time to sublimate
to paraphrase a friend, i wish i had the wisdom not to write this. but it's been one of those weekends, so here goes.
thursday night i was reminded how not to entrust your feelings with people you don't know well. tonight i learned the lesson again, at another level, from a brighter candle. those were the bookends.
my negative but heartfelt manhunt profile served as some kind of inverse philosopher's stone, but not in the way i expected. i expected the usual defensiveness and accusations of bitterness from guys on there, but the large majority of responses were positive. i may have even made a friend from "the ass-end of the universe", who described our resonance thusly: "i seem to have met my evil twin. or maybe i'm your evil twin. either way, uncanny." he got my sense of humor, and i got his, and that doesn't happen much. the double date looms in the indefinite future (he's hitched too).
and yet, points 2 and 3 came home to roost big time, when i wasn't manhunting in name or in fact. i won't get into it, because it's time to sublimate:
i've come to believe that i am most myself in my words. at first i thought such an idea was run-of-the-mill insane (in real life, i'm a nice person with a sentimental streak; i'm an amused didactic fuck in my writing), but over the years the logic has shone through. my poems have become miniature altars to this and that -- ones i'm not ashamed to need or attend. like franz wright's have. i don't know if franz is the man his poems suggest he is, but i am the man i want to be in my poems. and by that i mean nothing less than: i have found (a very unusual, personal but sublime) god in them; i have discovered/invented reasons to continue my life, with or without him/it; i have rediscovered a language my head dreamed of using but my life never allowed; i have begun to understand and undertake my past; i have had moments where i felt honored to exist, even if my existence means nothing more than charming the pants off this model reader i have in mind, who will see my footnotes and rub his eyes in disbelief, just before the unstoppable smile comes across and winds its way through a day reclaimed.
thursday night i was reminded how not to entrust your feelings with people you don't know well. tonight i learned the lesson again, at another level, from a brighter candle. those were the bookends.
my negative but heartfelt manhunt profile served as some kind of inverse philosopher's stone, but not in the way i expected. i expected the usual defensiveness and accusations of bitterness from guys on there, but the large majority of responses were positive. i may have even made a friend from "the ass-end of the universe", who described our resonance thusly: "i seem to have met my evil twin. or maybe i'm your evil twin. either way, uncanny." he got my sense of humor, and i got his, and that doesn't happen much. the double date looms in the indefinite future (he's hitched too).
and yet, points 2 and 3 came home to roost big time, when i wasn't manhunting in name or in fact. i won't get into it, because it's time to sublimate:
i've come to believe that i am most myself in my words. at first i thought such an idea was run-of-the-mill insane (in real life, i'm a nice person with a sentimental streak; i'm an amused didactic fuck in my writing), but over the years the logic has shone through. my poems have become miniature altars to this and that -- ones i'm not ashamed to need or attend. like franz wright's have. i don't know if franz is the man his poems suggest he is, but i am the man i want to be in my poems. and by that i mean nothing less than: i have found (a very unusual, personal but sublime) god in them; i have discovered/invented reasons to continue my life, with or without him/it; i have rediscovered a language my head dreamed of using but my life never allowed; i have begun to understand and undertake my past; i have had moments where i felt honored to exist, even if my existence means nothing more than charming the pants off this model reader i have in mind, who will see my footnotes and rub his eyes in disbelief, just before the unstoppable smile comes across and winds its way through a day reclaimed.
posted by Christopher Phelps at 6/21/2006 04:47:00 PM
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