I Know You've Read So Many Books

Hot summer night, mid-July, when you and I were forever wild—the crazy days, the city lights, the way you would play with me like a child.

April is the cruelest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain.

. . .

I still remember the first poem that ever called out to me. It wasn't some masterpiece, but it did win a poetry contest—Terra Incognita it was called—and it called out to me like no other poem had. I don't remember the exact details of it, but I remember the elements of charting new grounds, deceptive sirens, and that flamboyant adventurous spirit rooted in some sense of reality. I wrote a poem too modeled after that, one about my desires and fears and hopes and dreams, all stuffed into a hero's calling across an almost impassible ocean, that archetypal plot.

. . .

It may sound childish (and heaven knows I've been called that a lot), but my favorite book is The Tale of Despereaux. Maybe it's because of the tried-and-true recipe of a knight, a princess, and a villain—but more so, it's because the villain is not quite a villain and the princess is not quite a damsel-in-distress princess, and the knight, oh the knight, he is a knight by virtue and courage alone. Here, even with strong veins of fairy tales spun into the story, things never go as planned and even the smallest thing such as a watercress soup can hurt and heal in an instant.

. . .

Oh tell me why / Do we build castles in the sky? Oh tell me why / All the castles way up high.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams / his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream / his wings are clipped and his feet are tied / so he opens his throat to sing.

. . .

I can't help but cry at the intro of The Titanic, when Jack Dawson wins two tickets to board the eponymous ship. I wish with all my might that I could wave my arms frantically in front of him and snatch the tickets away from him and rip them up so he wouldn't die only days later. But had he not gone on the Titanic, would he have ever met Rose? Is it okay to rob someone of a life-changing romance to save their life? How do authors justify it to themselves when they put their characters in peril for that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity? Do they cry when their noble heroes and heroines die trying to be rather than merely am?

. . .

In The Kite Runner, the protagonist's father claims that all sin can be simmered down to theft. A lie at its very basis is a theft of someone's undeniable right to truth. But what do they call it when you steal from yourself? Every time I read a book or watch a movie, I am lying to myself. I am telling myself that I live in this world—and I very much wish I did. I wish I could live in this constructed world of perfect coincidences, no matter how much pain that might require (and authors do put their characters through a lot), because some days anything seems better than this emotional cyclone I am in, no matter how calm the eye is.

. . .

"Ah, Sharon Lipschutz," said the young man. "How that name comes up. Mixing memory and desire." He suddenly got to his feet. He looked at the ocean. "Sybil," he said, "I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll see if we can catch a bananafish."

That Night We Ran Away with the River of Lights

Now that The Great Gatsby is coming out in movie form, all decked out in the kind of frivolous extravagance to be expected of a movie of that era; now that it is summer, just as it was the year Gatsby constructed the infamously haunting fantasy; now that I am back here, in this basement, in this room, hungry and pained, once again, now that I am in front of the computer typing in front a familiar screen with a familiar pain in my throat—where has the past year gone?

Once again the room is hollow, once again only my shadow steps in place with me. Once again I cannot stand up straight and soldier on, I am instead shivering in the slightly chilled air mulling over the past few days, the past few months, the past few years that have slipped by so silently I barely had a chance to turn around.

Maybe, just maybe, "tomorrow is another day." I have always hated the ending of Gone with the Wind, because I want to believe in the happy endings, but if life must end in uncertainty and heartbreak, maybe we should still stand proud and hopeful. The Ashleys in our world will always remind us of our painful pasts and all the horrible mistakes we have made, but maybe, just maybe, if we are lucky, the Rhetts in our world will bring us to our senses—wake us from our nightmares and save us from our callousness.

. . .

Is it late enough yet?

Lately I have been rereading Homestuck, since the author is on a hiatus. The first time I read it was last summer. I spent a good couple days up all night reading the pages in a dazed fervor, and when it was all over, I had to face what had been tormenting me with my full consciousness again.

Reality.

I have often said that I write to face reality, because in words black against the white, I can slowly take them in without having them burn me alive. In life, the overwhelming thoughts are suffocating, parasitic, and all-consuming. But reality is rooted in life, and more often than not, my writing is merely reactionary.

Is it late enough yet to talk of the nights spent draped under a thin felt blanket, crying into the telephone desperate for the tiniest amount of consolation? Has enough time passed that the stars are now hung high in the sky, cold and out of reach? Are the bells tolling midnight, past midnight, much past midnight?

Is it too late to retrace our steps and pretend we did not just take a detour into a land that tore us apart and rebuilt us with desolation? Even if we do not know where we should go from here on, even if there are a million paths and every but one of them leads to horrible suffering death.

And if we can, could we still build the world we want to see?