If You Knew

How I miss you- 
You would not stay away, today…

Fuck all, Mr. Buckley, get out of my mind.

For a long time I have had two… sort of impossible romances.  Impossible because both of my others… are dead.  And both have been pretty present in my life of late, for their own reasons.

Jeff Buckley.  Jeff Buckley.  Great Scott- he had me from the first sigh of Hallelujah.  And his story, so tragic, so rock and roll, has kept me ever since.

The son of Tim Buckley, the had so very much to live up to.  And yet… he did.  Grace.  Need I say more??  Grace, the one album he released while living, stacks up beyond anything that anyone had done at his age, during that age.  At 31 he died, drowning in the Wolf River.  All that passion, all that potential- gone in the wake of a passing boat.  But still his voice and the things he did with lyrics are timeless (impossible).

It's never over- 
My kingdom for a kiss
Upon her shoulder

It's never over-
all my riches
for her smiles when I slept 
so soft against her

It's never over-
all my blood 
for the sweetness of her laughter..

I mean, come on.  What on earth else does a girl want to hear but that??  What else does any one want to feel but the profound need to be with their impossibly never-ending (it's never over) other??  And who but Buckley could express that, like a miracle?  Like marveling?

And so he is on my mind for what he knew of love.  Of impossible love, of my love.  Of the way I think or want or wish love could or to be.

And then there is Eliot.

If there is one person who I could revive, literally bring him back to live simply to kiss him on the lips and tell him that his talent is visionary and bold and yet beautiful and mystical… it would be TS Eliot.  And I know that I have been on and on about Eliot.  All the time and forever.  But I started 'All Hallows' Eve' by Charles Williams, recently.  Which is a book for a book club of sorts- a book for which Eliot wrote the introduction.

And in it he wrote about Williams:

'To him the supernatural was perfectly natural, and the natural was also supernatural.  And this peculiarity gave him that profound insight into Good and Evil…. '

And next to that, in the margins, I wrote… Thank God.

I wrote that in the margins because we on the margins understand the significance of marginalia: Because Eliot, in interpreting Williams, somehow managed to interpret me.  Or at least managed to make me feel not nearly as alone in my interpretation of the natural…and everything else.  And so I had to add myself, in scribbled pencil on the side of the page, to this book.  

And Eliot, these days, seems to be doing a phenomenal job of expressing exactly what I am feeling. His poetry perfectly maneuvers the complications of the heart- spiritually, psychologically: with emotion.  Eliot, in his honesty and challenges, brings me a sort of literary and human ecstasy.

I suppose the reason I know and love these two so well is because they have each known and defined some version of me.  These are the two, although there is another, who I come back to as touchstones of goodness- of grace- of Love.   And I suppose the reason they have been on my mind so very much is this fear that third

(Who is the third who walks always beside you
when I count, there are only you and I together…)

The third who knows me and knows love… The fear that I have lost the third.

And until next time.. Be good.