Dovina20 Mar 2006

Dovina’s Diary, March 20, 2006:

Ah, yes, the morning mail and another dispatch from Mr. Zodiac. The question is whether to answer it, giving the appearance of dialog, (which, if history repeats, will really be two intersecting monologs), or to ignore another assertion of my incompetence as a human being. It is both gratifying to know he cares, and irritating to see it go on this way, with no more apparent understanding of me than he showed in those year-old diatribes of his.

He’s very persistent. “Which would you rather be, Dovina, a child caught in a magician’s spell, or the magician casting it?” Silly me, I’ve sometimes answered his questions, knowing he’ll take my answer off on a tangent.

It’s sweet, really, the way he keeps on, as if hoping, even after all these months, that I’ll follow him to Arabia on an invitation to Paris.

I imagine him telling some coffee-house crony about me, and the crony saying, “Is she a nut?” and him weighing a stack of my Poemranker comments and poems in his hand, saying, “I’m not sure.”

When you correspond with someone, you begin to form impressions. You wonder whether the impressions are correct. “Certainly not a beauty. Long, pointed nose? Brown beady eyes? No, I think more . . . probing. Pushy.” I imagine his impressions of me running along these lines, rather than the harsh nouns and adjectives he writes to describe me.

No, I don’t believe I’ll answer this time.