A Letter to Max
I think I'm going to have a heart attack.
So, I started reading The Picture of Dorian Grey and it's fantastic. I also started reading Sarah, which is about a little boy truck-stop prostitute. Whenever I stop feeling like my whole body is made of molten iron and swarming bees, I'll resume reading one or both of them. Did I tell you I have a drinking problem, too? It's not a happy thing.
My life is so empty these days. Summer is terrible for people who are used to business. I need religion or something to fill it up all this void. A lover. I think if I could shrink into somebody larger than me every single night; somebody stronger, wiser, more beautiful, I'd never have need of anything again. I could stop being my self, and just be part of something completely good and beautiful. I've come to realize how terrible it is that every single person has two sides, and one is as black as soot and terrible to behold. I'm seeing more and more of my dark side as I grow older; moody, fickle, selfish. I'm a blabbermouth and an elitist, I'm self-centered and lustful for things and people I can't and often shouldn't have. I try so damn hard and everybody can see it; I'm like a teenager desperate for attention. I've got no morals and no beliefs and no strength to draw on when temptation comes to me. I'm not christian; in fact, I don't even believe in sin, but I do believe in imbalance and I am so imbalanced sometimes. I do big, wasteful things when I ought to just stay small and empty and contented with simplicity and labour (which I do love). I think too much and suffer through ninety percent of the process. I wish I had a big reason to stay alive, to do good things, but all I have are these small reasons, like a child's collection of found things in a box: little cloud-white rocks and a foreign coin, a plastic ring, a lost playing card, a piece of a broken tile. It's hard to motivate yourself to do good things when all you have is a piece of broken tile.
Mothers have their children and lovers have each other. I have blue twilights and the feeling that comes from the first two glasses of beer; I have the taste of basil and tomato, the satisfaction of sex, and the first glup of very hot tea. I have Indian mythology and the beauty of greek sculpture. That's great. But it's not grand. If there were a plague, and I were struck down, dying, I would have nothing to offer that plague as a reason not to die. Suffering, even the slightest amount of suffering, seems far too miserable to make the malaise of life worth enduring it.
And that, my love, is the definition of blasé. Get me out of America and into the forest. Get me up on a mountain somewhere with a tribe. Make me a shaman. Take me to a place where I can smear my face in bentonite clay and take demons out of posessed children by sucking on their ears. Let me eat nuts and berries and know that there are demons and gods in every handful of bread I eat. Make me an old man in a place where being an old man is a good thing. Make me a young man in a place where being a young man means more than belonging to a target demographic. Make me a woman in a place where gender is a circle and not a line. I'm tired of America. I'm tired of a humanity that is so big and complicated that there are places on earth where nobody has a name.
Sorry if I got you down.
I'll try to come back up.
I do love the people around me. As much as I get cynical, as bitter as life seems sometime. I love people, and pretend not to sometimes because it seems fashionable to sneer and grow impatient with simplicity and naivete. If I think about it a little each day, I can pretend my heart is a big, full, red rose, all tightly bound and puckered. Reluctant. And if I think about it a little more, I can make that rose glow, and open, and the petals burst outward like a suffocating mouth opening to take breath--but what it's really suffocating for is to exhale. To breathe out sweetness and happiness as a gift. That rose opened is full of love and mercy, boundless and giving as inexhaustibly as one of the world's great rivers, and anything that full of compassion can suffer immensely before ever losing strength. I could be burned and shot and tortured with thumbscrews, but if that rose stayed open and warm in my chest, stayed pure and simple, I could endure all of it.
That's all I need to remember. My heart is a rose.
So, I started reading The Picture of Dorian Grey and it's fantastic. I also started reading Sarah, which is about a little boy truck-stop prostitute. Whenever I stop feeling like my whole body is made of molten iron and swarming bees, I'll resume reading one or both of them. Did I tell you I have a drinking problem, too? It's not a happy thing.
My life is so empty these days. Summer is terrible for people who are used to business. I need religion or something to fill it up all this void. A lover. I think if I could shrink into somebody larger than me every single night; somebody stronger, wiser, more beautiful, I'd never have need of anything again. I could stop being my self, and just be part of something completely good and beautiful. I've come to realize how terrible it is that every single person has two sides, and one is as black as soot and terrible to behold. I'm seeing more and more of my dark side as I grow older; moody, fickle, selfish. I'm a blabbermouth and an elitist, I'm self-centered and lustful for things and people I can't and often shouldn't have. I try so damn hard and everybody can see it; I'm like a teenager desperate for attention. I've got no morals and no beliefs and no strength to draw on when temptation comes to me. I'm not christian; in fact, I don't even believe in sin, but I do believe in imbalance and I am so imbalanced sometimes. I do big, wasteful things when I ought to just stay small and empty and contented with simplicity and labour (which I do love). I think too much and suffer through ninety percent of the process. I wish I had a big reason to stay alive, to do good things, but all I have are these small reasons, like a child's collection of found things in a box: little cloud-white rocks and a foreign coin, a plastic ring, a lost playing card, a piece of a broken tile. It's hard to motivate yourself to do good things when all you have is a piece of broken tile.
Mothers have their children and lovers have each other. I have blue twilights and the feeling that comes from the first two glasses of beer; I have the taste of basil and tomato, the satisfaction of sex, and the first glup of very hot tea. I have Indian mythology and the beauty of greek sculpture. That's great. But it's not grand. If there were a plague, and I were struck down, dying, I would have nothing to offer that plague as a reason not to die. Suffering, even the slightest amount of suffering, seems far too miserable to make the malaise of life worth enduring it.
And that, my love, is the definition of blasé. Get me out of America and into the forest. Get me up on a mountain somewhere with a tribe. Make me a shaman. Take me to a place where I can smear my face in bentonite clay and take demons out of posessed children by sucking on their ears. Let me eat nuts and berries and know that there are demons and gods in every handful of bread I eat. Make me an old man in a place where being an old man is a good thing. Make me a young man in a place where being a young man means more than belonging to a target demographic. Make me a woman in a place where gender is a circle and not a line. I'm tired of America. I'm tired of a humanity that is so big and complicated that there are places on earth where nobody has a name.
Sorry if I got you down.
I'll try to come back up.
I do love the people around me. As much as I get cynical, as bitter as life seems sometime. I love people, and pretend not to sometimes because it seems fashionable to sneer and grow impatient with simplicity and naivete. If I think about it a little each day, I can pretend my heart is a big, full, red rose, all tightly bound and puckered. Reluctant. And if I think about it a little more, I can make that rose glow, and open, and the petals burst outward like a suffocating mouth opening to take breath--but what it's really suffocating for is to exhale. To breathe out sweetness and happiness as a gift. That rose opened is full of love and mercy, boundless and giving as inexhaustibly as one of the world's great rivers, and anything that full of compassion can suffer immensely before ever losing strength. I could be burned and shot and tortured with thumbscrews, but if that rose stayed open and warm in my chest, stayed pure and simple, I could endure all of it.
That's all I need to remember. My heart is a rose.