A few months ago, I was purchasing alcohol from the corner bodega/deli that sold to me despite the fact that I was underage simply because the guy who had the night shift really liked my best friend. Other funny stories revolve around this fellow but on this night he asked me about my "friend", whom I assumed was my best friend and I informed him of her status: that she was well but away in Massachusetts and away from me. He smiled and then inquired after my other "friend" and did a hand motion indicating a height difference. He meant my ex. Immediately my demeanor changed, I frowned and let out an uncomfortable guff and told the clerk that he was my friend no more. He feigned concern but still smiled and let out a hearty laugh, as he is accustomed to do and in his heavy Middle Eastern accent he said that summer was swiftly approaching and that I was sure to find a summer romance. Annoyed at the thought, I quickly collected my booze and my junk food and scoffed at his suggestion. He looked at me with amusement as I stormed out and yelling back at him to have a good night. I haven't gone back there since but I should introduce him... and then thank him.
Over a cup of coffee I angrily stared back at a pair of deeply hurt and confused eyes as I attempted to convey my idiotic amount of ire in the most polite way I knew how while still trying to deliver an emotional blow that would cause those eyelashes to dust those cheeks for months upon months. I sometimes wonder if I ever succeeded and then I become mad at the prospect that I didn't but slowly guilty for ever desiring success over such a matter. My cheeks were aflame, as I've described ad nauseum to my friends and family, as I hissed that I had no intention of being emotionally close to another male for an extraordinarily long time, maybe even never, hoping that he was perceptive enough to decipher the underlying invective of that comment. His eyes told me that he had a vague inclination towards where I had been going.
I always say, "never". I am a pessimist through and through and I can try to varnish that over by calling myself a realist but I am a little too paranoid for that to be entirely true. I would go to middle school dances, the height of my socially awkward phase of which I was brutally made fun of for, and convince myself that they were going to be absolutely terrible. All of those acne-ridden, New Jersey suburban WASP bros in the making would find me sexually repellent and none would grind with yours truly. After repeating this as a mantra in the car on the way there, my mom probably pondered why she was driving thirty minutes out of her way to something he daughter would not even enjoy. Sure enough, four hours later, I would climb back into the car, bathed in sweat and axe body spray with a huge smile in my face after having a mildly successful evening that seemed exponentially better given the fabrication of low expectations. It was fail-safe. To this day, my mother will bring it up once in a while with an air not of pride per sé but... certainly impressed. It seems horrifying when you extrapolate this innocuous trick to get through the debilitating awkwardness of the teen years to life in general. It seems like a dreadful way of looking on life: no one will like you, that you are bound for failure, etc., and truth be told, it does make one a little anxious and neurotic. But it certainly comes in handy... though it is another defense mechanism, another layer between you and someone else that has to come down eventually. I always say "never" and "never" never happens and you are always pleasantly surprised. I always say "never" and then I'm proven wrong.
And so, that excruciatingly long hiatus I was meant to have taken that was supposed to carry me through spinsterhood was remarkably short lived and I am pleasantly surprised. I laugh at the folly of it all. How can I not? All of the sudden I am devouring every single item of someone else's interests; appropriating them, analyzing them, dissecting them... inhaling a plethora of new things I would never have given a second glance or maneuvering my "to check out" lists so that their interest take priority or sitting through things I know I dislike simply because someone else likes them and that must mean something. Books, music, movies, comics, games, television, entertainers... everything. What is it exactly that I think I am doing and how am I justifying all of this to myself? Background material to understand them? Material upon which I can relate to them, discuss with them? Seem cooler? More genuine? Interested? All of the above? A professor once told me if there are multiple questions... the answer is usually all of the above. I answer D. I would like to think that I am making poetry, that I am intellectualizing everything and puzzling a human being together by listening to the lyrics of a certain song but I am pretty certain I am trying mighty hard to justify an overload of emotion I swore would never happen. When you are a pessimist running around pretending to be a realist, you also tend to be a closet hopeless romantic masked as a cynic. It is all a fantastic game that results in a great deal of self-loathing but its funny nevertheless because, as my new found activity of comic book reading would have me realize, we all wear masks. Anyways, the cynic looks at the romantic in euphoria over the whole situation, relishing in this influx of new information to process ... and crosses its arms and shakes its head. We see this stuff in movies and we always point to the screen and say, with half-eaten popcorn spilling out of our mouths, "That could never happen". And sometimes it does and all you can do is stare flabbergasted at the screen (see cereal guy).
