Seven o’clock. I just listened to The Miraculous Mandarin by Bartok. It was fantastic, gorgeous in a dark way. I hadn’t heard it in many years. It really takes me back to the mid nineties, even before Satin Love Orchestra. There is such a depth of exquisite feeling I get from Bartok. Very sensual, like intoxication or the ecstasy of Eros. Definitely a carnal kind of passion, dark and deep. That’s what I miss about my relationship with Kate eight years ago. She could go to those places with me. I long for her, and for inebriation, but the music has to be enough. Somewhere there is a real dimension of love and pleasure in the human heart, and someday I’ll be reunited with it. But alcohol can’t be a part of it, unless I’m prepared to die.
Two thirty. With that, I received an email from Lisa saying I was missed at church last Sunday. So I replied with a brief discussion of my intellectual dilemma, and asked her if I should come to church tomorrow anyway. She answered in the affirmative. The voluptuous Bartok music floats back to me, chanting the impossible. Is that so bad? Yet Lisa contrasts with the music, like blue sunshine to a moonlit field of poppies. Like the invincible summer to the black heart of winter. She is innocence embodied, a guiding light out of the underground tunnel that is my life. Lisa’s perfection stands as an affront to the fallen natural world around her. But no, it’s only my idealizing poet’s eye. No woman could ever live up to such a pedestal. To expect this is unfair. But still, a poet can dream.
robgradens 