soon we make up, and you’ll say, “Let’s go to so-and-so’s poetry reading.” And I’ll say, “Oh, darling! Let’s! Just give me a minute to freshen up and hang myself from the hall chandelier”—which, by the way, I repaired last week.
Memories? Say, rather, treasures! The day your agent returned your call. The day your editor returned your call. The day you found your name in the papers. In the phone book. Remember the time we saw your first novel on sale in the Strand for one dollar?
How we laughed! The night you awoke with an inspiration for a story, and in the morning it sounded so silly?
Remember when I tried to write something myself, and you said it was “interesting”?
You know? I used to like books.
Ah. You’ve turned to the left again. I’m pooped just watching you. Watching you in your dreams. I dream, too. Here’s mine:
Lord, please let him find a younger woman.
{ essay in The Kenyon Review }
From the Book-length Essay The Book of Love
Tonight, I thought of you as the moon was turning its knowing face, the way you turn away from me at one of my contrived displays of wit. Embarrassed for me, who lacks the wit to be embarrassed for myself. Why is that? Why are you prepared to bear my slightest burden? I, the tropical ceiling fan, wheeling in my faux aristocratic self-confidence. You, with the serene sense to look beyond the slats of the casa shutters to the mango trees, the bougainvillea, and beyond those, to the sea. So steady, your eyesight. But tonight was different. The past had changed, as it does sometimes, and instead of the self-regard I have worn like a white linen suit, I saw only you, and the strawberries, and the windfall of light on your hair.
The story I have to tell is of you. It was related to me by a priest who had read it in an Icelandic saga memorized by an Irishman who recited it on a road packed with flutists and soldiers, where he was overheard by a young girl from Florida who transcribed it in a language no one speaks anymore. So I need to tread carefully. Stories like yours tend to slip away, if one is not careful. And I have been known not to be careful. A dead language is like the ruins of a great civilization. It glows as it is excavated. I shall tell your story in that language, whose power derives from not saying everything, like a poem. Or a song. Maybe a song.
The story I have to tell is of you. Of others, too. Other people, other things. But mainly of you. It begins and ends with you. It always comes back to you.
From the Memoir Kayak Morning
Writing makes sorrow endurable, evil intelligible, justice desirable, and love possible.
Mash Note
Should we mix it up this Valentine’s Day? I mean, a knock-down-drag-out, no-holds-barred, mano a mano donnybrook? You married a writer. You asked for it. Tell you what. Let’s make love instead. Let’s do both, and fight between the sheets. Does that make sense? Does anything about love make sense? Love is irrational, delirium, which is why neither of us would want to be one of those gods graced with eternal life, because if you have eternal life, why panic? Where’s the fire? But if you’re mortal, and are we ever, carpe diem, carpe whatever frantic impulse comes charging through your heart. So, what is it to be, baby? A shot to the kisser, or embraceable you? (I like a Gershwin tune. How about you?) Plant one on me.
The safest place to be in a tornado is a storm cellar. The safest place to be in a tornado is a railroad apartment on Bleecker Street or a Motel 6 or Williams-Sonoma or a bank vault or a North Korean prison. The safest place to be in a tornado is in your arms, you said, and you thought you meant it but you didn’t. Love is no safer than a bread knife. Take the storm cellar. Tea for two and two for tea and me for you in a cottage small by a waterfall? I don’t think so. Embrace the peril. If we’re going to pick our song, let’s make it “That Old Black Magic” and revel in the spin we’re in.
How do conservatives fall in love? Conservatively, I suppose, like porcupines. Love may be better suited to liberals, for whom disorder is a work of the imagination. Within the blink of a black eye, you can be enthralled by me, disgusted with me, appalled, enchanted, smitten, bored (Bored? With me?), forever mine, forever through with me. Analyze that.
The trick is not to forget that we love each other, because couples do that. They forget to remember. As if love were keys to misplace or a purse to leave in an airport. What? Did I slip your mind? Did you slip mine? My irreplaceable you. Me sweet erasable you, you’d be so nice to come home to. That is, you or Tracey the waitress with the boobs I glimpsed in Applebee’s last Tuesday. Unforgettable, that’s what you are not, unless I concentrate on you.
Pope John XXIII said life is a holy mess. Is that so? Is the Pope Catholic? Life is a holy mess. Love is a holy mess. You were not meant for me. I was not meant for you. Yet there we were in the snow, our first night together, the quiet luster of you, composed like a Gershwin tune, like “Embraceable You,” while I, a whooping rhinoceros, stomped about in boots, a rhino in boots, until we stopped, stood thigh to thigh, looked up, and caught the moon between the tangles of the clouds. My heart fell open like a knot.
Be my valentine in a blizzard, where the air is so thick, we cannot see two feet ahead of us, and we flail about snow-blind, without a GPS. Be my GPS to the tundra, the Klondike, and I’ll be yours. The outer world of fanatics hates at the drop of a hat. Let us love fanatically, unhinged. O, promise me nothing. Is that you standing before me in the whiteout? Come to Papa. Do.
{ from the book-length essay The Book of Love }
From the Novel Thomas Murphy
A poem should consist of two parts rocks, one part daisy. ’Tis my opinion, anyway. If the rocks aren’t in the poem, you won’t be able to appreciate the daisy. And if you take out the rocks, so all that’s left is daisy, well, that’s all that’s left. It’s not so yellow anymore. It wilts. You want hard language to convey soft thought, because in the end all poetry is about love, and no one wants love without a backbone. It’s about contrast, see. The kiss and the slap. Oona and I never fucked so brilliantly as when we’d gone at each other beforehand, really torn each other up, tooth and claw. Then we’d hurl ourselves into bed and make a poem.
Essays. I, Too, Dislike Them
The essay consists of one part poetry, two parts history, three parts philosophy, and no parts sex.
My point of entry is a young woman standing before you reading a book, waiting for a train. She wears a round straw hat girded by a thick blue band. Her sandals are open-toed. Her dress is white with a pattern of small yellow flowers. Her skirt stops at her knees. Her expression skitters between the quizzical and the serene. She never lifts her gaze from the pages of the book, and she shows no concern for the time, the station, the train, her eventual destination, or for you.
What do you think? Is she a vision from a painting by Degas? Is she Galatea? Is she the intersection of thought and space? A problem? A symbol? A doop de doop?
Is that bulge in your pants a thousand words long?
{ from the essay collection Anything Can Happen }
Humiliation, Mon Amour
The woman at the counter in Barnes & Noble had silver hair in a bun and a smile like breakfast. I was with a friend, for whom I was buying a copy of my latest book. I do this often—buy my own books for friends, then wonder why I’m broke. “May I take a moment to sign it?” I asked the smiling woman. “Did you write it?” she asked. “No,” I said. “I just like signing books.” Unmoved, she asked, “Is this your first book?” I shook my head no, and continued inscribing. “It must be fun to write books,” she said. “Superfun,” I said.
On