Tuesday, April 1, 2008

When It's All You Can Do

"No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart." --The Great Gatsby 

"He smiled understandingly— much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced— or seemed to face— the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey." --The Great Gatsby

You give me your pieces
And I'll give you my time.
I'll put you together
And fit you to rhyme. 

The truth is, none of us are so much the liars we may see ourselves or others to be. None of us are so much the concealers, the hidden clues, the closed books, the drawn blinds that we may sometimes feel we are. You give a different part of yourself away to each person you come into contact with. Upon each collision between you and a singular other being, you analyze their intent, allow them to impress a different mark upon your conscious, determine their worth and significance, and with that information, decide how to best present yourself to them on their occasion and thereon out. Yet we wonder why people do not see us "as we are." We marvel at the fact that she does not think of us as he does, wonder at the difference of opinions that two people can have of us, and yet we stop ourselves short of realizing what we allow, perhaps subconsciously and perhaps consciously, to be seen and to whom makes us "different" to each person. 

We present ourselves brokenly. But it is not our faults; that is all we can give. Only a whole person can give themselves wholly away, and who fully knows himself or herself, or has complete control and understands what they think and do? And we realize that when we only give ourselves away in part, we only have to trust in part; therefore, if mishandled, we are only liable to lose part. 

What I know in part I may comprehend, but give me the entire pie and I am sure to become ill.

Now, what you receive in parts, don't hold for unchangeable truth, for people are malleable by circumstance and numerous encounters; therefore, their pieces are apt to change and the hand which you use to hold them so tightly must be loose enough to let them shift in your grasp. Do not be surprised, nay, even disappointed, when you find what you are holding wasn't what you'd originally bought in faith that it would remain the same. 

My thoughts are in utter chaos. They spread out like ink from the nub of a pen and run across each other in rivulets of theory and splattered text. They are in want of a period to end their sentences but I find it impossible to stop the flow, and so they drip and smudge and smear and leave you and I hoping for a clear and concise ending but it drops off so suddenly


4 comments:

Jen said...

::Speechless::

Joe said...

the last paragraph is my favorite.

i love it,
actually.

Amanda said...

hey, you're right. totally right. about it all. you smart person, you. :)

it's harder to give someone your whole self because if they dissapoint you, you'll be totally left heartbroken, because you've given them enough of yourself to have the chance to do it. But that's fear, I guess, maybe. Plus, I don't want to give just anyone all of me anyways - I want to show people my heart, but all of it, no. Just to one. (I know that that was only a small, small part of what you wrote, but I really liked that part, and it kinda intertwines the rest as I reread it.)

(I loved that second quote from The Great Gatsby when I read it the first time in the book. I read it over and over again.)

359-0320

and I love the last paragraph too! Especially the last...uhh, sentence. :D cause of the no period.

Amanda said...

the heart thing is & h e a r t s ;

♥