The Paroles Of JK

I liked yesterday’s dialogue (yesterday? Or the day before? Time seems to be running together; too many late night and early mornings with nothing to differentiate today from tomorrow) so much that I did some more. Scribbled that shite out and wrote some more. Here’s an extract. If you like it let me know. (Please?)

A: [on the phone. The phone is ringing]

B: Hello?

A: Don’t hang up!

B: What do you want?

A: An answer. And world peace, but I’d prefer an answer.

B: An answer from me? Over world peace? Is it that important?

A: [beat] Yes.

B: [sighs] What if the answer’s no?

A: [trying to make light of the situation] Well, then I can get on with world peace.

B: I do love you. I’ve loved you ever since we met. I feel like I’ve worn a groove in the floor where I’ve paced, just waiting for you to walk past so I can glimpse you. I know your phone number off by heart. But -

A: [quickly] Don’t say but! Please don’t say but!

B: But…you’re so far away. And what we had we can’t get back. We’ve both grown up. It’s been six years, six years since I saw you for the first time and…we’re different now. What if you’re not the same man I knew? What if you’ve changed for the worse? I don’t want to marry a man I don’t know. I just want us to get to know each other. I want to know who you are again.

A: I’ve kept you in my heart for six years. If there’s anyone who knows me, it’s you. It always has been. I love you, you ridiculous girl. I used to walk past your classes just so I could glimpse you. I bought you sheet music once. Do you remember?

B: [smiling] I remember. You tried to charge me for it.

A: Always with the negative. [smiling also] But - I’m still that guy. Tell me you’ll marry me and tomorrow I’ll move back down. Sod university, sod everything. I’m finally understanding what people mean when they talk about Love. I always thought it was stupid but - I’m here. And I’m telling you the truth. Marry me.

B: Please -

A: What does your heart tell you?

B: I’ll hang up again.

A: I’ll call you back.

B: I’ll turn off my phone.

A: I’ll email you.

B: Not near a computer.

A: Then I’ll write to you.

B: I don’t live there anymore.

A: Then where do you live?

B: [silence]

A: Well?

B: With - with my boyfriend.

A: [pause] Oh.

Not really a post about Hugh Grant, but I’ve been told I sound like him, and I want to try out some dialogue from a play I’m tinkering with.

B: I love you. You and I have been drifting, moment by moment, past each other, somehow never gathering the courage to say it. So I’m saying it. I’m saying it before I leave because if I don’t then you’ll find someone else, and so will I, and for our whole lives we’ll wake up and regret, just a little, not having each other. We are one person, broken in half before birth, and seeking ever since the missing part of ourselves.

A: but-

B: there are no buts! Here, in this moment, in these seconds, there is only us. Us and the words. Words are all I have to offer you. Three words and two; I love you. Marry me.

A: you can’t - you can’t just ask me that. You can’t just ask it like it’s nothing.

B: it’s taken me six years to work out. It’s everything.

Love! Always this ridiculous obsession with love!

(I always have an obsession with correct grammar and spelling, but so far that’s never been made into a musical starring Ewan MacGregor. But we can dream.)

Because one thing’s piling onto another and a blog’s just come up that’s frustrated me a tiny little bit, so sausages to everyone expecting something sensible. It’s half one.

Love is all around us. It is all pervading and abused to the point of humiliation. Dior released a perfume called “j’adore,” which any half awake fourth year will tell you mean “I love.”

It doesn’t even have a damn subject. Just a universal declaration of love for, whatever. It sounds nice. Words that sound nice. And love is the nicest sounding word of all.

Love gives you goosebumps. I love you has power when shouted in a crowd or when whispered in bed or when just said, hand in hand, offhand, the words just thrown lightly into a waiting ear that almost breathes them in.

Love is the inescapable, impossible desire to want to be more. The always, terrible, jangling fear that you are not good enough for the object of your affections. That first date, those slow uncoiling strands that reach from our hearts to grasp another’s is worse than a thousand job interviews.

We sit and chat for minutes that stretch into ours and then we kiss. That first kiss, that sudden explosion of electricity that makes your hair feel like it’s standing on end. You can’t stop smiling for hours. Everything feels good; the crisp air, even a granite city takes on a new and beautiful aspect.

