the child is grown, the dream is gone

i felt the need to jot down the following observations i and a conversational partner made today, but i am too lazy to actually restructure the comments we said into paragraph format. therefore, you, Nonexistent Reader, shall simply have to muddle through the discourse.

Laskuraska:
Remember when cartoons used to have jokes in them that were meant for adults?
I miss that
New cartoons don't usually have them
but the older ones did, and watching them as an adult is just as fun

Zen:
well i love Butch Hartman cartoons
like Danny Phantom
Fairly Oddparents
they've got that thing where the audience isn't just kids but teens and adults too
not as cracktastic and glorious as Freakazoid or The Animaniacs, but they're the classics, so, you know.

Laskuraska:
yeah
Animaniacs was fucking great
I miss that show too
the thing is though- I don't want them to try to make new ones.
They'd ruin it ;-;

Zen:
indeed
the era has passed
it's like getting ska bands back into pop culture

Laskuraska:
yeah

Zen:
you can't. the need for them in america is gone
you can fuse some of the reggae sound, but the personality of america has changed

Laskuraska:
the question is what do we need right now, really. We're not getting it or we'd be less violent anf ig'nant.

Zen:
grown up.
indeed

Laskuraska:
We need to find out what we need and take it.
Maybe we need a big bowl of post-post rock
lol
whatever it is we need, it
's probably not here yet.
Someone needs to make it.

Zen:
hahah
we're just getting into post-postmodernism
give us time

Laskuraska:
hahaha
Yes. We're not ready for that many post-posts.
And see here is my issue with calling stuff "modern" or "post-___".
Now modern means like 60 years ago, and we're post-post-modern, And that's rediculous.
I mean, modern is supposed to be a word that refers to the state of the world right now, in'nit? As in "in modern times we use hummers instead of cars usually."
"- because we is ig'nant"

Zen:
pretty much yes
it was also supposed to be about the mindset though
instead of reminiscing about "the good ol' days" it was about moving forward
1950s was the supposedly Golden Era Of American Advancement
everything was supposed to shape up and we'd defeated the economy and hitler and we were heading to the stars
it was all go go go
until we realized some of us were falling behind
and some of us were chained to the floor
and still more of us said 'fuck you stars' and went off slamming their doors, playing loud music and practicing their Pretentious Twat Smirk in the mirror while salivating over "art" from marcel duchamp

Laskuraska: hahaha yes.
A few of us tried to build elevators
but they were like "hey no blacks and women allowed on my elevator" and then the other white guys pissed on the engine and broke the elevators because that's what you get for being a giant dick.
And the Asians were like "Hey can we not live in concentration camps anymore? The war's been over for like ten years"
and the white guys who peed on the elevators were like "Ok guys come on out"

Zen: precisely
you stole that from a history textbook.

i wonder what our descendants will say about post-postmodernism, once society has grown enough to shed the cultures of this era and don the idiosyncrasies of the next.

my fair lady

once, i laid down the bill for some customers, discretely as any dutiful waitress, and by some chance glanced down at my fingers, still gripping the corner of the bill holder. one of the men already had a hovering hand awaiting my self-removal from the tableside, and i recall thinking about the image in my mind of a thick hand on a bill vs. a smaller, softer one with chipped polish on the fingers instead of hairy knuckles. the juxtaposition seemed strange to me, like my hand shouldn't have been on it. it took me a while to realize why, but in all my time as a waitress, i have only rarely seen a woman pay for the food when her company also included at least one grown man.

my own father fits the same profile, so i suppose my socialization is to blame for why the reversal of roles would stand out to me. i don't assume something so daft  as that a female breadwinner (or bread-payer-for, at any rate) would destabilize society, but it would certainly break a mold i still have yet to see reshaped.

****

as a child, rarely ever did i dream of marriage. 

actually, that's not true. i never imagined my wedding, which is what one hears about little girls, isn't it? a mother walking in on her daughter, all overdolled in makeup until she resembles more a clown than a lady, stumbling around in too-big heels and a trailing dress, and she doesn't frown at the hurricane that's blown through the room, but coos because her little girl has been properly socialized, and in the end that's the only job of a parent. 

but such a comment is for another post.

i wonder how many girls thought about marriage, as opposed to the ornate quality of their wedding decorations. how many pondered who would raise the children; whose job would be the force behind any migration of familial location; who would do the driving and the paying and the speaking to members of society outside the family unit. because that's as much a matrix of choices in marriage as is picking apart one another's guest list when planning a wedding.

