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“Disabled nearness”: on Jenny Drai’s The New Sorrow is Less Than The Old Sorrow “Few people have the imagination for reality”

~Goethe

so that we’re preparing. when you’re stuck in sadness, sometimes the way out is painful. cliché: to set something free. longing turned on its head—when you’re still too close for it to qualify as missing. preoccupation as distraction. do you see what i’m doing here… / embarrassment is embarrassment is embarrassment is the sad, embarrassed body feels hot & static, despite ever-changing (embarrassed by its inability to truly sit still) “not decisions but placeholders” (5). but we want decisions, so we make sentences. you can’t help but pluck the grounded heart //

2

“ever not a question but an answer,” because the answers are open, because enough doesn’t always mean finished or definitive (6). sometimes, i’ll just sit down (there, that ground) / who actually desires to be rational? in this sentence, language is mostly just holding my place. //

3

“take care, body” (6). “Oh body, be glad” (Sexton, “Hurry Up Please It’s Time). / i think i’ll keep my heart //

4

list of unrequited abstractions: time (always) love (often) /

“misuse” “consumption” (16).

misuse consumption

misuse consumption etc. we build habits of miscommunication, this is the life of relationships //

5

when we talk about our feelings we’re taking away the bike (language) just fumbling on the ground two training wheels in our hands getting dirty //

6

“I” (19). / amongst the fragments of voyeuristic sorrow, when I show up it feels like it’s truly appearing in you, pulled from your chest, the reader / this, always: like a string in your heart //

7

what is the relationship between language and instinct? / “I want to lose my instincts” (21). ~A woman //

8

what does it mean to miss: 1) when missing can lead to reuniting? 2) when the thing missed is already gone? 3) when the thing is right in front of you? / but what else is there? //

9

life is not infinite; there is only precision or imprecision / “magazine” as a verb. nouns that could imply movement, like to magazine through one’s heart. //

10

error: can be ambiguous / “I want you to notice when I’m not around” (Tori, singing “Creep”). “I want to decide how you matter” (Drai, 32). / when want is utterly clear and still probably a mistake

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misreading: i want to explain you to the corners. / title: The Sad Life of Memory, More Accidental Than You Know //

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the need for multiplicity which means loss, always, means heartbreak / “careful, body” (37). //

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“passion writes us a permission slip to survive it” (39). but we write our own passion / & so we must write our own slip