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I just watched the Sex and the City movie with KL, and I feel downright optimistic. It’s funny, I hardly ever talk to people online. I feel like I don’t translate well to facebook chat, like it’s so much harder to come up with something to talk about, and because the talking is all there is, it gets a little awkward. And I practically spent the weekend hanging out with Miss L and I realize I miss all my high school friends- but I’m not going to miss them any more when I go to Mexico. Because they’re already gone. They’re already off in their own lands, spinning away at their own lives trying to make sense of it without me. I might visit band before I leave for Mexico, but on the other hand, maybe not. That high school world is just gone and behind me. I like seeing the younger kids, but it’s really not the same- they still live in a world where passing English is important, where the science teachers are mostly incompetent, where they don’t know if they’re pretty or ugly or whether anyone will ever love them or if they’re just in a relationship for the sake of being in one. I’m rapidly leaving my teenage years and I’m glad of it. I may continue to lead a dramatic and exciting life, but I’m not going to do it with that teenage angst attached. And I’m going to remember that some of my friendships may fade, but often, you see someone again and it’s like you were never apart. I can hear the Oktoberfest music through my window, and it sounds so much like life, you know? You spin around and you laugh in each others’ arms, and then you spin off to another partner and keep laughing, keep turning with the music. Of course you hope it never stops, but the musicians can’t play forever. You just try to have as much fun spinning as you can while it lasts.
To all my girls, I love you. To all my boys, I love you too. And to all those of you who aren’t mine yet, I can’t wait to meet you 
Sometimes I avoid people. Sometimes I avoid people I like because I don’t really want to talk about the things they want to know about me. Sometimes I suck myself into a ridiculous little cocoon and hope nobody notices what I’m doing, hope people will just leave me alone because although I have nothing to be ashamed of, I’m not really proud of myself anyway. Living without a deadline is killing me. Have you ever really thought about the word “deadline”? It kind of suggests what it is: this is the point at which something dies. It suggests mortality in general. There’s no life without death, and right now, I feel like I’m drifting through life because I’ve got no deadline. I suppose part of this problem is my overdeveloped sense of perspective- nothing REALLY bad happens when I miss a deadline. My life doesn’t get unbearably worse- it just doesn’t get better. I should want to get better way more than I do, but I think I’m overly grateful that my life isn’t terrible, so I’m too willing to settle for mediocrity. Perhaps I have a brain, but I don’t really have any use for it. I dislike being purposeless, but I don’t dislike it enough to really try to change it. My central quality and greatest sin is my own sloth. People want to know what I’m doing, people care about what I’m doing and I don’t answer them because I don’t really want to tell them that I’m doing nothing. My talent and my cute blue eyes and my charm and my humor are sitting here, whiling away the hours, not doing anything. I don’t really want to tell people that- they react badly. They always think that it’s through no fault of my own, because that’s the way I tell my own story. My habit of telling it more optimistically than it is comes to bite me in the ass now- I’m never going to be destroyed by outside forces. I am so powerful that the only person who can bring me down is myself. But good lord, it’s so likely…
How dare you. How dare you say things like that. How dare you talk about something you know NOTHING about. That’s what I want to know. Except that I know it already. Your ignorance is brazen and crude and it gives you the garish audacity to spout shit from your vocal chords, squirting it all over me. Can you tell that you’ve incurred my wrath? Because you have. You do not ever, EVER insult my mother that way. I cannot believe you said that. “The love dies after years; then they just choose to be together out of routine and convenience.” You really said that. About man who never forgot to tell my mother that she was beautiful, not because he was doing it habitually but because he never stopped thinking it. About the man who was mouthing “I love you” to my mother as he was dying, desperately trying to gather breath so that he could actually say it, so that he could be sure that she heard him. My mother, who asked me so many times how she could live without him. You seriously think their love died after 22 years? You know nothing. You are so suspicious of people that you cannot imagine being so in love with someone that you wouldn’t “check” to make sure they are where they say they are. My question is, how the hell can you love someone like that? Always looking over your shoulder, never ceasing in your inability to trust them. That’s so much work. If you have to check on them to know that they love you, that’s not love. That’s convenience my friend. Many long marriages may be convenience, but you can’t take the generalizations you learned in psychology class and apply them to all people everywhere, because guess what? So often, they’re wrong. I know more about people than you can ever learn in a psychology class. I’m not always right, but at least I don’t sit there judging people I don’t know. Who the hell judges a case when they don’t know all the arguments? I judge cases based on their merits; you judge them based on your own naïve biases. Even if you do apologize, I’m not sure I’ll ever be friends with you again. None of my other friends EVER piss me off this much, let alone do it twice. I don’t need to have fights. I really don’t. I am sick of your narrow-minded bullshit. Do you understand that? You think you’re so philosophical. You’re not. You just move shit around in your mind in a way that makes it sound good. It’s like remixing a crappy song. It’s no worse than the way it was organized before, but it’s still crap. This is why I hate talking about things with you. You like the theoretical, and when I disagree with you by offering evidence, you just decide my evidence is somehow irrelevant based on no evidence of your own. I’m pissed, and I don’t like it. I think this is the end; have a nice life, sir.