all this post-postmodern world has bequeathed to its generations is the cliquifying of individuality, the recognition of even the most obviously androgynous traits (and those who insist on viewing them as such) to the LGBT community's claims department, and the polarization of all behavior any woman exhibits (or inhibits) in light of the 'type' of woman it makes her. to someone with only two decades marked on the bingo scoresheet of life experiences, even the willingness to wear an engagement ring, as opposed to the demand that her fiance wear one as well, is some Epic Revelation Regarding Her Opinions Of Her Ancestors' Fight For Her Right To Be Masculine. 

not-so-secretly, all i want to be is me, and to hell with gender roles and societal expectations, but even i can squint through my cloud of idealism well enough to recognize reality right before it boxes my ears. history is a tale spun by the victors, and if we aren't always fighting then the story isn't deemed interesting enough to tell, so sometimes we just make it up. 

it's because we cannot let anything exist without letting everyone dig a fingernail into it that my marriage - assuming i ever actually meet someone i could imagining myself willing to spend a lifetime With Me as opposed to just around me, like my dearest and most prized friends - would be niggled at and prodded with and stipulated upon before i even agreed to undertaking it. 

which, ok: writing the fine print before signing to the contract is always a wise idea, but i wonder just how many more conditions are set nowadays than in ye oldedayes, because so many women are under the assumption that if they list a quota on how many hours a week their husbands must allow them outside working and shopping, that they will be doing the foremothers of feminism proud. in the end, though, they're still defining themselves by their relation to men; drinking vodka martinis instead of beers on a raucous night out because they hold themselves at a higher class than men; wearing high heels and a slinky dress to work because they happen to have bodies that are less aesthetically awkward than men; hiring someone else to raise/watch/interact with the children because they refuse to be held down by domestic responsibilities any more than their masculine counterparts.

perhaps i am putting more thought into this than required (wouldn't be the first time i stuck philosophy in where it wasn't recommended), but i imagine the utmost a woman can do for marriage, or feminism, or for anti-discrimination movements anywhere, is to refine her self-concept (and her intentions, and certainly her values) internally. 

****

if i marry, it won't be because that's 'what you do' or because i intend to listen to any biological clock, or because i am secretly waiting for the one person in all of creation who, by his battered lonesome, can finish my puzzle better than the jagged pieces i collect from everyone else who has ever influenced me. 

if i marry, i won't change my name, and i won't ask my fiance to change his - not as some vehement feminist message about how i am tied but not bound, but simply because i've actively struggled against letting other people drape names on me like mantling.

unless it was a clearly superior last name, that is. then i would change it just to introduce myself and hear the syllables roll around in my mouth.

if i marry, i won't quit my job to raise children, and i won't pawn them off on a daycare center. mostly because i don't really want children (i rather expect to be an atrociously-tempered, inconsistent, impertinent mother, and why, if i could avoid it, would i burden anyone with whatever psychological scarring that would cause, thereby creating a vicious serial killer?). 

if i do end up reproducing, my husband can take off time or work from home and rear them, because he would be the one who'd begged for them in the first place.

if i marry, i won't keep an immaculate house. i wouldn't even have a house, since i much prefer more cramped dwellings like inner-city apartments (i can sacrifice living in a tenement, though). i would wash dishes if what i needed at the moment was unclean. i would sweep/vaccuum if i couldn't walk barefoot across a floor without wincing at the sensation of dirt squishing itself between my toes. i usually don't ever really clean until i get disgusted or i find myself in an obsessive-compulsive fit of tidiness. instead of worrying about what a 'bad' wife that might make me, i just chalk it up to artistic nature and move on.

if i marry, i won't have dinner waiting on the table precisely at mealtimes. mostly because i don't have a set meal time, i just eat when i am hungry, but also because if anyone's going to be enforcing a family dinner, it's whomever happens to be the better cook.

if i marry, i will continue to have friends my husband doesn't share, and probably a few he hates. as i imagine he will. i never understood couples whose lives suddenly revolve around one another, who think love is spending nearly every waking second together. nor can i understand why they are so shocked that the spark dies after being throttled for twenty years.

...and so many other stipulations, but after a while that just becomes another random list, and not something that matters to this post.

so, yeah, I felt so scared

why, i wonder, are our lives so defined by cycles?

wake, shower, eat, brush teeth, go [to work, to school, to ever-present errands], return, eat, vegge out, sleep, wake...repeat.
repeat.
repeat.

glance, see, dilate pupils, smile, prowl, approach, negotiate, take, have, lose/break, cry, scowl, leave, glance...repeat.
repeat.
repeat.

breathe, cry, eat/sleep/shit, discover, laugh, love, grow, bleed, break, heal, learn, [live], migrate, procreate [, teach, settle, fade, wither, decompose]...repeat.
repeat.
repeat.

all we can hope for is that we are not hamsters in wheels; fixed.
roll down every hill, tumble blindly past each valley - enforce a cycle
move the subject forward.

get on with the fascination [each another's audience]

i wrote the following at 5am last week. the editing of my rough draft was a harrowing process, involving many a threat to just trash the whole thing and drop out of college. to forget i that i ever had such aspirations.

are all writers this self-loathing?

also: the title is a line from an Arctic Monkeys song.

