Don't Give Upby Carl Salonen You once wrote, "We must never give up, even in our darkest hour." My men friends say that life is one big song cue, Do you remember writing that? You sent me a tape, and on this tape were songs that you said were "our songs", that had meaning to you because they reminded you of me or us, and on this tape you had recorded Peter Gabriel's "Don't Give Up" and with this tape you sent a letter describing each and every song on it and what it meant about us to you and for this one you recalled the video of Gabriel and Kate Bush, locked in an embrace, the camera circling them pressed together, eyes solely for each other and how you thought that should be us, and you wrote at the end of that paragraph, "We must never give up, even in our darkest hour." Do you still remember me when you see this video?
To that point. And now, I found your tape and letter in a briefcase where I had squirreled away my important papers, things that meant something to me, because I needed the case because life got darker still this week, and so I'm standing in a train station by Times Square, by Virgin Records, my eyes brimming with tears because someone who didn't give a damn about meaning what she said wrote to me a year ago, "We must never give up, even in our darkest hour."
photo copyright: S Beck As a shadow I came into this life. CARL SALONEN, 75323.2373@compuserve.com, Carl is a practicing tree trunk, looking forward to the Autumnal Equinox. Check out his personal homepage at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/de_Valois
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You sent that
last year, after you came here to visit for the first time, and we spent an
incredible weekend rummaging through record stores and acting like a couple of
pretentious tourists, retracing Lennon and Ono's footsteps through Central Park,
eating in Little Italy, drinking Irish beer at English pubs, making love on the
Ferry at 11 PM. I never felt more alive than I did that weekend, and I fell for
you harder than I had ever fell for anyone that I really didn't want to get
involved with in the first place.
But it couldn't
last. You were alone, and as soon as you weren't alone anymore, I was
out of your life like old luggage. You found some way to blame me, some
technicality of temper that you inflamed because you couldn't or wouldn't listen
to me when I tried to show you how different things had become for me, how you
had changed when you weren't so alone anymore, how you had family and didn't
need friends anymore. You walked the corridor that bridged our lives, and
turned off the light, and closed the door, and gave up and left me, groping for
my way back in my darkest hour. 
As darkness
becomes blindness, as I need you most, I find myself giving up more and more. As
the mirror works harder and harder to find enough light around me to illuminate
my visage, I want to throw myself in front of the train that takes me home. As I
absorb the light and heat from the eyes all around me like a black hole sucking
up the star fires, I think more about the freedom of walking away from the liars
and cheaters and haters of this world, the users who don't want to own up to
their promises and responsibilities, the people who maim and cripple, but no one
can see it, except that their victims go blind, and suddenly even they can't see
it anymore.
As a shadow shall I
leave. 
