tomorrow i get paid. do you know what that means? here are just a few--my check to the doctor won't bounce. my savings account won't incur a "service charge" for being empty. i can pay the friend who cut my hair a couple of weeks ago. i can save money for another haircut in another couple of weeks.
no. tomorrow i'm going to shop so, so slowly. i'm going to compare products that, to the consistently solvent, would seem nearly indistinguishable. i'm going to scrutinize their respective prices and protein content. i'm going to think through all the possibilities of what i could do with each of them; in the end i will have a thoughtfully coordinated spectrum of materials for the sustenance of my mind and the invigoration of my body.
maybe poets aren't impoverished by accident or unsmiling fortune. lack of familiarity breeds respect. respect is the first step to love. which reminds me--those crushes that disguise themselves as contumely? don't we know they are really a self-saving reflex of our pride, when it feels itself wildly inclined to prostrate before something as reverential as our own selves? that's why love is such a climactic occasion, why it presents such an urgent fanfare--suddenly, unexpectedly, we have found a second being worthy of our worship. who knew there could be two such, in the world? they must unite! justice and beauty demand it!
i was just talking to a friend who wanted my advice--my! advice!--about a situation. a person my friend thought of as an intellectual gascon has shown himself sympathetic, sensitive...and, in the end, sexy. naturally, it is complicated; there are secondary characters and conflicting values and, ultimately, questions of "who am i?" and "what do i want?"
i said, go slow. that's what i would do if i were in my friend's position, and if i were collected enough to do what i knew i would advise a friend to do if they were in my position. i said, don't make a "next move" simply because it would be a valuable experience, or an opportunity to grow. you can't set the value on an experience ahead of time. unless you know exactly the kind of self you want to achieve--which i, for my part, don't, and doubt that my friend would claim to--growing is largely organic.
you can't help but become yourself, more and more, unless you make a forceful move to become something quite other, like a gardener training an apple tree into an espalier. i think it's a good idea, and vastly interesting, to let the self make its own forays into experience, to let it take the ego by surprise with its sudden decisions. i told my friend that there may soon come a night when they sit together under the moon, and suddenly she finds herself saying things quite true and quite out of character. it will surprise her, i said, it will scare her, it will heighten the romance as much in that moment as it will in memory. she won't have to doubt that she did the right thing, because right or wrong, it will have been done for her.
it's all very romantic and real. i've had it happen. the affair unraveled, but the romance of it is surprisingly steadfast.
if you always know exactly what you're doing, you're doing something wrong. sorry. you're not that smart; nobody is.
don't decide right away.
anything worth doing is worth doing slowly. (mae west said that.)
try dancing with your eyes closed. (i said that.)
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