It's been a weekend of relaxation, for the most part. Though I've managed to drink myself into a stupor several times, I feel like I've gotten a lot of substance in.
I need to think about some things. I need to talk to a certain person about those things, after I think about them, good and hard. Mostly hard. It's going to be hard.
Shit's always hard. The falling-into-the-lap things are the worst -- wasn't there, and now it is; surprise. Surprise problems, complications, etcetera. Sure, it was stupid in the first place, but it's turned into something I need to think about and make sure I'm okay with before I make decisions.
Decision is a misleading word: there is only one decision to be made, negating the "decision" part entirely. All that's left is leading myself there, with reason, sound mind and my own thoughts, instead of "what's right" or "reasonable." I need to make sure I know why I'm doing this. Otherwise, I risk wondering about it....weeks, months, years later, at weak points in my life. Those what-ifs can be real pesky sometimes, and I'm particularly susceptible to doors I opened and didn't explore.
Dangerous. This is so dangerous.
30 May 2011
26 May 2011
Extremes
And she claimed it took no effort of will to hold him as he wept as he raped her. She just stared into his eyes lovingly the entire time. She stayed where he left her all day in the gravel, weeping and giving thanks to her religious principles. She wept out of gratitude, she says.
She had addressed the psychotic's core weakness, the terror of a soul-exposing connection with another human being. Nor is any of this all that different than a man sizing up an attractive girl at a concert and pushing all the right buttons to induce her to come home with him and lighting her cigarettes and engaging in an hour of post-coital chitchat, seemingly very content and close. But what he really wants to do is give her a special disconnected telephone number and never contact her again. And that the reason for this cold and victimizing behavior is that the very connection he had worked so hard to make her feel, terrifies him.
She had addressed the psychotic's core weakness, the terror of a soul-exposing connection with another human being. Nor is any of this all that different than a man sizing up an attractive girl at a concert and pushing all the right buttons to induce her to come home with him and lighting her cigarettes and engaging in an hour of post-coital chitchat, seemingly very content and close. But what he really wants to do is give her a special disconnected telephone number and never contact her again. And that the reason for this cold and victimizing behavior is that the very connection he had worked so hard to make her feel, terrifies him.
25 May 2011
Once Were Two
Last night, while tossing and turning, generally unable to sleep, I tried to dissect infatuation from love.
I guess love always starts there, with some insatiable passion, a tangling of sheets and lips, a muddling of where your body starts and theirs begins. You might begin to feel something changing in your life, like the climax of a novel, the part where nothing can be the same after that.
You'll hear some crap on the radio that you made fun of a week ago, and all of a sudden, Guns n' Roses speaks to your soul like they know what's in it (and you know they don't), and you don't know what's happening. You leave the house or the bed or the bar and right above your stomach, it feels like Christmas morning in there -- boxes wrapped, waiting for the greenlight to tear them open and explore them.
(I always opened mine with careful discipline, because I knew the boxes would be gone after I open them all, and half of the allure was ripping the paper apart. Make it last, make it last.)
Infatuation is the best.
But last night, while mostly not sleeping, I had two absolutely heartbreaking dreams between sessions of picking love apart. They were heartbreaking because the things I wanted were happening in them, and neither of them can happen right now. And while it's my life's calling to explain these things that happen to me, I could not find words for this situation.
With only 26 letters to fashion an explanation, it's impossible unless you describe your whole world in one instant -- every breeze that blows, every hour that passes both fast and slow, every wave of goosebumps that brings you to your knees. The way cold water hits a parched throat after a long night, every shudder at every touch after that moment you figured out that you didn't want to "grab a drink," "eat dinner," or "watch a movie" with that person, that all you wanted was to be in the same room with him and it didn't matter what the hell you did.
Because everything changes after that, and it's irreparable and irreversible. By definition, that's damage, but it's what makes any good story worth reading.
I am damaged; irreparably and irreversibly changed. Make it last, make it last.
I guess love always starts there, with some insatiable passion, a tangling of sheets and lips, a muddling of where your body starts and theirs begins. You might begin to feel something changing in your life, like the climax of a novel, the part where nothing can be the same after that.
You'll hear some crap on the radio that you made fun of a week ago, and all of a sudden, Guns n' Roses speaks to your soul like they know what's in it (and you know they don't), and you don't know what's happening. You leave the house or the bed or the bar and right above your stomach, it feels like Christmas morning in there -- boxes wrapped, waiting for the greenlight to tear them open and explore them.
(I always opened mine with careful discipline, because I knew the boxes would be gone after I open them all, and half of the allure was ripping the paper apart. Make it last, make it last.)
Infatuation is the best.
But last night, while mostly not sleeping, I had two absolutely heartbreaking dreams between sessions of picking love apart. They were heartbreaking because the things I wanted were happening in them, and neither of them can happen right now. And while it's my life's calling to explain these things that happen to me, I could not find words for this situation.
With only 26 letters to fashion an explanation, it's impossible unless you describe your whole world in one instant -- every breeze that blows, every hour that passes both fast and slow, every wave of goosebumps that brings you to your knees. The way cold water hits a parched throat after a long night, every shudder at every touch after that moment you figured out that you didn't want to "grab a drink," "eat dinner," or "watch a movie" with that person, that all you wanted was to be in the same room with him and it didn't matter what the hell you did.
Because everything changes after that, and it's irreparable and irreversible. By definition, that's damage, but it's what makes any good story worth reading.
I am damaged; irreparably and irreversibly changed. Make it last, make it last.
