// an epic love story //

i fell in love on page 13: "a day, a livelong day, is not one thing, but many. it changes not only in growing light toward zenith and decline again, but in texture and mood, in tone and meaning, warped by a thousand factors of season, of heat or cold, of still or multi winds, torqued by odors, tastes or fabrics of ice or grass, of bud or leaf of black-drawn naked limbs. and as a day changes so do its subjects, bugs and birds, cats, dogs, butterflies and people."

and i fell in love a little more on page 91: "honey roll, youre the fortune expert. how would i know?" "well, anyway, im glad you dont hate her. i thought you did." "im tricky" i said. "i conceal my thoughts." "not from me you dont. they'll stay right through to the second show." "come again?" "the children. they always do. i thought you were wonderful about the dishes." "im devious," i said. "and, in due course, i have designs on your honor."

my affairs with various authors began, i suppose, with shel silverstein, way back in 2nd or third grade. i remember just reading and reading poems of his over and over, and of course, they are lovely and funny and everything best about poems. and i dont know who i loved after that. my affections in grade school were many and far-reaching--great brain, skinnybones, ramona, boxcar children, fudge and peter. i read and loved everything, or at least most things. and i read whatever my best friend was reading, or said was good too. she greatly influenced my reading preferences and patterns, i think.

so, my first real grown-up loveaffair, then, was winston churchill. junior year world history--i was in the class with a bunch of freshman, and they were great freshman, actually,--we bonded--but freshman still. i decided to read the muchly dreaded and feared millionpageslong winston churchill book for the required book report and show them all up [if any freshman was stupid enough to actually pick the book then they certainly didnt read it! they read the beginning and the end, and that is all.] i read it, every single word of it. winston and i spent many long days and nights together. but we get along famously. and hes so cute--and nearly everything i could ever want in a man. [except, perhaps, the alive thing.] but i love him anyway.

and then there was ernest. first off, how could you not love a man whose name is ernest: Gwendolen: my ideal has always been to love some one of the name of Ernest. There is something in that name that inspires absolute confidence. The moment Algernon first mentioned to me that he had a friend called Ernest, I knew I was destined to love you.
Jack: You really love me, Gwendolen?
Gwendolen. Passionately!...My own Ernest!
Jack. But you don’t really mean to say that you couldn’t love me if my name wasn’t Ernest?... Personally, darling, to speak quite candidly, I don’t much care about the name of Ernest... I don’t think the name suits me at all. I must say that I think there are lots of other much nicer names. I think Jack, for instance, a charming name.
Gwendolen. It suits you perfectly. It is a divine name. It has a music of its own. It produces vibrations....The only really safe name is Ernest.
and then besides all that--ernest hemingway is really sexy--he totally has the cigar-smoking, tall, dark, handsome, rugged, gun-shooting, fishing, war-fighting, woman-loving, genius thing going for him; and i think it works for him. this whole lifestyle doesnt work for everyone [i would venture to say it works for very few]. but it does work for hemingway. we spent lots of time together too. i did my first major college-type research paper on him. it was a sexy time, let me tell you. [that year was a good year for men. winston and i spent some more time together for a different class and then f.scott fitzgerald and i met. that was love at first sight. also--i was properly introduced to shakespeare and eecummings, and aldous huxley. and i think that year i also finished reading tolkein. also, i got around to some more of lewis.]

and after that, i spent a good deal of time with jack london. but he and i didnt get along too well, so i broke it off after a few months. he was heartbroken. and then after that ordeal [he kept stalking me for a few months, you know,] i think i was ready for a break. i picked up john irving. he is sortof more like an dirty old uncle than a love affair--i find his stories to be slightly dirty, very funny, and highly memorable. i cant spend too much time at once with him, but the times we do share, i love. and then i spent a lot of time with ee cummings. hes an attractive man. the end. john keats and i had a small fling in world literature 2 and then another small fling in britlit3. short and sweet both times. dumas i read, loved, and then moved on. tolstoy and i are having a very long, and complicated relationship. he says i have commitment issues. [im on my 3rd summer to work on anna karenina.] i told him i loved him anyway, but im not sure he believes it. homer and i spent many miserable, but sortof nice hours together. virgil and i are hardly even on speaking terms right now.

and then david. a heartbreaking work of staggering genius and i are very happy together. a wonderful find. and then stephen dunn and i--i saw him read. twice. but im not sure that i love dunn so much as i love the unrequited love that came along with those readings. oh--the tragic beauty of that love will haunt me for the rest of my life, i think. and if i had had more time, i also would love greene. and dostoevsky and i might have a chance now that i think i finally learned how to spell his name. and now we come to johnny-boy. very sexy. [fine.] steinbeck and i first met on tape. he was read to me while i drove, and he was a very good companion, but not so good as now. now: snap. but i think the point is, is that i can be talked into nearly anything. more than half of these relationships started on a blind date that someone else set up for me. and that may be slightly worrisome. yes. i think im deciding that it could be harmful to my bookshelves and perhaps my mental wellbeing and who knows what else if i am any more talkintoable than i already am, which is very.

Posted 6/25/2005 11:44 PM