And love takes on this wild, ridiculous journey, and for some time we’re together and then we split. Do we stop loving each other? Yes! Of course we do! Love is fragile and breakable and stop treating it like a word you can toss on a blasted perfume bottle to sell it.

You ever fall in love at first glance? You will. One day you will, and that glance across a room will hit you like a ton of clichés. I make light of it, but it’s true. One look. And suddenly you know, you know deep down in your heart, that something has to happen. You get butterflies. That first touch stops your breath, and when they step in close and you smell their hair your head swims because for a second you don’t want to breathe out. Sometimes you don’t even need words. Just touch, tactile sensations. Be dumbfounded; find yourself dumb before the object of your adoration. You are not meeting a human being; you are in the presence of a being from a higher plane.

And tonight that’s true, and tomorrow maybe it won’t be. Maybe it will. Angelic quitessence is not my department. But love, oh love is. What I know about angels would fit on the head of a pin, were there room, but my knowledge of love, of the passion and the anguish and the pain and the joy, that I could write a blog about.

Or I could just get furious about more adverts that tell us to love this, that, or whatever. Love who you want, what you want, how and when you want. Dance with the devil or lie with the angels or just plain lie to them. We live on the middle kingdom, so live somewhere in the middle. And love.

And of course men don’t listen. You want to be reassured of something we have already told you. We worked up to this, baring our souls. It seems to be easier for you. Well done. It took us three days to get up the courage to say those three words. Stop cheapening them by saying them every five minutes.

When it happened, Maria was indoors. The storm had been growing for some time, thick, heavy clouds squatting low over the city. She pressed her fingers to the glass. It was cool against the fleshy pads. Far away lightning flashed, soundless now. Maria counted. She’d reached four before the rumble vibrated through her fingertips, up her arm, into her heart.

Maria took her fingers from the glass. Another flash of lightning and her fingertips silhouetted against the clouds. Storms used to scare her. They still did, if she was outside. But here, within the warmth of her flat, there was no fear. There was no need to be afraid.

Of course nobody is ever afraid because they need to be. If you are scared, you simply are, working out the wherefore is something for people who have the time. But for now the storm was outside, and Maria was inside, and for now those are the only two sides that matter.

When Maria went to sleep thirty minutes later, she could only count two between light and sound. In her dreams, the lightning still flashed and the thunder rolled and crashed. She whimpered as she slept. There was no inside or outside in the dreamscape. There was only the storm; the darkness overhead, and the sudden brightness that illuminated a shape that was all at once by her shoulder and far away. It was hard to judge distance, here.

I write about love all the time

Time is all I have to write about love

I write for all time about love.

This is silly because I don’t know anything about love.

I have denied love three times before the dawn.

And before the dusk a hundred times again.

And now I am asked again.

I don’t know what love is.

Ask me again tomorrow.

There are three suitors, waiting. One looks with disdain upon the others, and his livery is red and fine silk. Another dresses plainly but with no less disdain views his neighbours; his pious nature in combat with his proud nose. The last looks neither at his neighbours nor at the casks before them; instead his eyes are fixed to the object of his beauty.

The lady asks the first to choose a cask. He steps at once to the cask liveried in gold. Gold, argues he, has value, and what is inside must have value greater still - for those who dress in silk are those whose worth is great, whilst those all clothed in rags have none. Therefore, says he, the cask of gold is where her heart shall be found. The key is given. the cask is flung eagerly open.

Inside there is no love but a dark and ugly skull, whose naked grin mocks the apparelled noble. Through its empty socket is thrust a paper. “Look you beyond the garments, and there shall you find greater worth.”

He turns, disgusted.

The second steps forward; examines he the silver and the leaden chest. He turns, now, to the silver chest, and clasping piously his hands declaims that silver is the metal from which the chalice and the tabernacle are built. Within these are kept the holies of holies, the body and blood of the risen Lord. Silver, then, is where one will find the most holy - most perfect - of beauty.

