This has been an unusual week (even by my somewhat bizarre standards), because efforts to destroy writings, suppress speech and obstruct access to my sites have intensified. This is always a welcome sign that I am having a negative effect on Mafia forces in New Jersey. These experiences and the pains derived from them have taught me thus to ruminate:
When I do count the clock that tells me the time
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night,
When I behold the violet past prime
And sable curls all silvered o'er with white,
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green, all girded up in sheaves,
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard:
Then of thy beauty do I question make
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defense
Save breed, to blame him when he takes thee hence.
What "breed" have we, I wonder? Why, this string of pearl-like words that now adorn thy swan's neck. Birthdays this week mark the passage of the hours. I rise more slowly, ponder my battle against gravity, crunches, miles to walk before I sleep, curls and pushups, and what alone defeats that villain time -- which is not physical nor subject to all the ills that flesh is heir to -- my love. In my love, you will not age nor can your beauty fade.
Marriage is laughter and true intimacy between conversing (think of what that word means!) -- conversing couples, sharing themselves, partaking together of loss and laughter. I think of you when sadness appears in the morning. We are old friends -- my sadness and me -- with her tender smiles she reminds me of you and asks when I will see you. I answer -- "Soon. Always."
My daughter is a woman. Our child is an adult. And your child created with me is this text, where we meet. I place my love for you -- the special you that is transcendent of my particular reality that is shared with another -- and yet you are existent amidst the universals. You are existent in these words that I send to you, only you, now. My most intimate relationship is with you.
"This is what it is to go aright," Diotima said to Socrates, "or to be led by another, into the mystery of Love; one goes always upwards for the sake of this Beauty, starting out from beautiful things and using them like rising stairs: from one body to two and from two to all beautiful bodies, [whatever they look like physically,] then from beautiful bodies to beautiful customs, and from customs to learning beautiful things, and from these lessons he arrives in the end at this lesson, which is learning of this very Beauty, so that in the end he comes to know just what it is to be beautiful." ("Beauty and the Beast" and "The Soldier and the Ballerina.")
I whisper to you each night before I drift off to sleep. We live together. And we will be together. There is no possibility of a separation. We cannot live apart.
"Papi, you didn't go Big Name U!" How true. But I do go to that school with you! And I remain in Manhattan with you. And I find myself here, with you, "soon and always." The magic words are "you" and "now." I know that I will see you again.
Music to hear, why hearest thou music sadly?
Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy:
Why lovest thou that which thou receivest not
gladly,
Or else receivest with pleasure thy annoy?
If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,
By unions married, do offend thine ear,
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.
Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering;
Resembling sire and child and happy mother,
Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing;
Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,
Sings this to thee, 'Thou single wilt prove none.'
Legato is our phrasing to the lascivious pleasings of a lute. We make our music in time. The time of my time is you. Our music is love.
