He is not really a misanthrope, I would say about me in the third-person, if I wanted to speak about me without you thinking it was me saying what I was saying . . . about me; although I think there might still be some of you who imagine him to be one no matter how many times I protest . . . a misanthrope was a posture I used to take in my satire . . . and now you ask, What are you doing here by saying what it is you intended or would have intended by speaking in another person? And I answer you by saying we are always other persons whenever we are anywhere with anyone at anytime different from another time, even a different time with the same person, but certainly all the someone’s we do encounter in our day-to-day, minute-by-minute passing minute after moment, life is lived in the moments, not even the hours some have said our lives pass by within . . . although certainly true that they do this as well as the lifetimes we try to assess at the end of them, nearing the end of them we recollect in fear and trepidation.
Only the thing in itself is the thing in itself, I heard someone say, I know one or more people have said, I have heard them say, no word is ever the thing in itself. What is it that you imagine will destroy you if it is not your fear of what might destroy you that will kill you?
Sun, morning sun, sun shining through the living room window, spilling over the sill onto the floor, by now the sun over the line of roofs across the compound of buildings. I do wonder why I do not enjoy myself as much as I can, as often as I should, how many days I have stumbled out of bed in my life with no regrets, as useless as they would be, as useless as they are when we indulge them, oh, you should have regrets about fucking your girlfriend’s mother.
I turn to see two minor blue vases, bright by the sun shining this morning at 10:20 here in the living room. I remember a girl who had once asked us to see our sounds, to hear our sights, to feel our thoughts, to think our feelings so as to know more intensely what it means to be human–animals all have five senses, she said. What use is it to see what you see, to hear what you hear, if you do no more than a dog does by doing so? I could ask now, might have asked then, but I do not now as I did not then. I wish this could as much meaning for you as it does for me, but I am not sure that is possible, and I am not even certain how much meaning it has for me except how much it has at this moment now, and if it could have any permanence of meaning is not a question I am going to ask. I am still not sure that regret has anything to do with being sorry or feeling sorry or saying sorry, but then sorry should be sorrow, no? So it does? Is sorrow, regret? I can’t get there.
Sun shining, morning sun shining, shining sun amid the shadows in the room. Curtains bright with sun full through their multicolored translucency. Lightly breeze gently touching them now as would you your lover on first opening your eyes–I do not know what that is supposed to mean, when there have been times when grabbing, gripping, pulling toward with what swells in the waves of the tide rising higher has been the only way I could have awakened next to my lover . . . wake up, wake up, we love to say to people to wake up, sleepwalking as we ourselves do; how many times have you said wake up in the mirror?
The Falling Leaf Review 