Godliness

Somehow, I’ve found it and lost it simultaneously. What is it? Maybe I’m sure, but perhaps I’m not. I think I won’t tell you. You’re gorgeous. I hope you know that. I hope you sit on your roof in a swimsuit and shades, soaking up the summer sun into your skin and miraculously not burning or tanning, just basking in the warmth and the light. Maybe you’ve got a bag of apricots up there and you take one out and bite into it and make seductive sucking sounds with your beautiful lips, slowly consuming the delectable flesh of the sunny fruit. Is it just me or is summer the most sensual season? It’s hot, it’s delicious, so much of it is spent on the beach in tiny amounts of clothing… it just seems like the perfect setting for physical love. I adore being buried in the sand at the beach. The weight and the contrast of the coolly wet under-layers with the dry floating grains above makes me feel enveloped in the embrace of the shore in it’s fully sexual symbolism. I remember the first time my English teacher told me that the ocean was a female symbol in literature- between the sea and Saturn’s chopped of balls, Venus was born. How horrible is it that the goddess of love was the result of a castration? Poor Saturn was turned into a steer by his own son because there could be only one bull in with the heifers. What a sexist society. Really, couldn’t they have settled for just some of the women? I can settle for just SOME men. I don’t need that many, really. It’s funny, I always feel so protective of male bits. I hate it when someone gets hit in the groin, I really do. It makes me feel like carrying them to a safe place and sitting with him until he feels better, and then staying with him forever to ensure that his balls will be safe from attack. Oddly enough, I think that’s still my weird maternal instinct coming through. I just hate to see people in pain like that. I can’t see people in any kind of pain without having sympathy. I can see the hurt on their faces, and it makes my forehead crease and my guts churn and my chest ache in a way that suggests that their pain is double what I can feel and that I need to take it away somehow, that I need to help these people. There are so many people in so much pain in the world. They mourn and weep in this vale of tears. Sorrow often causes me to think of my Catholicism, like right now. Sometimes I wish my friends understood my relationship with God, but it’s not their fault that they don’t. I suppose it’s like anything that is uncommon among my social circle- love of football, cars, calculus. At least with those, however, I know someone else that likes them, and I don’t feel uncomfortable that my friends don’t like them because it’s not personal. My relationship with God is so personal, and not only that, any conversation with my friends about him involves some reference to the fact that they don’t even believe he’s there. And I know that they have justification for thinking that, that I cannot blame them or judge them for it, but I also feel like it’s so disrespectful, like talking about someone who’s right in front of you as if they aren’t there. And I know he doesn’t mind, that it doesn’t bug him. But it bugs me. It makes me feel so bad for him that people talk about him like that. Hell, it makes me feel terrible when people say things like “If God existed, he wouldn’t let things like Hurricane Katrina happen.” All those people who are angry with God, who actively hate him- it just makes me sad. And can you imagine how he must feel when he sees signs at funerals that say “God hates fags”? Taking the Lord’s name in vain isn’t about swearing, it’s about using God’s name to give credence to things he would never approve. Being God would be like being eternally misquoted in the news and never getting to write letters of correction to the editors. And yet somehow, he’s serene enough to deal with it. This is why I’m a Catholic. I cannot begin to understand how God is so great, but I know that he is because somehow, he deals with it. He deals with all the pain and suffering of the world and he manages to not break down and destroy the whole damn thing just because it’s too much for him. Because it’s never too much for him. Somehow he deals with the denial and the hatred and all of the other things that come his way, and somehow he finds time to help little old ladies and cheating middle-aged men, dying children and whiny teenage girls. He finds the time, and he cares about everyone and somehow, it’s never too much for him. He just keeps going, doing his piece with the grace and peace of his being. I suppose with that, I wish you good day.

