Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Indulge and ignore

I am old enough and aware enough now to know that sex is always capable of being a point of inspiration, as sure as me achieving orgasm after every sex act, unless I don't want to otherwise. I always seem to have an inexhaustible reserve for post-coital, no, post-orgasmic energy that makes me want to do something, like reading or blogging. Maybe that's why so many of my entries are about sex. But I have to be careful. Too much about sex and it becomes boring. Nobody would want to read it. I wouldn't want to write it. Too much about sex is like watching too much porn. It's best to keep it short and nice once a while, maybe even a few times in a while, but all the time and constantly, it becomes boring, even repugnant, and its ability to arouse is drained and dry.

But tonight is not about sex. Tonight is about nothing. Tonight is a gathering of muted snapshots of little thoughts running, running, back and forth in my head without ever maturing to form any recognizable or tellable idea.

The other night, I dreamed of a long, sweet kiss. Mary was tossing and turning in her bed, but I didn't want to wake up. That morning I slept in until late, trying again and again to go back to the same dream but I kept waking up and waking up until the memory of that dream has faded away and I can't remember what sweetness tasted like.

Like my unease about a flirting friendship. It has budded. It's slowly flowering, but I go at it one step forward and two steps back, and three steps sideways. In my imaginary I am free to conjure up fantastic loves with anyone I like, and I do often, but when someone has read my posts, seen my conjurings, it's as if they've peeked in on me (and this peeking I welcome because what's the purpose of writing my imaginings if not for them to be read? So, does this make me an exhibitionist? I would imagine.) and suddenly I'm caught naked. Maybe I'm only caught naked because what I've imagined has ceased to be in the imaginary but has, through the recognition and acknowledgment from its object of desire, transferred to the real. I'm caught naked and feel embarrassed of my nakedness, like Eve after she has eaten the apple of knowledge. I become hesitant, unsure of where I want my stories to go, insecure of myself, ashamed of my shortcomings. And like her, I am uncertain and insecure because I don't know what I want, because I've never had it to know it--desire in its nakedness, desire without moral responsibility. I have only lived vicariously. I haven't dared to act. But I wonder anyway, and imagine what it would be like to act on that desire. I know it. It's no stranger to me after all. The desire is not for him. The desire is not for any other except me. It is my desire to get back to myself the singularity of me, of a non-encumbered I, of a free floating I that can imagine, inflame, imitate, impress, indulge, irate, irritate, ignore.

It's just as well. I am too insecure and needy, too greedy, which would make me too possessive, I would want too much.

Which does not bring me to my next thought but I am there anyway: the history of learning new words. For some of them, I can remember clearly when I came to learn them: like "fissure," I learned when I was a sophomore in high school reading "The Fall of the House of Usher." "Sycophant" because I couldn't correctly pronounce it to my class while student-teaching. "Obsequiously" while reading "Disquiet." "Fecundity" while reading Duong Thu Huong in high school, although I'm not sure I remember the exact context. "Promiscuous" is another good word. I learned it my freshman year in college, I was eighteen and ecstatic because I had a handsome and charming (albeit childlike) boyfriend who one day suddenly asked me if I thought he was promiscuous.

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