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jane
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LOVE: is it, after all these years, inexplicable? we have infinite words attempting to comprehend, to articulate, but none of them quite seem to cut it. and yet, men will still kill for love. they will still cry out for it in the middle of the night, and they still will not realize they had it until it is gone.
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as i began to walk down the subway steps this evening, i noticed a man on the phone, unable to descend the stairs for fear of losing cellular reception. this was clearly a conversation he wanted to finish. he was a nice looking man, the kind of man i would like to take me out to dinner, so he could pretend to know about writing, and i could pretend to know about being a historian, and we would kiss each other meekly at my doorstep.
this evening, however, was not for me. i saw him yelling desperately on the phone, some sort of argument, and i watched him with his painful expression: "you're in love with somebody else, though. how dare you say that?" and i lost the rest as i walked down the subway steps, into an underground world where everyone's preoccupation was getting home on time.
and as i rode the F train to my own home, i thought about this man. i thought about the layers of tragedy that made up his conversation. my eyes watered as i realized this man loved someone, and they didn't love him in return, and they were telling him over the phone. and this man was stuck at the entrance of the subway, unable to move on, to hang up and get on the train, stuck in a public argument with himself. it reminded me of what james said about public arguments, how they are the most real thing, because it is just the two of you, oblivious to the world, even though everyone is listening and pretending not to. and then one of you realizes that this is, in fact, the case, and says something like, "we'll talk about this later, when we get home." but this man was without the option of talking about it later; he was very much alone. and i think this is the saddest thing that i have seen in a very long time.
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050126
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