"The Little Room" -- Reconfiguration

Eleanor says: My Biographer and I are reconfiguring The Little Room, to ensure that the feng shui energy we need for the words is in the absolute, ideal alignment. We are also cleansing the room, and getting rid of anything that might distract us from the goal -- which continues to be the conclusion to my story, Volume One.

It's that perfect time of Winter, when the clouds open just a little bit wider and allow us to see everything with more -- well -- clarity. This is our window, our precious time, and as we are now more than 460 postings toward No. 500, we need to make each of them count. Please stay tuned, please, won't you? -- and meanwhile, you're welcome to scroll down, at your leisure. These 460-plus postings are all on one long page, remember. And my Biographer would say this, so I am going to say it as well: "To the words!"

"I write and I understand."

"I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I write and I understand."
-- Chinese Proverb

On Richard Brautigan's Birthday:

"All of us have a place in history. Mine is clouds."
-- Richard Brautigan

*
Eleanor wants to fish for trout today, on Richard Brautigan's birthday.

"And I also want to look into the clouds, and see the faces of everybody living there," she says. "I wonder when typewriters will begin falling from the sky? Everybody knows that words float."

Guest Poet David Wayne Dunn:

Guest Poet David Wayne Dunn, one of Eleanor's favorite writers, offers us a new poem for the "Save Me" scroll from his studio in Big Sur. Thank you, David, for once again sharing your work with us.
-- Geoff
*

"wind from the moon"
by david wayne dunn

wind from the moon
transfixing the trees
life in winter when the days
dwindle and the light beckons
golden upon the face of the world
day moon upon the faces of the beloveds
everywhere it is present a glance
a finger a leg a smile
a bird somewhere a tree waving
or a sea stirring the heart
of a need the world is pregnant
with want of you

copyright dwd 2009

*
David Wayne Dunn lives and works in Big Sur, California. You can check out more of David's words and images here: http://www.myspace.com/davidwdunn
*

Alfred Lord Tennyson:

"I am a part of all that I have seen."
-- Alfred Lord Tennyson

*
Eleanor Spain: "I am part of all that have seen me, or read me, or listened to me whisper in a breeze. I want to linger for as long as I can. I want to find the beauty in the pain, but never pain in the beautiful."

"We stop being random -- stop being numbers."

Eleanor: This is just one of those things, like numbers, like random numbers, you know? I mean, how numbers follow patterns but they're still random, like the lottery, like those little white ping pong balls bouncing around in the machine and what number pops out after the next number after the next number, well -- if you look at yesterday's numbers and tomorrow's numbers, you're sure to see at least one or two duplicates, but if you look at two or three days ago, you won't see any duplicates, unless you are comparing that day with the day after or the day before. But then, on very rare occasions, one number can go from day one to day three, and then repeat on day six, and come up a dozen times more in the next twenty bounces in the machine, and then after that, not bounce out for weeks or months. This is just one of those things that seems like it's random but you start noticing the patterns, and if you notice the patterns, you can follow them -- the patterns -- are you hearing me? -- you can follow them until they tell what the missing pieces of the puzzle are, or what the missing last sentence is, or even what the beginning sentence should be. You can work the patterns forward for backward, it doesn't matter, because random thinks both ways. It tries to trick you. And people, they know this trickery, by God they know, even if they don't think they do. Just follow me a moment on this. I mean, how many times you hear somebody talk about a baby being born. And somebody in the family will say years later, or sooner: your number was called, and so you arrived, and we've been so happy ever since. Or -- it works at the end, this trickery, with dying. Your number has been called, sorry buddy but you're a goner, dead as a doornail -- or dead as the random number that came up and won't ping pong bounce out again for another three months. By then -- and this is what I'm getting at -- by then -- well, by then ... it's not your random number anymore. It's somebody else's. So you need to look out for the numbers and notice the patterns and see the beginnings and the endings and take good care, because if you see all of this -- if you are so intuitive and notice -- you just might be saving somebody's life, and that even might be your own life, and if you're a writer, for example, it might even be the character you've created. Because she has a number too, you know? But you need to remember than in all of this randomness with all of its patterns, that eventually the numbers, like the character you've created, or the person you know or the person you are -- well, everybody -- I mean, we -- have -- a -- name. We stop being numbers. Right then and there. We stop being random. We stop being part of the pattern, part of the machine. And then -- that's when we start being, you know? I mean, being, you hear me? Being!

