I don't like text messaging because for me it's an excuse for not calling. It's true that people can multi-task when they send text mesages, but I prefer doing one thing at a time. My biggest problem in phone conversation is probably speed. I often have to think very long before I know what to say. This is not a mental illness, is it?
I got a little nervous looking at the course offerings. Will I be able to handle the new school year's work load? I start to question my ability again.
This afternoon I almost fainted in the subway because of my terrible cramps. I arrived at MoMA on time for Shoah but my cramps just got worse. I had to lie on the bench just outside T1 to rest. A guard came over to me to check if I was okay. She wanted me to go and get some ginger ale. I thanked her, but I really didn't have any strength to go. At around 4 pm, I got back home. Luckily Mike didn't visit this weekend for it would have been terrible.
Mike I daydreamed the following story because I came to the conclusion that it was a challenging thing to love you or to make you love a woman. For one thing, you have been and are still involved in and will probably continue having sex with many people. How will you be able to explore love with me if you can have sex as freely as you want with other women? (Red love) For another, you learn perfectly on your own, so anything less productive is less desirable. How will I be able to keep up with your expanding tank of knowledge without ever feeling bad about myself if I am not able to keep up with you? (Blue love) Furthermore, you don’t give a damn to the conventional duties that society sort of imposes on us. How is there anything in reality that we will ever amount to? (Grey love)
I’m not giving up on my tri-color understanding of love. I’m writing this poem to explore something else though. I thought green could be a temporary way of dealing with you.
Once upon a time there was a prince named Make,
with the surname Hay.
On a bare piece of land stood his castle,
entry was restricted to very few people.
Gypsies traveled there.
They liked to set up camps at the foot of the castle,
where they could cook smelly foods and sang vulgar songs.
In the darkness of the night,
an obscure red door purposely left ajar would welcome the ladies in.
The prince told the professionals,
“You can have these pearls, but you won’t have it for free.”
Night after night, month after month, year after year,
the prince had never counted how much wealth he had spent like that,
or how many passports to heaven he had renewed like that.
As long as he could recall, however, nothing except these crappy camps had ever appeared outside the castle,
until one day an oak sprang into his sight.
The green was something new,
so at first it really took his breath away.
He took a book from his library, used the blue door, ventured outside, sat under the tree, and read.
The bark gave him a sense of security, the canopy a sense of protection.
The smell was right, the temperature was right, the walking distance to his castle was right.
He was elated like never before, so he declared,
“The oak is mine!”
Gypsies still came, so did a green rider on a white horse.
“It’s only me, let me come in,” the rider knocked at the front door.
“Go away, it’s shut tight,” said the prince.
“I’ve come out of pure curiosity, only life can quench it. My world is worth returning to, so I will leave empty-handed. Plus, I don’t have much time, so let me come in.”
“There’s nothing in here for you. If there is, you won’t have a sense of taking part. Leave me and my oak at once,” said the prince. “Just go away.”
(The conversation is taken from Wislawa Szymborska's poem "Conversation with a Stone.")
While the rider remained at the door,
the rider’s horse ate away at the oak.
Since the prince would not let them in,
they gave up in the end.
The rider and the horse walked around the castle before they finally left,
with the horse shitting constantly along the way.
Days later, the bare piece of land where the castle stood started to turn green.
Weeks later, more green.
Months later, small oaks were visible.
A year later, a young forest.
The prince hated how his oak was no longer unique among the oaks.
Most annoyingly of all,
they kept growing.
Deep down under the castle, their roots kept invading.
In the middle of the air, their dampness eroded the castle walls.
The prince would wake in the middle of the night, feeling his bed shifted an inch up,
and another inch for anther night.
Because of these trees, gypsies also came less often too,
their caravans were too big to be maneuvered in the narrow space in the growing forest.
From a distance, the castle began to look afloat in an ocean of greenness.
Inside it, the condition was getting worse and worse and worse.
At times the prince would curse the stupid rider and the stupid horse.
“If they ever come back, I will make them my slaves,” he swore. “They are not only responsible for clearing out my land, they are also responsible for building me a new castle just like the one before!”
But the horse had long died of old age, so the rider had technically long ceased to be a rider.
And even if the prince succeeded in seizing the rider, sooner or later he would find out that it was a woman. What would she do except putting up a wood cabin for him, and only with his help?
For all I know, slowly the prince has lost everything he once had. However,
if he misses them badly enough, he will tame the forest and rebuild his castle from scratch.
