It is an unforeseeable offence, one that I always recognise once it has already taken place. As I leave the room, it echoes and tingles against my skin and I recognise that I have been zinged like this before and that I promised myself I would anticipate the fall in the future. But somehow I always manage to fumble my way into it again. I find that I am almost incapable of honesty unless I am writing it and then it ends up being so brash and bawdy it usually borders on bitter.
I see myself alone once again, which isn’t really news, but this time my alone-ness is coupled with an underwhelming sense of detachment. That is new. I am never detached from my surroundings, which is why I make a conscious effort to appear so. If anything my surroundings are best acquainted with my person: I write on my walls, cover my bathroom mirrors in quotes and favourite lyrics, write in my books and adorn my room with photographs, pottery and all the precious junk I have made in my too few - too many years of existence. I have decided, as of yesterday, that I am finally ready to give up on any notion of family that I have been secretly harbouring and I am grossly disappointed in myself for not having done so in the past five years.
Some people never learn.
I am some people.
And yes, I suppose that means I must admit that I am people.
One would think that I would have given up on both my parents a long time ago, but I suppose that some ridiculous corner in my being still feels the need to be accepted and wanted. This pathetic propensity to please and impress people, even as I contrive intricate means to avoid their company is finally beginning to weigh on me. My much-former therapist would say that it was the natural state of affairs to need to solicit everyone’s approval when one has been abandoned repeatedly for better prospects, and much as I have always resented the notion that I needed help, I suppose I wanted it offered nonetheless. But it wasn’t…at least never from the corners I craved. That’s the funny thing about ‘want’…it is the source that trumps all flavour and essence. Even if one were able to easily get ‘what’ one wants, the craving caves if it comes from the wrong ‘who’. And I have finally acknowledged that both the Beast and Beauty don’t have the time or inclination to ‘want’ to have anything to do with the many me’s that form an integral part of I. They do it, but they don’t want to and that makes me care much less. Okay, that’s a load of crap, it makes me care more but it allows me to accept that I need to stop!
It is a relief to finally face fiction.
This whole conundrum brings to mind a Sex and the City reference where Charlotte mentions that deep down “women just want to be rescued”. An abhorrent notion, even if it may be true. I like to think I am my own saviour as I have been for so long – me, my books and my frameless art.
I am tired of existing in a constant state of being and not living. The random snippets of Sappho and Nietzsche that I have been going over these days would have me convinced that this is all there is. That my dedicated regimen of hours spent sitting spellbound by Hollywood kisses and listening to Baez and Young is all contrived nonsense to inspire hope in the hopeless. That I should acknowledge and accept my agnosticism; my inability to nurture relationships even as I crave them; and my inherent disability to adapt to the mundane series of linear moments in the string of time they call life.
Practicality would have me pause, take stock of the fact that all reality is an illusion and that we’re all going to die anyway and just wash my hands off the whole thing. As my fingers travelled along my shelves yesterday in hopes of some good conversation, I picked out a few old friends. When I am more demented than usual I tend to pull out random titles and read random passages out loud as I pace the length of my room. The opening to Melville’s Moby Dick is - in my opinion - the best prose for this sort of thing…there is something about starting a sentence with ‘Call me Ishmael’ that offers and immediate suspension in present tense. I also love ranting out Douglas Adams, Ayn Rand and Cervantes at times like this. Each - when read out loud - is overpoweringly individual, which makes it easy to carry on with several ends of the conversation all by my lonesome.
I had written yesterday that I was afraid I might die today. I thought about it a lot as I was reading and came across a passage from Seneca, where he said that he passed Death walking along the Street of Sighs one evening. He said that Death was in a hurry and didn’t pay him much attention but that their eyes met in a customary glance. And I pictured myself driving the next day, slamming my car into a tree because Death wanted to get a good look at me but as usual I could not meet His eyes, so I kept looking at His feet.
Today as I was driving on my way to work I felt an eerily familiar shiver creep up my spine. I recognised it immediately because I had felt it thrice before. The first had me at thirteen just about to fall off a horse mid-gallop for the first time - the shiver greeted me somewhere along the split-second between my foot getting caught in the stirrups and my head hitting the ground. It brought with it a sharp thrill of not-knowing, a minute-miasma of images from the past, present and future spliced in a manner that made me unsure of whether I welcomed its presence or dreaded it. I suppose it must have been the former because the second time our paths crossed I was perched on top of my balcony staring at the five-story drop below. I don’t really think I would have jumped but I remember thinking about what might happen if a stray crow distracted me or the wind blew and I tumbled…I remember wondering how people would react or whether they would at all. Then I started therapy. The third time I sat perched at the corner of a bed, five years ago, frozen in the minute that would deliver my get-out-of-jail-free card from hell.
I got out.
But free would be pushing it.
Today the thrill made its unexpected appearance for no conceivable reason, I found myself wondering what would happen if I swerved my car onto the wrong side of the road…but I didn’t follow through with it. I considered it again for about ten minutes, until I told myself that I wasn’t really an adrenaline junkie and admonished myself for thinking about soliciting Death once again. We had been down that path before and I had won that particular War of Wills. He would simply have to do his own damn job this time around. In some Freudian context I suppose this means that when actually faced with death I might fight for life. I like to think that I would have more courage than wanting to hang on to a vague notion of searching for something in nothing.
