Wine (Part VII)
I try not to post as a drunken buffoon, but sometimes when the antsiness hits and I end up consuming the entire bottle for no reason while my companions stand around snickering I feel I have to validate myself somehow.
I think I crossed the barrier today. I started empathising with the counselling clients. I saw echoes of myself in all their problems. I know this would be a problem if I didn't keep a lid on it, a careful detachment. But today it went so well that I thought it useful to truly and warmly empathize. But the drawback comes later in the day, when you realize you've failed in exactly the same way that the lonely peple have failed, and that all your frustrations are really just weaknesses: nothing to get angry over, just something to cry about. And I can't accept that. I mean, the rational part of me can to tally accept it, but rationality is thin ice floating on a deep lake of subroutines which vie for control. And some of them are quite fundamentalist about what they're willing to accept. So I guess I didn't drink the whole bottle for no reason. And I guess I'm seeing what I could become: no prophet and no madman, no teacher and no failure, no soldier and no firebrand, just a mediocrity with combinatorially exploding regrets. Suddenly all the melodramatic songs make sense, but just for a while. Just as long as I've been drinking long enough to be able to discuss this. Unlike many, I don't drink to escape. I drink to face the whole brilliance of life, the whole complexity and the whole madness when am incapable of processing it, incapable of even pretending to keep a lid on it. It's a shame the culture has raised me to suppress these "feelings"; once you've had enough and feel loosened anough you'll face up to anything. I feel: I tremble, I toss and turn, I wake in terrors, I tuck my arms in to avoid the snakes, I feel jealous amd inadequate, I feel naked and soft and wooden and dusty, bereft of face and voiceless, I feel as if breath has been knocked out of me, I feel sad for no reason, I feel pity and I snicker ironically, I mock eanestness which I could never work up the courage to exhibit, I shake in strangers' gazes. A few weeks ago I saw a streetcar making a right turn at the bar where I was sitting and this wave of incredible elation and anticipation hit me. It was this entire foreboding that everything would exlode and multiply and carry on better than before, that I would be better and more deserving, that I would be more active in the shaping of this thing we call life. But what of it?
I've managed to fit myself into a fucking emo song. Great. fucking great. It's a pretty crazy existence. Pretty repetitive. For fuck's sake, it's my seventh wine-themed post.
Consider: "What do you despise? By this you are truly known."
I think I crossed the barrier today. I started empathising with the counselling clients. I saw echoes of myself in all their problems. I know this would be a problem if I didn't keep a lid on it, a careful detachment. But today it went so well that I thought it useful to truly and warmly empathize. But the drawback comes later in the day, when you realize you've failed in exactly the same way that the lonely peple have failed, and that all your frustrations are really just weaknesses: nothing to get angry over, just something to cry about. And I can't accept that. I mean, the rational part of me can to tally accept it, but rationality is thin ice floating on a deep lake of subroutines which vie for control. And some of them are quite fundamentalist about what they're willing to accept. So I guess I didn't drink the whole bottle for no reason. And I guess I'm seeing what I could become: no prophet and no madman, no teacher and no failure, no soldier and no firebrand, just a mediocrity with combinatorially exploding regrets. Suddenly all the melodramatic songs make sense, but just for a while. Just as long as I've been drinking long enough to be able to discuss this. Unlike many, I don't drink to escape. I drink to face the whole brilliance of life, the whole complexity and the whole madness when am incapable of processing it, incapable of even pretending to keep a lid on it. It's a shame the culture has raised me to suppress these "feelings"; once you've had enough and feel loosened anough you'll face up to anything. I feel: I tremble, I toss and turn, I wake in terrors, I tuck my arms in to avoid the snakes, I feel jealous amd inadequate, I feel naked and soft and wooden and dusty, bereft of face and voiceless, I feel as if breath has been knocked out of me, I feel sad for no reason, I feel pity and I snicker ironically, I mock eanestness which I could never work up the courage to exhibit, I shake in strangers' gazes. A few weeks ago I saw a streetcar making a right turn at the bar where I was sitting and this wave of incredible elation and anticipation hit me. It was this entire foreboding that everything would exlode and multiply and carry on better than before, that I would be better and more deserving, that I would be more active in the shaping of this thing we call life. But what of it?
I've managed to fit myself into a fucking emo song. Great. fucking great. It's a pretty crazy existence. Pretty repetitive. For fuck's sake, it's my seventh wine-themed post.
Consider: "What do you despise? By this you are truly known."
posted by A. D. at 12:23 AM
5 Comments:
fascinating - and i mean that in the most seriously complimentary way.
i'm almost tempted to tell you to post more as a "drunken buffoon" - you really put a lot out to think about.
i shall come back and reread your post when i can think coherently, seeing that it's 1 in the morning and i'm dead tired.
mind if i bookmark you?
:)
AlieMalie
Go for it. I've never been hurt by having someone read something I've written.
Cheers!
can you post on your blog when you've finished your book and are getting it published/ how to identify it? been reading your site for a few weeks (hope you don't mind) and i for one would definitely read it.
Unfortunately, I might have been too ambitious when I said that. I can't in good conscience say what I have produced is a book. But if I ever actually manage to get published, I won't fail to self-promote. Thanks for the vote of confidence, though.
a tangent: if you were going to read one or two works of fiction, what would they be?
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