notes:
– it’s too cold. i put my hands in my pockets. from the edges of my eyes, i see you reach for them but then hesitate and pull away.
– i hesitate, in general.
– you take things too literally. therefore i become silent.
– what is presence? and is introversion a mood?
– i sit still these days, more out of forced paralysis than meditation. i’m hoping it will transform into meditativeness soon.
– sitting on a saturday afternoon at the MoMA before the Matisse exhibit closed was an introvert’s nightmare. but i calmly sat and looked through a book about Banksy and felt better.
– i have now lived in the same room long enough that i can tell how early it is from the sunlight coming in. or lack thereof. this past week, i wake in the middle of the night. my jaw is usually sore, which means i’ve been having nightmares.
– sometimes you pull the curtains closed for me so that i sleep better, and then time disappears. or maybe time disappears before you even pull them closed, i’m not sure which.
– it’s numbing, the month of february. i haven’t yet figured out how to feel happy, but i’ve gotten better at not feeling sad.
– i receive letters. they make me feel closer to something.
– sometimes the falling snow is so beautiful that i forget about the cold.
– i try to listen more than i speak because when i speak i repeat myself.
– i’m still the luckiest girl in the world.
– the glass cracked three times. you came back to me with a whole one.
– i slip.
– i fall. i vow to be more careful.
– yet, i fall again.
– i blame it on the soles of my shoes. there is always a scapegoat, isn’t there?
Sometimes we forget, and think there are only women—endless hills and plains of unresisting women. We make little jokes and comfort each other and our lives pass quickly. But every now and then, it is true, a man rises unexpectedly in our midst like a pine tree, and looks savagely at us, and sends us hobbling away in great floods to hide in the caves and gullies until he is gone.
– Men, Lydia Davis.
