De Canadese dichter, schrijver en acteur Sky Gilbert werd geboren op 20 december 1952 Norwich, Connecticut. Zie ook alle tags voor Sky Gilbert op dit blog.
Uit: Come Back
“Yes, I am aware that I should, perhaps, not go there. Even as I write, the word sentiment — or rather sentimentality — comes up like yesterday’s dinner. Please believe me that there is no urge on my part to go back. It is long gone and I don’t give a flying fuck. So I am slipping into my previous nomenclature. But I don’t — I really don’t — give a damn about any of it. Do you think I want to go back? When I think for a moment, it all returns. Like a flood, yes, but one I can control.
I see you, in my mind’s eye, sitting there, smiling, looking satiric. When? When was it that I suggested something you considered very outrageous, and you said, “It seems that you have temporarily lost your mind”? And then you went on in that vein. You know, my darling, I wish you were not so ruled by your loins.
Is it that? You claim it is.
Of course, Johnny. But sometimes I think it is your heart, because that is the way we think of women — and you are one. But still. Let’s just say it has nothing to do with being a woman. We both know that men too are puddles, and can dissolve even without menstruating.
Remember when you stopped menstruating? I do. You dove into bodybuilding with your usual innocent bravado — no reservations whatsoever. Then it was, “I want a period. I don’t want to stop fucking menstruating. Jesus.” Someday you will. Soon, actually. That is certainly a something I no longer regret. Perhaps it has to do with what I am going to tell you about. Because, Johnny, I am going to use you unabashedly as a sounding board. That’s what you are best at when it comes to me, but I wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for you, so I suppose you are more than that to me. You know what I mean. You are what, barely fifty? And I am … so old, so very, very old. One cannot even imagine how old I am. And to have died so many times! When one has lived and died so often it does not seem quite so fantastical to get a little teary-eyed. It won’t last. But yes, even after all these years there is a whiff. A friend of mine wrote a beautiful essay once called “A Whiff of Abandon.” There’s a whiff of abandon in me. It’s still there, even though I cannot, or will not, act upon it. No, I have no real actual desire to climb onto one of those things, to straddle it again, or better yet to have it in my mouth. There is still the memory — but memory does not express it — the mood (it is in a way a mood) that overtakes one. But that sounds too romantic. There is a sense memory — the way actors talk about the remembrance of a smell, or a taste. Jesus, it’s enough maybe to say there is still a longing for it — an appreciation of beauty that never goes away.”
Sky Gilbert (Norwich, 20 december 1952)
De Amerikaanse dichter Kenneth Rexroth werd geboren in South Bend (Indiana) op 22 december 1905. Zie ook alle tags voor Kenneth Rexroth op dit blog.
Vitaminen en ruwvoer
Met sterke enkels, verbrand door de zon, bijna naakt,
Worden door de dochters van Californië
Onwillige humanisten onderwezen;
In hun schedels drukken zij met tennisballen
De ongelukkige realisering
Dat de natuur nog steeds sterker is dan de mens.
Het speciale Helleense voorrecht
Van het speciale intellect sijpelt
Eindelijk in deze geïrrigeerde grond.
Zweet van atleten en sap van geliefden
Zijn sterker dan Socrates’ dollekervel;
En de spelletjes van nauwgezette Euclides
Verdwijnen in de gymnopaedia.
Vertaald door Frans Roumen
Kenneth Rexroth (22 december 1905 – 6 juni 1982)
Zie voor de schrijvers van de 20e december ook mijn blog van 20 december 2021 en ook mijn blog van 20 december 2018 en ook mijn blog van 20 december 2015 deel 2 en eveneens deel 3.
