zen and the art of hurtling towards the ground at a million miles an hour; a manifesto
HEY GUYS IT'S NEARLY TIME TO EXPRESS YOUR AFFECTION FOR SOMEONE ON THE MANDATED DAY THROUGH THE CAREFULLY COMMERCIAL BARRIER OF TACKY PRESENTS AND IMPERSONAL CARDS!
About three years ago I wrote this: [...] a pretty big step towards acquiring my [heart] is wanting to. Be interested. Want to be near me. If this reads to you like demanding worship then I worry about your relationships - I'd always thought that liking someone was a weighty prerequisite in the dating them field. Hell yes I want attention, for that's what relationships ARE - mutual attention and affection. Jesus. Think about me when I'm gone. Miss me when I'm not there. Be pleased to see me, because you know damn well I do the same about you.
I'd also like adventure and excitement (and really wild things), intelligent conversation, and not to feel like you're settling for me because you think someone better - usually one of my friends, as it happens - would turn you down. Sure, find other people attractive. Want to screw famous men or women. Go "Phwoar" when you see someone fit in the street. But like me. Find me attractive, even if I think it's absurd. Don't wish for my mind in someone else's body. Don't regret my scars, because I don't. They're mine. They're me. Admire my tattoos, be impressed by my sewing, laugh at my atrocious jokes. Be delighted, be charmed, be happy to be in my company and hope to make me feel the same about you.
I'm not remotely close to perfect, and neither are the people I love and have loved. I find flaws exciting, interesting, individual and above all, loveable. Someone (probably my mother) once told me that to love someone not instead of their defects but because of them is giving them permission to be at peace with themselves.
And now, in the run-up to Commercially Dictated Affection Day I'm afraid something else needs to be added to it. That's how I'd want to be loved, that's how I want to love people, even if I probably get it wrong, thinking about it like that. I've done some fucking stupid things in the name of love and, embarrassing and occasionally damaging though they were, and inconclusive though many of them are in the end, I don't think I want to make myself regret them.
I'm not cool. I don't get to be commitmentphobic or aloof or mope about claiming I have no idea how it feels love someone, my heart is a cold stone oh if only someone could change me, god my life is so hard. I'm a giant messy red-hot idiot and I fall in love like I'm going to war and it's amazing and stupid and giddying and horrible and life-affirming every single time. It's like base-jumping, I think; you know you're going to hit the bottom at some point, you know you're going to hurt either a little or a lot, you don't know that you're necessarily going to survive it, but the seconds before the impact are the most incredible rush. Sometimes you don't even need someone to love you back, sometimes it's just enough to turn your heart inside out and let go.
I have done enormous things for love, stupid things, ridiculous, mockworthy things. I've written letters most people would want burnt, I've said things that would make you want to swallow your own tongue in sympathy. I've bled of it and yelled for it and drunk myself unconscious for it, punched walls and mirrors and doors and myself in the head. I've chased it, clung to it, prostrated myself before it, lied for it and tried all manner of absurd gestures to convince the object of whichever affections that I'm sincere. That I mean it. Because I always mean it. And I won't be made to regret that because a retarded majority of people would rather be afraid than happy, would rather be dignified than content, would rather pull tiny threads until the whole possible edifice of joy unravels before their eyes than just fling themselves off the precipice and embrace the madness of it occasionally.
Perhaps your love is small things, remembering birthdays and finding the car keys or letting someone sleep in by five minutes. I'd call that basic consideration. You don't have to be wildly and impossibly smitten with someone to pick up their dry-cleaning, just kind. Perhaps your love is Third Tuesday Of The Month Carefully Timed Dates, perhaps it's just something that slides in beside your busy schedule of clubs and societies. Good for you and good for your order and neatness.
Mine isn't, and I'm not going to be made to regret the fact that it's chaotic and consuming and sporadic and unwieldy. I am a bloody romantic, in the worst possible sense. Not a pragmatist, not a I Think We Should End This Relationship Because It Won't Allow Our Careers To Blossom Fully And Doesn't Fit With My Life Plan person, but an unattractive moron who slumps on your fucking doorstep before you're awake. Yeah, love like this is childish and impractical and terrifying and unpredictable. It makes you feel ALIVE. If the only thing I can afford to do is drag you to the top of the tallest hill in the city and introduce the most beautiful person I know to the most beautiful thing I can think of - London at night spread out like a blanket of living souls - and see the one reflected in each other, that's my present.
I'm not going to be made to regret taking someone I'd never met before to Paris for five days and trailing dog stupid behind her the whole time; I'm not going to be made to regret stacks of frankly purple letters, I'm not going to be made to regret travelling half the country on a whim, and I'm not going to claim that love's not worth it on the measure of several broken hearts, or scars that may never fade, or getting stuck in Exeter bus station at 2am, several hundred miles from home. Sacrifices like that are always worth it.
Love is not a fucking INVESTMENT for your shiny achievement future, it is its own end, its own purpose, its own destination. Even when it doesn't work out - especially when it doesn't work out - it was always worth it.
I would like to stop having to see people who are otherwise worthy of respect cheering themselves on for being too self-absorbed to take that dive. Faux-is-me whining about how you just don't seem to be able to love any one is bad enough; denying that you ever did is shameful and pathetic. Own your goddamn infatuations. Hold your sodding head up and say, "Yeah, I was crazy about her and she didn't love me back. it was amazing and I wouldn't change that or the hurt for the world".
And btw, every living person on this planet "deserves" it, if worthiness is your pissing concern. It's self-reflexive: loving someone makes them worthy of being loved. You do, I do, the kindest and most sainted human beings and the biggest murdering assholes all "deserve" love from someone, most of all themselves. Ourselves.