Anton Chekhov:

"If you cry 'forward,' you must without fail make plain in what direction to go."
-- Anton Chekhov

Robert Burns Day & The Chinese New Year

Eleanor says: My Biographer is a bit under the weather, and my emergency stock of moondust for the moondust tea is depleted. I don't know what happened, and there's not another Full Moon until next month! Still, I plan a big celebration for Robert Burns Day (today) and the Chinese New Year. (Tonight is New Year's Eve.) We'll be enjoying some Ramen noodles with a couple of fortune cookies from my collection.

Thank you, everybody, who has been reading and commenting on the recent interview I conducted with my Biographer. Perhaps my questions weren't tough enough, or perhaps I asked questions that touched a nerve, and that's why he's not feeling so well. In any case, I'm determined to get him back to good health and writing again. I've said it before, but it's worth saying again -- we have a lot of work to do, and many words to write before we sleep.

Where Are We?

"I can't go back to yesterday - because I was a different person then."
-- Lewis Carroll

The Interview: Eleanor & Her Biographer

Eleanor: I think it's time that I interview you, my Biographer, for the record.

Biographer: For the record.

Eleanor: Truth. Your version of it, at least. What you consider the truth.

Biographer: We can try this, sure. Ask whatever you want.

Eleanor: No questions are off limits?

Biographer: None. I might choose not to answer, but you may ask anything.

Eleanor (smiling): Okay then, here we go. Seatbelts fastened? Okay, okay. I have lots of notes. I've been keeping tabs on you, you know.

B: For more than 18 years, yes, I know.

E: You talk about your Little Room, but you like the exotic. You like the adventure.

B: I'm not sure how to answer that one.

E: Well, examples then. You were married once in Rome. You honeymooned once in Iceland. Your favorite cities are Paris and Dublin.

B: Okay, yes.

E: You've always said that once my story is finished -- really finished, as in, this is the correct version of me, you're ready to die. You will have nothing left to accomplish, you say. I am your epic, your opus, your masterpiece -- if you have a masterpiece in you.

B: I've said these things. I'm not sure you can take anything at face value. But yes, I do keep trying to get your story right, and I know I can't leave this world until I do.

E: So what you're saying is -- I'm to die for! (Eleanor giggles.) To have my story written and published and have people say, wow, this is pretty darn good and we should keep this in print forever.

B: I think that you're the star, Eleanor. I'm just a player in this, a conduit for something larger, and that something is you, plain and simple. And the story, the themes I want to address with your story. I do think that you deserve to stay in print. And I think it's up to me to make sure I write you well enough that it happens this way.

E: How many pages of me do you suppose you've written -- to date, since 1990, when you say I first climbed inside your head?

B: I have no idea. Thousands. Lots of drafts. You've already lived many lives, and most of those lives were all wrong. Completely wrong.

E: But I remember each one I lived. You can't just write me, and then delete that part of me. It would be like asking you to forget parts of your own life, yes?

B: I suppose.

E: You spent nine days in Paris, by yourself -- this was your first trip there, and you barely spoke a word to another person. You slept in the afternoon. You sat on the grass in front of the Eiffel Tower and ate your lunch. You felt the sun on your face. You couldn't believe that you could close your eyes, and open them, and see the Eiffel Tower. You thought, this is what's pictured on calendars, not real. What's real is mundane and repetitive. It's not the Eiffel Tower. You walked the streets long after the Metro shut down for the night. You returned to your hotel when the garbage collectors were just beginning their routes.

B: I could hear my footsteps on the street as I walked. I could hear my footsteps echo, in fact. Even Paris sleeps sometimes.

E: The bums -- the homeless. They always wanted your cigarettes.

B: And I didn't smoke! But in Europe, everyone smokes. So I bought cigarettes, just to give them out when somebody asked.

E: There was a club in the Latin Quarter you loved. You liked to watch the pretty girls in their short dresses while they danced to swing music.

B: Le Caveau de la Huchette. The doorman didn't speak much English, but he let me in for free as long as I promised to get drunk. He took pity on an American who obviously wasn't your average tourist.

