Give it up.
Give up the idea that you were special, or important or noticeable.
Give up the notion that the world is ahead of the next thicket, that there is only one more hurdle, that it is really just a matter of time before you are discovered.
Give away the hope for a fresh start, a new beginning, stuff it in the salvos bin and tell the bell ringer his t-shirt says camp wood and it's pouring rain and who does he think he is expecting generosity from in a recession anyhow?
Give up trying and erasing and practicing and editing and rethinking and spell check and doubling back and posture and sucking in your gut and writing a budget and improving your stroke, meeting someone new, apologizing, being forgiven, scratching an itch give it up give it up give it all up.
In The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, which was originally titled A Solitary Soul, the main character, Edna Pontellier, is a lady of wealth and privilege. She falls in love with a younger man during a summer she, her husband, and her two young sons spend on Grand Isle. He goes away to forget her and the risk of ruin.
When she and her family return to their lavish home in new orleans, she slowly dispatches with all her proper wifely duties. Her husband goes away and business, and in his absence, she take up with another younger suitor, sends her children away to country for a visit, so she can move out of her house, and slowly withdraws further from her societal requirements.
At the end of the story, her summer lover returns, only to leave her before they can culminate their affection with a note that says simply, "good by i love you... because i love you good by."
She returns to Grand Isle, and drowns herself.
This book must have been patial inspiration for Less Than Zero. The thematic similarities are astonishing. Characters basing the weight of their purposes in life by their possessions, by their entertainments; whims creating deeper impacts than any clear decisive processes; people driven by their desires and follies; selfishness beyond comprehension; actions begetting actions and hurtling headlong into one's doom while the maw is propped open with pride; the greatest act of narcisissm of all: suicide.
On my side, I wear the words 'disappear here' forever burned into my skin.
Spring is a time of rebirth. It is a time for awakening. But these are dark days, and what do we awaken, when the earth is uncovered and the sleeping green allowed to fertilize and grow?
I wonder if it is not a better idea to burrow deeper, and hold onto something simple. The action of standing still, while wind may scream away your breath, rain pummel your eyelids, ground drift away like sand.
What if we need to sleep standing up?
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
A Blunt Instrument
Sometimes the feeling that I am standing stock still in the middle of an eight lane highway is overwhelming.
I remember in high school being simultaneously incarcerated in my routine and my fears of the unknown. I couldn't leave, I couldn't budge. I didn't feel like I ever effected any kind of change, and the seasons moved, the earth turned, the plants and my nails and my hair grew and I could keep time that way, but otherwise, the world marked its days with blood and guts and screams and fires and paint and songs and running and action action action!
I remember this feeling, when I hit nineteen or so, that finally the blocks were gone, and I was moving, really moving, leaving that gorgeous, billowing cloud of dust behind me, and making tracks. I felt like I was in the cars, driving the cars, and not only that, but I had a fucking destination, and after that, I had another place to go, and I always had something to do, and I almost had to rush, but there was a minute or so, here and there, where I could pause, take a breath, taste the air, and remind myself why I was burning burning burning through all the time in the world. Around then, I threw out every watch I owned.
I still don't carry one. My cell phone is a clock, and I hate it.
It feels as though my life has come to a screeching halt.
I recede.
I pull back.
I am sequestered in this immobile state where there is nothing else to do but watch the clock, and shuffle around, attempting to make progress. I feel so ineffectual sometimes, I want to destroy everything around me just to remind myself that what I do actually matters.
In floods the nihilism. I put the informers on the bedside table, and somewhere in the sweat-soaked night, I thumb through and let my own personal deity (Mr. B.E.E.) sing a song of succumbing.
Give up.
Put away your passion.
Take up the weapons of your immaterial life.
Realize your insignificance and take another
blood racing tablet.
Know this,
there is nothing in this life you will ever do
with more impact
than peeling an orange.
So soak your eyes in tears
cut your fingers to ribbons
take a bottle of what have you
and amp up your cause
so at least when you dig your fingernails
under the skin
you can pretend you're really hurting it.
When I rise, the sun is different. The street slaps back the soles of my shoes, and I feel the wriggling underneath the concrete. But is it just the plants growing? My nails? My hair?
The days melting like icicles, drip drip dripping away, and crashing to the ground another week. It lies in front of me, splintered on the sidewalk, reflecting light and refracting time. The sun passes behind a cloud and all the beauty of the crystalline ice is gone. Its just dirty fragments hurled against the ground.
I choke on it a little, but I eat the orange.
I remember in high school being simultaneously incarcerated in my routine and my fears of the unknown. I couldn't leave, I couldn't budge. I didn't feel like I ever effected any kind of change, and the seasons moved, the earth turned, the plants and my nails and my hair grew and I could keep time that way, but otherwise, the world marked its days with blood and guts and screams and fires and paint and songs and running and action action action!
I remember this feeling, when I hit nineteen or so, that finally the blocks were gone, and I was moving, really moving, leaving that gorgeous, billowing cloud of dust behind me, and making tracks. I felt like I was in the cars, driving the cars, and not only that, but I had a fucking destination, and after that, I had another place to go, and I always had something to do, and I almost had to rush, but there was a minute or so, here and there, where I could pause, take a breath, taste the air, and remind myself why I was burning burning burning through all the time in the world. Around then, I threw out every watch I owned.
I still don't carry one. My cell phone is a clock, and I hate it.
It feels as though my life has come to a screeching halt.
I recede.
I pull back.
I am sequestered in this immobile state where there is nothing else to do but watch the clock, and shuffle around, attempting to make progress. I feel so ineffectual sometimes, I want to destroy everything around me just to remind myself that what I do actually matters.
In floods the nihilism. I put the informers on the bedside table, and somewhere in the sweat-soaked night, I thumb through and let my own personal deity (Mr. B.E.E.) sing a song of succumbing.
Give up.
Put away your passion.
Take up the weapons of your immaterial life.
Realize your insignificance and take another
blood racing tablet.
Know this,
there is nothing in this life you will ever do
with more impact
than peeling an orange.
So soak your eyes in tears
cut your fingers to ribbons
take a bottle of what have you
and amp up your cause
so at least when you dig your fingernails
under the skin
you can pretend you're really hurting it.
When I rise, the sun is different. The street slaps back the soles of my shoes, and I feel the wriggling underneath the concrete. But is it just the plants growing? My nails? My hair?
The days melting like icicles, drip drip dripping away, and crashing to the ground another week. It lies in front of me, splintered on the sidewalk, reflecting light and refracting time. The sun passes behind a cloud and all the beauty of the crystalline ice is gone. Its just dirty fragments hurled against the ground.
I choke on it a little, but I eat the orange.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