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Thursday, July 21, 2011
18
I report from the front lines of the battle taking place in my upper chest cavity that the battle is over. Negotiations were under weigh late last night into the early hours of this morning and all sides have come to an agreement. Concessions were made on all sides and for the first time in history, there had been no casualties.
And so I slip easily into this mellifluously flowing stream of new-found feeling, floating lazily downstream without a care to my name. My fishing pole has retired to my side while I let the sun illuminate the capillaries in my eyelids - a network of tiny vessels bringing the pulsating warmth from my heart to farthest corners of my body. The days of cinnamon and burnt orange still so far off, I have reached the zenith of summer vacation - the very moment that defines the season, that lasts in our memory and within the heart and warms our frostbitten fingers when we shove our hands into our coats after surviving a blizzard. The wet air cut through by a warm breeze, the sticky smell of heat, the drops of sweat beading along the edges of the face, the laughter, the starry nights and the constellations of lightning bugs along the black backdrop of a forest at night. A photographic memory would romanticize these scenes with light vignetting, lens flair, film grain and color-crossed processing to provide a vintage haze in pink and yellow hues. The soundtrack would be something slow, something sweet that kept in time with the rocking of a hammock. These are the easy days that we keep in place of those days when the sun scorches the earth and the cul de sac is abandoned for air conditioning.
But this analogy has run on too long.
I can see things in poetry again, read the most innocuous detail for its beauty and allegory. And maybe this moment of relaxation, of acquiescence, of inhibition will be as brief as the explosion of paranoia, of fear and of anxiety had been... but what of it? And perhaps I am romanticizing, glazing over reality with the dreamy melodies provided by Zero 7 and Air that launch me back to a time that has never existed but I have been looking for this whole time; nostalgia my only true yet dearly beloved malady. You feel as though you are endlessly falling through pink clouds. And perhaps this sounds silly and naive, maybe it even is... but what of it? Need everything be so serious, so controlled, so logical? Need everything be grown-up and utilitarian; cold, factory-made and rational? And perhaps I'll feel differently later, sooner... whenever, if ever ... and perhaps I will look back at this as I did my diaries that I hid under my mattress: embarrassed at my vain attempts at eloquent expression in order to sound romantic, intelligent, and dare I say it, witty. But for a moment I was happy, a luxury few have and even fewer relish in when they recognize it. So I pray that I look back on this and giggle at my carelessness because for this one moment in time, I was happy and I lived my life not according to what anyone told me to do but how things simply worked out.
Life is remarkably simple sometimes. It does what it does and has this way of working out, even when it seems like it doesn't. Of course this sounds incredibly trite and cliché... because it is... but romantic comedies and romances do not warm our hearts for nothing. I realize that my cynicism is a clever ruse to distract both others as well as myself that, at heart, I am a romantic. But for this one moment I can truly appreciate that resistance is futile and ride the crest of this tidal wave.
And so I slip easily into this mellifluously flowing stream of new-found feeling, floating lazily downstream without a care to my name. My fishing pole has retired to my side while I let the sun illuminate the capillaries in my eyelids - a network of tiny vessels bringing the pulsating warmth from my heart to farthest corners of my body. The days of cinnamon and burnt orange still so far off, I have reached the zenith of summer vacation - the very moment that defines the season, that lasts in our memory and within the heart and warms our frostbitten fingers when we shove our hands into our coats after surviving a blizzard. The wet air cut through by a warm breeze, the sticky smell of heat, the drops of sweat beading along the edges of the face, the laughter, the starry nights and the constellations of lightning bugs along the black backdrop of a forest at night. A photographic memory would romanticize these scenes with light vignetting, lens flair, film grain and color-crossed processing to provide a vintage haze in pink and yellow hues. The soundtrack would be something slow, something sweet that kept in time with the rocking of a hammock. These are the easy days that we keep in place of those days when the sun scorches the earth and the cul de sac is abandoned for air conditioning.
But this analogy has run on too long.
I can see things in poetry again, read the most innocuous detail for its beauty and allegory. And maybe this moment of relaxation, of acquiescence, of inhibition will be as brief as the explosion of paranoia, of fear and of anxiety had been... but what of it? And perhaps I am romanticizing, glazing over reality with the dreamy melodies provided by Zero 7 and Air that launch me back to a time that has never existed but I have been looking for this whole time; nostalgia my only true yet dearly beloved malady. You feel as though you are endlessly falling through pink clouds. And perhaps this sounds silly and naive, maybe it even is... but what of it? Need everything be so serious, so controlled, so logical? Need everything be grown-up and utilitarian; cold, factory-made and rational? And perhaps I'll feel differently later, sooner... whenever, if ever ... and perhaps I will look back at this as I did my diaries that I hid under my mattress: embarrassed at my vain attempts at eloquent expression in order to sound romantic, intelligent, and dare I say it, witty. But for a moment I was happy, a luxury few have and even fewer relish in when they recognize it. So I pray that I look back on this and giggle at my carelessness because for this one moment in time, I was happy and I lived my life not according to what anyone told me to do but how things simply worked out.
