2005-04-08 - 7:43 p.m.

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"Freedom tastes a lot like pennies, and if I remember so does my blood."
That is obviously not a thought native to my head, but one which has immigrated to it in the last year and made itself at home. Casey was talking (or rather writing) about the amazing feeling of being free and that quote was the culmination. Somehow and for some reason it struck me as being impossibly brilliant.

Freedom tastes a lot like pennies...

It's kind of nonsensical but in that way that seems so very true. Every once in a while- like when I'm putting one on the railroad tracks so when the train passes I can pick it up all hot and flat- I hold a penny in my hand and think of that.
It dawns on me that I have never actually put a penny in my mouth to determine what exactly freedom tastes like but I have absent-mindedly chewed on a length of copper wire while making jewelery so I think I know what he's talking about.

And yes, it does taste like blood.

That's the kind of thing poet-artist-writers say and if you know Casey you know that he could go his whole life without writing a poem and yet everytime you see him you think of poetry. Sure, sometimes you'll want to kick him really hard while wearing steel-toed boots, but you still think of poetry even as you're suppressing your urge to do him physical violence. Then again, he's a poet (even if he doesn't write anything ever) so I suppose he should be used to getting the crap beat out of him.

Poets, poets, poets. All poets are lovers and all lovers can't be trusted. People who think and reason are dull but their emotions are transparent. Since their emotions are obvious I assume their motives are as well. I asume this because I know so few reasonable people. Everyone I truly love is an artist or a poet or a writer or a lover. They are not to be trusted with their own thoughts, feelings and ideas and neither am I. I am not a poet. I have tried to write poems but I'm far to sarcastic for verse. Instead I stick to prose and will admit that I do it quite poorly. The point is that I have that in me. The thing that makes me fall in love with people places things images words ideas- all the baggage of an artist/poet/writer/lover. We love too easy and as such cannot be trusted.

Now you may be thinking "holy shit this is airy-fairy, incomprehensible and introspective! This is not the flippant Emma I know!" Well I'm sorry. I was sitting on my balcony drinking a glass of very cheap wine and reading a brilliant novel (Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman- I highly recomend it). When I saw a penny sitting on the ground. I remembered what Casey had said about freedom and blood and I thought about the book I was reading. Brilliant and lovely but melancholy. Writers are so melancholy- even the most bouyant chipper ones find a way to slip a sigh in between the lines. What is it about playing with words that causes that? Maybe it's the thing where you are eternally creating a world which you build brick-by-brick (meaning, metaphorically, word-by-word) in which fantastic things happen that never really happened and never can. It's like living a life of unrequited love. You're always thinking on something that can never happen.

Casey, despite his impending marriage is living a life of unrequited love. Because of this he cannot be trusted.

Of course, that's not the point. The point is that I do know one person who, despite a natural talent in art, music and literature, does not have this thing in him. The only true creative genius who I feel can be trusted is Jason, and that's why I love him. He deals so much in facts- so much in the real. His emotions are always spelled out. When he's angry he's angry and when he thinks the sun rises and sets in my hair he says so. I love that about him. I love knowing that he never thinks of anyone else and I love knowing that even though he will never make the faintest amount of sense to me I have him pretty well figured out.

I love my Jason. I love him so much.

The last thing I wrote before this thing. The next thing I wrote after this.