I Just Hang On (Suffer Well)
I was in Beachwood today to see Dr. Warren. I spent a few hours after that at Borders looking at books and reading. I am going to break my bank if I keep going to bookstores. I obtained Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis, Ada, or Ardour by Vladimir Nabokov, On Formally Undecidable Propositions Of Principia Mathematica And Related Systems by Kurt Gödel, Story of O by Pauline Réage, and Requiem For a Dream on DVD. My favorite thing about good Borders employees is that they will strike up a conversation on something you are checking out, but they will know what not to comment on, and will behave as if it weren't even there. A middle aged woman rang up my purchases, and we talked about Nabokov's stunning artistry with the English language in light of the fact that he was Russian. She didn't even bat an eyelash as she scanned the bar code on my 1950s French torture porn. A+ for her.
I also started wearing gloves today. My nail biting has gotten too severe, and my nails are painfully bitten to the quick. I found an old pair of white lace gloves I'd gotten from a thrift store a while back, and went out wearing those and a white dress. Multiple people commented on the gloves, but they did their job, and I think they looked nice. Sadly, I'm rapidly destroying them as I bite at the loose threads. Since I can't chew my nails, I've gone after the gloves. I'll need to find new gloves quickly.
I also had to make an Emergency Notebook Purchace because I had the urge to scrawl. I'll transcribe some of what I penned here.
For all the thinking I do, an astoundingly large proportion of my actions are thoughtless. My thoughts, like souring ponds, cut off from outside currents, are prone to inaction, while my actions have a history of being spontaneous and regrettable in ways that could have been prevented had I devoted any of my excessive rhumination to them before the fact, rather than after.
This pattern is particularly evident in my romantic endeavors, if you can even call them that. I spend uncountable hours longing for an abstract sense of fulfillment and the avatar du jour to whom I have attached this fulfillment. Then, without reason, I'll end up in an insubstantial tryst with someone I barely know, then try to be surprised when I'm left unsatisfied. I can recall all my sordid history, and yet I repeat it still. Dusky mornings lead into kisses, clumsy and off-rythm, as out of synch as their participants. In some way, I hope that this will prolong my fading feeling of life, and wring some last bit of blood from the night as it receeds. I do not want it for its own sake, nor his or hers. It's not the pressing together of our more-sober-than-we'd-like-to-admit lips that I want. This is just a dramatization.
There's more, but it's pornographic and isn't really substantial. It's just me playing with pretty phrases. "Pale bodies writhing on white sheets, crumpling them under the push and strain" was decent, as was the bone-grinding image that I completely ripped off of Propertius.
I want to do something with a conversation fragment I had with Nada a while back. It was very scriptable.
Why were you kneeling?
Because it was comfortable? It's really an inconsequential detail.
But you chose to mention it in the story. Why were you kneeling?
I don't know. Why is it important?
It's a sexually loaded position.
In what way?
It indicates submission.
There was no submission going on. This wasn't even related to sex. How is that submissive?
The lowering of height is a sign of submission for pretty much all mammels. Additionally, it's hard to spring up rapidly from a kneeling position. It's vulnerable.
Okay then, why was I kneeling?
I don't know!
You're not very good at this, Dr. Freud.
Speaking of scriptable conversations, I talked to Benny for the first time in far too long. He said that if I were a movie, Kubrick would have directed me. I think that's fair enough.
Aside from that, I don't have much for you. I got assigned to a double at Reed, which means that some poor girl is my roommate. We'll see how that goes.
I also started wearing gloves today. My nail biting has gotten too severe, and my nails are painfully bitten to the quick. I found an old pair of white lace gloves I'd gotten from a thrift store a while back, and went out wearing those and a white dress. Multiple people commented on the gloves, but they did their job, and I think they looked nice. Sadly, I'm rapidly destroying them as I bite at the loose threads. Since I can't chew my nails, I've gone after the gloves. I'll need to find new gloves quickly.
I also had to make an Emergency Notebook Purchace because I had the urge to scrawl. I'll transcribe some of what I penned here.
For all the thinking I do, an astoundingly large proportion of my actions are thoughtless. My thoughts, like souring ponds, cut off from outside currents, are prone to inaction, while my actions have a history of being spontaneous and regrettable in ways that could have been prevented had I devoted any of my excessive rhumination to them before the fact, rather than after.
This pattern is particularly evident in my romantic endeavors, if you can even call them that. I spend uncountable hours longing for an abstract sense of fulfillment and the avatar du jour to whom I have attached this fulfillment. Then, without reason, I'll end up in an insubstantial tryst with someone I barely know, then try to be surprised when I'm left unsatisfied. I can recall all my sordid history, and yet I repeat it still. Dusky mornings lead into kisses, clumsy and off-rythm, as out of synch as their participants. In some way, I hope that this will prolong my fading feeling of life, and wring some last bit of blood from the night as it receeds. I do not want it for its own sake, nor his or hers. It's not the pressing together of our more-sober-than-we'd-like-to-admit lips that I want. This is just a dramatization.
There's more, but it's pornographic and isn't really substantial. It's just me playing with pretty phrases. "Pale bodies writhing on white sheets, crumpling them under the push and strain" was decent, as was the bone-grinding image that I completely ripped off of Propertius.
I want to do something with a conversation fragment I had with Nada a while back. It was very scriptable.
Why were you kneeling?
Because it was comfortable? It's really an inconsequential detail.
But you chose to mention it in the story. Why were you kneeling?
I don't know. Why is it important?
It's a sexually loaded position.
In what way?
It indicates submission.
There was no submission going on. This wasn't even related to sex. How is that submissive?
The lowering of height is a sign of submission for pretty much all mammels. Additionally, it's hard to spring up rapidly from a kneeling position. It's vulnerable.
Okay then, why was I kneeling?
I don't know!
You're not very good at this, Dr. Freud.
Speaking of scriptable conversations, I talked to Benny for the first time in far too long. He said that if I were a movie, Kubrick would have directed me. I think that's fair enough.
Aside from that, I don't have much for you. I got assigned to a double at Reed, which means that some poor girl is my roommate. We'll see how that goes.