My dad and I often argue, both sides of the issue because we are both as equally stubborn as we are rational, whether it is better to be good at many things or excellent in a few. I usually favor the good at many things, not because it makes more sense to me, but because it is the way I have naturally developed. My dad, because he is concerned over my safety, would favor me to excel at a few things. And by a few things, he only means grades. Of the many things I may have accomplished, excellence in academics is not one of them. True, I have received the highest academic award for writing at my school. But writing is a pastime, a hobby. It is not a class that can be isolated into itself or worthy of my attention as a scientist.
Occasionally my dad will quit insulting me for being merely good at so many things, and praise me for the little things I am capable of that have no direct bearing on my GPA. I am thankful for this. Because I oftentimes worry if I will seem good enough on paper. But why should that be important? How do the things that I can say I've done and accomplished, say anything about my actual character? I know how to sail in sunfish on Lake Michigan. I know the most effective way to make small children laugh. I know how to run faster than all my friends and how to run away from them. I know how to make shrimp fried rice. I know when it is appropriate to be kind to strangers. I know what pitch to giggle in to make boys pay attention to me. I know how to throw a frisbee. I know how to throw a football in a perfect spiral. I know how to swim butterfly. And I know how to catch them. I know what Tourmaline is and I know how to fascinate children about the physical properties of a dollar bill.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
Hell is other people? That's absurd! and existential!
My little sister called me yesterday, all panicked, about her senior AP English project. She had chosen for her assignment to read six plays. But these weren't simple theatrical works. She chose, for some intangible reason which likely deals with the fact that she has an intellect larger than ideally controllable, to read plays possessing themes of absurdism. We debated it for a while. I've never really talked about absurdism in any class, and am only kind of aware of it. I do know that it should overlap with existentialism, if only because Camus' The Stranger is considered a work of both the absurd and the existential. Fortunately, my sister had no idea what existentialism was and after I had explained it the best I could, we compared the two studies. And we found the overlap!
Existentialism tries to find meaning in things which should have no meaning. It's a kind of counterpart to religions, which usually try to tell you what you should be doing with your life and more importantly, why you must do what you're told. But existentialism is more like one person:one meaning. You make your own decisions.
Absurdism, on the other hand, seems to throw many random details at you and makes use of your mind's inherent demand to find meaning in anything. Just as I can see faces in the front bumpers of cars, being presented with many random details, we will find the meaning, the lesson, the cause of such random events.
A famous work along these lines is No Exit best known for it's quote "Hell is other people." Four people find themselves in a room which turns out to be hell. When the door to the room finally opens, they do not wish to leave, because they've found a sort of meaning in the other people they've spent close time with.
And it's almost painfully true that you can only judge yourself by knowing yourself through other people. You can only do so much objective analysis of yourself before you realize you are nothing without a sort of external scheme to compare to. This scheme is presented by others. I've always assumed that I am quite tame in the sins department because I didn't drink alcohol or have sex until I was twenty, whereas most of my peers have much younger ages of first intoxication and lose of virginity events. I've also occasionally thought of myself as much more of a lesbian than any of my female friends because I've made out with somewhere between four and six women (I said I was a virgin, I didn't say my mouth wasn't a slut).
I wonder if this is at all misleading. In isolation you could easily grow to hate or love yourself to unhealthy extremes. But how accurate are other people's portrayal of you? Things like racism, sexism, and other smaller details like how tall you are or how pretty you look, go a long way in tainting people's assumptions about you. I just broke up with my boyfriend and I couldn't comprehend exactly why he was breaking up with me for the longest time. And when I finally found out his reasons, that he thought of me as harsh and insensitive in the way I communicated, I was shocked. That's not how I imagine myself at all.
And maybe we're both right. Surrounded by my family, my comments have been cultivated alongside my older sister and my parents, all of whom joke to the extremes. The sarcasm, the black humor, I can't shake it. I don't feel like I ever try to be overly mean to anyone. I'm easy to love most people, as long as they don't hurt me first. But what is hurt? And how do you judge if you've really been hurt or if you've just received a compliment from a very negative person? raised completely different compared to you?
