Things That Rankle
It is night. Now do the leaping fountains of life leap higher.
It is night. And my heart too is a leaping fountain.
When I lived in Glasgow, the summer I was 20, there was a multi-tiered Victorian fountain on a hill in a park, near Glasgow University. They didn't have it running, so it was dry, sort of like a stone wedding cake. I used to climb up there and sit, reading. That was my summer of Nietzsche and Iris Murchoch. I read Nietzsches words about the leaping fountains of life there. So I've always pictured that fountain when I've thought of those lines. Though naturally I pictured it with water in it.
Now, when it's night and my heart surges longing, sometimes I feel like I'm still 20, still sitting there in Glasgow.
It was a long time ago.
Iris Murdoch was alive, and I wrote to her. She wrote back. I asked her if she considered herself a feminist, and she replied, "If by feminism you mean that women should sit up and join the human race, then I'm all for that."
I wish I still had the letter. It got lost in a move somewhere. Or I think an ex-boyfriend appropriated it. (I've no idea why. He'd never heard of Iris Murdoch until I found the letter one day and showed it to him. As far as I know the only books he'd ever read were "Mastering Pac-Man" and a series about the right way to gut fish and tan hides.)
Why am I telling you all this? Because my heart is surging with that same longing, and there's nothing I can do about it.
Sometimes there's just so much longing that I think I am drowning in it.
I wish so much I could go back to that summer I was 20. I know now which forks in the road I ought to have taken. That when the head of the Amherst theater department said he'd get me into Amherst because he wanted me in his department, I should NOT have said, "But I'm going to Rome next year. Sorry."
That I shouldn't have bought a certain property that I'm longing to dump right now.
That I should have agreed, when an old boyfriend asked me to move in with him, rather than bolting to another state and then wondering why the relationship didn't move forward.
Hindsight being 20-20 isn't necessarily a good thing. I wish I was just blind to the mistakes in my past. Instead, sleepless nights like this one.
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
for unremembered lads that not again
will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
I shouldn't write after midnight. I just get morose.
It is night. And my heart too is a leaping fountain.
When I lived in Glasgow, the summer I was 20, there was a multi-tiered Victorian fountain on a hill in a park, near Glasgow University. They didn't have it running, so it was dry, sort of like a stone wedding cake. I used to climb up there and sit, reading. That was my summer of Nietzsche and Iris Murchoch. I read Nietzsches words about the leaping fountains of life there. So I've always pictured that fountain when I've thought of those lines. Though naturally I pictured it with water in it.
Now, when it's night and my heart surges longing, sometimes I feel like I'm still 20, still sitting there in Glasgow.
It was a long time ago.
Iris Murdoch was alive, and I wrote to her. She wrote back. I asked her if she considered herself a feminist, and she replied, "If by feminism you mean that women should sit up and join the human race, then I'm all for that."
I wish I still had the letter. It got lost in a move somewhere. Or I think an ex-boyfriend appropriated it. (I've no idea why. He'd never heard of Iris Murdoch until I found the letter one day and showed it to him. As far as I know the only books he'd ever read were "Mastering Pac-Man" and a series about the right way to gut fish and tan hides.)
Why am I telling you all this? Because my heart is surging with that same longing, and there's nothing I can do about it.
Sometimes there's just so much longing that I think I am drowning in it.
I wish so much I could go back to that summer I was 20. I know now which forks in the road I ought to have taken. That when the head of the Amherst theater department said he'd get me into Amherst because he wanted me in his department, I should NOT have said, "But I'm going to Rome next year. Sorry."
That I shouldn't have bought a certain property that I'm longing to dump right now.
That I should have agreed, when an old boyfriend asked me to move in with him, rather than bolting to another state and then wondering why the relationship didn't move forward.
Hindsight being 20-20 isn't necessarily a good thing. I wish I was just blind to the mistakes in my past. Instead, sleepless nights like this one.
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
for unremembered lads that not again
will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
I shouldn't write after midnight. I just get morose.
posted by Cupcakegrrl at Saturday, January 14, 2006
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