He wanted new experiences in his brain, not old, predictable ones. Were he to remain in Europe, his new experiences would only ever have the same texture as a cover version of a song he already knew-- old buildings doing riffs on other old buildings; bahnhofs and gares and staziones; change/cambio/wechsel. Going to America would be like learning a whole new kind of music.
The pain. It sparkles and twists and winds and pops and angles its way through and around every part it can reach, dreaming and drilling for those small cracks it cannot touch, yet.
"You're everybody's hidden influence," he remarks.
&, given the evidence, I have a hard time disproving his theory.
a dear friend wrote this in an email to me, after i concocted something about nostalgia and pain:
'About nostalgia...it's a function of the human condition that when we decide that an experience was, on balance, a good one, then our memory of it all tends to be shaped accordingly. We forget or edit out little aspects or nuances. Or as I like to say, we get all Rashomon about things. Hence the ache for nostalgia, just as we pine to breathe in that summer sunlight the way we did when we were children. We want it still despite the knowledge that the past is all but gone except for the ghosts of memory.'
'Or maybe memories are like karaoke-- where you realize up on the stage, with all those lyrics scrawling across the screen's bottom, and with everybody clapping at you, that you didn't know even half the lyrics to your all-time favourite song. Only afterwards, when someone else is up on stage humiliating themselves amid the clapping and laughing, do you realize that what you liked most about your favourite song was precisely your ignorance of its full meaning-- and you read more into it than maybe existed in the first place. I think it's better to not know the lyrics to your life.'
even adultery has morality to it...
It's hard to argue when
you won't stop making sense
But my tongue still misbehaves and it
keeps digging my own grave with my Hands open, and my eyes open
I just keep hoping
That your heart opens
"You're my favourite use of bandwidth. Possibly the entire reason I support Web 2.0."
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): "Partner needed for mission from God," read the classified ad I spied online. "I'm driving across the country in a banana-yellow 1979 Cadillac Seville with a Lionel Richie photo dangling from the rearview mirror and the thousand-page manuscript of my autobiography piled in the trunk. The mission is driving to Mexico to find my biological father, a rancher. Swimming pools will be peed in, convenience stores trashed, and large sunglasses worn. If you accompany me, I'll pay you $1,000." In calling this to your attention, Libra, I'm not necessarily suggesting you take the guy up on his offer. However, I do hope you'll be alert for comparable proposals that would reward you for helping interesting characters carry out edgy, inspirational quests. This made me swoon. A lot. Please, someone invite me on such a quest. Hell, any roadtrip, with or without a purpose of any kind, will do.... sigh.
'Look for redemption in an influence that has created a mess or broken your heart.'
Je ne sais pas si ca c'est possible avec moi et toi. //Il manque 'nous.'
