Only ten days ago I was made a feature writer, but when I went home to celebrate with the Loved One, I found the L.O. had flown the coop with no forwarding address. Since then I haven’t been able to eat, sleep or write at all. My warped sense of humor has taken a nose dive into the muck of swamplike depression, and all the happy people around me look like tellytubbies larking about in green valleys under too blue skies… (To Be Continued
My writing partner, who is staying in the house with seven of his ten children, manages to put out several thousand words a day, while I lie fallow going over the sonnets of Shakespeare and pulp pornography from the 1950’s. He and his children are no bother at all, and we have managed to get some work done. He takes what I’ve written, scratches through every sentence of mine that begins with “I” and erases any reference to him. Then he wipes out my belief system and interjects his own… thus rewriting my piece to one of his, which turns out brilliantly, while I am left to study him to try to find out what I meant in the first place, so I can rewrite my piece behind his back.)
This would be a lot of fun, but in the pursuit of my orignial piece I have been falling to pieces. Now I find I have nothing at all to say, and too many words to say it with. It is the Loved One’s fault… all of it. But there is no dog to kick, no dishes to break, and nothing to drink in the house… and as far as I can tell the FBC is closed, and I am six hours ahead of Boston, 8 hours ahead of California, and am getting ahead of myself altogether. I don’t even remember the story I was working on before I got derailed into the ditch of no return….. If I ever fall in love again, I will make sure to fall out of it posthaste… my health, my career, and my sanity…. all gone to mush and slobber.
Raglan Road
I saw her first and knew
That her dark hair would weave a snare
that I might one day rue.
I saw the danger and I passed
along the enchanted wayand
I said let grief be a fallen leaf
at the dawning of the day.
On Grafton Street in November
we tripped lightly along the lay
of a deep ravine where can be seen
the worth of passions play.
The queen of hearts still making tarts
and I not making hay.
Oh, I love too much and by such,
by such is happiness thrown away.
I gave her gifts of the mind
I gave her the secret sign
Known to the artists who have known
the true Gods of sound and stone.
And words and tint I did not stint,
I gave her poems to say.
With her own name there
and her own dark hair
like clouds over the fields of May.
On a quiet street where old ghosts meet,
I see her walking now
away from me so hurriedly
my reason must allow
that I had loved not as I should
a creature made of clay.
When tha angel woos
the clay he’ll lose
his wings at the dawn of the day.
Patrick Kavanaugh
Well, fun’s over, have gone back to work. Now pursuit of the work is pursuit of the self lost in pursuit of the Loved One. Only ten days ago I had something to do, something to love, something to believe in and something to write. Must go back to recreate myself in a way that will not end in predementia praecox, and a musty claustrophobic closet of old costumes of period plays… my life’s romantic pursuits… what a terrible waste of time.