Life is remarkably simple sometimes. It does what it does and has this way of working out, even when it seems like it doesn't. Of course this sounds incredibly trite and cliché... because it is... but romantic comedies and romances do not warm our hearts for nothing. I realize that my cynicism is a clever ruse to distract both others as well as myself that, at heart, I am a romantic. But for this one moment I can truly appreciate that resistance is futile and ride the crest of this tidal wave.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
17
Up until now I had been drunk on the promise of adventure.. l'aventure... of the unknown. But as I watch the dust settle, I cannot shake the feeling that the final flake to fall will cause an earthquake in my heart. A bitter war is occurring in the center of my torso now between reason, anxiety and foolish hope, three camps fighting the other to conquer both mind and matter. I know what it is that I ought to do. I ought to let go of inhibition, of paranoia, of the debilitating fear and live life as it comes. This fear is not synonymous with the mounting anticipatory adrenaline rush one gets on a roller coaster's first climb... this fear is deep and instinctive... a protective mechanism ... the shot of hesitation you receive as you stand on the threshold of a dark tunnel that has no end in sight.
I sit here consumed with anxiety and insecurity trying to psychoanalyze myself out of an emotional stupor. Can one really be blamed for wanting to medicate one's emotions into submission? To want to amputate one's heart so that all that remains are the phantom pains of emotion? Dostoevsky would tell me to relish in this fear. To suffer means I feel, it means I am human. But with each new wave, I remember the days in which I felt like a shade walking along the banks of the Styx... forever anticipating something but walking without purpose, without feeling and without any sense of outside awareness. There is a comfort in that quality of being numb... as is the state of knowing. Everything is so polarized at the moment. I feel as though I am either reading too much into things or not, accepting too little or too much, building things up or not at all, playing make believe or being hyper-cynical. I cannot find a balance and I don't know how. I want control simply because I foolishly believe it will prevent my heart from being broken; the notion that knowing the future... knowing if, when or how things will end ... might somehow protect me. But knowing if things will end seems too optimistic... knowing when is too pessimistic... and knowing how is masochistic.
This fear is like an ancient Fury that slipped into my soul with serpentine artifice to haunt me with nightmares of my past. She distorts the face of my current interest into the ones of my past - connecting and confusing their present character and qualities with those from ancient history long since repressed. "His eyes have the same look in them just like that one used to have but what can it mean?" They are all distorted visions, misappropriated and misinterpreted so that I can give up while I'm ahead and cut myself off from being human. We call it reason, to reason with ourselves. But is it truly reasoning that takes over the silliness of youthful romance when it becomes something more and when we suddenly become concerned what our best friends, our parents, our minor acquaintances will think? Is it reasoning when we give up simply because it cannot work out? But are these butterflies simply a case of indigestion caused by stress and anxiety?
I know what I ought to do: Throw caution to the wind; ignore what everyone might think; come what may; let go... all this cliché phraseology that sounds like bravery and courage and foolishness and stupidity all at once. But I cannot help but pause and ponder what is at stake. Do I have nothing or everything left to lose? Soon, all this will seem laughably ridiculous but I cannot shake this chill that has crept into my veins.
I sit here consumed with anxiety and insecurity trying to psychoanalyze myself out of an emotional stupor. Can one really be blamed for wanting to medicate one's emotions into submission? To want to amputate one's heart so that all that remains are the phantom pains of emotion? Dostoevsky would tell me to relish in this fear. To suffer means I feel, it means I am human. But with each new wave, I remember the days in which I felt like a shade walking along the banks of the Styx... forever anticipating something but walking without purpose, without feeling and without any sense of outside awareness. There is a comfort in that quality of being numb... as is the state of knowing. Everything is so polarized at the moment. I feel as though I am either reading too much into things or not, accepting too little or too much, building things up or not at all, playing make believe or being hyper-cynical. I cannot find a balance and I don't know how. I want control simply because I foolishly believe it will prevent my heart from being broken; the notion that knowing the future... knowing if, when or how things will end ... might somehow protect me. But knowing if things will end seems too optimistic... knowing when is too pessimistic... and knowing how is masochistic.
