Some knots help–keeping your shoes on, tethering the dingy to the dock. Some are downright delicious, like garlic knots. Then there are the majorly irksome, like hair knots or infernal earpod wires. This June, we’re looking at Gordian knots–and the ingenious work-arounds that free us from those seemingly impossible snarls.
This week in particular, we’re focusing on one of the most impossible and perplexing snarls of all–love. Danielle Trussoni, writing as her alter ego, Dani Tru, shares some excerpts from True Romantic, a weekly column featured in The Rumpus. For the full True Romantic story, visit Dani Tru’s column here.
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Lately, I’ve been thinking about origin myths. Creation ex nihilo, creation from the void, mythical creation, creation by God, and creation by the Big Bang—I’m into all of them. I like dramatic beginnings, with an explosion that can expand a universe into infinity, and quieter ones that portend a world that runs itself out, like a watch unwinding. It’s a writer’s way of looking at creation, I suppose, to believe that the beginning defines the ending, that how we start something tells us about how we will end it. And so I can’t help but believe that, on the day I met The Magician, it was all there, our future foretold in the very first shared glance.
We met in October of 2001, at a potluck hosted by the head of the International Writers Program at the University of Iowa. I was a student at The Iowa Writers’ Workshop and The Magician was a Bulgarian novelist visiting the US to participate in The International Writers Program. I’d brought a platter of maki sushi to the party, and The Magician was impressed that I’d rolled it all myself. He stood at my side as I set 
out the wasabi and soy sauce, watching me as if I were some exotic butterfly fallen from the sky. When I looked at him more carefully, I saw a man who was confident, good looking, and trying hard to get my attention. His hair was black and shorn short, his eyes large and green, his lips full and his skin tanned dark, as if he’d spent the entire summer on the beach.
He was never far from me during the party and, although we said only a few words to one another that afternoon, I knew that he had chosen me. I had been chosen.
See more of Trussoni’s Featured Creative posts on our Ideablog
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~~~Danielle Trussoni is the author of four books: Falling Through the Earth (2006), Angelology (2010), Angelopolis (2013) and the forthcoming memoir The Fortress (2016). In addition to being published in The New York Times, The Guardian and Tin House, her writings have been widely anthologized.
Falling Through the Earth, a memoir about her relationship with her father, was chosen by The New York Times as one of the Ten Best Books of 2006. Falling Through the Earth was recipient of the Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award, Elle Magazine’s Reader’s Choice Award for April 2006 and was chosen as a Book Sense Pick for March 2006. Her novels Angelology and Angelopolis were New York Times Bestsellers and have been translated into thirty-two languages. You can learn more about Danielle at www.danielletrussoni.com and follow her on Twitter @DaniTrussoni
