crisp and free and full of wind

Gods! I wanted to gasp,
to draw the air of life into my lungs
To stay outside,
to run and run and run and never return
To just go--to just go
To fling myself into my car and to drive!

I wanted to fly!
White Crane Spreads Its Wings
Dragon Holding the Pearl

I wanted to go go go go go

...

But I didn't.

...

Every day I die a little bit more,
until I fear that, one day,
I will become insensible to that wild innate cry.

Assertiveness

Sometimes I feel
I ought to have been born a man.
I’m lucky I wasn’t, I suppose—
I’d have to fight for my interest in Art.
I don’t want to be a man.
I just wish…
there were women like the woman I want to be.
I have the perfect personality to do manly things, like
adoring from afar
and
knocking down walls.
In my daydreams,
I am the rescuer, the lover, the rider, the emperor
I am the one who does.
The subjective. The superlative.
Endless striving,
like that cad Faust.
My beloved is Dulcinea, she is Beatrice—
Is there a man for me to love?
Or will I have to love a woman?
In the dreams I have at night,
I can fly and nobody notices.

My Beloved

Am I a cynic or an optimist?

That is the question we have been pondering.

I am an idealist; that cannot be denied,
and it is true that a cynic is merely an idealist who has suffered.
(For a person who never expected Good Things would never be disappointed by their failure to appear.)

I think sometimes that I am an optimist, because I’ve never been able to believe that bad things will happen to me:
Obscurity
Poverty
Failure to Create Something Important
But… still…
I am terribly afraid that bad things will happen:
Giving Up
Giving In
Growing too Tired to Resist

I know that I’m going to drive away everyone that loves me,
I’ll kill myself,
I’ll fall in love with a monster

But what if it’s even worse?

What if I become… boring?

What if I forget about the heights and learn to be content with mediocrity?

This thought makes me sick.

I don’t care if I DIE, I don’t care if I have the skin ripped off me and my intestines fed to pigs,
I don’t care if I’m the discarded plaything of incubi and aliens and secret government agents,

just… please…

don’t let me marry a man with whom I’m not in love.

I don’t believe in True Love.
I never would have said I did, but my cynical protestations were the cool postulations of a girl who never truly disbelieved.

There is no love that lasts—
not forever, not for a lifetime, not even for twenty years.
What exists in lasting relationships
is just the fondness, the respect, the commitment that exists after love is killed.

There is no happy love—
love makes you joyful, ecstatic,
and then it pierces your insides and twists your mind until it becomes nothing but ugly, hateful SIN.

Love should never be consummated.

It should never be reciprocated.

Because after that bright instant of wonderful death that occurs when the beloved object relents,
the story is over.
Love is lost in a mundane effort to get along.

How can you love someone who flosses his teeth? Or drinks cheap beer? Or can’t stand up to his father?

You can care for this person, surely. You can want good things for him. You can hope he becomes a better person.
You can enjoy his company. You can respect him. You can share with him and miss him when he’s gone.

That is marriage. But it is not love!

How could you love this person? This person is no better than you are!

Love is worship!

Love is adoration!

I will not truly say, “I love you,” until I can hold the adored object up to the lightning with both of my hands, saying,
“This is what I ought to wish I could be!”

When I love, my beloved will be an innocent child,
an angel who sings the primeval songs in the language of Ur,
a holy infant whose only sin is naivety.

My beloved will look down at me with frightened, bewildered eyes,
and I will tear down cities to protect him.

I will not pray for him to love me—
for him to do so would indicate his poor taste, if not unintelligence—
I will only pray for him to accept my love,
and perhaps for my work to make his world somehow more pleasant.

His beauty will make my heart stop,
and his kindness and generosity will be boundless.
His extensive knowledge will place him as a part of the spheres,
The part that wills the universe to turn and grow.
Plants will grow at his touch,
Animals will come to him freely.
Only evil or stupid people will shy from his outstretched hands,
and he will not understand their wicked hearts and will cry.

I will fall at his feet and he will not think to abuse me.
All I give to him will be from my own heart and with both hands.

I will NEVER touch him. Never.
I will never plunder him nor allow him to be despoiled.
Any bruise on his pale skin will awe me with its beauty and incite me to wrath.

Every day for me will be pain, because he will never be mine.
But I will forget the pain, because his goodness will overwhelm me.
I will drown and pass away in the many waters of his radiance.

His skin will shine bright white like a pure light,
and his eyes will sparkle like the life incarnate he possesses.
His white hands, with long and graceful fingers,
will gently part the clouds to bring about the daybreak.

He will be tall enough to see the universe at one glance
and small enough to cuddle in my arms.
He will be infinitely compassionate and steadfast in the face of evil.
He will always try again,
he will never give up,
and if he loses,
it will be in honorable death.

I will never stop speaking of him, never stop writing of him.
He will be the motive of every phrase, the theme of every movement.
He will be his own leitmotif in the gesamptkunstwerk of time.
He is the hero of every novel, the rose that drops inspiration onto the poet;
he is the uncut marble and the emerald still buried in earth.
He is the motion of the water that inspires the dance.
He was the first smile, the first laughter;
he is the laws of physics and the mysteries of metaphysics.
I will never tire of praising his wonders,
and the world will know him through me.
I will never cease singing of his virtues until the seas dry up, the stars fall into blackness,
and the whole world knows his glory.

When my task is finished,
I will die,
not happy,
not satisfied,
but noble and steady.

Satisfaction means that you stop wanting to improve,
and happiness means you learn to love the imperfect.

This is what I pray will never happen to me.

I want the moon—the moon is my love.

He does not exist now, nor will he ever.
And so,
I must never marry.

What do you think I would do to a husband who doesn’t measure up to my beloved?

You see, I am neither optimist nor cynic.

Awake at Night in January

Again, restless melancholy forbids me to sleep.
Am I depressed? No, only melancholy.
By now I know,
Sadness and Happiness are Irrelevant;
All that matters is Energy.

Energy I have now,
in the aftermath of the exhibition:
the Theater, the Concert Hall—
they never let me rest.

My room is too hot and too quiet
and the moon is unseen.
I want to open the door and look at it,
to go out onto the cold metal railing
and hurt myself with snow.
My body craves action!
Anything! Except the hot and stifling stupor
that will not come.

I could do anything now!
I could dance, I could drive!
I don’t want to sit or eat or talk with friends.
Right now I want to sing as loud as I can,
outside to the stars,
with the empty forest to surround me.

And here I have the uneasy feeling that I have hurt the people who love me.
Just by being myself.
It’s my nature to injure others.

I ought to go alone.

Please be silent, O Music!