So I was thinking last night, about this last relationship, now that I’m over the initial shock of the end of it. I think I understand it now. Much as my girl friends all want to tell me men are assholes or whatever, I’m damn sure that wasn’t it. I think it really was me who ruined this relationship. I remember him asking, “Do you think we’re going too fast?” My answer then was no, but it worried me when he asked the first time because it basically implied that he thought we were. I didn’t really get it until after he broke up with me, why he thought that. I was too caught up in me to see what he was talking about.
We were going too fast. Straight up, that’s it. Somewhere along the line, my words about not pushing him and not trying to be high maintenance stopped having any actual meaning, because I wasn’t really thinking about it- hell, I wasn’t really thinking about him. I was trying to be the world’s most perfect girlfriend, but I was trying to be the world’s most perfect girlfriend for a representative of Generic Manhood, not the world’s most perfect girlfriend for HIM. At the same time as I was making that transition, he stopped REALLY talking to me. I remember him remarking once on the fact that I did most of the talking in our conversations. That was back when it was still okay, when we weren’t in trouble yet really. Now that I look at those conversations, I notice the same thing he did: mostly me, a little of him. But at the same time, reading those conversations from the first month, when it was really good, there’s something different about them. We’re telling each other anything, not afraid of what the other one thinks, not afraid that the other isn’t listening. We haven’t had a conversation like that in ages, a perfect as you like it solid conversation. Somewhere along the line, I guess I stopped listening to him the way I had before. I started waiting for him to say something so that I could start a monologue off of what he said, to fill up space, instead of REALLY having a conversation.
He was right; we went too fast. Instead of thinking of him as a friend, I treated him more like “my boyfriend”, and I stopped really thinking of him as a person in relation to me outside that role. We got too physical, and to be honest, I started not thinking of him any other way. It must have been so burdensome for him. So degrading to be treated like that. In retrospect, I can’t believe I did that to him. He’s such a sweet, funny guy; it’s not like I don’t enjoy his conversation, his brain, his hopes and dreams; I just forgot about them in pursuit of his other charms.
I sure hope the next relationship he’s in is better than this one. And I hope the same for myself. I think there’s a snowballs chance in hell that we’ll get back together after all that I did to drive him off, so I’m not going to bother to hope. But whatever relationship I pursue next, I’m not making the same mistakes. I’m not going to throw all the responsibility on someone else, because it’s not fair to them. Maybe I got a D+ in this relationship (I don’t fail only because I made him fudge), but at least I learned something. I’m willing to bet that these lessons aren’t relevant in my next relationship because that’s how it goes, but I’m a better person anyway. In my opinion. I suppose you might think otherwise.
Thank you, subject of this post. And thank you, anyone who read this. It has been an education.
Laugh or cry? Those are the choices. The intensity of the moment demands a response. You don’t just get to sit there and think nothing; that would look stupid, incomprehensive, like you don’t understand the importance, the value of this moment.
