Only trouble is, gee whiz...
I alternately tell myself I'm going to post more and decide to just cancel my LJ account altogether. I can still have an f-list and comment without pretending I'm maintaining a journal of my own.
Life simply hasn't been that journal-worthy lately. I mean, even when it is, the thought of writing it all out is exhausting. Maybe because I write for eight hours at work, and it's essentially the same type of writing -- non-fiction narrative -- and frankly, no less boring than writing about my own life has become.
I was reading Arbogast on Film the other day, and he said this in his review of East German film Solo Sunny:
"Sunny's future seems bright until Ralph betrays her and her band drops her in favor of someone less complicated."
I don't know why that phrase, "drops her in favor of someone less complicated" resonated with me so much. Maybe partly because I've been reading Jezebel faithfully lately and realizing how angry I still am -- about everything, or perhaps rather everyone. I've been dumped by boyfriends, or undumped by unboyfriends, three times in the last year-and-a-half, sometimes fairly and mutually (Neil) and sometimes not (DH) and sometimes like Rick in Casablanca* (Scott). Every time, I got the feeling that I was just too much trouble.
Which has led to the acknowledgment on my part that I am trouble, at least for a man. Frustratingly irreducible to something sweet and beautiful -- fitting that, having been nicknamed after a bird, it would be a flamingo. No sparrows or wren or chickadees here, just a tacky, awkward water creature. You watch flamingos lope around and never for a minute believe they can actually fly. I'm prone to cuteness as a defense mechanism, which I would imagine is confusing as hell -- who the hell translates "coy" as "afraid" without subtitles? And can we say "mercurial" rather than "unreliable and painfully neurotic"?
And yet, despite being in most people's estimation a hot mess, still I find that most of the people I meet fail to live up *my* standards. I spend most of my time thinking about the people I want to be around, the ideal mates who just don't exist, or if they do are totally out of my league. "...I'm dreaming my life away."
Lately I just keep feeling... maybe because I work with such a maddeningly normal, straight-arrow group of people. Can I say "boring"? Just... small people. "Get married, have babies, climb professional ladder, buy more stuff" people. I'm totally unaccustomed to this after Madison -- I admit, I miss being surrounded by people who did what they did just for the love of it, people who would still do the work if they weren't being paid and still did the work even though they were paid very, very badly.
And surrounded by these people, I feel odd, and like I'm getting odder still. I'm being laughed at, not with. Maybe I could cope with that at work if there were somewhere else where that wasn't the case, but the only time in my life when I don't feel like an outsider now is when I'm with Bartlet for America and Sparky, or Neil, or in New York with my people.
Really, it feels like college. I guess in Madison I got so used to being surrounded by kindred spirits that I forgot that it's not like that everywhere. I thought I'd gotten more well-adjusted, when in fact I just found an environment where I didn't have to adjust.
*"I remember every day, especially the last one: a guy standing on a train platform with a comical look on his face because his insides have just been kicked out."
Life simply hasn't been that journal-worthy lately. I mean, even when it is, the thought of writing it all out is exhausting. Maybe because I write for eight hours at work, and it's essentially the same type of writing -- non-fiction narrative -- and frankly, no less boring than writing about my own life has become.
I was reading Arbogast on Film the other day, and he said this in his review of East German film Solo Sunny:
"Sunny's future seems bright until Ralph betrays her and her band drops her in favor of someone less complicated."
I don't know why that phrase, "drops her in favor of someone less complicated" resonated with me so much. Maybe partly because I've been reading Jezebel faithfully lately and realizing how angry I still am -- about everything, or perhaps rather everyone. I've been dumped by boyfriends, or undumped by unboyfriends, three times in the last year-and-a-half, sometimes fairly and mutually (Neil) and sometimes not (DH) and sometimes like Rick in Casablanca* (Scott). Every time, I got the feeling that I was just too much trouble.
Which has led to the acknowledgment on my part that I am trouble, at least for a man. Frustratingly irreducible to something sweet and beautiful -- fitting that, having been nicknamed after a bird, it would be a flamingo. No sparrows or wren or chickadees here, just a tacky, awkward water creature. You watch flamingos lope around and never for a minute believe they can actually fly. I'm prone to cuteness as a defense mechanism, which I would imagine is confusing as hell -- who the hell translates "coy" as "afraid" without subtitles? And can we say "mercurial" rather than "unreliable and painfully neurotic"?
And yet, despite being in most people's estimation a hot mess, still I find that most of the people I meet fail to live up *my* standards. I spend most of my time thinking about the people I want to be around, the ideal mates who just don't exist, or if they do are totally out of my league. "...I'm dreaming my life away."
Lately I just keep feeling... maybe because I work with such a maddeningly normal, straight-arrow group of people. Can I say "boring"? Just... small people. "Get married, have babies, climb professional ladder, buy more stuff" people. I'm totally unaccustomed to this after Madison -- I admit, I miss being surrounded by people who did what they did just for the love of it, people who would still do the work if they weren't being paid and still did the work even though they were paid very, very badly.
And surrounded by these people, I feel odd, and like I'm getting odder still. I'm being laughed at, not with. Maybe I could cope with that at work if there were somewhere else where that wasn't the case, but the only time in my life when I don't feel like an outsider now is when I'm with Bartlet for America and Sparky, or Neil, or in New York with my people.
Really, it feels like college. I guess in Madison I got so used to being surrounded by kindred spirits that I forgot that it's not like that everywhere. I thought I'd gotten more well-adjusted, when in fact I just found an environment where I didn't have to adjust.
*"I remember every day, especially the last one: a guy standing on a train platform with a comical look on his face because his insides have just been kicked out."