I don't know why sometimes people break down over the smallest things. Given my drive to place logic into every crevice of reality, sudden meltdowns are not permitted in my equations. Imagine a foreign feeling suddenly envelopes you in some way, and you have no idea what caused it. What could this mean? For one thing, it means it could happen again. For another, you would not know when it would happen. And finally, you would not know how to prevent such things. Imagine having no such control over your own self, a thing that should be most immune to such incomprehension.
I just read a short story inspired by alcoholism. The narrator goes through the same sense of lack of control. The only difference is that she is too drunk in her narrative to care, so the reader cares doubly for her. It's easy for me to do so, because I can lay a concise solution out on the ironing board, waiting for her to try it on.
Such tactics cannot be used on things whose roots remain unearthed. I suppose the medicine is somehow embedded in the very process of physical release, but I don't just want a reactive patch-up. Not knowing would mean no armor to iron, no armor to put on, and consequently, no defense against the very first moment of the blow. No matter how instantaneously the pain recoils, it's always the unpredictability that hits the hardest.
**
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
sources
Can I just vent that I really really REALLY do not believe in a supposed "friendship" that consists of no time together? It just doesn't work. People have all kinds of grandiose ideas about how abstract concepts can subsist on abstract fuel. Love, friendship, grief, none of them have to be material based!
Well, I'm calling bullshit. Their sources of subsistence are petty and tangible and necessary. If it's not some physical thing, then at least time, or visible effort, will be needed. This is how all these great concepts unravel--you take them for granted, justify to yourself how they don't need to be watered regularly, and turn your back on them, empty water can in hand, for one too many days.
You know how the most spoiled, fragile, delicate flowers are also the most beautiful? Pause from reading this line and think of the most exquisitely, deliciously, PAINFULLY beautiful flower you can imagine.
Now think of a cactus.
You're right, a cactus, with its super efficient needles, does not need watering at all. So go feast your eyes on a cactus. Because I'm done waiting for your water can to come back.
**
Well, I'm calling bullshit. Their sources of subsistence are petty and tangible and necessary. If it's not some physical thing, then at least time, or visible effort, will be needed. This is how all these great concepts unravel--you take them for granted, justify to yourself how they don't need to be watered regularly, and turn your back on them, empty water can in hand, for one too many days.
You know how the most spoiled, fragile, delicate flowers are also the most beautiful? Pause from reading this line and think of the most exquisitely, deliciously, PAINFULLY beautiful flower you can imagine.
Now think of a cactus.
You're right, a cactus, with its super efficient needles, does not need watering at all. So go feast your eyes on a cactus. Because I'm done waiting for your water can to come back.
**
Sunday, October 10, 2010
candles, revisited
Another night marked with candles, so now, yet another time to reflect on them. The image of warm yellow flickers is really comforting to me. They light just enough of the dark and are kind enough to leave the rest alone. Generosity rules this bunch--who bestow just the right amount of glow upon their mesmerized audience.
Of course, their biggest asset is still the associations they carry, with wishes, with celebration, with loved ones, all of which give a similar glow to the beholder, no? Hope for what you may have. Gratitude for what you do have. And support for achieving all that you have. There is a reason why these associations have the same effect in our insides as candles do in an ordinary room.
When Prometheus gave us fire, the gods punished him for giving mankind too powerful a tool. Greeks dubbed his gift the "means of life". And let's read this description more metaphorically than it was perhaps intended (like how we do with Septembers), a flame uncontrolled indeed has great potential to destroy, but maybe that's precisely why it renders life so apparent and visible to us.
In light (pun intended) of its power, I suppose it's not at all surprising what a simple flicker is capable of--to illuminate what we need to flourish, ignite what we were afraid of starting, and perhaps brighten again what we have left to gather dust.
**
Of course, their biggest asset is still the associations they carry, with wishes, with celebration, with loved ones, all of which give a similar glow to the beholder, no? Hope for what you may have. Gratitude for what you do have. And support for achieving all that you have. There is a reason why these associations have the same effect in our insides as candles do in an ordinary room.
When Prometheus gave us fire, the gods punished him for giving mankind too powerful a tool. Greeks dubbed his gift the "means of life". And let's read this description more metaphorically than it was perhaps intended (like how we do with Septembers), a flame uncontrolled indeed has great potential to destroy, but maybe that's precisely why it renders life so apparent and visible to us.
In light (pun intended) of its power, I suppose it's not at all surprising what a simple flicker is capable of--to illuminate what we need to flourish, ignite what we were afraid of starting, and perhaps brighten again what we have left to gather dust.
**
Saturday, October 2, 2010
love the way you lie
The prime of your life is for making mistakes, right? There's also something in there about learning from them, but I don't have that part down at all. All my chronicled mistakes. They are the same. Same source. Same actors that merely put on different masks during intermission. Same climax. And of course, same dénouement. The unraveling is so familiar I can see in my mind's eye how strings will fall away from the ball before it even rolls from me.
It used to be a very gung-ho process. Learn from this non-learning. A great tagline. There's even something vaguely socratic about it. How perfect. How appropriate. Then all the lessons, all the hope, self-destructs by the next act, the same way the plotlines do. You want tragedy? It's not a will vs. fate thing. It's not a fall from nobility thing. It's a refusal to change thing. Not because the gods are preventing you--in fact, nothing is barring you from the way out--but because something about yourself (ignorance? obstinacy? masochistic tendencies?) roots you to this theater that is ablaze. It's something simultaneously manipulable and not at all. It's embers fueled by tears. You want tragedy?
Come into the flames.
**
It used to be a very gung-ho process. Learn from this non-learning. A great tagline. There's even something vaguely socratic about it. How perfect. How appropriate. Then all the lessons, all the hope, self-destructs by the next act, the same way the plotlines do. You want tragedy? It's not a will vs. fate thing. It's not a fall from nobility thing. It's a refusal to change thing. Not because the gods are preventing you--in fact, nothing is barring you from the way out--but because something about yourself (ignorance? obstinacy? masochistic tendencies?) roots you to this theater that is ablaze. It's something simultaneously manipulable and not at all. It's embers fueled by tears. You want tragedy?
Come into the flames.
**
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