20 May 2011
I Am Stupid
Man. I am just on a rampage for fucking up shit this week.
These things I do don't make any goddamn sense. Oh, my life, and such people in it. On one hand, I should count myself lucky for having such great people surrounding me at all times. On the other hand, I seem to have a penchant for creating impossible situations.
Seriously, impossible. Self, you're a dumbass. But self, you've got some guts, if I may say so. Some stupid guts.
Shitfire. This is trouble.
These things I do don't make any goddamn sense. Oh, my life, and such people in it. On one hand, I should count myself lucky for having such great people surrounding me at all times. On the other hand, I seem to have a penchant for creating impossible situations.
Seriously, impossible. Self, you're a dumbass. But self, you've got some guts, if I may say so. Some stupid guts.
Shitfire. This is trouble.
17 May 2011
One Week
I've sickened myself of looking at word documents. In the past two days, I've actually felt nauseous pulling up my article template. I'm so glad it's a light week, on one hand, but on the other, getting through another one sounds like the hardest thing I've ever done in my entire life.
I miss non-directed, random conversation. I miss talking about things I don't know much about. I miss being a fly on the wall (the longer I hold this position, the less possible it becomes to walk into a place and not see at least two people I know professionally), able to listen to conversations that shouldn't mean anything to me and being able to postulate on the people having them, without them knowing that I'm a reporter. I've always known that I'm an introvert, but I don't think I ever realized how essential being unnoticed is to my peace of mind.
I used to love having the time to search for pieces of a human puzzle at my leisure, without having to put it together in a week's time for the entire city to look at and scrutinize. I haven't been able to slow down long enough to assess the damage it's done.
My heart currently resides on an organic farm in the pacific northwest, and while it's always been consoling to know that he's still on the planet somewhere, these rough spots are excruciating without him. There was a time when distance wasn't bad, even good for building resilience to being needy or jealous or otherwise, but as I get older, I'm finding that those lessons have been beaten to death. I have learned them over and over again, without ever having had the opportunity to fuck it up. I'm done building it up, and I'm losing the ability to stand up straight. I need my heart.
Though I'm glad I have one, because I don't have the time to develop feelings for, or even meet people who don't have some affiliation with my job. Even if I do meet someone who's unaffiliated, they will be soon enough -- it's a life job, and I can't ever leave it at work; the cables remain attached when I leave the office and sometimes, even while I'm asleep.
When I go out, I see people I've interviewed, and it's hard to tell whether they liked the article or not. I haven't gotten a ton of bad criticism or anything, it's just the disconnect from having previously known every soul who has ever looked at your work, to knowing there are tons of people you don't know who might read 5 pieces of your work, every week. I'll see someone I had to rush an interview with, or had to rush writing the piece that involved them, and I think they can tell I didn't have the time I needed to treat it adequately. They might not know, or care, but what if I've made a triviality to their life's work, with my inexperience and fiction training?
I have a tendency to say I'm good, I'm fine, my life is great and I'm happy. There are times when that is true, and usually they're intense enough to throw a shadow on the things that aren't so good. I'm a born optimist, almost to a fault, and it's not often that I'm not actively trying to make my life better. It's just gotten the better of me today.
I miss non-directed, random conversation. I miss talking about things I don't know much about. I miss being a fly on the wall (the longer I hold this position, the less possible it becomes to walk into a place and not see at least two people I know professionally), able to listen to conversations that shouldn't mean anything to me and being able to postulate on the people having them, without them knowing that I'm a reporter. I've always known that I'm an introvert, but I don't think I ever realized how essential being unnoticed is to my peace of mind.
I used to love having the time to search for pieces of a human puzzle at my leisure, without having to put it together in a week's time for the entire city to look at and scrutinize. I haven't been able to slow down long enough to assess the damage it's done.
My heart currently resides on an organic farm in the pacific northwest, and while it's always been consoling to know that he's still on the planet somewhere, these rough spots are excruciating without him. There was a time when distance wasn't bad, even good for building resilience to being needy or jealous or otherwise, but as I get older, I'm finding that those lessons have been beaten to death. I have learned them over and over again, without ever having had the opportunity to fuck it up. I'm done building it up, and I'm losing the ability to stand up straight. I need my heart.
Though I'm glad I have one, because I don't have the time to develop feelings for, or even meet people who don't have some affiliation with my job. Even if I do meet someone who's unaffiliated, they will be soon enough -- it's a life job, and I can't ever leave it at work; the cables remain attached when I leave the office and sometimes, even while I'm asleep.
When I go out, I see people I've interviewed, and it's hard to tell whether they liked the article or not. I haven't gotten a ton of bad criticism or anything, it's just the disconnect from having previously known every soul who has ever looked at your work, to knowing there are tons of people you don't know who might read 5 pieces of your work, every week. I'll see someone I had to rush an interview with, or had to rush writing the piece that involved them, and I think they can tell I didn't have the time I needed to treat it adequately. They might not know, or care, but what if I've made a triviality to their life's work, with my inexperience and fiction training?
I have a tendency to say I'm good, I'm fine, my life is great and I'm happy. There are times when that is true, and usually they're intense enough to throw a shadow on the things that aren't so good. I'm a born optimist, almost to a fault, and it's not often that I'm not actively trying to make my life better. It's just gotten the better of me today.
16 May 2011
One Love
It's so rare to have an entire day at home, not pounding out copy on deadline or staying up all night staring at a word processor. And it's kind of funny that I've decided to blog after weeks of doing nothing but writing. Maybe it's not funny...maybe it means that I've actually dedicated my life to this passion.
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