This fear is like an ancient Fury that slipped into my soul with serpentine artifice to haunt me with nightmares of my past. She distorts the face of my current interest into the ones of my past - connecting and confusing their present character and qualities with those from ancient history long since repressed. "His eyes have the same look in them just like that one used to have but what can it mean?" They are all distorted visions, misappropriated and misinterpreted so that I can give up while I'm ahead and cut myself off from being human. We call it reason, to reason with ourselves. But is it truly reasoning that takes over the silliness of youthful romance when it becomes something more and when we suddenly become concerned what our best friends, our parents, our minor acquaintances will think? Is it reasoning when we give up simply because it cannot work out? But are these butterflies simply a case of indigestion caused by stress and anxiety?
I know what I ought to do: Throw caution to the wind; ignore what everyone might think; come what may; let go... all this cliché phraseology that sounds like bravery and courage and foolishness and stupidity all at once. But I cannot help but pause and ponder what is at stake. Do I have nothing or everything left to lose? Soon, all this will seem laughably ridiculous but I cannot shake this chill that has crept into my veins.
Friday, July 15, 2011
16
Three hundred and sixty five days ago- I was in Paris anxious about my future, watching with empty eyes my relationship evaporate, and feeling as though I was under fire by everyone who was meant to love me. Unhappy, confused, and completely unaware ... it was more of a nightmare than a vacation. My loved ones looked on terrified as I simply acquiesced to a zombie-like demeanor. Three hundred and sixty five days later, I can only look back on that day and see how far away I am.... how everything has changed.
I'm smiling. I'm laughing. I'm happy.
Nigh two weeks ago, I left the United States in a state of annoyance, loneliness, anxiety and a touch sad and landed in Rome hours before anyone else would arrive. I waited patiently at the meeting spot until an enormous group of Italian tourists congregated in front of me. Waiting impatiently and becoming claustrophobic, I escaped and decided to watch the spot from above. Two hours later, a familiar face appeared. We eyed each other inquisitively for a few seconds, trying to make sure it was the other before confirming the identities. It was "The Comedian" that my professor had been hyping up for since May but had been missing in action - I hadn't realized it was the same person I had taken two classes with already and was entirely surprised to see him. Reluctant but in desperate need of human interaction and company, I invited him for a bite in the airport café and we entertained small talk awkwardly while I tried to ascertain his sexuality and whether or not he really hated me as much as I thought he had and all the while keeping him pinned to my preconceived notions of him. I joined him outside to watch him smoke and a bird shit on my luggage. Mortified and disgusted, I took it to be a bad omen for the upcoming trip and while cleaning everything up and hoping to be simultaneously struck down by a random bolt of lightning, I imagined what else could possibly go wrong. Our group began to assemble and we finally were together and on our bus heading towards Siena. The week that ensued, however, was of course anything but what I could possibly have expected. A pessimist and a cynic, I was pleasantly proven wrong on so many counts... and perhaps unpleasantly on just a few. I tried to understand people, where each phrase could have stemmed from and what it said about them. When the Comedian did begin to speak due to the copious amounts of wine we were having, I saw that I had entirely misjudged him. What I took for haughty, pretentious, elitist egocentricity (albeit painfully cool and intimidating) was his collected cover for a music and video game nerd who was as much of a 13 year old boy as he was a 21 year old man and everything made sense. All of the sudden, I realized I should try to apply this to others in order to prevent from judging them but rather understanding them. Simultaneously, the fates drew us together until we hit "wham - like two cabs on Broadway" [rw]. After months, cynicism and bitterness were replaced by butterflies and stupid giggles that accelerated at the swiftest of rates so that eight days later, we were holding hands and crying over the cruelty of fate. Reason, anxiety and fear battled with hope and foolhardy ambition until a realization, a minor epiphany materialized. This affinity that developed out of nowhere was not aided nor repressed simply because I had gone with the flow. I let it run its course and it had brought me to impulsively switching my flight to spend an extra 24 hours with someone I had only just gotten to know... why dam up the floodgate when it had occurred naturally? After leaving our status as uncomfortably ambiguous, I threw my arms around him before his 12 hour flight for a last good-bye and only one phrase kept repeating itself in my head over and over ... which I had refused to say, something I do not regret in the least but it was a revelation. Mulling it over coffee and tears, it seemed evident to throw caution to the wind. And here I am in Paris, terrified and excited and accepting what the future has in store, good or bad.
