For Rui Boy

These three songs are all I can reach out to you with from this helpless place here in New York. Rui, you’re in every dream.  I haven’t forgotten a thing.

This is, for me, a memory of when you were small and we slept side by side.

Graham Nash – Sleep Song

When you were asleep
I was kissing your forehead
You gave a frown
So I kissed you again
You started waking
And put your arms round my waist
Just making sure I was there
Then you drifted away
Then you drifted away

And when I awoke
I found out I’d been dreaming
Some of my bed clothes were still on the floor
I looked around
Realized you were leaving me
I saw the back of your dress
As you slipped through the door
As you slipped through the door

And when I return
I will kiss your eyes open
Take off my clothes
And I’ll lie by your side
Then I will wait
Till The sandman is done with you
And as you sleepily rise
You’ll find I’ll be there
You’ll find I’ll be there

Our childhood days of reading and play together blinked past instantly and  left a lost, bleak, wintry morning aftermath; memories of you, Rui boy, with starlike brilliance are lodged deeply in every thought I have, all days and nights.  My love is unchanged but the experience of it is now laden with boomerangs – energy in, violence out. To contain this surging emotion each day, passing our favorite parks, moving among parents and their little ones in strollers on trains, knees on bench seats, fingers pointing out windows at clouds and airplanes, high-pitched voices in perpetual curiosity, yearning, and slicing air like knives.

Psychoanalysis says axiomatically that we must always respect the symptom. So the focus of  daily struggle shifts in unceasing movement from one aspect of the project to another. My pain, a bereft parent’s abjection which has to bear a sense of a constant threat that sickens and hangs over Rui and me in his absence. Proliferating psychotechnolgies  reduce him, and cultural conservatism triumphs. Xenophobia, racism, patriotism, neo-nationalism, cultural deprivation, class warfare,  sexism, in the name of unaccountable corporate and governmental power have hindered to the point of arresting the progressive possibilities in the supposedly liberal state practice  through which the U.S. and Japan formally institutionalize the crime of abduction, insluation sealed around Rui.

This is a thought with deep feeling about how strongly I long to restore my daily communication with you.

Lou Reed – A Talking Book

        I wish I had a talking book
        That told me how to act and look
        A talking book that contained keys
        To past and present memories

        A talking book that said your name
        So if you were gone you'd still remain
        More than a picture on a shelf
        In imagination I could touch
        A talking-talking book

        I wish I had a talking book
        Filled with buttons you could push
        Containing looks and sights, your touch
        Your feel, your breath, your sounds, your sighs

        How much I'd love to ask it why
        One must live and one must die

        I wish I had a talking book
        By my side so I could look
        And touch and feel and dream a look
        Much bigger than a talking book
        A taste of loving's future and past
        Is that so much to really ask?
        In this one moment's time and space
        Can our love really be replaced
        By a talking book?

Here is an example, much better, of wise love. These two, singing to each other, stayed married for  20 years. Love, real love, lets you live your emotions without shame and bias. So the hard ones don’t have to ruin you; and the beautiful and deep ones can be released, and course through you, into an other.

For you Rui, my loved son.

Lou Reed – Hang On To Your Emotions

When your imagination has too much to say
When the chill of the night meets the sweat of the day
And you have trouble understanding what other people have to say
You’d better
Hang on to your emotions
Hang on to your emotions

When a demagogue inside your head has taken charge
And by default what you say or do is criticized
And this litany of failures is recited a thousand times
You’d better
Hang on to your emotions
Hang on to your emotions

Could it be you’ve never felt like that
That your mind’s a cage inside the cage of  a cat
That spits and scratches all it can get at
And that’s you and your emotions

Could it be you’ve never felt like that
Your mind’s a cage inside the cage of a rat
Rabidly trying to get at you
And your emotions,
You and your emotions

When your imagination has too much to say
When that facile voice inside your head says give your life away
You might think to ask – how it got that way
What books it has read – that make it that way
And where it got the right – to speak to anyone that way
You’d better
Hang on to your emotions
Hold on to your emotions

When a night city’s breeze blows across the room
And a 5 am moon and sun start their swoon
You hear your lover’s breath
And not a moment too soon
You get to
Release all your emotions!
you get to
Let go of your emotions, and now you
Release all your emotions,
You’d better
Let go of your emotions

Release, I wanna let go
I wanna release, now!