just love me tonight & i'll be alright

four years ago i read door wide open and kind of fell in love with kerouac, despite his women-hatred, because i could see pieces of him in me. too in love with motion, observer-writer.

from minor characters, joyce johnson:
Unlike Alex, Jack took what you gave him, asked no more. For Jack you didn't have to be anything but what you were—just as Ti Gris the cat was only Ti Gris, to be admired in all his hopeless Ti Grisness.

from an unsent email (c. may 2007):
i'm trying to accept things as they are, the art of leaving things in place, accepting (for instance) olivia in all her olivia-ness, you in all your you-ness, even when that takes you away from me. i've been reading about the beats, again, and now i'm done with all this sedentary lifestyle, with this townhome, with respectability, with a future in academia. the only ones for me are mad, like jack says, in that so overquoted passage that i hung on my wall.

you are dead to me, though you still live. the part of you that i loved is dead. the skin i kissed, bit, scratched, tore, licked, loved, is dead, was dead to begin with. we are all necrophiliacs, loving that which is dead to us.
      if i pretend you are dead, i do not have to deal with you loving someone else.
      without love i am dead, flaking away until there is no more.

the problem with saving everything is it becomes so easy to recreate the past.

you look at me like i'm telling ghost stories, and i am, not with my voice but rather with my smiling at you like i love you, like i once loved you— there are many kinds of ghosts in this world, darling, and they are not only of people—

(emphasis mine, as found in my copy)

As it is, I can't settle, I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and know that love is as strong as death, and be on my side for ever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me. There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other's names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can you call home? Only the one who knows your name. Romantic love has been diluted into paperback from and has sold thousands and millions of copies. Somewhere it is still in the original, written on tablets of stone. I would cross seas and suffer sunstroke and give away all I have, but not for a man, because they want to be the destroyer and never the destroyed. That is why they are unfit for romantic love. There are exceptions and I hope they are happy.
      The unknownness of my needs frightens me. I do not know how huge they are, or how high they are, I only know that they are not being met.

Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling into at night. I miss you like hell.

We make commitments whenever we use language, and they are too many and too complex to be fully mastered. But using a term critically at least increases our awareness of the commitments we do make. (5)

she doesn’t see him pack up. (she doesn’t really remember him unpacking, to be honest.) he laughs as he catches her looking at the suitcase, softly as though he is afraid of damaging something with sound waves. 'i save all my packing for the last minute and dump everything in.'
        'oh.' she shrugs him off but he’s insistent. 'you know i have to leave, baby,' he says.
        'only you could leave your grave,' she says (more fondly than she wishes).
        'poetry.' and he kisses her, soft and sweet like a first kiss; soon they are on the bed, not fucking but just holding each other like bereft siblings. myths and gods slip through her head but this time none stay. even deities can respect the bittersweetness of lasts.

kassandra, struck by apollo, made mad by the sun, prophecying truths no one will believe - poor little kassie can't interact with the others anymore, the sun's in her eyes and it separates her -

Perhaps Naomi's death finally freed Allen to be himself. He apparently no longer felt torn by the need to make such choices. Peter and he could share women or love them separately or love other men. It seemed to make no difference — they possessed each other's souls. They would always love each other.