Given the camera imagery, call it snap, Ken. But the regretful thinking, that's neatly tied up here...
Doug
On Sep 10, 2014, at 8:49 AM, Kenneth Wolman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I don't even try to define them anymore, just that it's very weird-feeling. A la recherche de temps perdu or something like that.
>
> OLD GIRLFRIEND, SO LONG AGO, MET AGAIN
>
> The camera in my head is broken
> so you've been flash-frozen,
> the time is not out of joint,
> simply then snapped into place perpetual.
>
> Flash-frozen, instant coffee, the piece of meat
> you were back then, to me and to yourself.
> "I can't love anyone," you told me,
> "but you can fuck me anyway."
>
> I could and did and it was ashes,
> we both fell down, dessicated.
>
> But today, passing on the street,
> I almost did not know you.
> How many years?
> I'd pinch you to be sure that
> this is not a dream, but
> you'd probably call the cops.
>
> Gone beyond 1968 you see me,
> and I remember that part
> without memory of sensation.
> It's my broken camera.
>
> I should have added
> 50 years to your face,
> grayed your hair, given you
> extra pounds and maybe
> even stretch marks.
>
> But then I'd have to re-vision me,
> look anew, look now, at what I have become.
> Vanity remains unchanged, but sadness grows,
> a nasty garden of withered regrets,
> of forgetting even what I've remembered.
>
Douglas Barbour
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If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.
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