So now I have to determine if I'm a bad person or not. But if hell is other people, maybe it would be preferable to being alone, with the last thing you remember being the details of how you uncontrollably and unintentionally hurt someone whom you respected quite a lot.
Existentialism tries to find meaning in things which should have no meaning. It's a kind of counterpart to religions, which usually try to tell you what you should be doing with your life and more importantly, why you must do what you're told. But existentialism is more like one person:one meaning. You make your own decisions.
Absurdism, on the other hand, seems to throw many random details at you and makes use of your mind's inherent demand to find meaning in anything. Just as I can see faces in the front bumpers of cars, being presented with many random details, we will find the meaning, the lesson, the cause of such random events.
A famous work along these lines is No Exit best known for it's quote "Hell is other people." Four people find themselves in a room which turns out to be hell. When the door to the room finally opens, they do not wish to leave, because they've found a sort of meaning in the other people they've spent close time with.
And it's almost painfully true that you can only judge yourself by knowing yourself through other people. You can only do so much objective analysis of yourself before you realize you are nothing without a sort of external scheme to compare to. This scheme is presented by others. I've always assumed that I am quite tame in the sins department because I didn't drink alcohol or have sex until I was twenty, whereas most of my peers have much younger ages of first intoxication and lose of virginity events. I've also occasionally thought of myself as much more of a lesbian than any of my female friends because I've made out with somewhere between four and six women (I said I was a virgin, I didn't say my mouth wasn't a slut).
I wonder if this is at all misleading. In isolation you could easily grow to hate or love yourself to unhealthy extremes. But how accurate are other people's portrayal of you? Things like racism, sexism, and other smaller details like how tall you are or how pretty you look, go a long way in tainting people's assumptions about you. I just broke up with my boyfriend and I couldn't comprehend exactly why he was breaking up with me for the longest time. And when I finally found out his reasons, that he thought of me as harsh and insensitive in the way I communicated, I was shocked. That's not how I imagine myself at all.
And maybe we're both right. Surrounded by my family, my comments have been cultivated alongside my older sister and my parents, all of whom joke to the extremes. The sarcasm, the black humor, I can't shake it. I don't feel like I ever try to be overly mean to anyone. I'm easy to love most people, as long as they don't hurt me first. But what is hurt? And how do you judge if you've really been hurt or if you've just received a compliment from a very negative person? raised completely different compared to you?
So now I have to determine if I'm a bad person or not. But if hell is other people, maybe it would be preferable to being alone, with the last thing you remember being the details of how you uncontrollably and unintentionally hurt someone whom you respected quite a lot.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
vague
Today Elora is sad. Not too much. She is south of the Mason Dixon line. It is warm. It is not snowing. It is not raining. It is almost sunny. She should be ecstatic.
But then there's all this goddamn guilt and its killing her.
And she's been tricked. She's almost sure.
And its killing her.
She got ahead of what she was going for.
And she can't do this again, no more.
but marquees will make everything better.
But then there's all this goddamn guilt and its killing her.
And she's been tricked. She's almost sure.
And its killing her.
She got ahead of what she was going for.
And she can't do this again, no more.
but marquees will make everything better.
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
It started with an Interrobang
Why‽it's absolutely positively and completely unfair that I always find myself getting treated this way! Why do I feel so terrible? What would happen if I began to cry? or scream? Or punch through a wall? a person? I believe I'm justified. But would anyone else see my actions as righteous? Or would I be just another crazy person? Dismissed? I feel so betrayed!
Sunday, February 28, 2010
The Power of Patheticism
How amazingly selfish young men are.
And how delightfully weak are the young women who follow them.
