I find it reassuring . . .

. . . that my ex-boyfriend and I blame each other for our identical inability to stay out of love. If I'm going to be inconvenienced, someone else better be suffering too, damn it.

Plus I think he has it much, much worse than I do. So there's that.

Falling slowly.

I don't know,
but I want you
all the more for that.
Words fall through me,
always fool me,
and I can't react.
Games that never amount
to more than they're meant
will play themselves out.

Take this sinking boat,
and point it home.
We've still got time.

[ . . . ]
You've suffered enough
And warred with yourself.
It's time you won.

♫ "Falling Slowly" (The Swell Season, The Swell Season)

For me, when everything is beautiful, life is music -- especially sad, sad music, especially soulful lyrics. This is why I think that I might be destined for poetry, not prose. Lately I've been looping the same few songs on my iPod, and it's put me into a strangely calm, reflective mood (despite finals in less than a week):

1. "Falling Slowly" (The Swell Season, The Swell Season)
2. "Broken Horse" (Freelance Whales, Weathervanes)
3. "Cosmic Love" (Florence + The Machine, Lungs)
4. "Honeymoon" (Bombadil, Tarpits in Canyonlands)
5. "Generator ^1" (Freelance Whales, Weathervanes)
6. "Melectric" (Ramona Falls, Intuit)

The Lollapalooza line-up seems really promising this year, and I'm tempted to fly out -- have at least one really good friend going, and another good friend is staying in Chicago for the summer.

Twelfth Night.

And with a green and yellow melancholy,
She sat like patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?

(Still so cruel?
Still so constant, lord.)

She is drowned already, sir, with salt water, though I seem to drown her remembrance again with more.

But oh god, that look in your eye:

Trouble that does not search words.
It sprung from the biblical vine and
Awaiting to return to the dirt.

(But oh god, that curve in your spine:
A question mark, a doctor's sigh
Was framed by the windowsill.)

And you saw something I did not in the night.
You saw something I did not in the night.

♫ "Broken Horse" (Freelance Whales, Weathervanes)

Gimmicky story idea #1.

What if Mr. Right showed up at your door?
What if he had the right clothes and the right color eyes, showed the right sort of embarrassment at the situation ("Wow, um, I'm kind of here with a weird thing to tell you")?
What if he even had the right sort of hesitating, self-deprecating laugh?
What if he promised everything would be interesting (but not overwhelmingly so) and heavy (but not in an unhealthy way), that he would be insecure in the cute way (and not the pitiful way), that you would grow together (but without stifling each other)?

We say all the time that we want him to be delivered to our doorstep. But think about that--going in, knowing that, understanding that This One Should Be Perfect. It would be something, wouldn't it? --something great and awful and mind-blowingly complicated? Yeah. Maybe.

This could be such a Disney Channel movie. I hate it.

The Time Traveler's Wife.

The Time Traveler's Wife--I awaited this movie with bated breath. Adapted from the novel by Audrey Niffenegger, it promised to be . . . something else. A sci-fi romance is awfully risky business in book form, even riskier on the big screen. There really is just too much that could go wrong.

Especially for Niffenegger's little darling of a premise, things could go terribly awry. A guy with time-traveling seizures, somehow capable of meeting and keeping his One True Love? Walking the streets naked, pick-pocketing, engineering winning lottery tickets, picking locks . . . -- it all works on the page, when imaginary circumstances don't have to come to three-dimensional life.

But Rachel McAdams is real. But Eric Bana is real. But, as one critic notes, the depiction of a supposedly 40-year-old man forcing himself on a teenage girl: a little too real for comfort, even if he's actually her future lover displaced in time.

At worst, the entire thing could seem ridiculous and cheesed-up--unconvincing, absurd, stitched together. This is what the critics reacted to, the sheer improbability of it all (really, a genetic basis for his condition seems too conveniently pop-science-y to be relevant). And granted, the movie doesn't try all that hard -- or even at all -- to win you over. Opening scene: enter six-year-old Henry, disappearing from his mother's car only seconds before the inevitable car crash that kills her. He reappears outside the car, shivering in the cold, as perplexed as we are, but in two or three sentences from a randomly appearing older Henry, everything is explained!

. . . Or it's not. Or it must be, because the movie takes off from there, any confusion be damned.

Uhm.

In any case, I'd already read the book, thankfully--you must, I think, in order to be genuinely moved by the film (in order to be genuinely moved by the movie? Hm). Once you suspend your disbelief (and your discombobulation), however, the true power of Niffenegger's themes overwhelms you. For Henry, time-traveling is a cruel imposition, tearing him from his wedding ceremony, from his wife, ultimately from his happiness. But it's also an inconvenience that forces the purest of human experience on its victims. It allows Henry and Clare to live life distilled, never forgetting the brilliance of new romance (how could they, when younger Henries are always traveling forward to smooth any ruffles in their relationship?). Henry's time seizures lend a certain immortality to his love: it never begins, it never ends. It just is, popping up unexpectedly years after his death, always passionate, always as though brand new.

If I envy Henry and Clare anything, it is this: they never forget. They're always so painfully aware of every second, every moment. If modern society is always accused of being distracted while the really important things slip away, then Henry and Clare exist in the opposite extreme. They only live in each other, to the point of amorality. Their tragedy is something different from the plight of every other love story, because they don't forget, because their affections never peter out or fade away or get lost. They're always reminded of the immediacy of their love, whereas the rest of us are stuck with the mere memory of idealism. Yes, they never had a true choice in the matter, but those of us with free will (or the illusion of it?) can only hope that memory is enough--and that we will all eventually make the right choices anyway.

Parisian.

More substantially speaking, this is an attempt at a poem of some sort, written during a family trip to Paris in early July:

parisian.

that day, the play was played out. she turned
from him before saying "you could not even
know two and a half things about me" and
wiped a tear from her cheek, delicate—like a
victorian would. the next morning she woke
with your name on her lips. "mon cheri"
began her letter to you. "je t'aime." I love you.
she lied with the first sentence. in the next,
she did not. "we should be in love." she had
dreamt it before she wrote it. "I want us to be.
come to paris."
                       you did.

like a true american, you believed romance
to be in the gestures: you stepped gladly into
the one she offered, graceful, grateful. at night
you asked "now?" but she locked
the bathroom door behind her and did not
answer. "now?" she slid from her clothes
and did not answer. "now?" she bathed
until she could feel herself disappearing in bubbles.
"now?" she opened the door.
                                          "now."

in a gesture, she and you explored the city arm
in arm. she did not love you because your
sleeves were empty and your eyes were earnest,
but she knew she could, with time, in time. the
eiffel tower was tall and made life seem forgettable
at the top. "romantic" you thought. "————
——————" she thought. it was not enough
to place her but too much to free her, and she fell
into a mood as though it were red hot and she were
tired. she was tired: of the mysteries becoming less
mysterious, of the luxuries so flippant as to become
nothing. (then: she knew she could love you.) then:
an old woman with spotted skin passed her and
grabbed her hand. "you are happy" the woman said,
the only english words she knew. “j’ai tombe dans
l’amour” came the reply, in garbled french. words are
great because they can become
                                               nothing.

then: you were nervous at the louvre, so she and you
took a boat tour of paris, and she could smell
your cologne vaporized in the mist. you passed
under a bridge as old as time itself. "make a wish"
the guide insisted. "it will come true"—but before
you could finish yours, she was gone.
she was smiling,
                          and then she was gone.

Note the lack of capitalization, cohesion, and meaning.