This time last year I was just settling into some good brooding; such is the reward of thwarted efforts to fall madly in love with one of your best friends. Anyway, I stewed, I introspected and I got better. More important is that in the meantime I churned out some of the best writing of my nascent professional life.
Sometimes I want nothing more than to go back there and indulge in some good, old-fashioned, earnest heartbreak—the kind that comes with mistakes worth learning from, the kind that clears the soul and sharpens the mind. I want to listen to Blood on the Tracks, or maybe Age of Adz plus a little "Wolf Like Me." Because being happy is great and great for you, but if you really want to see how vivid colors can be, you're at your clearest in your melancholy and the looming threat of infinite sadness.
So, I'm drinking a bottle of Charles Shaw and watching the "dead dad" episode of Californication just to let myself really feel it. It is my girlfriend's birthday today, and when I go to pick her up from work, give her a present and think about spending our lives together whether it lasts the next 60 years or the next 60 minutes, it is just bound to cheer me up again and everything will be rosy and fuzzy for as long as it lasts.
This morning I was having sex with my girlfriend, telling her to choke me and slap me in the face, and I said, "to think, this all started with a conversation... on Myspace."
Middle aged women with boxy haircuts and rotund, American bodies discussing second marriages and the adjustments (called 'training periods,' humorlessly) with despairingly less wit and insight than most 19 and 20-year olds I know. It must be hard, I imagine, to be old with no wisdom in the bank.
I can't help but imagine what these women were like at my age. I imagine "silly little girls" who think well-roundedness is just lines on a resume, pop-fiction is high art, oral sex is scandalous and intellectual curiosity is met by a morning radio talk show. They probably believe that they intend to read more books when find the time, and that deep down they are as smart and interesting as anybody.
It is easier to imagine them as people I would never need to know; the alternative is that it could happen to anyone.
Is the Christian doxology aimed at truth? Once one accepts that a thing must be true, no experience in the world is immune to manipulation towards a forgone conclusion. Check out theChristian Posts top 10 news stories of 2011 and see if you can spot a few surprises.
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Earlier today, I considered unfriending all vocal Christians on Facebook. This came on the heels of one of my cousins (a person I love dearly though we do not speak often) declaring in her status a desire to unfriend anyone who frequently posts about failing relationships, drugs, sex, partying, and other such topics. The same cousin routinely posts paragraph long, proud statuses of her own thanking God for everything good, blaming Satan for everything bad, and reaffirming her obeisance to the almighty.
I guess that if I had to choose, I would rather read lame statuses about people's sucky real lives.
Last night I was visited by my bright dream muse. She was young and blonde, aggressive and powerful. She would let me cuddle her and put her arms around my waist in the front row of the relevant concert.
"Should I get an alarm from the grocery store on our way home tonight?" I said.
"I don’t care," she said, "I’m not going to sleep with you, remember?"
"I remember. I said, but lately I’ve been reconsidering it."
She said that she wouldn’t sleep with me because I couldn’t tell her how to save money on her cable bill.
"I don’t have cable," I said. "I don’t watch TV."
"What do you do?" she said.
"I read," I said. She liked that. She wouldn’t sleep with me because I couldn’t repair her kitchen stove or cook her a meal using just the pipes. She wouldn’t sleep with me because I couldn’t open a difficult box that had been warped out of shape. She said, I don’t need you because you’re older and I can already do anything you can. She said it, and I knew I had been wasting my life.
So what can you do? I recited Howl from memory. But even that was wrong. I found a book of poems in her bedroom and read Howl from the page and the words were completely different. I on her bed sulking surrounded by posters of Ashley Simpson and Liz Light.
I woke up knowing that today was a good day for art.
Just curious: if all of these sexual misconduct scandals hadn't come to light, would conservatives still be pretending they were going to vote for Herman Cain? I find that hard to believe. Still, even among this year's field of would-be presidents, Mr. Cain's fall from grace has been especially meteoric, likely ruining not only his political hopes, but his chances at getting a job anywhere AND his personal life. This is the part where we joke that "it couldn't have happened to a nicer fella."
Downloaded and watched Jesus Camp today, a 2006 documentary about the effort of an Evangelical organization to indoctrinate brainwash raise enthusiasm for God as well as familiarity with the contemporary social and p olitical implications of their religion's beliefs as expounded by its current leading voices. To summarize: God is good, gays are gross, science is stoopid, George W. Bush is awesome (no, really), terrorists suck but have the right attitude (no... really), and abortion.
The children, for their part, are equal measures of adorable and sp00ky. The sincerity of a child's faith is a truly singular thing. Seeing those smiles on their faces and exhuberant tears in their eyes gave me a counterintuitive gut reaction that what was going on here is okay, even though my intellect screamed and clawed in horror. The whole film is very moving and challenging and I would recommend it to anyone with a stronger curiosity than gag-reflex.
My love, I have chosen to write you a letter during the day because I have failed, at times, in articulating myself off the cuff on most frustrating matters, to wit, skin maintenance.
When I was in high school, I suffered from frequent acne breakouts. I tried many products and took many trips to the dermatologist, but nothing seemed to control this adolescent affliction. Of course, a lack of diligence and patience was perhaps the biggest obstacle between me and the clear skin I desired. After all, by the cruelty of an apathetic and unloving god, this aesthetic development coincided with my discovery of girls and things of a sexy nature. What good was a skin treatment if it didn't help me tomorrow, when tomorrow I still had to go to school and take off my hat before entering the building? Was it not enough, I wondered, that my developing body cut an awkward figure in the unflattering Oakridge School boy's uniform? In puberty, enough is never enough.
My condition persisted through college, though breakouts eventually became less frequent and less severe. Additionally, the freedom proffered by young adulthood permitted me to wear hats over my forehead and silly stickers on my cheek. In the worst case scenario, when that awful vainity of mine was unduly threatened, I could always skip class altogether and take a few "Don days" to recover. I have skipped birthdays. I have skipped presentations. Machi once would not speak to me for months because I cancelled as her escort the morning of her friends' wedding. I have never told anyone this, but anxiety over my skin was the first powerful deterrent to my seeking out regular employment. Although I am no longer as burdened by my skin, the insecurity is deeply imbedded into my psyche, partly informing my aversion to the "day job" in ways I cannot fully perceive or control.
These anxieties have been mostly conquered thanks chiefly to my relationship with you. You have seen me at my best and worst in so many ways that it just seems silly to lock myself in my room every time I have a pimple or two. But I still want to look my best. I know how to do it. I should wash my face twice a day every day and probably use some sort of mask treatment once or twice a week. I should drink enough water because my skin is prone to drying and dry skin is more easily damage. I should avoid sleeping on my face or with my face in my hands because unblocked pores are happy pores. I should do all of these things knowing that there will always be elements of my skin that are beyond my control and that breakouts will still happen.
That's not on me. I am not the master of everything. To be my best, I must only work to master what I can (in this and many other ways).
Tracks tonight: That M83 didn't already have a song called Midnight City is hard to wrap my head around.