And how delightfully weak are the young women who follow them.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Running On
So I'm going to say something and I'm going to provide a lot of continuing evidence for that point, starting here when I say that I was madder than I'd ever been; too mad to actually be able to think of anything smart to say, of course, as always; such anger leaving me inexplicably silent, unfortunately, because given the opportunity to be loud, I almost always take that option; and all of this anger could have been avoided if only I understood grammar.
Writing long sentences is hard. I miss run-ons.
Writing long sentences is hard. I miss run-ons.
Sunday, February 07, 2010
Extended Metaphor Madness -- "Tonight I Feel Like a Library Book"
Tonight I feel like a library book. Still sequestered in a book bag, waiting for some sort of utilization. I might be read. Maybe I'll be used as a door stopper. If I'm big enough, maybe a booster seat. I can hear that there are things going on. Sometimes I get close enough to the walls that I can smell the outside, and light calls the softest attention, a siren several city blocks away, to the edges of things that surround me. If I just let my mind rest, willing the creation of some sort of reality, I am wherever I need to be. But when I remember that I am here, I remember that I am still only just here. I want to be read. But really, I just want to get out of this bag.
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
Happiness Playlist
So I've had this Cat Stevens' song stuck in my head for about a week and a half now. The trouble is that its not one of his more famous songs (i.e. Peace Train, Wild World, Hard Headed Woman). Because what most people don't know about Cat Stevens is that before he was the ultimate hippy, he was a greased-up, overly stylized pop star.
Irregardless, it's a pretty good song*. What I find amazing is that he's not really a good singer. But he was working the British music scene, so they probably had lower standards or something. I mean, they're British... they had what? The Beatles? Big whoop.
*By pretty good, I mean it makes me so freaking happy. Other songs in the field of "Will Cheer You Up Regardless Of Predetermined Predispositions For Being Filled With Melancholy":
Blame It On The Boogie -- The Jackson 5
2 Atoms In A Molecule - Noah & The Whale
Banana Pancakes -- Jack Johnson
Yea Yea Yea La La La -- Calvin Harris
Cobrastyle -- Teddybears
Crescendolls -- Daft Punk
I Want You Back -- The Jackson 5
Mess Around -- Ray Charles
Pata Pata -- Miriam Makeba
Sleepyhead -- Passion Pit
Three Little Birds -- Bob Marley
Whole Wide World -- Wreckless Eric
ABC's -- The Jackson 5
Little Bitty Pretty One -- The Jackson 5
basically anything by the jackson 5 really.
Try frowning during these songs and you'll feel like a freak.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
She is... Something's Wrong... Without Her
It's been a while since she's felt sad so she decides to...
The scratched rubber soles of the flip-flops scatter the oxidized red dust of main street into the air as she chases after the boy in his school uniform, bright, crisp, white at noon.
She's almost there, it's resting on her wrist, but then it rains and she decides not to slice if only because it can't end in a cliche.
The wrench slips out of her hand before she can tighten the bolt, right when the gravity generator switches on again. The station begins flashing big red letters on each of its impassable windows. The sirens are unbearable; her ears are bleeding. She kicks off her sheets. She left the heater on through the night.
She does not know why this man thinks that talking about the "pussy he pounded last night" will make her go back with him. She thinks that he is either an idiot or she is a lesbian.
Nobody will tell her, but eventually someone let's slip. Your son made it into medical school. Your daughter got accepted to MIT. Your sister cured five types of cancer. You've become a household name. That trip you took to some tropical country last week? You were fighting off the paparazzi and interviewers the entire time. Don't you remember? No? It just happened. Real as reality. When she opens her eyes to daylight it seems so perverse she cries without knowing why. She used to love mornings.
This is the second time she's woken up to the lights in this same fucking ICU. The next time, if she makes it, the next time she'll fucking end it.
She's listened to this sixties pop song twenty-one times. It's in a minor chord. She thinks that she should stop. But she can't. She wants to know how she can hate herself for doing nothing. She wants to cry. But she can't. She's an adult now. She wants to sleep all the time. She doesn't want to shower. That's how she knows. It's back.