Tangential spinning

I try to describe it. The lurid bliss of freedom, calling to me with its vivid hues and dramatic cliffs which everyone jumps off and either finds that they fly or that they fall flat, just seems ever so much more attainable. I’ve been listening to all this jazz (granted, it’s all by the Seatbelts, but still), and I think something about it is seeping into my moods, warming them, making them more spontaneous, making my spiritual cooking that much more innovative and carefree, laughing at life the way the lady sings. I went faraway and discovered that not only was I desirable, I was more attractive than I liked being. Perhaps flirting is the national sport of France, but I would like to not have to play if I don’t want to, but it was damn hard to avoid. I guess the gentlemen here don’t prefer blondes, but I’m a hit in Europe. Something about dressing myself better makes me feel just gorgeous too. I feel like it doesn’t matter if I lose out with one or two- there are just so many other possibilities just waiting to happen. I feel like I’m good with my money, like it’s nice to have money, like it’s nice to be generous and take my mother out to dinner, to not eat so much just because it’s there. If I’m not hungry, I won’t eat. So simple. I’ll eat a little, but if I don’t want more, I don’t need more. Gluttony is just silly. I feel like I don’t need the fast, cheap, half-assed pleasures of life. I believe in the sensual indulgence in the beautiful, the rich and decadent, but in nothing else. If I don’t really want it, I’m not going to bother. I will never go into a store and feel obligated to buy something I don’t want just because I went to the store. I will only buy something that really makes me feel fabulous, because nothing in my lifestyle should be less fabulous than me. I guess I know what they mean when they say “I feel like a million bucks.” Because I’m getting better at it. Normally I’m the lady singing the blues, and today, I’m laughing at life, not thinking of the ghost of yesterday. Screw yesterday. It can go wank because I’m off to glamourland without it. I just want to go around with a fairy wand in my new Italian suit and bestow good luck on everyone, because I feel lucky. I better not play poker right now, because when I feel lucky, I always bet like I’m lucky and then my luck runs out. So I won’t play poker, because I feel like I shouldn’t waste my luck on poker. I’m going to go off and be productive now, because this glamourgirl isn’t too high-fashion to clean her room. And I’ll do it faster than ever before, you just watch me. I am going to conquer the universe, and you won’t even notice that it’s happening. You’ll think I’m the nicest, most charming, prettiest girl in the world, and you won’t even notice that everything is going along to my scheme for world domination. Oh it feels good to know that I can run the world, even if I don’t. And well, this saxiphone sound is damn sexy. I can indulge in the grunge sound, because even dirty and sleazy can be just so delicious and jaded. There is a disgusting beauty in extravagent living, isn’t there? It’s horrible that people steal all the money in order to have gilded toilets while other people starve, but on the other hand, the gilded toilet is just so pretty. It’s what I hate about pop art. It should be prettier for the amount of decadence it represents- but it’s not. It’s not pretty. It’s just- cool. I feel like the emptiness should be more cleverly disguised than it is- more embellishment, more gorgeous material, more distinction. But it’s not disguised. The rich barely dress differently from the poor. They should. Without luxury, how can you hide the triviality of money? The ediface is what you buy, because you certainly can’t buy the happiness. I really can feel the cool washing over me just listening to this music. It’s from the soundtrack of Cowboy Bebop, which is a beautiful anime, just so full of life and style. I cried at the end. That’s right, I cried over the death of an anime character. Some things are just so sad. I guess sometimes sadness is romantic- there’s something beautiful about it. The problem is that the sadness is not worth the romance or the beauty. Maybe beauty is just not what it’s about. It’s too bad, because I seem to be radiating it right now. I’ll just dream my little dreamy dreams I suppose. Maybe I shouldn’t quote things so much in my own writing, but it’s as good as biting a chocolate covered apricot, it really is. Oh summer fruit. I love summer. The heat, the beach, the long days, the fruit… it can’t be better.

too much of a good thing

The better the high, the worse the comedown. I’m not sure that it’s an entirely accurate aphorism, but it seems pretty apt today. I was really really happy for like 2 solid days, and now my body has decided that I should feel old and worn out. I felt like I wanted chocolate frosting, so I made myself some. I started eating it, and it was good for a while, and then it became gross and made me feel sicker than I had before. Sometimes it seems to me that the more you like something, the worse it is when it turns sour on you. I’m sure part of the bitterness is the memory of how good it was. Not only is what you have now sour, it’s nothing like as sweet as it was. At least with something that started out bad, you expect it to stay bad. I think half the pain of the comedown is the pain of comparison. Oh God I feel like crap. Are these ridiculous mood swings part of being human, part of being a woman, or just part of being me? I feel like my namesake in The Nightmare Before Christmas. I’m so great when I’m all sewn together, but my seams keep ripping and I have to keep repairing myself, sewing myself back up. But every time I sew myself back up, I lose a little of the stuffing. I never put myself back together quite right. If I were a better seamstress, perhaps I would stop ripping. I suppose the problem could also be in my inferior materials. But how do I learn to sew better with my metaphorical thread? It’s not like I can go to psychological sewing class. Dude I totally feel like I’m going to throw up. Maybe I should do that. Or not. Oh I’m so bloody indecisive.

thoughts from nowhere

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.