But at the Arizona border they stopped us and said Turn Back, and I sat in a little room with barred windows while they typed.
What relation is this man to you? (My beloved is mine and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies).
How long have you known him? (I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine: he feedeth among the lilies).
Did you sleep in the same room? (Behold thou art fair, my beloved, yea pleasant, also our bed is green).
Did intercourse take place? (I sat down under his shadow with great delight and his fruit was sweet to my taste).
When did intercourse first take place? (The king hath brought me to the banqueting house and his banner over me was love).
Were you intending to commit fornication in Arizona? (He shall lie all night between my breasts).
Behold thou art fair my beloved, behold thou art fair: thou hast doves eyes.
Get away from there! cried the guard, as I wept by the crack of the door.
(My beloved is mine)
Better not try any funny business, cried the guard, you’re only making things tough for yourself. (Let me kiss him with the kisses of his mouth).
Stay put! cried the guard, and struck me.
All the searches I've been doing on the Internet. Like after reading Emily Coleman's The Shutter of Snow, her novel about her experiences being committed in the 20s after the birth of her son, realizing she too was once madly in love with George Barker. George Barker who later wrote dirty little stories with Henry Miller and Anais Nin. Who was TS Eliot's protege. All these circles I'm drawing, around and around. Yesterday I looked at the Catholic encyclopedia entry on St. Valentine. It makes sense the patron saint of love is also that of epilepsy and the plague. Henry Miller and Anais Nin comparing everything in their tortured triangulated soap opera to Doestoevsky's The Idiot, just like I did when I was a senior in college. Everything so tortured. St. Valentine who was hitting on the jailer's daughter. We celebrate as a holiday of coupling a saint who was tortured, mutilated, beheaded. This makes sense to me. To lose one's head in love - Laure and Bataille's secret sacrificial society, L'Acephale, the symbol of which is a man losing his head. Both allegedly volunteering to be the society's first human sacrifice. All that is rent and torn and sacrificed.
(Also: Please read Jackie's essay here. It has destroyed me this morning it is so good, and weird and raw and jetlagged and icky and intimate. Sometimes I feel Jackie writes, in the most authentic way, what I want to write, and fail at. )
