Selections from the Box
I keep a big black plastic container next to my computer. It houses the contents of an old Marshall Fields box into which I tossed pages and pages of printouts that I don't want to throw away, but for which I don't have any immediate use. From time to time, I like to share excerpts with you all. This is one of those times.
This is the highlight from a love letter to Emma (I don't remember writing a love letter -- obviously it didn't work), probably circa Summer 1998:
"...joy and despair coupled are infinitely more preferable than existing in a prolonged desensitized state. However, I do not wish to employ you as my therapist, so I'll get to my point. In the coldest periods of the past year, every once in a while your presence could make me feel the pure happiness that I used to be able to feel. However incidental this phenomenon might have been, the fact remains that I am indebted to you for being the only one with that ability. So thanks."
Wow, dude, that's really good -- fantastic effort young Jon. It's a touch clinical, or maybe I mean academic, or maybe I mean reserved, but I don't know if I could do it much better.
Well...
---
This is the highlight from a love letter to Emma (I don't remember writing a love letter -- obviously it didn't work), probably circa Summer 1998:
"...joy and despair coupled are infinitely more preferable than existing in a prolonged desensitized state. However, I do not wish to employ you as my therapist, so I'll get to my point. In the coldest periods of the past year, every once in a while your presence could make me feel the pure happiness that I used to be able to feel. However incidental this phenomenon might have been, the fact remains that I am indebted to you for being the only one with that ability. So thanks."
Wow, dude, that's really good -- fantastic effort young Jon. It's a touch clinical, or maybe I mean academic, or maybe I mean reserved, but I don't know if I could do it much better.
Well...
---
Labels: from the box
posted by JMH | 10:53 PM
8 Comments:
I love it.
So does that mean you didn't give it to her, or was it a draft of some sort?
I'm pretty sure I sent it. I'm pretty sure I never saw her again.
How romantic.
It is, isn't it?
Traipsing personal literary histories is so amusing. And often so painful, too. Painfully amusing, then?
Every once in awhile I pull out an old journal or seven and typically end up laughing until I'm crying because wow, was I melodramatic. And horrible at writing legibly.
Isn't everything amusing painful? Or is that just clowns?
Yeah, there's no one who quite gets Me From The Past's sense of humor quite as completely as Me From The Present. I always wrote legibly, but rarely coherently.
Oh, you poor bastard.
Pity is pretty palatable when given so crassly.
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