the most fun a girl can have is finding parallels

a lil missive, just for funzies

Dear friends,

Here are some things I encountered this week that I’m turning into makeshift diptychs. They’re parallels, okay? Or at least complementary. And, no, I won’t explain how/why! Just take these as they are. And read You, which is as addictive as the TV show and far better written than I anticipated.

-Despy Boutris
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1:

Having a Coke with You

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
                                                                                                              I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together for the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse
                               it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it

-Frank O’Hara

&

All I want is a Coke in a can and a text from you.

-Caroline Kepnes

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2:

-Eurypedes (tr. Anne Carson)

&

Whatever the mess you are, you’re mine, okay?

-The New Pornographers

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3:

[Kissing the stomach]

Kissing the stomach
kissing your scarred
skin boat. History
is what you've travelled on
and take with you

We've each had our stomachs
kissed by strangers
to the other

and as for me
I bless everyone
who kissed you here

-Michael Ondaatje

&

All that I can say is

All of the girls you loved before (ooh)
Made you the one I've fallen for
Every dead-end street
Led you straight to me
Now you're all I need
I'm so thankful for
All of the girls you loved before

-Taylor Swift

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4.

I was going to die if I didn’t get to hold her, or at least make a step toward holding her.

-Caroline Kepnes

&

When I meet such a woman on my path, I forget the whole world around me and I am not at peace until I have completely grasped her.

-Ola Hansson, Sensitiva Amorosa (tr. Paul Norlen)

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