With Girlfriend S. away for a few days, I find myself reminded of what my life was before I met her. This feeling has been further compounded because I rented a movie I first saw about 4 years ago -- Eric Schaeffer's Fall.
I strongly identified with this film when I first saw it because the way that Schaeffer's character, a cabbie named Michael, woos Sarah, a supermodel played by Amanda DeCadenet, who happens to ride in his cab one day. He does it with words -- long passages of free form poetry sent to her by fax... some sweet and tender, some profane and explicit. This reminded me how I hoped to woo a woman as a younger man. I yearned to find that magic spell that would unlock a woman's heart to me. I wanted to be more bohemian and ballsy, full of a bluster that can only arise from a contented knowledge of self, a keen understanding of others, and a lack of fear of disappointment.
I used to write more poetry.
What I want is a primitive cool
A cool cold as ice, cold as outer space,
blacker than bike leather,
And a sleeker than Harley chrome.
I want to walk that primitive cool;
Walk it down the street,
Walk it down to my bones,
And walk it under long dead stars.
I want to show that primative cool
In the ways I move,
the way I hold my head,
And the way I look at you and puff my cigarette.
I can be that primitive cool
Out on the road, out in the night
Outside my Self
But never, never when I'm with you.
I lose that primative cool
When I see your eyes
When I see your face
And when I feel your hand touch mine.
I need that primitive cool
Cool in my soul, cool in my heart
Cool when I kiss you
And cool when I hold you in my arms.
Because in all that I am
All that I was
All that I ever will be
With you I am lost...
And looking for that primitive cool.
I sometimes miss who I was then. His ideas and perceptions were grounded more in ideals and absolutes uncorrupted by experience. He saw relationships more in the way they are presented in books and film -- in impossibly perfect shapes, carefully edited sensations, and selective cuts that eliminate the day to day noise to reveal the emotional subtext beneath. His was the romance of the grand poetic gesture... not the thousand small ways that are really necessary to say "I love you."
Then again, he was doubtless naive... but only in the beautiful way that so many young people are. Perhaps it is a good and inevitable thing that he is gone, but sometimes it is fun to go back and visit.
said drgeek
on 2003-06-21 at 7:40 p.m.
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The Wayback Machine - To Infinity And Beyond
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