(no subject)
Let's just say I've been overpowered all winter by a misguided devotion to television, fueled by the DV-R acquired in late fall. In the household, we have recently established a deadline for cable television. This deadline will coincide with the introduction of warm weather. Things are going to change around here, most optimistically my daily behvaior.
To welcome change, I must first decide that I've learned something from all this waste of time, and that I can now take what I've learned with me and throw myself forward. This is pretty much how I've always worked -- obsession, conflagration, followed by a nervous wobble in some other but not necessarily better direction.
I've watched many iterations of makeover shows. In grad school, I was ready to write a curriculum solely about the meaning of makeovers in American culture. I take them, even the staging of them, seriously.
Reflecting on all the makeovers I've watched this winter, I thought about my own staged turning points. There are a lot of them, and I know this is the root of my fascination. Why be fascinated with something if it doesn't wind its way back to the only thing one can really be in charge of -- the idea of a self?
So, Einstein's. Einstein's was a significant makeover for me. Some people suddenly become Richard Simmons devotees, I went to Einstein's. Started smoking. Started investigating my ability to be bad and risky for the first time. This was all in confluence with a lot of funny family business, a lot of confusing and upsetting stuff which certainly merited a version of escape.
That was my first time trying out being bad. And in being bad, I allowed myself to be stupid, which is no different than being cruel to myself and other people.
I have to vouch for my own willing stupidity. I half knew what I was doing through all those different mistakes.
I feel less mature at thirty than I've felt my whole life. It's embarrassing because I bet you five dollars I stunted my own evolution in high school.
Sometimes I think about the way I was a bad kid, how my older siblings were tempestuous enough that my parents couldn't afford the emotional strain to pay attention to my badness. I try to remember the exact moments of making decisions. All the decisions were cluttered, maybe I was thirsty for rigidity. I know I was angry a lot. Probably not as often as I am in adulthood.
My parents watched my grades and enforced mild curfews. I learned the routine of parents through siblings, quickly abided by the rules -- said the right things when I did wrong, paid them off to ignore me by saying what I should. I am good at presenting an appropriate representation of my end of a deal.
Oh, the point the point point, or else go on endlessly.
It's only recently that I've become profoundly aware of the determination of age in my own experiences, as in how old I am when other people in my life are at specific ages of their own. It's not that I've been oblivious to age, never that. I just get the whole coexistence between dramatically different places in people's lives better than I used to.
My parents didn't invite friends into our home. Our home was populated with children and children's friends. Adulthood occurred outside of the home.
Adulthood occurred accidentally all the time.
To welcome change, I must first decide that I've learned something from all this waste of time, and that I can now take what I've learned with me and throw myself forward. This is pretty much how I've always worked -- obsession, conflagration, followed by a nervous wobble in some other but not necessarily better direction.
I've watched many iterations of makeover shows. In grad school, I was ready to write a curriculum solely about the meaning of makeovers in American culture. I take them, even the staging of them, seriously.
Reflecting on all the makeovers I've watched this winter, I thought about my own staged turning points. There are a lot of them, and I know this is the root of my fascination. Why be fascinated with something if it doesn't wind its way back to the only thing one can really be in charge of -- the idea of a self?
So, Einstein's. Einstein's was a significant makeover for me. Some people suddenly become Richard Simmons devotees, I went to Einstein's. Started smoking. Started investigating my ability to be bad and risky for the first time. This was all in confluence with a lot of funny family business, a lot of confusing and upsetting stuff which certainly merited a version of escape.
That was my first time trying out being bad. And in being bad, I allowed myself to be stupid, which is no different than being cruel to myself and other people.
I have to vouch for my own willing stupidity. I half knew what I was doing through all those different mistakes.
I feel less mature at thirty than I've felt my whole life. It's embarrassing because I bet you five dollars I stunted my own evolution in high school.
Sometimes I think about the way I was a bad kid, how my older siblings were tempestuous enough that my parents couldn't afford the emotional strain to pay attention to my badness. I try to remember the exact moments of making decisions. All the decisions were cluttered, maybe I was thirsty for rigidity. I know I was angry a lot. Probably not as often as I am in adulthood.
My parents watched my grades and enforced mild curfews. I learned the routine of parents through siblings, quickly abided by the rules -- said the right things when I did wrong, paid them off to ignore me by saying what I should. I am good at presenting an appropriate representation of my end of a deal.
Oh, the point the point point, or else go on endlessly.
It's only recently that I've become profoundly aware of the determination of age in my own experiences, as in how old I am when other people in my life are at specific ages of their own. It's not that I've been oblivious to age, never that. I just get the whole coexistence between dramatically different places in people's lives better than I used to.
My parents didn't invite friends into our home. Our home was populated with children and children's friends. Adulthood occurred outside of the home.
Adulthood occurred accidentally all the time.