Should you cry? Does crying make you look weak? Like you can’t handle yourself? Like you’ve been letting life get to you too much, letting people wear you down, letting them devalue your currency of self? Crying seems risky.
So should you laugh? Do you want to make it seem like you don’t understand the seriousness of human sorrow? Are you a heartless fiend? Are you such a cynic that you find this funny? Are you so beyond caring about people that you find this… amusing? How dare you laugh!
You walk along the gallery floor, trying to look introspective, trying to decide how to react to the painting in front of you without being called a bastard or a hysteric. You try looking thoughtful, and yet concerned. A man walks by you, whistling as he goes; you find it odd that he whistles, odd that you cannot get away with laughing yet he’s WHISTLING as he goes by. And then you realize he’s whistling the suicide theme from Tristan and Isolde. You then wonder, what kind of man whistles operatic funeral music? He wears an incredibly ugly cardigan, but he’s still very good-looking. He’s really too young to be wearing a cardigan like that. Perhaps he’s Mr. Rogers’ grandson. You almost start humming “It’s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”, but catch yourself in time to realize how offensive that is. You decide to leave the painting, leave its ironic horror for others to look at. Walking out of the gallery, you are surprised when you reach the outside and the sun is brighter than it is on the sea. You have a pair of sunglasses, but at the moment, you want to absorb the brightness, let it linger on your face, soak up the sun as Icarus did. You spin around with your bag in your hand, arms flying out, smiling, and then laughing… and you hear a whistle, not of the star-crossed lovers, but something happy and cheerful- you can’t quite place it. You look up, and there is the man in the awful sweatervest, whistling, looking at you with inviting eyes. You ask him what he’s whistling. He raises one eyebrow, turns and starts walking. His head looks back over his shoulder after a second, and it tips to show you that he wants you to follow. You pause for a minute, and then do so. He leads you around many twists and turns; although you’ve lived in the city for years, you are in unfamiliar territory-not completely lost, but not sure where you are. Finally, he goes down a flight of stairs, into the basement of an old brick building, a cafe. You even follow him here, dubious though you are by this time. At this point, he walks up to the counter, and his song ends. He says something in a low bass voice, too softly for you to hear exactly what, but loudly enough for you to know that his voice is like a deep pool of melted rum chocolate. He pulls out a chair for you to sit at the table, and then sits across from you. You ask again what he was whistling. He smiles a little and says you’ll have to wait until after you’ve eaten. And after you’ve told him your name. You promptly enlighten him. He tells you his as well. You ask whether he likes abstract expressionism and he tells you that he prefers the European works to the American. You are sorely tempted to ask him about his sweatervest, but before you do so, a beautiful chocolate dessert arrives before you, topped with gelato. You are too busy enjoying it to ask tactless questions, and he goes on talking about the beauty of dada and its nonsensical approach to the world, the artist’s response to the organizational militarism of the war. He asks whether you like graphic novels; you say you like the good ones. You finish your dessert, and you ask whether you will see him again. He says yes; you ask him what the song was. And he tells you it’s the song he made about your smile in the sun. And with that, you depart.