E: What about Notre Dame, the first time?

B: I was finished with the night, I was drunk and stumbling along, and I wanted to walk on the other side of the Seine for a change, so I crossed a bridge, somehow made it to a bench. There were a couple of others there. Nobody talked. It was too late for talking. I looked up. It was Notre Dame. It felt surreal.

E: You wrote entire chapters about me, about me and my father, Jay Spain, visiting Paris. What happened to those chapters?

B: Deleted. I lost the hard copy, too, I think. That was a few years ago.

E: You did the same thing with Dublin, except for that trip, you had me visiting with a girl named Mary, and Mary was my lover. Was I old enough to have a lover?

B: Those were mistaken attempts to tell your story. I didn't get it right.

E: But I loved that trip! Mary was kind -- I didn't care that we kissed. I was more interested in being in Dublin.

B: I never had you visit Rome, or London, or Madrid, or Morocco. I was selective.

E: You also had me in a jacuzzi room with Mary in Upper Sandusky, Ohio -- at a Comfort Inn or something. I remember that. We stole my father's credit card and were charging everything. Mary was seducing this guy we met, so we could steal his money. We didn't know when the credit card would be cut off.

B: You remember too much, Eleanor. It was all wrong though -- you were never meant to be in those places, not for the final draft.

E: But I was, and I can't forget any of it.

B: I wrote chapters about you going to college, too.

E: Even though my story is supposed to end when I'm 17 -- 18?

B: I guess I was thinking more than one book. Or maybe I was thinking, you needed a back story and a front story. I had to know what kind of person you would grow up to be, so I could write the earlier parts.

E: You wrote me as a killer once, too. Before we heard about school shootings on the news like this is so routine. Before it became so common, and I know it's horrible to say that. But you made me ahead of my time, and not in a good way either, walking into my school and taking hostages, and then that reporter from Rolling Stone visiting me in prison to write my story.

B: He would have been your Biographer in that version.

E: But I'm not a killer. I don't like guns.

B: I don't like guns, Eleanor -- so, no, you're not a killer. No one will ever see that draft of your story, I promise.

E: When did you decide on the doughnuts?

B: Nobody who's reading this is going to know what we're talking about!

E: That's what makes it fun. There are doughnuts in my story, in the version you say is the real story of me.

B: Yes. Your favorite flavor is strawberry frosted. We can say that much.

E: I like sweets, I do.

B: You like to drink, too. That hasn't changed. You always drank too much, too early in life. I'm not sure why I did that -- why I wrote that.

E: Because you were no rebel when you were young.

B: (Laughs.) I didn't have my first beer until college, but I made up for it. In high school, it was the girl I was dating, who didn't drink, or the beer and parties and the rest of it. I guess I chose the girl. I'm always choosing the girl, aren't I? Sometimes it gets me into trouble. But for you, Eleanor -- you get to experience all of it at once. Sometimes too much. You live through me, and I live through you -- a weird sort of arrangement.

E: How do I know that this is the version of my story that's going to stick with people, that's going to resonate? How do I know that this version of my story will stay in print, or that anybody will want to publish it?

B: The good stories -- the good words -- they eventually find a home. You will always have a home, Eleanor, but eventually, the world will be your home. I have to make that happen, if it takes me the rest of my life. So, no, I can't die before the world sees you and loves you. Or understands you. Or gets you.

E: Well, anyhow -- let me see, I have so many questions left. We've barely scratched the surface of what I want to ask.

B: We should get back to your story, not mine, and not all of the versions of you that didn't work out.

E: Sometimes I miss Mary.

B: Maybe she'll make a cameo appearance.

E: I'd like that, if you could manage it.

B: Are we ready to get back to the new words?

E: I want to hear more about Iceland, and what it was like getting married in Rome.

B: Those were other lifetimes for me, Eleanor. Those were my personal stories that didn't get lived right. I'm evolving too. My story isn't finished. We're on parallel paths in this thing.

E: The right story, the story you want people to remember you for. Not the literary biography, you mean.

B: There's plenty of literary biography. I'll leave that for somebody else.

Eleanor Wonders:

"I am full of all kinds of interior monologues," Eleanor says to her Biographer, "but how is that possible, when I'm supposed to be your interior monologue? Am I my own person, or not?"

