France

I pack for France. I would like to be excited. I feel as if I should be busy learning french or reading about George Orwell, Andre Breton, Nin. I fell nothing except exhaustion. The last book has taken it all out of me somehow. The only thing I am looking forward to, my goal, is to sleep on the plane and read. 30something hours on a plane. Reading sleeping reading. What has happened to the part of me that should be stretched tight and vibrating with all the sexual excitement of the city of love? Instead of longing for the adventure of the new I am wishing my friend Benjamin were here so we could eat together and curl up lazily on the couch. I am depleted. I feel to tired for a holiday.

The french girls they say are beautiful. Always thin, always pretty with their big eyes and their mouths full of consonants. I know that when I am there I will be lusting as I always lust and yet, from this distance I am only afraid that I will appear monstrous beside them, heavy and big and ham fisted. I feel like a great mountain of flesh, and somewhere under it all I am sleeping, safe where no one will find me. This is how it is for me now. This pre-holiday lethargy. This pile of exhaustion and insecurity that I am buried under. Still. I am trying to crawl out. With the help of the pile of books at the bottom of my suitcase and that manuscript that I now mus cut back and polish till it shines. Only this is keeping me awake. Nothing more.