aug 27

there are days worth a lifetime... ever felt melting away in tenderness?

РИХАРД ДЕМЕЛЬ. На меня его книги (и кстати сказать, и он сам при беглых наших встречах) всегда действуют так, что читая хорошую его страницу, я уже опасаюсь следующей, которая может все разрушить, и то, что было достойно восхищения, как по волшебству, окажется дурным и недостойным. Вы вполне точно определили его словами: "жить и писать чувственно". И в самом деле, творческое переживание так немыслимо близко к переживанию пола, к его горю и радости, что оба эти явления есть, собственно говоря, лишь разные формы единой страсти и единого блаженства. И если вместо слова "чувственность" можно было бы сказать "пол" в великом, обширном и чистом значении этого слова, свободном от всяких церковных осуждений, то искусство Демеля было бы большим и безмерно важным. Его поэтическая сила велика, она неудержима, как влечение инстинкта, в ней кроются особые, беспощадные ритмы, и она рвется из него на волю, как из гранита.

Но кажется, что эта сила не всегда вполне искренна и свободна от позы. (Но это одно из самых трудных испытаний творческого духа: он всегда должен творить бессознательно, не подозревая о самых серьезных своих достоинствах, - если только он не хочет отнять у этих достоинств их нетронутую свежесть!) И когда эта сила, шумя в крови, пробуждает ощущение пола, она уже не находит той человеческой чистоты, которая ей необходима. Мир чистых и зрелых переживаний пола ему незнаком; в его страсти - слишком мало человеческого и слишком много мужского; вечная чувственность, хмель и тревога; и к тому же его тяготят все старые предрассудки и та надменность, которой мужчина сумел поработить и унизить любовь. Именно потому, что его любовь - только мужская, а не человеческая любовь, в его ощущении пола есть что-то ограниченное и как бы дикое, ненавистное, непрочное и невечное, и это умаляет его искусство, делает его двойственным и двусмысленным. Оно не без изъяна, на нем печать времени и страсти, и лишь немногое из его искусства останется жить. (Но так в искусстве бывает чаще всего!) и все-таки можно всем сердцем радоваться тому великому, что есть в его искусстве, но нельзя им увлекаться чрезмерно. Нельзя покориться миру Рихарда Демеля: его мир исполнен безмерной робости, вероломства в любви и смятений и далек от настоящих судеб, которые несут с собой больше страданий, чем все эти временные невзгоды, но дают и больше поводов к величию духа, больше мужества в стремлении к вечному.

Письма к молодому поэту. Р.М.Рильке

ПИСЬМО #3
Виареджо, окрестности Пизы (Италия), 23 апреля 1903 года.

smth broke inside...no, i can't be cynical. i'm just turning pallid. seems like the marrow's leaking away through a hole inside. nothing hurts me, nothing excites me.

i'm not writing to a... every morning the first thing i love doing is say barev. not now. i still greet him every morning, but don't send it to him. i could never push myself on someone, and he does not seem to be too willing to keep in touch. at least there is no sign he is. well, the good thing is he's recovering.

i'll just leave him have it his way. no, i don't want to prove him wrong:-) as Justice (whoever s/he may be) suggests. simply i'm convinced that one-way direction is a lonely direction and i can't be lonelier than i am. no sense to continue.

i'm constantly thinking of adopting a child. perhaps a boy. i want to care about someone. my parents need this care, but they live apart and they will suffer leaving v. i have excess of love, it tortures me, and these kids may be willing to use it. people around keep saying i should have my own kid... can't hide how tempting it sounds........................ but i can't make a child unhappy if i can make one happy. these kids don't have parents and a mother might be a better option, than no parents at all. do i have the right to deprive my kid of a father and do this knowingly? no. it's already too egotistic to think of a child, i don't need to push over the limits:-( kids adorn love, no need to disgrace it.

and i want my parents to welcome the kid. now they can't hear of him. i can't stand the child not being loved in his family. or her, i don't really care.

i love dovlatov. my new discovery. he's sincere, precise, knows his way with words. he's sharp like a knife but does not hurt. the pain's dissolved in love infiltrating his every sentence. he's unpretentiously honest. reminds of hemingway he admired so much: clear-cut words hiding truths inside. не ясные истины, а глубокие...

got to run.