He doesn't know her middle name. She will spend the next sixty minutes thinking about him, once or twice her mind will switch to something more pertinent; whether to eat lunch or just wait for dinner. She does not realize this will kill her. It's a Sunday. There's nothing else anyway.
She can recognize her life is a loop. It is replaying patterns. She's tried almost everything except; ...like you wouldn't believe. But she hasn't ended it. That's the only thing she hasn't tried. Three more months, if she makes it, and she will do it.
The scratched rubber soles of the flip-flops scatter the oxidized red dust of main street into the air as she chases after the boy in his school uniform, bright, crisp, white at noon.
She's almost there, it's resting on her wrist, but then it rains and she decides not to slice if only because it can't end in a cliche.
The wrench slips out of her hand before she can tighten the bolt, right when the gravity generator switches on again. The station begins flashing big red letters on each of its impassable windows. The sirens are unbearable; her ears are bleeding. She kicks off her sheets. She left the heater on through the night.
She does not know why this man thinks that talking about the "pussy he pounded last night" will make her go back with him. She thinks that he is either an idiot or she is a lesbian.
This is the second time she's woken up to the lights in this same fucking ICU. The next time, if she makes it, the next time she'll fucking end it.
She's listened to this sixties pop song twenty-one times. It's in a minor chord. She thinks that she should stop. But she can't. She wants to know how she can hate herself for doing nothing. She wants to cry. But she can't. She's an adult now. She wants to sleep all the time. She doesn't want to shower. That's how she knows. It's back.
He doesn't know her middle name. She will spend the next sixty minutes thinking about him, once or twice her mind will switch to something more pertinent; whether to eat lunch or just wait for dinner. She does not realize this will kill her. It's a Sunday. There's nothing else anyway.
She can recognize her life is a loop. It is replaying patterns. She's tried almost everything except; ...like you wouldn't believe. But she hasn't ended it. That's the only thing she hasn't tried. Three more months, if she makes it, and she will do it.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Doctor Fly
He had been watching the fly all morning. It was too hot in his office. And he hadn't taken a shower in two days. His scalp smelled like a grandfather's baseball cap. And he was unbearably itchy. The fly did not make this better.
It had been two hours and thirty-two minutes since he had walked in. Put his things on his desk, a wooden dark affair with a computer and a frame with a picture of his sister in it. She was wearing a sweater and she was standing in front of a mountain. A mountain range, really. She seemed so cool and cold. The picture seemed so refreshing. It worked well to convince him that the broken air conditioning unit was no big deal. But then the fly would buzz somewhere and he'd lose concentration and his neck would tick and he'd try very hard to kill it without getting up from his chair but it would never make itself that easy. If he stood up, he would know immediately that he had lost. And he wasn't about to lose to an invertebrate.
It was probably a house fly. If it was a doctor fly, it would have probably bitten him by now and he would have killed the damn thing. He'd only been bitten by a doctor fly twice since arriving in this equatorial hell hole, and he hadn't enjoyed either experience. They were large and purple and yellow. But usually, after being bitten by one, they were soon dead. Guts and innards, escaping the thorax onto whatever killing device he had swatted at them, like the colored and artificially flavored corn syrup they put inside Gushers.
This was just a house fly. He'd been re-working the draft of his speech for days now. There really wasn't much else to do. If he didn't stay on the premise, they wouldn't pay him. But he didn't have any work to do. He wondered if he should be manipulating a third world government in such a way. But then he'd walk past the fat post master whose private office was only a few hallways away, and briefly peering in at the ornate cultural decorations lining his wall, the Jay-Z albums, and the signed New York Yankees jersey he'd framed, and knowing that his postmaster salary couldn't possibly cover any of that, he'd feel much better about himself. He'd wave at the gentlemen, piled into his probably designer suit, bulging a bit at certain seams, and say hi with a smile, but really, when he walked away he'd think to himself that a fat fuck like David would never make it in America. Then he'd smile for real and get back to his office and pretend to be working some more until 5 when he could actually go home.