Thoughts are noisy tonight.

"The author must keep his mouth shut when his work starts to speak."

-- Frederich Nietzsche

*
And so, here we are, Eleanor's Biographer says. (Or thinks. He isn't sure if words have actually been spoken. Thoughts are noisy tonight.)

First, I will tell you what it was like, growing up inside your head, Eleanor responds, out loud or in a thought. In any case, the air has been punctured and begins to leak.

Then, she says, after that, she says, I want you to change certain incidents -- some details.

The air is making its own sounds, at first like a balloon slowly bleeding, and then like a train traveling leisurely down the tracks.

*
The Moleskine notebook is out, the pen at the ready, and the hand steadied by a shot (or two) of Evan Williams whiskey.

Make that three shots of Evan Williams, as Eleanor keeps counting her fingers, from one to five, and then five to one -- just one hand counting the fingers on the other hand, back and forth like this, as the darkness becomes like a heavy wool blanket and the punctured air -- well, it begins to smell of oranges. The sweet, juice oranges -- the kind with lots of pulp. (Not the ones you buy at the grocery story, big and pretty but hollow. These are the small, ugly oranges with spots on their skin to discourage you; yet inside is a tall glass of nectar. This is the good sticky stuff with all of the vitamins -- to help you remember, Eleanor says, somewhat abruptly, what you most likely have forgotten.)

In Which Eleanor Quotes Jane Austen

"If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more."
-- Jane Austen

*
Eleanor to her Biographer: You understand now why I've been a just little bit quiet these past few days? I'm not sure how to say what I need to say next. Please -- give me a little more time, okay? That is, unless we're like so running out of time that you're just going to give up on me -- you know, walk away, put me on the shelf, whatever. But you just need to understand why it's been like this -- the silence, I mean -- my silence.

I'll be ready when you are, Eleanor, her Biographer replies.

You already know, don't you? Eleanor says.

William Stafford:

"I have woven a parachute out of everything broken."
-- William Stafford

"I am so frightened," she says.

"Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true."
-- Charles Dickens

*
I need to be brave now, Eleanor says, and the truth will come with being brave, I'm sure of it. I am going to start sending out postcards to complete strangers, and ask them, Will you be brave with me? Will you tell me what's in your soul? Will you write it all down for me, so I know you're serious?

Eleanor says, I want to read your handwriting. I want to know you, so you can know me.

Eleanor says, Nothing's real, unless it's in writing -- unless it's in the writing you can only do with your own hand, with a pen or pencil. I want to feel the texture of your words. I want to feel your honesty. I want to feel that it's going to be okay, you know? These are tough times, so why should anybody care about me? I know what you're thinking. I know you're thinking that I am discretionary. You want bread and wine. You don't want me. You can't afford me, you'll say -- even if I offer myself up for free. You will be too suspicious. You will say, Nobody gets anything for free.

Eleanor says, My Biographer is keeping count of these postings, and he tells me we're getting closer and closer to the final chapter. And what I want to know is why there has to be a final chapter to anything? I want to begin. I don't want to end. I want to begin before the beginning. I want a prologue. I want to make me last as long as I can.

Eleanor says, I want to say Hello, not Goodbye.

Eleanor says, I wish I had something more profound to say right now. You say you get me but do you really? I don't want to be mean. I want to be reassured. I want to be tucked into bed at night. I want to hear the birds sing when I wake up. I'm so tired, you know? I've stayed up non-stop for months now, and I am so tired of staying up.

Eleanor says, I want to travel the world, and learn everything about everything. Then I want to sit on the street corner, against a wall, with a handwritten sign beside me. I'm not asking for handouts. I'm asking you to tell me what I don't know, even after traveling the world and learning everything about everything. I want you to show me your heart, so I believe you. I want you to see me.

Eleanor says, It's no fun being invisible. Not anymore. But how can I make you see me? And what will you see, when you look at me?

Eleanor says, I am so very afraid you might be disappointed, and never come back again. How can I ever live up to your expectations? I am expecting too much of myself probably. I am expecting too much of my Biographer, probably. You have to see me, like right this moment, and you have to know that right now, this very moment, I am shivering. But I'm not cold or anything like that. I am shivering and I do not like this feeling.

