Erica Jong & Half-Lives

On my second visit to Bound Bookshop, I chanced upon a woman with blonde hair and beautiful blue eyes on the cover of a paperback book. It was a book of poems by a poet named Erica Jong. And the blue-eyed woman was Erica Jong herself. It was love at first sight. I loved her even before I read her poems. Although when I browsed the book and read some of her poems at random, I closed the book and forgot about her for awhile.

Then, one unusually quiet morning, when the kids and my husband were sleeping late, I decided to have an early breakfast of garlic rice, eggs, luncheon meat and Erica Jong's poems.

I read them aloud, taking full advantage of my early morning solitude. And when I came to read the "Prologue/The Evidence" from the book "Half-Lives", I unraveled and wept endlessly.

(As far as I can recall, there were only two poems that have really moved me to tears. Sad to say, I have no idea where to find those two poems now. One was written by a good friend who could not remember where she wrote that poem: it would take an exploration of her stacks of boxes in her storage room, reading every piece of paper, which requires time and patience, both of which she could not muster at the moment. She assured me, though, that if she did write it on her journal, she would find it and give it to me. So I am praying for that miracle.

Finding the other poem would take more than a miracle, though. I read it when I was still in college (which was eons ago), in the Sunday Inquirer. Can't remember the date, the poem, the poet. All I remember was the effect it had on me. It was heartbreaking and my heart was broken then, so I took it as sympathetic to my plight. It spoke to me; it spoke of my pain. It knew. That was all I needed then. )

Erica Jong wrote:
"Why does life need evidence
of life?
We disbelieve it
even as we live."

What evidence do I have that those two poems existed? I have no physical proof. Nothing to show for. I could not even remember the words. All I have is the memory of what I felt about them. And even memory is fleeting, temporal. In a few years, I may get Alzheimer's, and forget every thing about myself or life. So maybe by writing about it, setting it down in print, in black and white, I have asked for forgiveness of my carelessness, of my taking for granted the temporal nature of things on earth, of my inability to remember: I ached. I cried. I was touched. Maybe that is evidence enough.)

I have no photograph of you.
At times I hardly can believe in you.
Except this ache,
this longing in my gut,
this emptiness which theorizes you
because if there is emptiness this deep,
there must be fullness somewhere.
(from "Prologue/The Evidence", Erica Jong)