2.
I wonder if I’ve become a kind of Max Cady figure for her. Perhaps I am representative of old misdeeds and have turned up, winking and flashing like a bad penny.
Continue readingInstagram: The Diabolical Mirror
Posted in Love letters with tags baby, Instagram, Max Cady, mirror, Whitney Houston on November 1, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle
Instagram: The Diabolical Mirror
Posted in Love letters with tags A Sport and a Pastime, Instagram, James Salter, WASP on October 27, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle
“I am not telling the truth about Dean, I am creating him out of my own inadequacies. You must always remember that.”
– James Salter,
A Sport and a Pastime.
It is worth mentioning that I found myself awake this morning, on my day off, at 4:11am. For this, I blame Y-.
For whatever reason, good or bad, I decided last night to stalk her on Instagram.
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The Sunless Side of Always
Posted in poetry, sonnet on September 29, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle
I promise not to flinch to hate
I will embrace this gift of pain
I will not hide your sovereign light
Beneath this abject cloak of shame
I promise not to run and hide
Concealed in darkness of another
Nor pull your faults across my eyes
I’ll keep my word to stand and suffer
Night folds me in blackened wings
And paints a landscape sinister
Your beating heart, it echoes still
Through the tangle of my viscera
That rhythm scores these absent days
On the sunless side of always
And for those who prefer their sonnets in the traditional pentameter…
I promise that I’ll not flinch into hate
I will fully embrace this gift of pain
I will not turn and hide your sovereign light
Underneath this abject cloak of shame
I promise I’ll not run away and hide
Or curl up in darkness of another
I will not pull your faults across my eyes
I’ll keep my word that I’ll stand and suffer
As night enfolds me in its blackened wings
And paints a landscape chill and sinister
The beating of your heart, it echoes still
Through darkling tangle of my viscera
Its rhythm scores these silent, stagnant days
Encamped on the sunless side of always
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James Salter’s ‘A Sport and a Pastime.’
Posted in Reading with tags D.H.Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover on September 17, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle
2.
The notion of a relationship becoming deeper and more profound as people begin to ‘transgress’ the boundaries of what a twenty-first century reader would describe as vanilla sex is also a time-worn strategy.
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James Salter’s ‘A Sport and a Pastime.’
Posted in Reading with tags A Moveable Feast, A Sport and a Pastime, D.H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, Feminism, James Salter, Lady Chatterley's Lover, Modernism, Paris on September 16, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle
1.
A Sport and a Pastime is considered – by Americans – to be an American classic. My first question, upon finishing the book, is, ‘What makes something a classic? What makes it ‘feel’ like one?’
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Blankness of a Clock Face
Posted in poetry, sonnet with tags clock face, poetry, sonnet on August 30, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle
Your stride faltered in hesitation as
The young man held the door to let you pass
His face eclipsed by yours – a brief reflection
His eyes stalled by yours within the glass
I’d hoped to catch this moment in the mirror
Rising from the lines upon my face
But read the time less from standing figures
Than from the way you spanned the empty space
This morning’s spectre of your fragrant heat
Attendant to your body’s pooling shadow
Trickles through the reef of cotton sheet as
A frigid breeze rattles the open window
I kiss your neck, then disappear from sight
You turn to face the weeping winter light
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The Devils – A User’s Guide
Posted in Fiction, Observation, Reading with tags Dostoyevsky, Martin Scorsese, Pyramids, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, The Devils on August 26, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle
What’s it about?
What amounts to a terrorist cell in mid-nineteenth century Russia and its effect on a small fictional town of Dostoyevsky’s invention.
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Her Invisible Wings
Posted in poetry, sonnet with tags Her Invisible Wings on August 9, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle
Within the lock the key creates a flashpoint
And the lambent pressure of her absence
Rolls back in waves from the open door
And mounts walls in cylinders of silence
Where once we sheltered in woven shadows
Drifting down from her invisible wings
And the electricity of orgasm
Glittered random and wild across her skin
I talk to her when I’m in the shower
At least, to the frequencies that linger
And after, standing before the mirror
Watching as my hunkered shadow glowers
Deep beneath the sheen of beaded silver
Draw her ciphered outline with a finger
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My Dark Vanessa
Posted in Pretensions toward cultural theory, Reading with tags Lolita, My Dark Vanessa, Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic, Vladimir Nabokov on August 7, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle
4.
“I called Lolita a love story and the professor cut me off, saying, ‘Calling this novel a love story indicates an unconscionable misreading on your part.’
She wouldn’t even let me finish what I was trying to say. Ever since then, I haven’t dared bring it up in any of my classes.”
p.291,
My Dark Vanessa.
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My Dark Vanessa
Posted in Pretensions toward cultural theory, Reading with tags Andrea Dworkin, Bessel Van Der Kolk, facebook, Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa, The Body Keeps the Score, trauma on August 2, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle
3.
Our relationship lasted until after I graduated. She left her husband and I’d left school, and she came over to my apartment one day and we talked about doing it properly. Continue reading