mmmm… chocolate is delicious. So are you. I woke up this morning and realized that you weren’t next to me, even though that would have been the perfect ending for last night. Since I didn’t have you, I had some chocolate. I was so relaxed and leisurely this morning. I floated through the kitchen, eating my chocolate, trying to figure out how to grind coffee, thinking about how much better you are than any daily grind. Thinking about how glorious mornings are. I hate mornings. Except when they’re glorious. This morning was delicious. I licked the chocolate off my fingers and even though I know I’d washed my hands a couple times since I’d seen you, they still tasted like you. I was too contentedly lethargic to be properly excited, but I just felt so warm and sparkly somehow, even though I washed all of the sparkles off last night. Can a person really feel sparkly? I think so. I think it’s like swinging on a star. I want some moonbeams. Maybe I’ll cover them in chocolate and feed them to you. I’ll store them in a jar and we’ll call them choco-beams. And they will give you the most delectable sparkly feeling. And I’ll smile at your sparkling. I’ll dance around with the jar, singing all those songs with “moon” in the title: “Moonriver” “Moon Dance” “Paper Moon”… and I’ll tell you that it’s not make believe if you believe in me. Except that I’m too wasted to dance around. Maybe I’ll just get some gnomes to be my slaves. Capture my moonbeams and such. They can melt the chocolate and dip the moonbeams in and then bring them to me. And they can carry me on a chair over to you, and then I will feed you choco-beams. In fact, if I had gnome slaves, we could make it a business: Sallacity’s Choco-beam Experience. Except it’s not really right to enslave gnomes. Even if I gave them good working conditions, it would still be enslavement. Of course, live gnomes don’t actually exist. Is it more or less immoral to enslave something that doesn’t exist? As opposed to things that do exist of course. I’m not sure. Maybe even nonexistant entities have the right to freedom. Gnomes are really cute though. Maybe I’ll have a gnome anyway. Maybe my gnomes will unionize so I can give them fair wages in my choco-beam enterprise. Maybe they will know already how to capture moonbeams, since I sure don’t. Maybe I should just stick with you. You are delicious enough for me, even if you are not sparkly and not covered in chocolate. I don’t really miss you yet. I’m still so happy to have soaked up so much of your time. I’ll miss you when this delightful exhaustion wears off. But right now, I just want to feed you moonbeams. And they will be delicious.
So I’ve decided that as part of my new and spiffified organized life, I’m going to blog weekly. No more of this “creative spurt” business (hahahaha, Zachy, I’m turning into a girl!). So maybe I won’t always be brilliant, but there will always be something.
I had my senior piano recital yesterday. The only one of my friends who could come was darling Katie L, but that’s fine with me. It was kind of scary anyway. I wasn’t as nervous as when I did the Foreign Language Talent Show, and I also wasn’t as nervous as any of my fellow pianists. But it was so different from doing a regular recital with Ms. Queener or even like a school talent show. I suppose it was knowing that I was in front of people who knew what good piano playing sounds like- they all knew one of my classmates, or they wouldn’t have been there. I did all right though I thought.
It’s… strange to me to think of how so much of my life is ending. I’ve been going to piano lessons since I was five. I just basically did the biggest performance of my piano career, since I’m not going to pursue it as anything other than a hobby after this year. I might have a teacher in college, but I’ll never play piano professionally because I’m just not that good. It’s strange to think of all these “talents” that kids take lessons for and they take up so much of their lives- and when they leave home… some of them just don’t last. I remember meeting my cousin George’s wife and talking to her when I was in Florida in 8th grade, and I remember playing her piano. And she told me that she had taken lessons through her senior year of high school and she never touched the piano since. And it was totally inconceivable to me that I would ever be like that, but I know so many adults who did things in their childhoods and just never pursued them further. I also know many people who continue to do things they did as kids, like my uncle and his trombone and my aunt and her softball and Paul O and his tap-dancing, but I’ve noticed they don’t do everything they did as kids. They pretty much have time for one hobby, the rest of their time is spent working.
I know it’s strange for a seventeen year old to say this, but I just feel like there can’t possibly be enough time for everything I’d like to do. I would love to be a surgeon, I would love to work with cyclotrons, I would love to run for congress, I would love to be a singer, I would love to spend all my time restoring paintings or blowing up stuff or helping people get jobs or… everything. And that’s just careers. I think of the things I would like to do as an adult that don’t make money- I’d love to travel the world, maybe do a musical, get a bridge club like my grandma, throw awesome parties for my friends, go camping, learn some foreign languages, go to church every week, raise a couple kids in Alameda, play rugby into my forties, keep in touch with all my family and friends, do proper Christmas every year…
…so how the fuck am I going to have the time to retire and go to Tahoe for a couple months a year and read New Yorkers on the beach? I just think of that and it makes me feel so sad. That was what my dad was going to do, you see. Retire and sit on the beach at Tahoe, reading his New Yorkers. He kept all the ones he didn’t finish reading on time- so we have several boxes of them, dating back from the late eighties. And I just think, we all plan like we’re going to make it to ninety-three. Like we’re going to be able to enjoy everything just as much when we’re little old people as we can now.
