oh hello, update.

October 4th, 2010

This blank word document has been glaring at me for the last twenty hours or so. I keep putting it off – waiting until I’m drunker. More sober. Happier. More Miserable. Waiting for “inspiration”. The right weather. The right music. The right mood. These variables are all part of an elaborate illusion – a false construct. Now that I’ve been forcing myself to write on a regular basis, it has become a chore. It isn’t really a chore, though. This is an excuse. Let me try to be more honest. With these little verbal excavations, I keep digging deeper and deeper. Recently I stumbled upon a lot of things I never thought I’d let see the light of day. I know that to let them emerge is better. It is  the right thing to do (if you can forgive my use of vague moral abstractions).

Maybe I’ll always be addicted to living outside my own head. Being incoherent is intoxicating. I am addicted not to a substance, but to a feeling. It is my only relief when my brain function slows down, when It’s hard to form sentences, when I can feel my vocabulary slipping as I become more inebriated. Sometimes, I can’t even fall asleep because of my incessant thoughts. This is why I long to jump from distortion to distortion. I know if I continue this way, it will eventually destroy me. But, what won’t? Being active and healthy in the sun will destroy me. Sunlight is a carcinogen. All of these hills will cause my knees to become weaker and my joints will begin to grind upon one another. Yet, staying inside will kill me. My mental health will take a drastic downward spiral. I’ll become inactive again – pale and weak and brooding. I’ll die of heart failure or complications from diabetes. I’m so close to where I want to be, and yet, nothing seems to matter anymore.  So, what’s worse? We’re all doomed to an untimely end – an abrupt swoosh of those heavy, dusty, velvet curtains closing before our soliloquies have concluded.

You can’t have a standing ovation when you’re singing to an empty auditorium.

I was never meant to have a prolonged speech. Those are for pretty girls, intelligent girls. I’m stuck here in the corner somewhere between those two states of being. I’m not dumb enough to be ignorant of my ignorance, but I’m not smart enough to transcend it. I’m not ugly enough to be a novelty, but I’m not pretty enough to be a prize. This is where I reluctantly accept my mediocrity.

I don’t know if getting used to writing for an audience has made me better or worse. Maybe I’m the same. Maybe I’m just the same as I always have been – the same rotting trash compiled into a more refined shell. But see, I don’t always feel this way about myself. It’s only when I’m sober. No – only sometimes when I’m sober. I love myself sometimes. Yet, it is not these periods of self-adoration that prompt me to write. Is this me admitting that I have a problem, or that I have the potential for one? I already know that I don’t need to drink in order to function. I got used to functioning miserably at least a decade ago. (It’s an underlying skill taught to young women in the Mormon church – how to live a visibly “happy” life amidst a torrential sea of internal desperation.)

My mom’s birthday is soon. I don’t have anything for her. I intend on getting something for her, but everything I consider just seems useless. Additionally, I have to consider  the practicality of shipping it to her. Will it be heavy? Will it break? I guess it’s really just the thought that counts. More honesty: I’ve never been a fan of commodified affection. Yet, here is where my hypocrisy returns: I love getting gifts. I’d like to believe that I remain unaffected by receiving gifts. It’s not true. Somehow, It still sickens me – the thought of labor becoming currency becoming goods becoming emotion becoming reaction. Maybe it disgusts me more because I enjoy it. I do know this: there is no such thing as altruism. I know, this is a stereotypical 21^st-century-student-quality-post-modern-pseudo-marxist rant. Even my “intellect” (god how I FUCKING HATE scare quotes) is just a byproduct of modern academic structures. There is no such thing as being “self-taught” unless you’re a feral child living outside the realm of language. It’s true: most of what I’ve learned has been outside of classrooms. Life experience, self-directed study, however you want to label it. It doesn’t matter. There were still specific variables catalyzed by current intellectual trends which drove me to read certain authors who then caused me to think a certain way.