It had been two hours and thirty-two minutes since he had walked in. Put his things on his desk, a wooden dark affair with a computer and a frame with a picture of his sister in it. She was wearing a sweater and she was standing in front of a mountain. A mountain range, really. She seemed so cool and cold. The picture seemed so refreshing. It worked well to convince him that the broken air conditioning unit was no big deal. But then the fly would buzz somewhere and he'd lose concentration and his neck would tick and he'd try very hard to kill it without getting up from his chair but it would never make itself that easy. If he stood up, he would know immediately that he had lost. And he wasn't about to lose to an invertebrate.
It was probably a house fly. If it was a doctor fly, it would have probably bitten him by now and he would have killed the damn thing. He'd only been bitten by a doctor fly twice since arriving in this equatorial hell hole, and he hadn't enjoyed either experience. They were large and purple and yellow. But usually, after being bitten by one, they were soon dead. Guts and innards, escaping the thorax onto whatever killing device he had swatted at them, like the colored and artificially flavored corn syrup they put inside Gushers.
This was just a house fly. He'd been re-working the draft of his speech for days now. There really wasn't much else to do. If he didn't stay on the premise, they wouldn't pay him. But he didn't have any work to do. He wondered if he should be manipulating a third world government in such a way. But then he'd walk past the fat post master whose private office was only a few hallways away, and briefly peering in at the ornate cultural decorations lining his wall, the Jay-Z albums, and the signed New York Yankees jersey he'd framed, and knowing that his postmaster salary couldn't possibly cover any of that, he'd feel much better about himself. He'd wave at the gentlemen, piled into his probably designer suit, bulging a bit at certain seams, and say hi with a smile, but really, when he walked away he'd think to himself that a fat fuck like David would never make it in America. Then he'd smile for real and get back to his office and pretend to be working some more until 5 when he could actually go home.
Hook, Line, and Loner
It had been a pretty hectic day. Yes, that's what she'd call it. If anyone asked. Not that anyone would inquire about how her Saturday was--but she was ready to engage anyone in a story, really. It was a wake up call. Not the extraordinary events of the day. Not the strain in her hamstrings the following morning while holding a cup of hot chocolate in her dark living room watching the morning news, a result of running around the city the day prior. Not the reading over her monthly statement online and realizing that she'd spent far too much on her Visa the night before. Not the shock at looking at her impromptu hair cut in her toothpaste splattered mirror. Not even the letter in the mail she would receive a week and a half later. No. The wake up call was that she had just had a spectacular day--the sort of day that helps to fend off the pesky thoughts of suicide--and she had no one to tell. She didn't realize how lonely she was until she woke up the next morning with a tale on her tongue with no one to lash it at.
Sunday, January 03, 2010
None of this Never Happened, Not at All, I Swear
"A little thing called Pride"
If I was just a little more feminine I would have cared. I would have felt remorse that I was walking all over him. But, like people making excuses for themselves always say, it's a man's world, and following tenets, I refused to care, because men never care (that's why they can't cry, the damn bastards). Still it was unbearable. The feeling of guilt, equivalent in severity to, I suppose, running over your neighbor's dumb and deaf dog with your SUV at 4 AM on the road outside your house, stayed near my train of thought even when more important things, like my daily half hour of television, should have been taking center stage. I didn't hate myself, though I refused to look at myself in the bathroom mirror while brushing my teeth. He wanted me to feel bad. But I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of knowing he was at all important to me. Because I didn't fucking care.
The number of missed calls my phone reported became more like a casualty report. Two opportunities died the other day at 3:17 in the afternoon. How he endured, I'll never know. I'd only reply in impersonal texts that were short and nondescript, like, "Sure. Sounds fine." Even though his plans for lunch always sounded horrible. Who the fuck like Thai soup? It's all watered down. Canned soup tastes better, but it's probably all thanks to the sodium; 20% of your daily allowance? What the fuck.