Carefree youth. Maybe some people manage that. I wonder sometimes where mine went.
I tried a long time ago to write a blog post about The Sun Also Rises. I never published it, because it just wasn’t very good and it sounded pretty condescending, which is not how I meant it. But I feel like I can really explain Brett Ashley.
She’s not a slut- not by the definition below, anyway. She’s much like the heroine of The Barefoot Contessa- at some point in her life, she thought she had it all. She thought that she had found her one true love, that she could just spend the rest of her life making him happy, giving him kids, giving him her body, giving him everything. And she would have been so happy to do that. If Brett could have Jake, really, she would never look at anyone else. She says to him “When I think of the hell I’ve put chaps through. I’m paying for it all now.” She used to just play with the affections of men, using their libido to support her lifestyle and her ego. And then she met Jake and fell in love with him. And so her total and complete love just built up in her- she just wanted that life where he was her world. She just had all that physical energy for him. At some point his accident shattered her hopes and dreams for the perfect life. I know it’s not usual to say this, I know that usually guys use this as a cop-out for douche-bag behavior, but sometimes girls have Needs too. And Brett has no outlet for them. She can’t give absolutely everything to Jake because he can’t take it- he can’t satisfy her. But neither can any other man because she doesn’t love any other man. His injury killed not only his happiness, but hers as well. So she returns to the life she led before- seducing men because she can- but she can’t take any joy in it because she knows what she’s missing. Brett Ashley is “tired of living but scared of dying.” She’s only alive because she doesn’t want to die- she isn’t alive because she wants to live. She has nothing to live for, but she also has nothing to die for. She’s in a perpetual limbo of mere existance.
And that, ultimately, is really what I think about when I face mortality. I think of my endless possibilities for happiness and fulfillment and then I think of my infinite capacity for defeatism, and I think maybe I’ll end up like her. Maybe I’ll end up like Brett Ashley, or Maria Vargas, or any drunk on the streets, drinking because they don’t want to remember that they’re failing at living.
So that’s why I’m getting my ass organized. Maybe it’s more beautiful and smooth and free-flowing just living my life moment to moment, blogging when I feel like it… but maybe life isn’t about the beauty. Sadness is a beautiful, romantic thing to behold. Ultimately, though, I feel like beauty is such an intangible, fleeting thing, and at the end of the day, it’s just not worth it. Who says that the Mona Lisa is more valuable as a work of art than Mark Rothko’s Number 14? It’s beautiful, but maybe art isn’t all about beauty either. Maybe art is really about life. Why do we study the cave paintings at Altamira, anyway? Why do we study the art of the Egyptians? Is it because it’s beautiful? Isn’t it really because we want to know the painters?
I don’t know. Perhaps I overindulge my rambling tendency. God bless you, you just read over thirteen hundred words.
It’s a strange thing to be in love. You know perfectly well what a disgusting, flawed person you are. You know you aren’t very pretty, that you’re a bitch when given half the chance, that you can never be a perfect person. In fact, you’d given up on trying to be a perfect person. You’d resigned yourself to being mean and chubby and mediocre a long time back. You’d realized that you aren’t very nice, that you should just remember to apologize for it, remember to make sure everyone is warned about you in advance. You were just trying to make sure people knew what they were getting into if they decided to be part of your life.
But then… then someone comes along. You forget to warn this one away because looking into his eyes makes your brain stop working for a minute. Meanwhile, your mouth is off to a great start, charming him, asking his name, what part he sings, what he likes to do, what his favorite movies are… it’s like your entire being wants to absorb his essence before your brain wakes up and makes you responsible again- before you realize that all this flirtation is against the rules you’ve set up for yourself, all this charm is tearing apart the walls you built to keep everybody out, that you really shouldn’t be conning him into liking you when you know how awful you are.