****
it's the red wine this time, but that is no excuse

you're going to tell Angie, because how could you not? Angie has always been privy to your blackest secrets (not your deepest, necessarily, but certainly your darkest) because Angie is the only person you know who could understand them, implicitly.

Angie used to fuck around. with men, with women, with random streetpeople she'd found in bars. with you, a few times, in the beginning. with acid-laced cigarettes, with vodka and anti-depressants; with rusted chains and never-dulled knives; she fucked around with everything she could mix and match. now she's on the up-and-up, with a brood of fresh-faced children and a handsome man with his hand on her lower back, steering her away from her demons.

you aren't so lucky.

or perhaps that's not fair; can one really blame luck for events that unfold because of one's own decisions, hastily-made as they might be? of course not. in the end, it's not luck - good or bad - that has you pressed between him and the creaking door of his flat, the shadows not distorting either of your faces enough for you to pretend confusion. you know exactly whose nimble fingers are rubbing circles into your spine. further: you know exactly whose aren't.

thinking of Andrew is probably not the best way to lose oneself in emotion, because it's David's fingers that entertwine with yours, David's skin getting grazed by silver and diamond. in an instant, the only thing flooding you is shame. you're flushing so fluorescently your mind supplies a bizarre image of yourself at this moment, glowing a vibrant red only observed by thermal vision. you imagine also, however, that David can see it (surely he must be able to feel it? you're so hot. you're burning with it - a twisted, post-modern interpretation of the scarlet letter, you suppose, but it's your brain, so you'll just chalk it up to something peculiar and repressed, and move on).

and perhaps he really can see it (you wouldn't put it past David to harbor superpowers, not after the way he'd sunk into your heart, even mere moments after you'd met him) because he's pulling away, palms cupping your neck, thumb tracing your jawline, and his hands are so cold you think it might be enough for you to just fling yourself on him, push out every last tendril of fever, until you've stopped shaking and can finally rest.

but the moment is over, perhaps (it never is. wasn't over the second after the second you met him, isn't over two years later, won't be over in twenty years' time) and he whispers your name with an entirely different timber than the one he'd used a minute ago. the black pools of his eyes have contracted, and you see a nightmare version of yourself - puffy-eyed and faintly squarish all around, (and oh God is that how he knew!? did he feel you bloating, gaining, the curse of your shattered self-control in times of panic?) - reflected in his irises.

he whispers your name again, and how is it that you don't even much mind how, tangled as you are, you can smell the merlot that accentuates every syllable rolling off of his tongue? there's something tranquilizing about his scent that you can never seem to bottle. you've tried, of course; mumbling half-remembered jokes he's made like mantras, grasping for anything to wield against that never-ending penchant for self-destruction that used to surface mostly when you were out with Angie. you suppose there's some dark irony in the fact that she got better after a few weeks of inpatient rehabilitation, and you just got worse.

Angie can't be your lifeline anymore. even if the anchor she'd provided had only tied you to a life of coke, larceny, and overdue rent, she'd been something to cling to when nothing else quite took the edge off. Andrew was supposed to be her healthy replacement. the solid food to which a child progresses in the natural order of things. what he has become is...what has he become? he's been supportive in all the right places, and repremmanding in every proper situation. he has entirely lived up to expectations. once again it's you that misses the mark.

"Mara!" David again summons your attention, and your obediant neck swings up to re-meet that nightmare version of yourself. you never could deny him more than twice. when you blink him into focus, the room is spinning. you really shouldn't have had that wine with dinner; mere affectionate friend or not, you've forever had trouble keeping the world behind him from sneaking away even without added distractions.

he lets leave a hand from its post holding up your jawline to brush your bangs from your eyelashes, and you start at the ice of his touch. you shiver, hoping the violence of the motion will shake free your fidelity from its cobweb cell.

you bat his hands away, an half-hearted attempt to push him the rest of the way off of you, and twist the knob, to place wood and stairs and miles of concrete between him and yourself.

in the end, you forget everything but your quest to catalog the various shades of his freckles.

the over-long buildup to behavioural modification

one : i have a livejournal (please don't mock me) which i use embarrassingly often. i don't actually ever post or comment in any of the various communities i have joined. i can sit all day reading from communities where those who post do so to make note of some event that has happened, some emotion they needed to remember, some thought they needed to call attention to, because of its importance. because, for a second, it defined them. their reactions to such moments are the epitome of humanity, and i love to immerse myself in it, and write about every tangent these confessions lead me down. {1}

but i never reveal what i think, even in commmunities about politics, or art, or music. among those who offer up their hearts, i lurk, on the brink of social interaction. previously, i have dared not inch a toe forward. now, i am determined to leap.