The key is proffered and taken. A prayer is whispered, but his thoughts are fixed on no thing higher than his navel. The chest is opened. Within is but a cross, laid upon a missive. It is taken with quavering hands. “Within silver keeps one death; my love is given only to the living.”

He turns disgusted. All eyes are then to the last suitor turned. Her love must then unto him default; there is no question. The final key is offered to him, but no hand makes he to take it.

Rather stands he tall, but speaks small, and every ear is close-bent to hear.

I would not have my love by default, as a loan. I am by my work a cleric, and know I well that steel fares better in defense than soft gold or cold silver. I think that my love has value above such petty things. I think this all a trick and a charade. I refuse the key. My love - and here spoke he so soft than none but she could hear - was given unto thee at first sight, and without riddle or puzzle. If thou my love do return, then step we from this place and be married. Elsewise shall I go, and ne’er be returned.

She placed then her lips upon his ear, and spake so: My love was given ere you begged askance of it. I had only to hear thy arguments to be sure of thy love’s truth.

And upon that moment they left, and were married.

And to my knowledge - which is not so boundless as the sea but is great indeed - that steel casket sits there still.

Remember, reader dear, that a heart hath many keys, but them that are presented you will never bring you love. Strive by words to unlock them, and find then thy words unlocked.

J

Speak thee, fool!

Sayeth then the fool nothing. What may he say?

I have no words but love upon my lips?

The kiss that lingers still upon mine breath forbids me speech?

I am rendered unto stone until her lips unbind me?

Speak now! Lest I tear out thine tongue!

This tongue speaks of naught but her.

These tears speak naught but her.

What value has tongue, or eye, or heart, e’en, that exists without love?

To know love is to know despair; sayeth the fool.

He starts and stops, in hesitant steps walks his speech.

For in knowing love, has a man the knowing of all that is not love

And seeing at once his life before amounting all to naught,

is seized by horror and turns at once to God, in whose favour

now he bathes. And though there be not spire nor altar nor bible holy,

it matters naught.

For where she treads is hallowed ground,

and at her feet is mercy found.

Being young is generally considered the worst and, indeed, the most difficult part of one’s life. It’s only considered that by adults, of course, children are generally keen to rebel and do so by enjoying themselves immensely.


The thing – if you can call it a thing – about being young is that everything is very new. Ideas burn through the twilight of the brain like supernovas and alter the fabric of the landscape below. Young people are very good at learning; indeed, it is the best time to do such frivolous things before settling down to the serious business of making money and being old.
 

(Being old, by the way, is a pastime that should be kept purely amongst those who have time for it. I myself have no truck with it and refuse to take any part in it; there is simply too much to do to be old.)


Being young, as I said, is difficult. New ideas present themselves all the time, and they are eagerly taken on board. I am quite sure that every one of us looks back and groans inwardly at the foolishness of youth – my own sin was a room painted black, wall-to-wall. It depressed me within a day. Within a week I had repainted it to reflect my new found love of – well, something. It was all a terribly long time ago, and even if it were yesterday, I shouldn’t much care to relive it because it was terribly boring. Boredom is the worst of all sins, and boring one’s audience worse. (If you ask why it is worse than a sin, it is because it is rude, and rudeness – unlike sin – cannot be forgiven).


And so we come – at last – to the premise of this tale. It may or may not be true, but truth is an ugly reason to tell a story. It is entertaining and at certain points quite beautiful, and that is quite reason enough. Beauty is often enough its own reason, and those that say otherwise are plain, and probably quite dull.


The reason behind this story is Love. I hope you don’t mind.

 
If you do mind then I beseech you to leave at once; your time has not been long wasted and I am sure that you have other things to do. Read another story, by all means; some of them are exceedingly good. Some are exceedingly terrible, but there is no great harm in that - it is better to write something bad than not to write anything. Words, when caught up inside one, tend to go slightly bad, like fine wine turning to vinegar in the bottle. Drink of your words. And fill the bottle once more.

 
But as to this story - I offer you a tale of Old Magic, of youth, of a future that you know but sadly they do not. It may not be true and it may not be what you believe - but it is only a story.

 
Enough of this foolish prologue. To the tale.