No, wait. Go ahead and argue with me on this one if you want to, but I am fucking right.
About three years ago I wrote this: [...] a pretty big step towards acquiring my [heart] is wanting to. Be interested. Want to be near me. If this reads to you like demanding worship then I worry about your relationships - I'd always thought that liking someone was a weighty prerequisite in the dating them field. Hell yes I want attention, for that's what relationships ARE - mutual attention and affection. Jesus. Think about me when I'm gone. Miss me when I'm not there. Be pleased to see me, because you know damn well I do the same about you.
I'd also like adventure and excitement (and really wild things), intelligent conversation, and not to feel like you're settling for me because you think someone better - usually one of my friends, as it happens - would turn you down. Sure, find other people attractive. Want to screw famous men or women. Go "Phwoar" when you see someone fit in the street. But like me. Find me attractive, even if I think it's absurd. Don't wish for my mind in someone else's body. Don't regret my scars, because I don't. They're mine. They're me. Admire my tattoos, be impressed by my sewing, laugh at my atrocious jokes. Be delighted, be charmed, be happy to be in my company and hope to make me feel the same about you.
I'm not remotely close to perfect, and neither are the people I love and have loved. I find flaws exciting, interesting, individual and above all, loveable. Someone (probably my mother) once told me that to love someone not instead of their defects but because of them is giving them permission to be at peace with themselves.
And now, in the run-up to Commercially Dictated Affection Day I'm afraid something else needs to be added to it. That's how I'd want to be loved, that's how I want to love people, even if I probably get it wrong, thinking about it like that. I've done some fucking stupid things in the name of love and, embarrassing and occasionally damaging though they were, and inconclusive though many of them are in the end, I don't think I want to make myself regret them.
I'm not cool. I don't get to be commitmentphobic or aloof or mope about claiming I have no idea how it feels love someone, my heart is a cold stone oh if only someone could change me, god my life is so hard. I'm a giant messy red-hot idiot and I fall in love like I'm going to war and it's amazing and stupid and giddying and horrible and life-affirming every single time. It's like base-jumping, I think; you know you're going to hit the bottom at some point, you know you're going to hurt either a little or a lot, you don't know that you're necessarily going to survive it, but the seconds before the impact are the most incredible rush. Sometimes you don't even need someone to love you back, sometimes it's just enough to turn your heart inside out and let go.
I have done enormous things for love, stupid things, ridiculous, mockworthy things. I've written letters most people would want burnt, I've said things that would make you want to swallow your own tongue in sympathy. I've bled of it and yelled for it and drunk myself unconscious for it, punched walls and mirrors and doors and myself in the head. I've chased it, clung to it, prostrated myself before it, lied for it and tried all manner of absurd gestures to convince the object of whichever affections that I'm sincere. That I mean it. Because I always mean it. And I won't be made to regret that because a retarded majority of people would rather be afraid than happy, would rather be dignified than content, would rather pull tiny threads until the whole possible edifice of joy unravels before their eyes than just fling themselves off the precipice and embrace the madness of it occasionally.
Perhaps your love is small things, remembering birthdays and finding the car keys or letting someone sleep in by five minutes. I'd call that basic consideration. You don't have to be wildly and impossibly smitten with someone to pick up their dry-cleaning, just kind. Perhaps your love is Third Tuesday Of The Month Carefully Timed Dates, perhaps it's just something that slides in beside your busy schedule of clubs and societies. Good for you and good for your order and neatness.
Mine isn't, and I'm not going to be made to regret the fact that it's chaotic and consuming and sporadic and unwieldy. I am a bloody romantic, in the worst possible sense. Not a pragmatist, not a I Think We Should End This Relationship Because It Won't Allow Our Careers To Blossom Fully And Doesn't Fit With My Life Plan person, but an unattractive moron who slumps on your fucking doorstep before you're awake. Yeah, love like this is childish and impractical and terrifying and unpredictable. It makes you feel ALIVE. If the only thing I can afford to do is drag you to the top of the tallest hill in the city and introduce the most beautiful person I know to the most beautiful thing I can think of - London at night spread out like a blanket of living souls - and see the one reflected in each other, that's my present.
I'm not going to be made to regret taking someone I'd never met before to Paris for five days and trailing dog stupid behind her the whole time; I'm not going to be made to regret stacks of frankly purple letters, I'm not going to be made to regret travelling half the country on a whim, and I'm not going to claim that love's not worth it on the measure of several broken hearts, or scars that may never fade, or getting stuck in Exeter bus station at 2am, several hundred miles from home. Sacrifices like that are always worth it.
Love is not a fucking INVESTMENT for your shiny achievement future, it is its own end, its own purpose, its own destination. Even when it doesn't work out - especially when it doesn't work out - it was always worth it.
I would like to stop having to see people who are otherwise worthy of respect cheering themselves on for being too self-absorbed to take that dive. Faux-is-me whining about how you just don't seem to be able to love any one is bad enough; denying that you ever did is shameful and pathetic. Own your goddamn infatuations. Hold your sodding head up and say, "Yeah, I was crazy about her and she didn't love me back. it was amazing and I wouldn't change that or the hurt for the world".
And btw, every living person on this planet "deserves" it, if worthiness is your pissing concern. It's self-reflexive: loving someone makes them worthy of being loved. You do, I do, the kindest and most sainted human beings and the biggest murdering assholes all "deserve" love from someone, most of all themselves. Ourselves.
No, wait. Go ahead and argue with me on this one if you want to, but I am fucking right.