Eleanor says, What do you do when you shiver and have goosebumps and it has nothing to do with being warm, but everything to do with being -- how do I even tell you this? How do I say it? How do I let you know?

Eleanor says, My heart doesn't bleed blood, that's my big problem you see. It bleeds words. Do you see the words? Just look down at the pavement, where you're standing. There are my words. I am bleeding them. I need you to read me. I need you to read all of me. I need you to make sense of me.

Eleanor says, I am so frightened. I'm brave as brave can be, but I am also scared to death. I hate that word -- death. I hate it. I am a warrior. I am in complete control. Why should I be so frightened then? You tell me. Please -- you tell me, okay? This -- hurts. Those people who keep walking by and ignoring me -- they are stepping on my words, my blood, my life. They don't even realize what they're doing. They are so damn oblivious.

Allen Ginsberg:

"Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does."
-- Allen Ginsberg

*
"Allen Ginsberg gets me," Eleanor says. "He knew the honest-to-God truth and he made it happen and then he made it keep on happening, and that's even more amazing. And all of that -- well, that's what I aim to do."

"Greedy"

Learn Chinese -- the word for today is "Greedy."

Eleanor shakes her head, No.

*
Her fortune reads: "Joys are often the shadows, cast by sorrows."

She turns up "The Weeping Song" even louder. Nick Cave is screaming in her ears. Eleanor finds a release in his screaming, but she keeps quiet herself. The day is still early.

Eleanor Smiles

Eleanor is listening to "The Weeping Song" by Nick Cave, on repeat, on cassette, on her Walkman.

Eleanor is listening, and now she smiles. I know these people, she says. I know the fathers and the mothers and the children. The ones who got away, they live with me in The Spirit House.

*
Eleanor has decided to become a post-Luddite-Luddite (she's working on the terminology), in which she can keep using her older (but still very functional) technology, and start a trend backwards, when people weren't so caught up in the newest this or that -- when you could paint a picture or read a book or write a letter and put it in the mail, or watch TV in black and white, or listen to the radio with lots of static and you really need to pay attention, too, because you're doing half the work, she says.

Eleanor is at peace with her world today.

She's still listening, and she's still smiling.

Sylvia Plath:

"If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days."
-- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, Chapter 8

Walt Whitman To Eleanor:

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes," Walt Whitman writes.

Eleanor shows this to her Biographer. See? she says, see?

Her Biographer remarks, Walt Whitman is Walt Whitman, and you, Eleanor -- are you. There's only one Walt Whitman, and there's only one Eleanor.

You sound so familiar, Eleanor says, a fake yawn, hand to her mouth several times like an obscene gesture of the obvious. So familiar, she says, but I'll tell you what. I'm going to grow a white beard and write poetry all day and all night and totally contradict myself but that's going to be okay, because I am filled with everybody. I am multitudes like Walt Whitman!

In fact, Eleanor continues with no small measure of bravado -- who's to say that I'm not the Biographer, and that you aren't MY character?

(She is dancing about like a ballerina. She dances wildly, provocatively. She dances a kind of seduction, but this is all about the words. It's always all about the words.)

Please do write my story then, her Biographer says. In fact, I dare you to.

*
They prepare to drink Moondust tea, and Eleanor's Biographer knows this could knock him out for a few days, if it's like last month's brew. But so it goes -- so it goes, indeed, he thinks, on Full Moon Day.

Herman Melville, Mighty Themes, Moondust

"To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme."

-- Herman Melville

*
"I do not believe that I am a small story. I will not accept being a small story," Eleanor tells her Biographer. "I do not believe that I am a small book, either. I believe that I am timeless. I believe that whatever my theme is, it has to be timeless too -- and it has to be a big, big theme. Don't you agree?"

Eleanor goes on: "So, Mister Biographer, what is my theme? Or are you going to keep that part a secret from me? I hope you realize that it isn't up for your character to tell you, you know. I'm not the director. I'm the star. And I don't care how much work it takes for you to get me right. What's important is that you do get me right. You can't argue with me on this. You know how right I am even saying these words. You know it. I know you do."

*
Eleanor reminds her Biographer that the first Full Moon of 2009 is almost here. At 10:27 p.m. (ET) on Saturday, January 10, Eleanor will once again be outside, bare feet on the wet grass, collecting Moodust as it sprinkles down, in that moment just before it lands. "Like snowflakes," she says, "except that pure Moondust never melts. It's like energy. You cannot destroy energy. You can only change it into something else."

