In the last post I mentioned the Girl in the window. She lived in a blue house on a hill. This is not a romantic image; it is as true and real as my blood. Now she lives in the valley in a smaller house; I’ve yet to see this house. However, it is a lie that the house was nearby. It was located ten miles from where I used to live, but to me she is the nighttime. I memorized poems in the evening sitting alone in my closet, learning lines from Byron. None of Beauty’s daughters were as fair as her, and she walked in beauty as the night, and the night was made for loving (or for me, hidden, furtive longing), but we were to no more go a-roving.
If you were to ask me I would say she was the first person I ever fell in love with, and if you were to ask I would say she never was that way, but hope still burned. Other women (or more accurately for my age, girls) had entranced me, but their magic was often distant as part of their natural state. Trees growing with wide-fanning leaves, unaware of the relief their shade provides. She was very much the same, the same appeal, but towards her I approached. I sought her approval; I read her my poems; I played my brother’s guitar, not to serenade, but to demonstrate that rock and roll moved and guided me. What I wanted more than her approval was her touch. Simple, metaphorical graciousness and the more complex physical apprehension of simply shaking hands. An ordinary act, but seemed to me that with each handshake it was like Pygmalion receiving his marble lady. Once she was a fantasy, but then was recreated by the gods.
Eventually I had to move away. For the longest time she haunted my dreams until my dreams simply faded, and learning Russian captivated me.
