Posted by Elorah Dannan at h0040d02a0bab.ne.client2.attbi.com on March 20, 2003 at 12:14:08:
In Reply to: My boy's wicked smart....NT posted by Altmann on March 20, 2003 at 12:11:40:
So if I asked you about art you could give me the skinny on every art book ever written … Michelangelo?
You know a lot about him I bet. Life’s work, criticism, political aspirations. But you couldn’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You’ve never stood there and looked up at the beautiful ceiling. And if I asked you I'm sure you could give me a syllabus of your personal favorites, and maybe you’ve been laid a few times, too. But you couldn’t tell me how it feels to wake up next to a woman and be truly happy. If I asked you about war you could refer me to a bevy of fictional and nonfictional material, but you’ve never been in one. You’ve never held your best friend’s head in your lap and watched him draw his last breath, looking to you for help. And if I asked you about love I’d get a sonnet, but you’ve never looked at a woman and been truly vulnerable. Known that someone could kill you with a look. That someone could rescue you from your grief. That God had put an angel on earth just for you. And you wouldn’t know how it felt to be her angel. To have the love to be there for her forever. Through anything, through cancer. You wouldn’t know about sleeping sitting up in a hospital room for two months holding her hand and not leaving because the doctors could see in your eyes that the term visiting hours didn’t apply to you. And you wouldn’t know about real loss, because that only occurs when you lose something you love more than yourself, and you’ve never dared to love anything that much. I look at you and I don’t see an intelligent, confident man; I don’t see a peer, and I don’t see my equal. I see a boy. Nobody could possibly understand you, right, Will? Yet you presume to know so much about me because of a painting you saw. You must know everything about me. You’re an orphan, right?