Anne Lamott & Eleanor:

"We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason why they write so little."

-- Anne Lamott

*
"My longing is to be so real you could slap me in the face and I'd feel it, or you could kiss me and I'd feel it, or you even could ignore me -- and I'd feel that too. My longing is to be so real that you and everybody else will never take me for granted. My longing is to be the girl version of Jack Kerouac. My longing hurts sometimes. I think my longing is more real than I am -- but I vow to catch up. My longing is to be the girl version of Valentino. I want to take my longing and satiate it with my story. My longing is to understand why this all isn't happening faster. I need to know right now, you know? -- as in everything. And then I can try to understand why it has to be the way it is, whatever it is. My longing is to be the girl version of Tom Waits. And I will say this, for the record, that if you ignore me, you'll never be rid of me. If you slap me in the face, I will slap you back. And I will say this, also for the record, that If you kiss me, I will kiss you in return. My longing is like the sun. It burns, even after the sun has set. My longing is to show you everything I am capable of being. My longing is to surprise you -- in ways I do not know yet - how could I know? My longing is to have my longing not hurt so much anymore, you know? My longing defines me, and it tears me apart and keeps me whole. My longing makes me desire you -- really want you -- your company, your companionship, your listening, your talking. My longing makes me trust you to trust me because there's no other way. I am not afraid of my longing. But my longing is ferocious, like a grizzly bear! My longing is strong enough to frighten away the nightmares. My longing is that you will never leave me, that you will never make me run after you. My longing isn't stalking you, but it clings. It holds on, my longing does. My longing is like a disease that needs the most powerful drugs to cure it, and even then it might only be in remission, because my longing isn't perfect. My longing is to be imperfect, so you will love me even more. My longing is to jump off this damn pedestal. My longing is filled with contradictions, but that's okay. My longing is to have a complete world. My longing is to have so much to do that I'm actually bored. My longing is for excitement and adventure. Do you get me? Do you get that my longing is inescapable? Do you get that my longing is like that star you're looking at, the one twinkling in the sky. My longing is to explode like a firework, and make you open your mouth and eyes and ears in awe of my fancy colors and the way I sparkle and how I fall to the ground and then become invisible, like being part of the dirt. I have so much to tell you that my longing is overwhelming. Do you get now that my longing is ferocious? Did I say that already? My longing is ferocious! Yes, it is. Did I say that already? I'll say this then. My longing is infinite."
-- Eleanor Spain (as told to her Biographer)

Andre Gide:

"The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say -- because they were too obvious."
-- Andre Gide

Eleanor says, "You need to love me like this."

Eleanor hands her Biographer her book of Shakespeare's Sonnets. She has a page marked. "You need to love me like this," she says. "Everything I told you, everything so far -- it won't mean anything unless I know you love me like this."

"Your insecurities are showing, Eleanor," her Biographer replies.

"So what if they are?" she says. "And anyway, who says they're insecurities. And -- you know, who's to say that these aren't your insecurities, not mine, that you aren't reading too much of the wrong thing into me, that just when I think you understand -- I start to think that ... maybe you don't."

The thin trail of smoke from the incense burns their eyes.

"I love you," Eleanor says. "I love you -- like this. Like these words. So why can't you just accept something I say without asking another question?"

Eleanor is waiting for him to say it. For her Biographer to say, Eleanor, you're just a made-up character. Inside my head. You aren't real. You'll never be real. You'll never be human. Anything to shut her up. For good.

Eleanor is waiting for him to say it, but he doesn't, of course.

And her Biographer is thinking, Eleanor, if you only knew what your words, the words about you -- your story -- what your story -- means to me -- how it's keeping me alive -- if I could tell you this, if I could -- would you understand? What you mean to me. How you are keeping me alive.

Eleanor blows more of the incense smoke into his eyes, enough to irritate them thoroughly, enough to draw moisture.

"I can make you cry but I can't make you love me?"

And still, her Biographer remains silent, because something hurts, and he can't explain what exactly.

*
"Sonnet # 116"
by William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

T. S. Eliot:

"For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning."
-- T. S. Eliot