2005-03-31
There's an old, abandoned shack
I sat down this morning, outside in the incoming sunlight, and typing up my project: turning Hamlet into prose. The teacher gave me an extension, and I'm grateful for it...but, somehow I fear that it'll take me much longer.
The March breeze comes in--it feels soft and and somewhat chilly. Concerns are drowned at this time--until the summer, that is.
Sometimes I begin to wonder when it is that I lost--completely--my personality and what meant the most to me at some point.
Three years ago I'd be sitting there and focused only on that damned story. What infuriates me is the fact that I cannot answer that simple question: when I lost myself.
I fell in love and everything changed. There's soemthing I've got to take back, like a long-gone conquerer...but it's difficult.
There are things I can't even notice anymore--details. I remember that at Georgetown, I began to regain back those things--that vision and eye for detail.
I'd sit some afternoons--in front of Healy Hall--staring at the large maples in front of me, painted by sunlight, scattered with the echoes of voices and laughter and conversation--you realize that every one of those object we run into are painted by words and thoughts.
I also remember really reading "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" for the for the first time--and in the back of my head and over the dizzy excitement that I felt in reading it--above my doubts and voices inside saying "yeah what makes you think you know what this means?"--I knew what he was talking about.
And Hell, it was the same thing that I was thinking about...only, I couldn't put it into words. We don't notice it, probably...but it's there. The streetlamps and the tea and the summer sun shining brightly on your face--it makes memories.
Norah Jones plays while I write this--yeah, I sing along to her. She's beautiful and an amazing artist. I'm not afraid to call her an artist--she is one. Anyone who admires Billie Holiday is worth something.
I was watching "Lakawanna Blues" yesterday. There was the scene with the blind man singing the blues--it made your heart pound even though you didn't want it to.
So I listen to Norah's blues guitar and her slinked-silk voice. Brienne has always fantasized about playing the piano alongside her.
Aside from when I listening to Chopin or Beethoven or Mozart--hers is the only music to which I really listen.
The haunting voice, guitar, and piano takes me back to a humid southern summer--one which I've never lived. It takes me right to an abandoned shack--smoke lingering in the atmosphere--sweat mixed melancholy...I've never been there, but I go everytime I listen to her.
Maybe it's the only time I can actually take hold of what I lost...