2001-11-26 - 8:46 a.m.

I am writing in my diary. Living in the time of Augustus I might well be a slave, property of a benign master. And I would be here before you recording my works and feedings, such as they were. But instead we are in 2001 on the last Monday of November. It's approaching 9am on a cold and lusty morning.

I don't know why I am what I am. Why can I spout out "The Good Morrow" at will? Why are snippets from Romeo and Juliet like tentacles? How is it that I managed to write something like 120 love letters in less than the course of a year to someone I had never really seen? The truth is that I'm no more than a mere novice at these matters of the heart. Altro che Salammbo. Was it Rilke that said in his letters that young poets should push away from forms in art that have been steadfastly occupied? Yet I am here, pining, yearning. And I would place my dreams upon a sonnet. Or a letter.

P.

The modalities of my love are staid Saracens. Apres tout, if I am to believe my good Muslim friends we are in the middle of a Crusade, no?

And who would I be if not on the other side?

I am a Saracen, a fierce Arab warrior holding on to my Jerusalem. A "promised land" that I have not yet seen! A place of plentiful plenipotentiaries.

Plenipotentiary. Pieni Poteri. Full powers, such as I do not have now.

It has always been the same. I spy. I consider. I backtrack. I contort. It is internalized. I lunge, fruitlessly.

And it has happened once again. And I have screwed up. Who or what can redeem me in my own eyes?

'For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory. Forever and ever, Amen'.

Salute

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