all that is faithful.

There are some things better left unnoticed. Like a flash of a piece of paper containing poems. Containing poems you read so long ago it hurts to think how innocent you were then. There are some things that you should just let go. When you realize that all of the crumpled pieces of paper filled with broken words - emulating those poets - add up to nothing, nothing, not anything at all, you also know it's hopeless. All the dreams of new apartments in big cities, putting up wallpaper, and laughing and crying while the light from sun-drenched window panes projects your happy faces out into the street.

When these times come, as they often do, you sit and you think of your past. You think of your old L.A. bedroom on a warm, gray night, the wind blowing the curtains and the door rattling against its frame. You wish you had not been so final. You wish you could have avoided the tears and the philosophical conversation altogether. You knew you were falling for him when you had that conversation about James Agee and As I Lay Dying and the meaning of words themselves. You could point to it and smile, looking at your best friend.

It is midnight, the day before the new year, and you think to yourself: it may be a cliche, but 2009 is a new number. You get to turn the page now. Throw away the gifts. Throw away the empty compliments. Throw away how he chose one path and you tried in vain to follow him. Let it go. Let it pass. Let it fall. Let it drown. And once that weight is lifted, you will thrash to the surface, I promise. If that isn't the truth, then life is nothing but an empty mess of experiences.

You walk through the book store. It's three days. Three days until the countdown. A volume of Susan Sontag's journal, plain and nondescript, catches your eye. She says learning has clear and distinct purposes. She says writing is about egotism. She says to you, with the physicality of the pieces of paper in front of you, that it's okay for you to embrace the world of learning and scholarship.

You think of this for days, you think of Susan Sontag. You think of photography and forms and shapes and shadows and you wish everything were a matter of form. For if it were, the new year would mean nothing this year, as it has meant nothing every other year to you. Instead, you understand that this is different. You must embrace it. If you do not, you will become what he thinks of you. You will become a secondary character in your own story. You are better than that. You are better than him.

Please, do not. Please, take a cue from Bronte and all those anti-Romantics.

You flip through the pages. You find it:

Look up into the light of the lantern.
Don't you see? The calm of darkness
is the horror of Heaven.

We've been apart too long, too painfully seperated.
How can you bear to dream,
to give up watching? I think you must be dreaming,
your face is full of mild expectancy.

I need to wake you, to remind you that there isn't a future.
That's why we're free. And now some weakness in me
has been cured forever, so I'm not compelled
to close my eyes, to go back, to rectify--

The beach is still; the sea, cleansed of its superfluous life,
opaque, rocklike. In mounds, in vegetal clusters,
seabirds sleep on the jetty. Terns, assassins--

You're tired; I can see that.
We're both tired, we have acted a great drama.
Even our hands are cold, that were kindling.
Our clothes are shattered on the sand; strangely enough,
they never turned to ashes.

I have to tell you what I've learned, that I know now
what happens to the dreamers.
They don't feel it when they change. One day
they wake, they dress, they are old.

Tonight I am not afraid
to feel the revolutions. How can you want sleep
when passion gives you that peace?
You're like me tonight, one of the lucky ones.
You'll get what you want. You'll get your oblivion.

- Louise Gluck, "Night Song."

You put it down. You say what you've been dreaming of. You make your resolutions.