I like to think that I will finally dispense with all false dignity and look Him in the eye.
But I really need to make sure He has the answers I’m looking for before I drop in for that final quick goodbye.
I see myself alone once again, which isn’t really news, but this time my alone-ness is coupled with an underwhelming sense of detachment. That is new. I am never detached from my surroundings, which is why I make a conscious effort to appear so. If anything my surroundings are best acquainted with my person: I write on my walls, cover my bathroom mirrors in quotes and favourite lyrics, write in my books and adorn my room with photographs, pottery and all the precious junk I have made in my too few - too many years of existence. I have decided, as of yesterday, that I am finally ready to give up on any notion of family that I have been secretly harbouring and I am grossly disappointed in myself for not having done so in the past five years.
Some people never learn.
I am some people.
And yes, I suppose that means I must admit that I am people.
One would think that I would have given up on both my parents a long time ago, but I suppose that some ridiculous corner in my being still feels the need to be accepted and wanted. This pathetic propensity to please and impress people, even as I contrive intricate means to avoid their company is finally beginning to weigh on me. My much-former therapist would say that it was the natural state of affairs to need to solicit everyone’s approval when one has been abandoned repeatedly for better prospects, and much as I have always resented the notion that I needed help, I suppose I wanted it offered nonetheless. But it wasn’t…at least never from the corners I craved. That’s the funny thing about ‘want’…it is the source that trumps all flavour and essence. Even if one were able to easily get ‘what’ one wants, the craving caves if it comes from the wrong ‘who’. And I have finally acknowledged that both the Beast and Beauty don’t have the time or inclination to ‘want’ to have anything to do with the many me’s that form an integral part of I. They do it, but they don’t want to and that makes me care much less. Okay, that’s a load of crap, it makes me care more but it allows me to accept that I need to stop!
It is a relief to finally face fiction.
This whole conundrum brings to mind a Sex and the City reference where Charlotte mentions that deep down “women just want to be rescued”. An abhorrent notion, even if it may be true. I like to think I am my own saviour as I have been for so long – me, my books and my frameless art.
I am tired of existing in a constant state of being and not living. The random snippets of Sappho and Nietzsche that I have been going over these days would have me convinced that this is all there is. That my dedicated regimen of hours spent sitting spellbound by Hollywood kisses and listening to Baez and Young is all contrived nonsense to inspire hope in the hopeless. That I should acknowledge and accept my agnosticism; my inability to nurture relationships even as I crave them; and my inherent disability to adapt to the mundane series of linear moments in the string of time they call life.
Practicality would have me pause, take stock of the fact that all reality is an illusion and that we’re all going to die anyway and just wash my hands off the whole thing. As my fingers travelled along my shelves yesterday in hopes of some good conversation, I picked out a few old friends. When I am more demented than usual I tend to pull out random titles and read random passages out loud as I pace the length of my room. The opening to Melville’s Moby Dick is - in my opinion - the best prose for this sort of thing…there is something about starting a sentence with ‘Call me Ishmael’ that offers and immediate suspension in present tense. I also love ranting out Douglas Adams, Ayn Rand and Cervantes at times like this. Each - when read out loud - is overpoweringly individual, which makes it easy to carry on with several ends of the conversation all by my lonesome.
I had written yesterday that I was afraid I might die today. I thought about it a lot as I was reading and came across a passage from Seneca, where he said that he passed Death walking along the Street of Sighs one evening. He said that Death was in a hurry and didn’t pay him much attention but that their eyes met in a customary glance. And I pictured myself driving the next day, slamming my car into a tree because Death wanted to get a good look at me but as usual I could not meet His eyes, so I kept looking at His feet.
Today as I was driving on my way to work I felt an eerily familiar shiver creep up my spine. I recognised it immediately because I had felt it thrice before. The first had me at thirteen just about to fall off a horse mid-gallop for the first time - the shiver greeted me somewhere along the split-second between my foot getting caught in the stirrups and my head hitting the ground. It brought with it a sharp thrill of not-knowing, a minute-miasma of images from the past, present and future spliced in a manner that made me unsure of whether I welcomed its presence or dreaded it. I suppose it must have been the former because the second time our paths crossed I was perched on top of my balcony staring at the five-story drop below. I don’t really think I would have jumped but I remember thinking about what might happen if a stray crow distracted me or the wind blew and I tumbled…I remember wondering how people would react or whether they would at all. Then I started therapy. The third time I sat perched at the corner of a bed, five years ago, frozen in the minute that would deliver my get-out-of-jail-free card from hell.
I got out.
But free would be pushing it.
Today the thrill made its unexpected appearance for no conceivable reason, I found myself wondering what would happen if I swerved my car onto the wrong side of the road…but I didn’t follow through with it. I considered it again for about ten minutes, until I told myself that I wasn’t really an adrenaline junkie and admonished myself for thinking about soliciting Death once again. We had been down that path before and I had won that particular War of Wills. He would simply have to do his own damn job this time around. In some Freudian context I suppose this means that when actually faced with death I might fight for life. I like to think that I would have more courage than wanting to hang on to a vague notion of searching for something in nothing.
I like to think that I will finally dispense with all false dignity and look Him in the eye.
But I really need to make sure He has the answers I’m looking for before I drop in for that final quick goodbye.
No comments:
Post a Comment