vanilla raindrops

email: noreia@planet-save.com.

This is my blogchalk:
United States, California, sometimes Steiermark, Austria, something bored teenagers say when they speak useless words into brick walls of cotton candy, English, German, Noreia,creative writing, fiction, reading, college student, strange, cat power, mogwai, arap strap, dresden dolls, white oleander, the earth, my butt, and other big, round things, welcome to the dollhouse, fuckers.

body jewelry by bodyPUNKS!

body jewelry by bodyPUNKS!

body jewelry by BodyPUNKS!

 

Dear David,

It's been two-and-a-half years now, just about, and still I think of you more than you'd probably guess.  I don't know why, or even what I think, but often in my mind, you're there.  I was seventeen, you were -- 19?  20? -- and you showed me a world that scared and enlivened me. 

They rushed by me, floured aprons, floured hair, grinding pepper, checking the oven.  I asked you a question, and suddenly time slowed down for me, while they continued their frenzied cooking.  Your words came.  We didn't know why.  You opened a door for me into your mind, and I don't think I've ever quite come back out of it. 

I sat across from you over the stained wooden table, trying to figure out where to look -- your eyes?  around the room? -- as you talked.  "How do you know you're right?" you said.  "I talked to a Muslim and a Buddhist the other day," you said.  "We're in a house where we think we have everything," you said, "but then we see a window, and the world outside of it frightens and fascinates us.  And maybe, if we keep searching, we'll find a door."

At first I tried to think of clever responses, to show you that, yes, I understood what you were talking about, yes, I was deep.  I soon gave up on that, because it was like you saw through me.  Me, in my world of sunlight and pink petals, holy love and rightness.  Me, young, a girl with all she ever needed, certain this was all anyone ever needed.  Certain I was right.  Certain I'd never be shaken.

But you did, even then.  You managed to crack that certainty.  Not that the certainty was a bad thing, or your cracking it a bad thing.  It was as it was, but somehow, in ways I can't label or categorize, something about the words you spoke that night has been woven into my world since then, my time, my experience, this beauty, this sadness, this love.  Your words have been there, under the surface, connecting with other words, and I don't know why, but they're always there.

I wonder about you now.  Am I the age you were then?  What had you gone through, to make you see things differently than all the other people who never seemed to question, never seemed to think that maybe their view of reality wasn't the objective and real one?  I want to know if it was personal for you, if you'd fallen.  Or was it just mental, a way of seeing things?

And then there was that other day, soon before I left them and their family world of ritual and "dynamic power" and "vision for your life."  I knew I was going to leave, I knew it was no longer me, and I came to you without fully knowing why, but something made me think you might understand.

I said I could read nothing but the Psalms, and there was a light in your eyes as you said you understood.  I remember fragments of what you said -- sin, questions, a certain U2 song I'd never heard of.  We sat on the steps as people walked past, some glancing toward me, worried.  Maybe I was trying to grab the last of the rope.  I guess I've always thought I failed.  Maybe I didn't.

I think of you, David.  I imagine talking to you again, telling you how crazy it's been, how alive.  I want you to know and understand; I think you would.  I think you guarded yourself, even in those hours of talk, because I was younger and more naive, I was in high school, I was in hope without fully realizing the depth of what hope meant.  Maybe you saw me like I see some of them now.  I understand that.  I understand not telling me everything.

But still I wonder.  What you'd been through.  Who you really were.  Who you are now. 

Thank you for giving me a glimpse of a bigger world.

Posted by: noreia at 14:18 | link | comments |