For Release February 14, 2012
words, mere lines drawn on frail paper
(and this, they say, is how history endures?)
When my partner Jeffrey died of AIDS in 1994, one of my greatest comforts was to sort through and organize a drawer full of mere lines drawn on frail paper – birthday cards, holiday greetings, anniversary remembrances, various notes I’d written, a few he’d written me.
Starting with our meeting in 1982, I had marked each birthday, anniversary, holiday, and other special or difficult occasion we shared with a piece of writing – sometimes prose, sometimes poetry, sometimes playful, sometimes philosophical, sometimes joyous, sometimes anguished – each one chronicling and reflecting upon the event. These were intimate writings composed solely for the purpose of expressing myself to one other person. I have now collected these writings into this “book of hours” entitled From Particles and Disputations.
I’m hoping this collection of the writings I did for and about Jeff will now communicate to a more public audience, mostly by inference, the story of our lives together. I hope they will convey how we grew as a couple, and how through our joys and our struggles we realized an abiding spirit of strength and peace in our relationship. I truly hope my readers will each see something worthy of and possible for their own relationships in ours.