PANDORA

You may say, what, that I cultivate certain intimacies?  That I share too much?  Is that true?  Maybe so.  Maybe that's what it is.  And what would you say should be done about that?

Done?

What's the operator?  What's the button to be pushed?  What's the unflipped switch, the unpressed button?  What is it?  What are you asking...

I'm not asking...

Point is...

I'm NOT asking....

POINT is there are some...what, inadequacies?  Shortcomings?  There are arguments to be made, positions to be taken and HELD?  You page casually through your Roget's Thesaurus of psychological irregularities and pinpoint some low-grade neurosis, some motivational abnormality, what the layman might call a 'need' for superficial, shall we say, CONNECTION, some unexplained and unexplored desire for the accumulation of confidences and secret familiarities stemming from...what, stemming from what?

I'm not sure what you're...this is your...

...stemming as all things do from an experience of loss?  From a too-soon, inchoate, unconscious procurement of circumstancial privation, so severe and so aboriginal as to SCAR, don't you see?  To wound, even before wound is appropriate, the fish and the fire, you understand, and bringing about this need.

I'm not sure, but do you think words will...

Words?

...you think these words you say, this way you have of over-articulating the facts...

That's my point.

The fact of the matter is that...

There are facts now?

Why can't there be things that just...ARE?

So, generally accepted.  Stipulated, say, for the sake of argument.  Designated covenants,  settled and authenticated terms, defined and ratified fait accompli, yes?

Where do you...

What I'm trying to say, the point, again, that I'm trying to make is that you want me to be BOTH aware of the motivations, conditions, and the symptoms and, at the same time, to be self-aware and -actualizing enough to actually step outside of it all and have the presense of mind to act in some healthy way to improve upon the dynamic...of ME.

Don't you want...

Do you remember Greta?  Standing on the stairs, straining to hear the music; the music that was like a marinade of youth and the catalyst for her sudden spiritual awakening?  A truth of such animating honesty as to imperil her very existence--her entire world.  From that moment, she was incapable of dishonesty, of charade.  But what if she had never moved from that stair?  What if the cries from below of the carriage waiting in the cold night air had gone unheeded?  What if she's standing on that stair still?

And Gabriel gazing up at her, wondering what makes her breast swell, and what source that far-off look.