007.
Yesterday was emotionally strange for me, and I can only attribute part of that strangeness to the fact that anyone who sits through almost nine solid hours of David Lynch movies is inevitably going to wind up feeling shaken, disoriented, and a bit deranged. I have a problem with jealousy. Not normal kinds of jealousy, exactly, like material jealousy or sexual jealousy. This is jealousy on a more pernicious plane, a deeper level. I hate myself, often. I don't think I have any worth as a person. I want someone, some impartial and God-like figure who is under no obligation to love me just on account of my existence, to tell me that I did something right, that I was good, and talented, and uniquely important in the life of the world. I don't mean that I would have to be better than everyone else, or that I would like to be famous. I only want to be smart, skilled, principled, and worthy. I want to stop botching every second chance I get. I want to know what I'm doing, and I want to know when what I'm doing is right, and I want to stop feeling like an inferior specimen of humanity-- I want to stop feeling that if I could crawl into someone else's life and be them, I would do it in a shot. That's impossible, and wanting it only makes me suffer. (I should stop wanting it, then.) I don't want to have an unrealistic idea of my abilities and limitations, nor do I want to be complacent, but I do want to be someone who can (always) stand the person she has to be. I want to be someone with a purpose. Other people appear to have purpose, or at least gifts. My only gifts are things like being occasionally capable of a bedraggled, non-photogenic sort of prettiness that attracts creeps like wasps to cola; accidentally saying funny things because I'm not very bright; writing poetry that most people don't understand in an age when nobody much even cares about poetry anymore, anyway. I hate the system that tells me any non-marketable abilities are useless, but I don't know that I can actually concieve of a viable alternative. My life feels dead-ended and pointless. It's not that I don't like a lot of things about the world; I just don't see how a person like me can hack another several decades in it. I'm not allowed to simply be an observer. I'm supposed to do things-- and it isn't even that I don't like to do the things that are expected of me, or that I'm afraid to do them, but that often I literally can't. I can't, and I can say that I can't because I have tried, I have done my best, and my best is never enough. And no one, no one in any position of importance in the world, thinks I'm valuable enough to make huge allowances for me in that department. They probably shouldn't. No one is going to let me take one class and stay enrolled in school as a full-time student. My adviser's eyes slid nervously off my skin and she told me to seek professional help and that was that.
I understand that this thinking is a little warped, but it still overtakes me from time to time, on gray days, and I wind up running full-tilt down the sidewalk for no reason. Collapsing on the pavement, slapping at it with my open hands, muttering "Fuck, fuck, fuck," under my breath, only vaguely aware that I'm saying it out loud at all. The outburst of emotion is so extreme I don't think it can be normal, but it passes quick enough. I force myself to breathe deeply and concentrate on the many squirrels that dig tiny fingernail-claws into oak-bark as they scurry up various trees. Scattered across a green lawn.
I spent most of my adolescence completely sober and drug-free (including prescription medications), save for a lot of coffee and tea. I was still awful. I still felt like I was dreaming half the time, and the world would tilt and spin by in a blur, and the thing is that even living a life less exciting or frenetic than many lives, everything still hit me too hard-- I was too much as a result, too excited, too sad, too angry, too scared, too enthusiastic, too talkative, too shy. Nothing right. Nothing by halves. I was a true and consistent underachiever (my parents were proud and relieved if I managed to make a B- in math), but I wasn't exactly what you'd call a wild child; I just mean mentally, emotionally. It sometimes took me hours to complete simple homework assignments, even if I focused as much as I was able, didn't work on anything else, didn't take any breaks. Other people could tell you similar stories, sure, but some bit of me is convinced that I am worse, I'm worse, I'm more screwed-up and less salvageable, and I'm pathetic, innately pathetic, I could be squeaky-clean and diligent and even calm and I'd still fail, fail, fail, fail. I really just want to finally do something right for once, execute it without falter or flaw. That's all.
Last night I dreamed that I was held down and had my hair forcibly cut very, very short by persons unknown. A gang of rogue hairdressers, perhaps. I couldn't see their faces. I'm sure this had an important symbolic meaning, probably related to my feeling unable to accomplish any goal or task I set myself (I've been trying to grow my hair out; it doesn't grow all that fast), or powerless (being forced or pressured to do things I don't want to do), or humiliated (this was meant to embarrass me, I knew, and the resulting haircut was...well, actually it looked a bit like a cross between Rimbaud-hair and a pixie cut, which I wouldn't find so ugly in real life but thought appalling in my dream). Whatever. For the most part, I was just relieved when I woke up and all my hair was still on my head, hanging slightly past chin-length, coiled and tangled from restless sleep.
Here's some music, then. There's no real organizing theme; I listen to the Smiths a lot while I'm doing household chores; I recently read a book whose main character mentions that she's a Poe fan; I think the cello is the most beautiful and haunting of all instruments; I've been morbid this weekend. Well. You know.
1. A Rose is a Rose, Poe
A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose, said my good friend, Gertrude Stein.
She knows that I go to the ol' Deux Magots and I drink Pernod through the night...
2. Ask, The Smiths
Shyness is nice, and shyness can stop you
from doing all the things in life that you'd like to do.
So if there's something you'd like to try,
if there's something you'd like to try, ask me,
I won't say no, how could I?
3. Suspended in Gaffa, Kate Bush (music video)
Some days my feet are feet of mud.
It all goes slo-mo. I don't know why I'm crying.
Am I suspended in gaffa?
4. Gallows, CocoRosie (music video)
Just listen to the whole song and watch the whole video and give them your whole attention for the duration, okay? It's ballad-ish and gothic and...storytelling, and very, very absorbing. I think you have to let yourself be absorbed to appreciate this.
5. Wrapped in Piano Strings, Radical Face
You said, "We're just the walking dead,"
so I pulled the trigger and we floated off...
6. Hello, Night, Zoe Keating
(instrumental)
7. Long Division, Samantha Crain
Oh, elder of anger, oh, child of woe,
where come your divisions, if not from below?
If not from above, if not from below,
and not from within...
8. Autoclave, The Mountain Goats
When I try to open up to you, I get completely lost
(houses swallowed by the earth, windows thick with frost),
and I reach deep down within, but the pathways twist and turn,
and there's no light anywhere, and nothing left to burn.