i love the sensation: an ensemble of swirling dervishes having turned your head into a stage:-) it's been for quite a while i've had any beverage influence me thus.

no surprise i'm writing here. i'm confused. or it would have been more accurate to say it hurts to feel you're ordinary:-) noooooooooooo, i've no pretensions of being extraordinary, talented or whatever. i'm not, i'm a regular, average armenian, but i do not fit into this reality. that is i do. i don't know what the problem is. i'm again forging a sophisticated female species ...

i wish i could keep things simple: i live my own life until you're available. we make love, you leave, i go on living. i wish i can cope with not being loved. you say it's an incredible feeling and i believe you. i don't know. i've never been loved.

i'm reading these different blogs and i feel so miserable. but i can't change, or perhaps i don't want to. i read about women driven by passion and pain, sensuality and love. they love, hate, copulate, despair... i can't. i can't make love because i feel vengeful, evil, curious, horny... i make love when i like the man. i don't need diversity to write about it. oneness encloses all the possibilities for diversity: whatever i can do with one, i can do with many.

i have to learn how to love you and be one of the many... but this is not love.

these days are a total challenge to the wetware: my brains refuse to function, my body cracks under the domineering fatigue of this horrible influenza and i drag my existence through the summer mires called armenian life:-) were i to reincarnate in any form, i'd have loved to be shaped into a lotus, this beautiful, unpretentious being that lives and dies simple. yesterday i saw a dead cat on the street... man, isn't death ugly?

i love the sun... i don't even remember how many times i've claimed this, but can't stop doing it. i guess i love it, since i don't see the black holes:-)))))))) well, this is not true, i love the way to perfection and not perfection itself:-)

mémoires

the morning glass of red wine left me tipsy and smiley, staring at the computer monitor and thinking of everything but the work that's due today:-) i was very happy on friday. for no reason. unconcerned, uninvolved, detached. yesterday i wanted to remember seattle (not that i manage to forget it:-). but yesterday it was a conscious attempt to do so) ... so, where shall i start? when i ask myself what's my best memory of seattle, i end with with a collage of images, smells and sounds.

the walk on the bridge to the bus stop, passing by the florist's, closed studio, boutiques and restaurants... i think i remember every small detail on the way to the campus. it was different to be a woman, i can't really say how and why, and i guess it's absolutely unnecessary, but ... it was different and soooo overwhelming. for the first time in my life i felt complete. i felt my body swaying...i lived those few hours effortlessly. i saw that woman jogging, and for the first time in my life i was really proud for who i was at the moment. but the whole confidence was very fragile and i knew the moment he takes his hand away, i'll be my old incomplete self.

i love it when he approaches from behind and holds me in the waist:-) i loved waiting for him in the mall.

the flowers... trying to design a vase:-)

university mall and the outburst of laughter. of course i don't remember why we were laughing, but i still remember the loud and hearty laughter i could not stop:-)

the couch. i loved sinking in its softness. that's tenderness you can rely on:-)

i was so scared to see him at the airport. not that he's scary:-) i can't explain the feeling. antinomy of losing smth known and gaining smth unknown... i wanted to hold him so tight, but be somewhere totally different, somewhere where it would have been a-less, at the very moment i would be holding him...

planning the weeks:-) i'm such a not-planner:-))))))) i love to wake up and go to places, but i loved the way he was searching, the way we were trying to come up with an agenda for the vacation. it was funny, but i liked it:-)

noooooo, here's my best memory: the tiger t-shirt:-) that was my only consolation (no, this is not true, nothing was....) on long nights....

hospital waltz!!!!!!!! i don't want to write anything else. an image i'll carry with me all my life...

the garlic kiss:-) i still remember the thought roaming in my head while we were kissing: man, i think i like garlic. i don't:-) usually:-)

i like watching him when he's not aware of me. e.g. when he's preparing for a class. i liked it when we were doing the things we were used to do alone, when none of us had been involved in the process the other was engaged in, but then we happened to be doing the same things in the presence of the other. at first it was strange, but i guess i came to like this very strangeness...i never thought i could co-exist in the same room (bed:-)) with smb else...

the presents. i love the perfume. well, the others do as well:-) i had people asking me for the label, and i can't remember it:-) diadora? deandra? see?:-)

him reading that short story i could not listen to:-) he's a good reader.

there's more, but i'll leave it for tomorrow...