Wednesday, April 25, 2007
personal curiosity cabinet
My birthday was last week and I thought of many things:
1. How memory can be organized like taxonomy or like a curiosity cabinet. Above are pictures of what would be in my personal curiosity cabinet, things which have a value only to me. I have an egg I found while I was a gardener, a bone found on a beach, a pipe-cleaner outlined heart, my cats' whiskers, some stones and pieces of glass, etc. These things evoke a memory, a meaning only accessible to me, yet valueless to the world. I used to think love was like that sometimes.
2. I'm actually quite glad that I will never have to deal with infatuation again. I wanted in life: someone smart and strange, someone who has a big heart, someone I can always trust and rely on, someone who engages my intellect, someone who is my best friend, someone who can share his life with me, someone who is comfortable being themselves with me and is comfortable letting me be myself around them. And I found that person. No matter what happens, or how life turns out, to have such an experience frees me. Even if I spend the rest of my life celibate and single, I will never feel alone.
3. There is a bitterness, though, that I must cure myself of. I felt alot for someone, then I realized that this feeling will never be reciprocated. I realized it was a shame to spend so much of life feeling this one-sided feeling. I never wanted to be a bitter person, yet I find that this bitter taste has not left me. I'm left with the bitter taste for empty feelings. It is useless.
4. About letters-something that used to give a us a window into a writer's mind- now disappeared. Then I thought about love letters. I guess it's better if your ex-lover returns your love letters than to throw it all away. If the loved can no longer feel the emotion expressed in the letter, at least you can remember the passion you felt. There is no ex-lover whose letters I can ever throw away. Those words mean alot to me. But perhaps I am alone this way.
It would be sad not to have slightest trace left. Love is never an easy thing to get over, I want to know that I felt this way once. A letter is the best gift I could ever receive. (he gave so little of himself) (MLG gave so much, more than anyone I've known, more than what I could ever expect).
5. I would like to be happy, for a change.