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.
***
Looking through the lens of the present, after all that has happened between us—all the good things and the bad—it is hard to see The Magician clearly, without prejudice. And so I won’t try. I will see him with the same distortion with which I saw him in 2001, in the months after we met, when I thought he was perfect. Looking at him like this, his whole being magnified and rose-colored, I understand why I fell in love with The Magician. I understand the rashness with which I did what I did. Why I packed up a few suitcases and moved in with him. Why I didn’t listen to my friends, who cautioned against making such a big decision so quickly. I understand why I ignored that little voice inside of me that warned that I couldn’t go back again.
After The Magician kissed me in the library, I was spellbound. In that moment, everything changed. It was as if I had been living in a fog and his touch cleared my vision. It was as if I had been reading one story and picked up another. He became the focus of my thoughts and my hopes. The way I saw him was utterly out of proportion with the reality of who he was. I still believe he was a good looking, intelligent man with an interesting history, but I saw him then as a kind of savior, a man who could bring me to a higher plane of existence.
See more of Trussoni’s Featured Creative posts on our Ideablog
***
~~~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
