tuesday 12:40am

it's already night but it gets darker as it goes on. neighbours' lights go out. leaves grow , trees grow. still, it's no less inviting. i get out of bed. walk around. with my steps trace the rectangles the windows make on the floor. feel the shift from wood to rug. try it without the sweater. then with. without socks. with.


___*___*___*

in two months i'll be somewhere else. somewhere far. i haven't felt this much uncertainty about my future for... a while. i lived with that feeling in my gut for a decade, this reprise feels like a homecoming.


___*___*___*

it occurs to me, whatever this is, this is what i've become. it seems mighty late to be someone new now. i'll just have to live with this. i wonder if i'm okay with that. if i had a re-try would i lose my virginity sooner? would i go to the conservatorium after high-school? would i have stayed in haifa and tried my hand at love?


___*___*___*

things that i've already decided will come with me to oxford no matter what, a preparatory (incomplete) list:

+ the copy of prayers and meditations with Ashtree's inscription - because it makes me feel unlonely. and i like that feeling. but then it also makes me feel far. and distant. but mostly unlonely.

+ the pee-wee sized football that lives on my couch and that i hold when i read. there's something very comforting about it. and although no one in australia knows how to throw a football, i lay upside on my couch and throw it into the air. it feels nice against my hands. sometimes i just let it crash against my chest. thump. throw.  thump. throw.  thump.

it's admittedly a short list. i can't seem to decide anything. which pens do i want with me. which of my 7 pajama pants? do i need more than 1 baseball cap? what about Sykes's Law of Securities?


___*___*___*

______my exams are over, you owe me a movie.

i stare at it. ____damn.



what am i going to do about you, you're going to destroy me.

______- Wednesday?[details]

______Done. see you there!

i stare at it. all i see is her dancing and her purple dress and her almond shaped eyes and the feel of her lips and -

damn.

damn.damn.damn.


___*___*___*

i can't stop reading Faulkner. i can't stop thinking about Faulkner. i memorised Macbeth's soliloquy. i mumble it to myself as i move mom's boxes into the van. what are you saying to yourself?
- full of sound and fury, ___signifying nothing.
- why do you keep saying it?
- listen to the 't' sounds:
___it is a tale told by an idiot
hear that? how percussive it is? tah tah tah tah
- yes. ___so?
- and the next bit is:
___full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
alternating 'f's and 's's.
- the last word should start with f.
- good! Right, exactly, it should - but that's the magic - the 'th' - it sounds almost like an 'f' but without the kick. it's fading itself out, phonetically.
- are you just saying it because you like the sounds?
- maybe. has there ever been a better description of life than as being 'sound and fury'?
- fury?
- i don't read 'fury' as in anger... think more, passion, and... feelings, like water boiling over - a wild energy being bashed around. that's life right? this huge exertion and noise and heartaches and breaks and remakes and blahs and blahs. and not really for much. after a few years, those huge melodramatic struggles become little anecdotes we smile at. an entire year you can retell in 10 minutes.
- no, don't take that box yet.
- what?
- that one.
- oh.


___*___*___*

things i am thinking/feeling:

+ i don't want strangers living in my house
+ let's get on with it
+ god i'm tired, i need a few days off these pills
+ i don't want to know what feelings are hiding under there, don't take a few days off these pills
+ i want to touch you, and undress you, and feel your ankles in my hands, and your wrists are so slender, and why do you always dress so proper?
+ i want to not think about you. or see you. i want to leave and not look back.
+ q, this is who you are now. you're not artsy anymore. you're not a creative type - you're a suit, live with it. [i sit at a table by myself at lunch reading. some colleagues approach - i guess from tomorrow i'll have to find a new place to have lunch -  heya q, whatchya doing? - reading. - ... - ... - ... - oookay, well, i guess we'll leave you to it then. - no problem, see you back up there. they leave. i keep reading.]
+ i'm really concerned about what to do with my first edition of Four Quartets. i'm more worried about it than my piano. no one's going to lose my piano. but the book...
+ who's going to show up in September? i really don't want to be workaholic, hermetic q. i don't want him to show up. i'm not ready for how much work this is going to entail. all i really want to do is ride my bike around, and join the beginners rowing team, and stare at the snow and read Absalom! Absalom! and try to write better than i'm managing now.


___*___*___*

it's darker still. no less inviting.

i'm not ready for tomorrow to happen. i'm not ready for today to end. i'm happy here in the middle. just let me sit here a minute. i wish you were here. we could listen to Made in Heights in the 2am dark with our arms around each other and sway our bodies ; and we could drink tea and tonic water and bourbon and we could play with my plastic dinosaurs and re-enact scenes from mean girls and i could play you Satie's gymnopedies and you could hold the football and lay on the opposite side of the couch with your feet on my chest and we could say absolutely nothing and stare at the books on my shelf and think about what they all say and it would go on for years. a perfect darkness. a perfect moment under the blanket hiding from tuesday.


___*___*___*

i understand that this is the shortest of the lives i'll live.

sometimes i wish that weren't so. other times it's the only thing that will console me.

in any case, i'll just have to live with this. with the books on my shelf. the decisions, the unmade bed. the empty rooms. the quiet nights...


one day soon my sweet ;
i'll have my face between your hair and neck and my arms around your waist, and we'll make fresh popcorn in the dark and i'll feel so alive, so real,

___our bodies like flowers in a vase,
___overlapping shadows

______ssshhh, listen to that - you hear that?
______what? she asks.
_________outside, i can hear the jasmine smiling in the dark

poem.

these are wordless thoughts
movements behind curtains
things i cannot shape,
distortions

___*
i still have a pencil from high school
the one i used during final exams
i'm too superstitious to write with it - sometimes i hold it
maybe it remembers me

___*
the moment i was born,
she handed me a balloon. 
it's your soul she said,
keep it safe she said - __she said
it will remind you which way is up
until your wings grow.

*
in 31 years i have forgotten french and physics ;
many things ,
continents.
books and books sit on my shelf,  heavy and empty.

___*
he was right, my dad:
everything that matters in this life is not of it.

measureless. timeless. __dreamstuff and spookstuff. 

___*
lost
and every minute more losing.

meaningless rhythms of flustered fools
full of sound and fury,
traffic noise, sun's glare, spam mail:

___*
there's a left somewhere i missed

sometimes i glance up
maybe there's a balloon that knows physics, speaks french
remembers the smell,
the feeling of ___, the possibility

remembers how to hold hands 

___(really you can't?
___ i can't.
___ try it she says, she takes me hand
___ i cringe, look away
___ oh my god! she says ,
___ she says you can't even look at my face! )

___*

Berg's violin concerto is
written in a language
i cannot translate.

hieroglyphs and dead-language spasms
of a foreigner 

___*
you scare me when you're like this she says
'but i am so calm...'
she says you're not even here q, i don't know where you are ,
i don't know where you are she says, you're not here
you're not here she says
she says you're not even here

___*
undiscovered star
silent oceans of fire
invisible inferno

enough night can smother anything.

___*
each day i walk in , walk out.
45 minutes each way.
tides.
mountain ranges of minutes.
markless footsteps on unimportant roads.

heat and hallucinations,
___The hope only 
___Of

___*
beautiful truths,
truthful beauties : 

measureless. timeless. __dreamstuff and spookstuff. 

wordless distortions

collected silences

___The hope only 
___Of


___**