In Times Which Seem Like Self-Psychotherapy He Says To Himself:
Oh, Vienna

Novel: Times 1–4, Chapter 49 I misread the absoluteness

Niet van der Zand
4 min readMay 22, 2023

This morning my poem begins:

Without you

How I love you

With you so so far away

How I pull you close

I was smiling as I plucked away at these words, slimming them down, drawing them out, expanding them to try for greater clarity, finally returning to the simple, minimal view. Then I heard the Guillemots singing of love; that Fyfe Dangerfield flooding through Made up Lovesong #43, yet he sang that after I had penned my words, I beg of you to remember that.

I read somewhere; only to write when you have something to write; I read somewhere else, always to write, start writing and then the story will come to you. My poetry follows the former, my Story follows the latter, my You words fall somewhere in between.

Last week, during meditation practice, I said how good it feels to pull on a clean white cotton shirt of a Saturday morning. Someone asked me why? My partner was there so I couldn’t say it was because of you, instead I said it was because of memories of good times in the past.

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