2003-01-14 - 1:35 a.m.
An exerpt from Tom Stoppard's "The Real Thing."
It's to do with knowing and being known. I remember how it stopped seeming so odd that in biblical Greek knowing was used for making love. Whosit knew so-and-so. Carnal knowledge. It's what lovers trust eachother with. Knowledge of each other, not of the flesh but through the flesh, knowledge of self, the real him, the real her, in extremis, the mask slipped from the face. Everyother version of oneself is on offer to the public. We share our vivacity, grief, sulks, anger, joy. . . we hand it out to anybody who happens to be standing around, to friends and family with a momentary sense of indecency perhaps, to strangers without hesitation. Our lovers share us with a passing trade. But in pairs we insist that we give ourselves to each other. What selves? What's left? What else is there that hasn't been dealt out like a deck of cards? Carnal knowledge. Personal, final, uncompromised. Knowing, being known. I revere that. Having that is being rich, you can be generous about what's shared-she walks, she talks, she laughs, she lends a sympathetic ear, she kicks off her shoes and dances on the tables, she's everybody's and it don't mean a thing, let them eat cake; knowledge is something else, the undealt card, and while it's held it makes you free-and-easy and nice to know, and when it's gone everything is pain. Every single thing. Every object that meets the eye, a pencil a tangerine, a travel poster. As if the physical world has been wired up to pass a current back to the part of your brain where imagination glows like a filament in a lobe no bigger than a torch bulb. Pain. (pause)
Really I love this monologue. I don't know why, but I think it has to do with the last part about the pain that is felt when that undealt card is gone. Iv'e only ever loved once. That ended in pain. Real and true pain. And now there is nothing that doesnt remind me of that pain and that makes me leary of everything. Every time a second of happiness creaps into my life I find a way to deny it or hide from it. I'm not running form it anymore and the pain has healed.
I didn't make an entry about semester break. There really isn't anything worth reporting on.
I have 19 hours this semester so I will be needing the therapy that this diary provides. Thank you to all my faithful readers who have checked back. Don't worry the entries will keep coming.
