This is the first time I’ve seen the Sonnet Cycle printed out ... all 70 pages of it. I guess I knew I’d churned out that many sonnets, but holding the pages in my hand somehow makes the volume of them more real ... more solid. Attach a check ... mail it off. Poetry contest.
You’d think this was a sign of courage, or of confidence. Nope. This is a sign of ... defeat, in a way. The Sonnet Cycle touched upon a lot of subjects, one of them being the obsession with Piero Barone aiding me in a passage through horrific grief with his beautiful voice. The Sonnet Cycle will have taken about 5 months to unspool. Even though the obsession itself has lessened, I still fully expect my heart to be shattered by him in nine days’ time – which is when I bought tickets to see him and Il Volo at the Beacon Theater in Manhattan. When I bought the tickets, I still had the reasonably attractive face and smile I was born with. I’m not saying I was stop in your tracks, drop-dead gorgeous ... I’m saying that the face I saw when I looked in the mirror was MY face! I was used to it, familiar with it, comfortable with it. Now I have no idea who that face in the mirror belongs to. Certainly I was quite a bit more positive and enthusiastic than I am now. I had planned to make a comforting weekend of this trip home to New York, have lunch with friends, maybe visit Enchantments again, the works. Now I’ll be lucky if I work up the confidence to go at all.
So I thought I’d send the Sonnet Cycle out now – before my heart is shattered into a million frozen shards of ice, and before I’m inspired to permanently shred the thing. Actually, in his defense, I have no reason to believe he’d react cruelly to an twisted, unbalanced, swollen face ... really! Nothing he has ever done makes me think that. To the contrary, everything he has done suggests he is extraordinarily kind and good-natured.
But think back now, and consider the "unlucky hand" I’ve been dealt over the last year or so, and then ask yourself why I would expect kindness – from anyone or anything: the universe, the world, a tenor from Sicily ... even Mr. Signpost. The answer? I wouldn’t expect kindness, of course – I would expect the polar opposite. And that’s why I’m sending that sonnet cycle out now, getting it out of range of my shredder. I’m expecting the absolute worst in nine days’ time. Par for the course and all that ... and that expectation has nothing to do with him, really.
It has more to do with me, despite Sekhmet’s use of Damien to block me from continuing along that emotional path. I can’t quite seem to get my expectations turned around. But then, I can’t think of anything that has happened which would convince me to do that. I get punched in the gut so regularly; I can’t even recover from one sucker-punch before I’m doubled over by another. That’s just the way it has been going over the last year or so.
28 August 2012
Two sides of a wolf’s head ... on one side, I had a beautiful dream. It was beautiful because nothing happened in it. I went to the concert and was so mesmerized by the performance, I forgot all about myself, my dead feet, my cramping legs, my swollen, deformed face ... and had a wonderful time. Nobody noticed me, nobody looked at me with pity, it was a wonderful evening. The dream was merely a fragment of a moment, but I absorbed a great deal in that one moment. I think it was triggered by one of Damien’s re-tweets about happiness, which I will go back and hunt down when I have a moment. But the end result: I’m far less intimidated and frightened than I was, even yesterday. Something changed, anyway.
The other side of the wolf’s head: I keep forgetting all of the pieces I need to send the Sonnet Cycle out. Yesterday I forgot the envelopes and the checkbook. Today I remembered the envelopes but forgot the postage stamps, the instructions and left my debit card at home so I couldn’t go to the Post Office anyway – or even buy lunch, come to think of it. The next day I forgot my flash drive all together. I’m thinking, "Are you TRYING to shoot yourself in the foot every five minutes?!?" Because – damn! – that’s what it feels like I’m doing.
29 August 2012
Must have been another long-lost memory jostled to the surface by some tweet or another, no doubt one about the forthcoming full moon, or blue moon... all of a sudden I recalled a lullaby Mom used to sing to us when we were young. She did NOT sing a version about "God blessing" anybody, she sang this one, that started out with the oak tree – probably yet another reason why I love trees – and larks – and maybe even roses:
I see the moon; the moon sees me
Down through the leaves of the old oak tree.
Please let the light that shines on me
Shine on the one I love.
I hear the lark; the lark hears me,
Singing a song with a melody.
Please let the lark that sings for me
Sing for the one I love.
I kiss a rose; the rose kisses me,
Fragrant as only a rose can be.
Please let the rose that comforts me
Comfort the one I love.
Here was Damien’s tweet about the moon: "The blue moon is the night after next. She'll be my last full moon in NYC. Have you decided what you'll wish for?"
Great. No wonder I forgot it. He reminds me he’s moving to Salem, of all places. [Mumble, mumble, frickafracka, stupid place, grumble ...]
I learned a while ago not to wish for anything because I’ll get the exact opposite. I mean: how many times have I wished that the Sky Sadist would stop punching me in the face every other week? That something good would happen ... as opposed to a never-ending string of death, disasters, near fatal illnesses and accidents? And what was the result?
30 AUG 2012
And it also somehow escaped my notice – once I came to the realization that Piero wasn’t going to give me a moment’s thought or attention so it didn’t matter WHAT my face looked like ... or if my nose was running like Usain Bolt... or if I was drooling so profusely I could serve as a stand-in for Niagara – that in five day’s time I was going to be in HIS PRESENCE. I unexpectedly started shaking and my hands turned ice cold. (Photo - Piero and his father, 2012)
Actually, I’ve never had an obsession like this before, so I felt like I should humbly track down and then apologize to all my high school girlfriends whom I ridiculed for their obsessions, all of which I thought were silly at the time because I considered myself so much more intelligent and self-possessed than they were – as I recall, one of them was so obsessed with one of the Backstreet Boys she was last seen crying and wailing when one of them was photographed with a girl. And now, here I was. Payback was indeed a bitch, now that I was going through it myself.
It’s not as though I regarded him as someone greater than any other man on the planet ... wait a minute. Who am I kidding? Of course I think of him that way, he’s Piero Barone of Il Volo, but that’s not the issue. The issue was more that this was the man whose voice had soothed me as I crawled through the depths of hell after my brother’s death, through accidents, nerve damage, illnesses and crippling surgeries, which is really an intimacy you don’t get with very many people. This was the man whose voice I heard in my dreams. This was the man who had inspired untold metres of passionate poetry. And in five days time I’d be staring up at him, from a spot somewhere south of his thighs. OH GOD, WHAT HAVE I DONE, I SHOULDN’T HAVE BOUGHT THOSE TICKETS, I’VE LOST MY MIND!!!
I still find it incredible that a nineteen year old boy has a voice like this ...
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