They sit around and clean their face with it

All evening, I've been listening to a song by Broken Social Scene: "Lover's Spit (Redux)". It's long and slow, intimate and swelling. It's the sound, I think, of love being made, or the memory (or anticipation) of such love making. It's the state I'm in, though I'm not in love and see no prospects for being so. I've been sick: some kind of cold. And that's probably where the romantic feeling is coming from.

But - how can I say this without the guise of melodrama? - something has happened to me these past few days. Something has happened, and everything is starting to change. On Friday, I did what I said (in my last post) I never do. At Chapterhouse with Jeehyun, and without any provocation, I told my story. An abbreviated telling of a story that Jeehyun already knew, but I told it nonetheless. I felt - again, such melodrama - as if I might cry as I did. Because I saw - as Jeehyun nodded, said softly, "I know" - that this story of mine didn't in fact belong to me. That it belonged to others who had long since offered new stories in its stead. And to it I, like a child to its mother, had clung with the insistence that it be remembered.

Since that night, what have I done? Nothing unusual. I've written to students, told them to ignore their papers' due date. I've asked professors for help, and have, in their responses, been given everything that I needed them to give me. I've walked through the city with Sara and Michael. I've written a grant proposal. I've made myself dinner and watched old episodes of Smallville.

But over the weekend, I didn't open a single book. And today, though my nose was runny and my throat soar, I sat in the sun in Rittenhouse and read The Tempest. A fitting play with which to end the semester. Shakespeare's last, it's said: a story of usurpers, of transformation, and of love. And then at home, in my office where the afternoon sun flooded through the windows and onto the carpet, I stripped off my clothes and lay naked in front of the mirror. My hands travelled across my body: carressing my thighs, my ass, my neck, my chest. I lay there in the sun for an hour, touching and watching myself touch. There was no orgasm serving as fullstop, no erection to lead things forward.

And now it's after ten. I drink tea from a ceramic mug, and write for this blog. I listen - again and again, so that its ending merges imperceptibly with its beginning - to "Lover's Spit (Redux)." I think of how little I know about things anymore. My mother, my father. I think of that story I told Jeehyun. And all the writing I've still to do, at some point. And all the writing that will write itself eventually, and will often take the guise of melodrama.