from The Name of the World by Denis Johnson

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abby
Posts: 257
Joined: Fri Jan 25, 2008 7:41 pm
Location: southern new mexico/el paso

from The Name of the World by Denis Johnson

Post by abby »

This isn't poetry but it's beautiful. I've been on a Denis Johnson kick.

'The worst of my disequilibrium had passed in a couple of years. I wouldn't bore even a highly paid psychiatrist with the details of my love life, my sex life, during this period, except to say that it was quite a lot less than nothing- that is, I couldn't bear to have so much as a single sexual thought, let a single desire so much as flicker in my mind, during the two years after I was widowed. Not only because my grief made me loyal to my wife, but also because I was grieving for someone who was dead, and death is such a physical thing. I didn't want physical things. I didn't even like facts about things, and in a secret way I came to hate the truth itself.
This extra dimension of loneliness, this revulsion for the world and even, at first, for the stuff of which it was composed, seemed unique at the time. But I think I see now that it was completely typical, and that what revolted me above all was the understanding that everything passes away.'

xo
Abby
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