11 thought about it late and then early again this morning, why it is that we put down the book in the middle of reading it (or else clutch it to us) and stare off as if to assimilate the beauty found there and integrate it within the here-to keep it here-to make it, so to say, real.
12 Actually, he would never read her letters that way. Dated her 25th year:
".& yet why do I keep rereading what I have written, attempting to surmise what you might be inferring, wondering if you will understand me, hoping that you will fall in love with something I've written here & thus fall in love with me? If I were to turn this life into a movie, we'd all be under bridges, then under tables, then under water, then in the belly of a sperm whale, all the while speaking of sky; moreover, we'd wear mourning veils, heavy coats, silk gloves & communicate solely through quill pens and carrier pigeons. If I were to turn these love letters into a book, the inscription would be by Barthes, & it would say: To know that one does not write for the other, to know that these things I am going to write will never cause me to be loved by the one I love (the other), to know that writing compensates for nothing, sublimates nothing, that it is precisely there where you are not-this is the beginning of writing. If this were a cartoon, you would be a giraffe & I'd be a mouse & we'd live in sycamore-leaf shaped house & we'd fight all the time, that is, when you could hear me, your head being so high up, so far off; I'd sleep in your little alarm clock, sing a morning song for you, chew holes in your favorite socks, hide my best straw and bits of yarn in your breast pockets, let you use my tail to mark your places in books"
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