recherche du temp perdu

when i was around 13, the age of sacrifice, when sexuality begins to play a role in one's life, i lived in the town of narbeth, pennsylvania. it was a mainly jewish town filled with people and trees, and winding roads in the dells and darlings of memory, unpeeling like shadows in the night. i remember beth keesh, my first girlfriend. i had a drop-dead crush on her. i thought she was so gorgeous, cute. i remember the first time i saw her, i felt something electric.

i was a nervous wreck back then, not knowing what i was doing. i went to school thinking i would be ignored by americans as i had been at plymouth meeting or in the city of philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. rather, people seemed curious about me.

the first day of school, a blonde girl named Brooke was staring at me. i thought i recognized her from hershey park when i went there with my brother. i was wearing a yellow shirt. i thought that i knew her somehow as if she were my soulmate. i, however, concluded that i was deluded. i was already living inside of my head. who could love me? the mystery of love is something one cannot define. one knows the other in the biblical sense of the word. sexual knowledge is a type of knowledge, a semiotic, a reading. the language is in shows like "Mad about You" but nothing happens or changes in such shows. Seinfeld and Elaine are constantly in love and also constantly avoiding being in love. Love is a craft. Amor reversed is Roma. Love's opposite is Power.

I think I deliberately avoided her. I began to realize rather early in american life that chivalry is a very dominant theme. the boys are like knights who protect their women from foreigners. in poem-novels like "Eugene Onegin," the writer begins to question this chivalry. In Dosteoevsky, the writer confronts the deepest reaches of the soul to discover the limits of the ego and the alterego.