Don't ask, but I'll be away this weekend. But since my readership continues to dwindle and since I finally got some freakin' comments after apparently alienating 30 readers or so I thought I would leave you with Ariel's translation of the french song Autumn Leaves or Les Feuilles Mortes.


Whatever you must say about the French, they have saved my life. Twice now. Now whether that's good or bad, well, you be the judge.

While the boy posse may be good for something, coping with my heartbreak isn't one of them. "You're depression is boring," the Doberman told me last night.

Now we know why he didn't pursue that alternative career in armchair psychology.

But one of the more recent additions to the viscious circle is Ariel-who is such a character that he defies synopsis. But he certainly deserves his ethereal name.

And while the boy posse complains and tries to rouse me with tough love. ("You are the master of your own destiny" How is this possible when I am not even the master of my own body? When even mounting a flight of stairs is a daunting task?) Ariel is simple and comforting. Perhaps because he is a storyteller.

So I sit on the loveseat with him, hidden from the rest, and he holds my hand and I tell him the story. "You don't have to tell me if it bothers you," he says. "No, no you won't understand any other way."

And so I tell him the whole story. The whole thing.

And Ariel listens and then he tells me a story." It's nothing like yours, but maybe it will help," he begins.

"When I was young, just a little boy, there was this Jewish-Persian girl I was in love with. I remember, there would be birthday parties, and I would always make sure she sat next to me. And so all the kids made fun of me. Even she did. But you know, I loved her. In fact, my grandfather told a story to my mother. I don't remember this, but she's insists that he told her this story. That one day after school my grandfather went to pick me up. And as I was walking, I saw her waiting for her bus. And me, this little five year old boy, I forced my grandfather, 6 feet tall, to get on this bus. Going the wrong way! So after some nudging, I go and sit next to her. We didn't say a word, but we rode hand in hand. Then she got off, and we went home. Well, we went to different schools. After a while, in high school, she writes me a letter apologizing for being so cruel to me. I couldn't believe I was reading this letter. I called her. She wasn't there, but I spoke to her mother. They were so happy to hear from me! I promised to call back. But then my grandmother had a fit-the girl was Persian! Why was I calling her? And I got angry and stormed out, but I didn't call her. Then after a while I called her again. She was in the hospital. I didn't know how sick she was or what was wrong. But I wrote her a letter, about all she meant to me, about what happened, that I was coming. She read the letter and cried. Her parents read the letter and cried."

He falls silent.

"Did you see her?" I asked.

"In her coffin. For the first time in years. But I am grateful. I am grateful that I was able to tell her. That she was able to know before she died."

And this is why I love Ariel because only he could find something to be grateful for in that story. We sit in silence. He holds my hand.

"You are a remarkable woman" he says in French.

"Why am I surrounded by men who think that, yet have no one?"

"Bad timing, cherie. But trust me, you think I do not feel alone because I am married? No, I will tell you this. I can remember times, dates, places, exactly when I felt such intimacy with my wife. This tells you how often it is."

We sit there. Hand in hand. In silence.
Well since you all had such a staggering response to my last post, I've decided if you're not gonna comment you can give Petrarch the silent treatment. He's been dead for a while. He can take it better than I can.

Translation by Robert M Durling from Petrarch's Lyric Poems: The Rime Sparse and Other Lyrics

Poem #36 (which I have renamed Ne Quitte Pas after the Nina Simone cover)

If I thought that by death I would be lightened of this amorous care that weighs me down, with my own hands by now I would have consigned to earth these burdensome members and that weight;

but because I fear that it would be a passage from weeping to weeping and from one war to another, still on this side of the pass that is closed to me I half remain, alas, and half pass over.

It would be time for the pitiless bowstring to have shot the last arrow, already wet and colored with blood;

And I beg Love for it, and that deaf one who left me paitned with her colors and does not remember to call me to her.

Yes it seems I have a singular talent for trading weeping for weeping and war for war. There are those who seem to believe that this can be fixed. And I was one of those who believed.

Past tense.

Even the most fervent idealist must confront reality at some point. Freud believed that depression was the result of reality impigning upon fantasy. Or, in other words, depression is the mourning a dream. Often we feel the loss of our fantasies with far more accuity than we do the loss of real objects or people. Our dreams are more real to us than our realities.

Poem 46 (excerpted)

Therefore my days will be tearful and cut short, for it is rare that a great sorrow grows old, ...

These were made besides the waters of hell and tempered in the eternal forgetfulness whence the beginning of my death was born.

One of the members of the boy posse has been whining about having to come up with an alternative poem for his eulogy (who writes their own eulogy?). I happened across this poem Saturday morning. Should anyone remember this post when I die, feel free to read my edited version of Poem 207.

Poem 207 (excerpted)

I feed on my death and live in flames:...

A hidden flame is hottest, and if it grows it can no longer be hidden in any way. Love, I know. I feel it at your hands. You saw it well when I so silently burned; now my own cries pain me, now I go a nuisance to near and far.

O world, O vain thoughts! O my strong destiny, where do they carry me? Oh from how lovely a light was that tenacious hope born in my heart, with which she binds and oppresses it...The fault is yours, mine the loss and suffering.

Thus from loving well I gain torments...for I should have turned away from the excessive light, closed my ears to the siren song; and still I do not repent that my heart is overflowing with sweet poison.

I am waiting for him to loose that last arrow who shot the first: and, if I judge aright, it will be a kind of pity to kill quickly, since he is not disposed to make of me anything but what he usually does; he dies well who escapes from sorrow.

...Servant of Love who read these lines, there is no good in the world that is equal to my ills.

The title of this post comes from the fact that I have been bound not to write about quite a few people in this life. For every person who wants to be blogworthy, there is one who wishes to be anonymous. Strangely it is usually the men whom I eventually bed who never want to appear here. The only exception to that rule was Rabid. Ah Rabid. She would be pleased if she could see me now. Walking around hell in my flipflops trying to fend off demons with nothing but a spatula.

And a plastic one at that.

Weeping for weeping...war for war. As a teacher, when will I ever learn?