i know you but i’ve never met you

I know you but I’ve never met you.

I know the way you walk and the confident sway of your hips, as if they command the world with quiet grace.

I know your smile, lit up by sunlight, even in the dark. I know your infectious laugh, that throaty confirmation of the love and laughter that bubbles within you, erupting at the slightest stir. You still laugh with ease and abandon, like a child not yet lost of innocence.

I know your hands, long and slender, but strong.  I know the bump on your middle finger, calloused and stained with ink from the pages you write every night.  I know the hand that holds your hand with love.

I know your body, slim and strong in some places, soft and voluptuous in others.  I know your strong thighs and slender ankles.  I know the birthmark on your ribs.  If your face was ever maimed beyond recognition, the first place I would look to identify you would be that tiny brown island on your milky white skin.

I know your eyes, big and sparkling with mischief.  I know them when they’re happy and bright.  I know them when they’re sad and red-rimmed with tears.  I know that they turn green when you’re angry and yellow when you’re content.  I see the whole of your life reflected in them, and I know it’s an amazing one. One to be proud of. And I wish I could tell you that, face to face.

I know your heart.  I know it beats like crazy when you’re dancing and singing, or when you’re inspired and eager to put your ideas down on a piece of paper.  I know your heart is pure and kind and I know that your intentions are gentle and true.  Sometimes your heart may feel black and dead, but I know, I know, that it stills bleeds with the powerful life force that connects us.

I know your dreams.  I know that you know your dreams.  I know that you are sometimes afraid of their vastness and of the possibility of them coming true.  I am here to tell you that they will come true, and that you must be brave for when they do, and that the realisation of them may be daunting, but believe me, when they do come true, you will still dream of more. Do not be afraid of that. Do not be afraid of having everything, but remember that once you do, share your success and share your secrets with others, because the only thing better than achieving your goals is helping others achieve theirs.

I know your family and your friends. I have known them for lifetimes. I know that they love you and that you will never be alone. They might advise you to not follow your dreams, but it is only because they are scared of their own failures. I know that you shouldn’t be, so have the courage to thank them for the advice and for their support, but don’t let their own fears stop you.  Keep your loved ones close and tight, help revitalise them with that energy I know so well. But also don’t give them too much of yourself, save a little of that beautiful fiery spark you have inside to keep the engine to your dream machine running strong.

I know your lover. He is a good man and he loves you more than anything. Appreciate him, thank him and love him with everything you have. He is the one cheerleader you have who will never go on strike and who will always remain loyal. Give your love the freedom and safety every soulmate deserves.

I know your spirit. I know the path it seeks in this life, the places it wants to go and the people it yearns to meet. I know the greater plan and I know what your soul needs to experience to achieve this. Remember that you chose this life, this family, this body and this place to work your magic. You chose this life many light years ago.  Everything that happens to you is pre-destined. Roll with it and keep listening to the whisperings in your heart every day. Before long, your next journey will begin. Make sure this one does not need to be repeated. Make it the most worthwhile journey you possibly can.

I haven’t met you but I know you.

I know you because I am you.

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why you should date an illiterate girl

My mom sent me this passage yesterday along with the message: I am so happy that you have read so much. Make your own dreams.

The following passage explains why reading is so very important.  Why immersing yourself in fictions and biographies is so essential to cultivating a life beyond the ordinary.  If you have been to far-off cities and lands in the stories you read, you will expect no less in your own life.  You will want to taste the pleasures you have read about, to see the landscapes you have imagined in your mind’s eye and to breathe the freedom in your dreams.  Read because it will help you judge a person’s character far better than any lesson you learned on the playground. Read to develop empathy for others and a sense of justice on a planet gone mad. Read because once you start to fully understand how people tick and how life works, you will have the tools to change your own world for the better.

***

You should date an illiterate girl.

Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you’ve seen it in a film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her.

Let the anxious contract you’ve unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale or the evenings too long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn’t fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice.

Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. Take her to dinner on the forty-fifth floor at a restaurant far beyond your means. Make sure there is a beautiful view of the city. Sheepishly ask a waiter to bring her a glass of champagne with a modest ring in it. When she notices, propose to her with all of the enthusiasm and sincerity you can muster. Do not be overly concerned if you feel your heart leap through a pane of sheet glass. For that matter, do not be overly concerned if you cannot feel it at all. If there is applause, let it stagnate. If she cries, smile as if you’ve never been happier. If she doesn’t, smile all the same.

Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house. Have two striking children. Try to raise them well. Fail frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. Lapse into an indifferent sadness. Have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at your lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contented, but mostly vacant and ethereal. Feel, during walks, as if you might never return or as if you might blow away on the wind. Contract a terminal illness. Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn’t read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of her capacity to love.

Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent of a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, goddamnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.

Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived.

Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.

Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so goddamned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life of which I spoke at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being told. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. I hate you. I really, really, really hate you.

Charles Warnke

***

How beautiful? Also, I have read A LOT in my lifetime, and I am a qualified high school English teacher, and even I still had to pull out the dictionary (ok, I lie, I totally clicked onto dictionary.com) to find the meanings of quite a number of words in that passage. But doesn’t it feel good to learn new things?  And that’s what reading is all about. Learning new things, every single day.  When you feel you have read everything and that you know all there is to know, well, then I’m afraid you might as well just admit that your life is over. Now go read a book and buy your kid a library card.

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