I don’t know why humans are so preoccupied with the myth of freedom. It doesn’t exist. Even on the most arbitrarily abstract level, humans are imprisoned by the daunting inevitability of their own mortality. Let’s not take into account societal expectation. The modern relationship between individuals and commodities has been placed on an absurd level of false necessity. I’m not going to reiterate what every 22-year-old hyper-political, middle class, self-proclaimed intellectual is regurgitating. We’ve all read Karl Marx and Ayn Rand and Chuck Palahniuk. Some have moved on to worshiping Zizek or other public philocelebrities. We’re anarchists cooking substances in our kitchens – 21^st century Betty Crockers with cyanide instead of cupcakes. We’re vehement nihilists venting about the meaninglessness of the universe as we misunderstand Nietzsche and quote his aphorisms out of context.  We’re toking socialists who advocate free health care for all but secretly hate paying high taxes with our minimum wage pay (a liberal arts degree ensures an entry-level position at any soul-crushing service job). We’re proud democrats who volunteer and campaign and thoroughly enjoy condemning every hick president who has sat in the white house. We’re militant libertarians – we know who John Galt is – making antiquated right-wing arguments seem controversial and happening -- “Down with big government!” Or, we are simply apathetic – however, the choice of apathy itself signifies a calculated judgment. The ones of us who are self-proclaimed apathetics tend to be the most narcissistically elitist of all. The cherry on top: we’re facebooking and tweeting and blogging these deformed opinions like frequent heart palpitations. It doesn’t matter how highly one values their opinion, we’re still part of this structure. The amount of in-depth analysis and self-motivated study required to illustrate and cultivate this modern intellect is completely futile. We’re still all on the inside  -- and it’s impossible to see what the whole structure looks like from here.

I am a hypocrite. Despite all of this, I will continue to read, to explore, to feed my perverse hunger for more knowledge. I know that I will never learn anything. I’m actually glad that I don’t understand precisely how the world works, and that I never will even come close. I don’t want justifications for this force labeled “evil” – this force that could be more adequately named “humanity”. I’d rather accept the notion of complete entropy.

Again, in spite of everything, I will continue to “better” myself – in the objective sense. I’ve already sold out – gone from awkward yet endearing to cute but bitter and soon I’ll be gorgeous and empty. I am obviously conflicted – I’ll keep running, keep climbing, keep sweating. It doesn’t matter. Nothing does. 

October 6th, 2010

I am my senses. My heart beats in unison with the ripples of sound echoing around me. I can hear the crickets, chickens, cicadas. It extends beyond mere perception, mere reception – these sounds permeate me. I feel the sounds resonate under my skin: the rustling of leaves as the wind moves around them, through them. The flow of water outside. After the noise of a city, you forget how raucous silence can be.

I’ve never been the jealous type. I’ve always defaulted to insecurity before assuming anyone else is at fault – naturally believing that I am less, but not desiring to be more. In embarking on my transformation,  I can feel the overly self-conscious part of myself slowly disappearing. It’s trickling out, drop by drop. There are truths emerging, however, that have always been relevant. Today, I realized that I don’t need to be a trophy to be beautiful. I don’t have to be an ornament to be breathtaking. Maybe this is what I needed to know all along. I finally have someone who has loved me at my worst – who has celebrated my improvement – and who will embrace me at my best. It’s strange. I always had this expectation that I had to be a certain way to be loved – less intelligent, more beautiful. Maybe it’s the Mormon in me, but I was consumed by this secret antiquated notion that a man would never choose a woman who thought too much. I thought I needed to make myself into somewhat of an utilitarian mantelpiece -- equally functional and aesthetically pleasing. I was sure that I needed to be less adventurous, more complacent. It isn’t true. When I firmly decided to engage in this treacherous and challenging battle with self improvement, I decided to do it only for myself. Maybe that’s why I’ve been successful. Most people fail. Maybe that’s why love just stumbled into my lap. Well, more like it (he) strode gallantly into my lap.  

I can think more freely here than in the city. There’s a comfort to the rotting wooden planks – how their termite-ridden insides creak and moan as I step over them. I am suddenly penned by Jonathan Swift –  surrounded by ubiquitously reverent Lilliputians. It makes me feel powerful and humble at the same time. It’s funny, how these bugs are slowly eating away at this house. They seem so small and inconsequential. Yet, in the thousands, they’ll demolish this place completely. (Termites throw the most jive parties ever – bringin’ down the house.)