By the time your brain kicks in, it’s too late. You talk to him, and he asks if he can do something with you, see you again. Because he wants to see you again. And your brain says, “Weren’t we going to stay off men this year? You’re going to college in the fall! It’s not fair to him if he falls in love with you and you aren’t here for him! And it’s cruel to break up with someone just because you’re going to college! THERE IS NO WAY THIS CAN END WELL! You aren’t worth a long-distance relationship anyway! Remember? The entire point of the rules was to keep you from harming people!”
But you just can’t listen. You can’t stay away. You don’t like him like you’ve liked any of the others. You didn’t even think you were flirting with him at the time. You didn’t think you were being obvious. You have never been so un-self-conscious in your life.
And so you spend time with him. Talking about all sorts of things. All sorts of everything. Finding that right when you’re about to talk about something you love, he’s already singing its praises. As if he can read your mind. At this point, you’re very glad he can’t, because you would be embarrassed if he knew how much you like him. And plus, there are things in your brain you don’t want him to see. You’re afraid that he’ll hate you, he’ll think you’re weird, and worst, that he’ll leave if he knows the things that lurk in your brain.
You let him touch you. You let him kiss you. God knows you want him to. You just want to touch him everywhere and make him as happy as you can, because you know that this dream can’t last forever- one day, he’ll have to find out how bad you are, how much more he deserves in a girlfriend. Because you know your time is limited, you try as hard as you can to make sure he doesn’t figure it out for as long as possible. You try so hard to look like a better person than you are. You try to be nice, to be pretty, to make your voice soft and sweet and not harsh and cruel. You try to look the part of world’s most perfect girlfriend, all so that he won’t leave so soon.
And then you find…
You find that you may not be the world’s most perfect girlfriend, but all this pretending is starting to pay off. Functionally, you’re becoming a better person. You’re nicer to people. You don’t argue as much. You start smiling randomly in the hallways. You put up with people you used to be unable to stand. You pay back debts, you remember to make a lunch for yourself, you get up early, you do your homework… it’s like the facade is rubbing off on the actual building. Like his idea of what you are is seeping into you. As if his admiration is peeling off layers of bad, trying to dig up something that used to be there.
You run over the sand, calling your father. “Daddy! Daddy!” You’re six years old again, adorable, sweet, so happy that you have the greatest father in the world. So glad that someone can love you as totally as he does, without reservation, never forgetting to tell you that you’re beautiful, that you are his sunshine, that he’ll always love you and that you are the greatest thing that ever happened to him. And you strive to be the perfect little girl he imagines you are. Sometimes you fail, and nothing breaks your heart like disappointing him. It doesn’t break your spirit, though. You know that you can make it up to him, because he believes in you. Nothing is impossible with that kind of love at your back.
Until tonight, you were sure that your depression had nothing to with his death. That the entire problem was caused by your shaken faith in humanity. And that may be what triggered it.
But tonight, you realized that the little blonde girl had been crying this whole time. Crying because there was no one to love her, no one to tell her she was beautiful, no one to believe that because she was so lovely, she could just mold the world in her hands like clay.
For a while after he died, it had been okay. The little blonde girl was trying to make him proud, trying to hold together the family because she knew that he wouldn’t have let her mother go to pieces. And your mother was so grateful that it was almost like that love, almost good enough. His memory and her dependence on you were enough to make it okay, enough to keep you together.
And then that summer happened. Your mother no longer leaned on you so much. A boy thought that a half-hour drive to see you was too much to bother. And worst, your opinions didn’t matter enough to convince your best friend to stop hurting you, to stop hurting your friends. You were helpless, you were useless, you were irrelevant, you were worthless. That’s the message you got. And this time, there was no one to tell you otherwise. The little blonde girl dyed her hair brown and hid in the corner. Maybe no one will see me, she thought. Maybe they’ll leave me alone. Maybe if I isolate myself, no one will notice how bad I am. Maybe they won’t hate me. Maybe I can learn to just love myself, and that will be enough for me.
And then a man, a veritable BFG, came to the corner. And he lifted the little girl’s head off her knees, looked into her eyes, and said “You’re beautiful.”
The little girl smiled. It was time to leave the corner. Time to go back to the beach.