Three hundred and sixty five days ago, I was absolutely terrified about the future - entertaining panic attacks as if they were commonplace. Occupation, graduate school, love, friendship, family... all these things seemed so uncertain and out of control. Three hundred and sixty five days later, life is all the more ambiguous and now all the more complicated but to simply reject everything - reject butterflies, anxiety, sadness, happiness, laughter... reject youth simply because the ending is unknown is to reject one's humanity and deny life. It would be a manifestation of Hippolito's clairvoyant protagonist who sees his terrible future and therefore elects to stay at home to do nothing... dying without having done anything.
And so... three hundred and sixty five days later, I choose not to subject my reason to desire nor do I elect to subject passion to anxiety but rather allow the fates to take me where they may. This does not mean I concede and no longer become an active agent in my life but simply just one who tries (key word, tries) not to control what cannot even be known.
Three hundred and sixty five days later- I feel as though I'm finally living and its absolutely terrifying.
I'm smiling. I'm laughing. I'm happy.
Nigh two weeks ago, I left the United States in a state of annoyance, loneliness, anxiety and a touch sad and landed in Rome hours before anyone else would arrive. I waited patiently at the meeting spot until an enormous group of Italian tourists congregated in front of me. Waiting impatiently and becoming claustrophobic, I escaped and decided to watch the spot from above. Two hours later, a familiar face appeared. We eyed each other inquisitively for a few seconds, trying to make sure it was the other before confirming the identities. It was "The Comedian" that my professor had been hyping up for since May but had been missing in action - I hadn't realized it was the same person I had taken two classes with already and was entirely surprised to see him. Reluctant but in desperate need of human interaction and company, I invited him for a bite in the airport café and we entertained small talk awkwardly while I tried to ascertain his sexuality and whether or not he really hated me as much as I thought he had and all the while keeping him pinned to my preconceived notions of him. I joined him outside to watch him smoke and a bird shit on my luggage. Mortified and disgusted, I took it to be a bad omen for the upcoming trip and while cleaning everything up and hoping to be simultaneously struck down by a random bolt of lightning, I imagined what else could possibly go wrong. Our group began to assemble and we finally were together and on our bus heading towards Siena. The week that ensued, however, was of course anything but what I could possibly have expected. A pessimist and a cynic, I was pleasantly proven wrong on so many counts... and perhaps unpleasantly on just a few. I tried to understand people, where each phrase could have stemmed from and what it said about them. When the Comedian did begin to speak due to the copious amounts of wine we were having, I saw that I had entirely misjudged him. What I took for haughty, pretentious, elitist egocentricity (albeit painfully cool and intimidating) was his collected cover for a music and video game nerd who was as much of a 13 year old boy as he was a 21 year old man and everything made sense. All of the sudden, I realized I should try to apply this to others in order to prevent from judging them but rather understanding them. Simultaneously, the fates drew us together until we hit "wham - like two cabs on Broadway" [rw]. After months, cynicism and bitterness were replaced by butterflies and stupid giggles that accelerated at the swiftest of rates so that eight days later, we were holding hands and crying over the cruelty of fate. Reason, anxiety and fear battled with hope and foolhardy ambition until a realization, a minor epiphany materialized. This affinity that developed out of nowhere was not aided nor repressed simply because I had gone with the flow. I let it run its course and it had brought me to impulsively switching my flight to spend an extra 24 hours with someone I had only just gotten to know... why dam up the floodgate when it had occurred naturally? After leaving our status as uncomfortably ambiguous, I threw my arms around him before his 12 hour flight for a last good-bye and only one phrase kept repeating itself in my head over and over ... which I had refused to say, something I do not regret in the least but it was a revelation. Mulling it over coffee and tears, it seemed evident to throw caution to the wind. And here I am in Paris, terrified and excited and accepting what the future has in store, good or bad.
Three hundred and sixty five days ago, I was absolutely terrified about the future - entertaining panic attacks as if they were commonplace. Occupation, graduate school, love, friendship, family... all these things seemed so uncertain and out of control. Three hundred and sixty five days later, life is all the more ambiguous and now all the more complicated but to simply reject everything - reject butterflies, anxiety, sadness, happiness, laughter... reject youth simply because the ending is unknown is to reject one's humanity and deny life. It would be a manifestation of Hippolito's clairvoyant protagonist who sees his terrible future and therefore elects to stay at home to do nothing... dying without having done anything.
And so... three hundred and sixty five days later, I choose not to subject my reason to desire nor do I elect to subject passion to anxiety but rather allow the fates to take me where they may. This does not mean I concede and no longer become an active agent in my life but simply just one who tries (key word, tries) not to control what cannot even be known.
Three hundred and sixty five days later- I feel as though I'm finally living and its absolutely terrifying.
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