But if I could show him in person that I no longer cared, then it was worth the train ride to the edges of Chinatown, even though there weren't any Chinese in the city. It should have been called Asian town, but that would probably sound even more offensive. At least it wasn't Oriental town. Then nobody would visit for fear of being labeled a racist through association.
My yellow trench coat kept catching my attention in the windows of the stores I walked past. I hadn't brushed my hair. I had taken a shower, but only out of common courtesy. If I wasn't trying to send a message, I would have had an eyeliner stripe a centimeter thicker underneath my green eyes. It was January, and my cheeks were flushed red. I should have been in love. Catching the neon Budweiser sign hanging in the Thai restaurant's window, I fully realized that if what he thought this was was love, then there was no God and everything anyone had ever told me about life had been a wishful euphemism.
If I had seen him, I would have probably told him flat out to give up already. I had rehearsed it hundreds of times. Sometimes he cried. Sometimes I cried but tried to cover it up by looking away or wearing sunglasses. Sometimes he shot me in the back of my head when I turned one-hundred-and-eighty degrees to leave, my blood splattering on his white wooden door, mixed in with a little brain. But he wasn't there. He stood me up. I stood outside the restaurant, feeling cold enough to order a soup anyway, as long as it was still steaming when it was placed before me. After considering whether his actions might have been a more blunt message indicating he was tired of my games, I reminded myself patiently that it didn't matter what he had meant or what he was thinking. I was going to fuck him up.
If I was just a little more feminine I would have cared. I would have felt remorse that I was walking all over him. But, like people making excuses for themselves always say, it's a man's world, and following tenets, I refused to care, because men never care (that's why they can't cry, the damn bastards). Still it was unbearable. The feeling of guilt, equivalent in severity to, I suppose, running over your neighbor's dumb and deaf dog with your SUV at 4 AM on the road outside your house, stayed near my train of thought even when more important things, like my daily half hour of television, should have been taking center stage. I didn't hate myself, though I refused to look at myself in the bathroom mirror while brushing my teeth. He wanted me to feel bad. But I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of knowing he was at all important to me. Because I didn't fucking care.
The number of missed calls my phone reported became more like a casualty report. Two opportunities died the other day at 3:17 in the afternoon. How he endured, I'll never know. I'd only reply in impersonal texts that were short and nondescript, like, "Sure. Sounds fine." Even though his plans for lunch always sounded horrible. Who the fuck like Thai soup? It's all watered down. Canned soup tastes better, but it's probably all thanks to the sodium; 20% of your daily allowance? What the fuck.
But if I could show him in person that I no longer cared, then it was worth the train ride to the edges of Chinatown, even though there weren't any Chinese in the city. It should have been called Asian town, but that would probably sound even more offensive. At least it wasn't Oriental town. Then nobody would visit for fear of being labeled a racist through association.
My yellow trench coat kept catching my attention in the windows of the stores I walked past. I hadn't brushed my hair. I had taken a shower, but only out of common courtesy. If I wasn't trying to send a message, I would have had an eyeliner stripe a centimeter thicker underneath my green eyes. It was January, and my cheeks were flushed red. I should have been in love. Catching the neon Budweiser sign hanging in the Thai restaurant's window, I fully realized that if what he thought this was was love, then there was no God and everything anyone had ever told me about life had been a wishful euphemism.
If I had seen him, I would have probably told him flat out to give up already. I had rehearsed it hundreds of times. Sometimes he cried. Sometimes I cried but tried to cover it up by looking away or wearing sunglasses. Sometimes he shot me in the back of my head when I turned one-hundred-and-eighty degrees to leave, my blood splattering on his white wooden door, mixed in with a little brain. But he wasn't there. He stood me up. I stood outside the restaurant, feeling cold enough to order a soup anyway, as long as it was still steaming when it was placed before me. After considering whether his actions might have been a more blunt message indicating he was tired of my games, I reminded myself patiently that it didn't matter what he had meant or what he was thinking. I was going to fuck him up.
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