Sunday, May 15, 2005

The problem

Or one of them, is that I don't think you are able or willing to hold me, if I were able or willing to attempt the experiment. I think of Virginia Woolf, if it was Virginia Woolf, talking about the heady wine of intelligent conversation and the close contact of a naked mind. I'm afraid of too many things, and not all of them unfounded. The physicality of your words. The evanescence of your presence. The real origin of my desire. Dorothy Sayers to John Cournos [somewhere on Minz's blog]: Ask any questions you like - I can't imagine the question I would not readily and frankly answer. But for Christ's sake, no generalities. Good God! Do you think I'm unsexed? What do we have to say to each other? I suppose there's a certain brute honesty to all this; we don't pretend to be anything more to each other, or to ask anything more of each other than the barest minimum without which this could not exist. But there's asking, and there's asking. We've come too far for me to give this up easily, or to open myself to it easily. (I can't speak for you.) Am I really immortal, does the sun care, when you leave will you give me back the words? Ask me for something I can bear to give.