When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes once had, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you
RANDOM TEACHER
I'm not supposed to help you with your exam.
CASSIE
I stopped eating and then everyone had to do what I said. That was powerful.
RANDOM TEACHER
And did you enjoy that?
CASSIE
I think it was the happiest time of my life... but I had to stop before I died because otherwise it wasn't fun...
You wouldn't understand.
RANDOM TEACHER
You're wrong, Cassie.
CASSIE
Did you cut yourself too?
RANDOM TEACHER
People would do anything... people would do anything to work out why they feel bad, won't they?
CASSIE
And did you... work it out?
RANDOM TEACHER
Like I said, I'm not supposed to help you with your exam.
CASSIE
I want you to tell me.
RANDOM TEACHER
What?
CASSIE
How to stop bad things happening?
RANDOM TEACHER
Doesn't work, does it? That's why you have to start eating again.
CASSIE
I fell in love.
RANDOM TEACHER
Ah, love. Why cut yourself when you can be in love?
CASSIE
You think passing an exam will make me happy?
RANDOM TEACHER
Cassie, passing exams generally only makes life more complicated. But there's lots of other stuff that make things bearable and you don't even have to use a knife.
However happy we may be with our partner, our love for them necessarily prevents us [unless with live in a polygamous society] from starting other romantic liaisons. But why should this constrain us if we truly loved them? Why should we feel this as a loss unless our love for them has already begun to wane? The answer perhaps lies in the uncomfortable thought that in resolving our need to love, we may not always succeed in resolving our need to long.
"You are quick for what you are," he said, "but slow, I think, for what you were. It is said that love makes men swift and women slow. I will catch you at last if you love much more."
The serious part is their bodies. I sit in the hall with the cradled telephone, and what I hear is their bodies. I don't listen much to the words but to the silences, and in the silences these bodies re-create themselves, are created by me, take form. When I am lonely for boys it's their bodies I miss. I study their hands lifting the cigarettes in the darkness of the movie theaters, the slope of a shoulder, the angle of a hip. Looking at them sideways, I examine them in different lights. My love for them is visual: that is the part of them I would like to possess. Don't move, I think. Stay like that. Let me have that. What power they have over me is held through the eyes, and when I'm tired of them it's an exhaustion partly physical, but also partly visual. Read more »