two : i must renew my commitment to Buddhism, and resolidify my trust in the God who's company i seek with it. i have toiled away for eons, handmolding my Zen into perfect rigidity. now i must build upon the foundations that i have left for cobwebs, before any crumbling of those stones which buffer me from all manner of howling winds.

three : i pledge to invest myself in my own academia. for too long have i let myself just topple from platform to platform, only picking myself up from the ground long enough to toddle straight off to lower heights. if i ever indend to accomplish anything, much less make of myself value via Achievement, i need to start climbing.

four : i will write more. i cannot grow into greatness if all i have to show for myself are fleeting fancies of faerietales and other flashes of fiction. {4} i cannot allow myself to put anything off, but i must improve myself in every fashion - particularly because i assume this mantle of Writer, and Philosopher, and Artist. i can't think of a single definition for any of them which includes a pervasive and ever-present slothfulness.

five : i shall not merely listen; i shall hear.


{1} and that is what i love about the Internet.
i can be completely alone, in a city where i know not a soul, and log on and immediately feel at home. at ease. surrounded, by the like-minded, by individuals so far outside my normal sphere of influence i would never be able to encounter (much less learn from) otherwise.
{4} i fear i have already damaged my Writer Muscle; caused it to atrophy beyond any level where i can retain full use of it again. further, i often read back on slop i've written and doubt i have ever even known such a thing.

why the list of literature in The Canon is interpretive

recently, i heard mention of the grapes of wrath as a fantastic work of cultured something or other.

no. not so, kool-aid.
at 18, i was instructed to read it, for my AP English class, something that pleased me mostly because i love literature like fanatic groupies love rockstars. literature is my Aragorn. this particular bit of paper, however, was nothing like Of Mice And Men, that soundbox which encased my heartstrings for Steinbeck to pluck as he chose. i don't know what happened between writing the two works, but a book that acts as victrola for too-finely tuned violin music did not inspire from this Shieldmaiden any sort of fondness. what it did inspire, in the november 2006 that first saw me hurl a book across a room, was the following:

A Waste of 619 Pages

John Steinbeck disappoints me. His work, The Grapes of Wrath, was supposed to be some amazing piece of literature that “galvanized” [1] the millions who read it. At the time, I didn’t even know what ‘galvanized’ meant (“to stimulate somebody or something into great activity”), but I expected to glance up from the novel in thought and suddenly be overcome with the feeling. An emotion did slap my face while I read, but it was far less pleasant and more idenifiable that whatever ‘galvanized’ was. That emotion was annoyance.

Here, in this novel, dozens of little plot turtles plodded along, waiting to be snatched up and turned into eloquence. Unfortunately, the only thing snatched away during my experience was my eager desire to read this book. Then I found out that either all the critics in the literary world are liars, or Steinbeck needs a new theme. After reading my 3,458^th thinly veiled ‘I hate Capitalism,’ I became convinced that it was that latter one.

Granted, Steinbeck touches on several interesting topics. Key word there, by the way, is ‘touches.’ As in ‘barely glances at it,’ or ‘briefly considers veering off the dead-ended Anti-Capitalism trail to pace other pastures.’ Former preacher Casy spends a lot of time organizing strikes that worsen the economy or praying over the dead and performing other priestly rites. Whenever he can escape the obligations he takes on, Casy takes a second to ponder the Over-Soul[2] and how we’re supposed to act when little pieces of our friends and countrymen are in our minds, influencing our subconscious descions.

For the most part though, Steinbeck just forces socialism-love down the throats of the thoroughly Capitalistic consumers who supplied his salary by using said despised economic system to buy the book in which he bashes the whole process. I’m relatively[3] certain that The Grapes of Wrath was simply a cathartic (though decades-late) retribution for failing Civics.

I understand that Steinbeck endured some of the worst aspects of Capitalism, but all at the fault of Steinbeck’s own generation[4]; the overspeculation by all parties, the uncontrolled inflation, the use of credit lines as toys, and the overall irresponsible excess of the 1920s caused the Great Depression more than anything. Pure Capitalism is not to blame, for the industrial capitalism eapoused by Adam Smith calls for an “Invisible Hand” that would force everyone to, by acting in their best interests, actually perpetuate the common good[5].

I think if Steinbeck actually understood the theories behind Captialism, Socialism, Communism, and especially the latter’s contrast to its root, Marxism, then he would have written a truly fantastic novel. As it is, I’m surprised Ayn Rand didn’t send her Objectivist friends to his house to beat him up. Later, recouperating in the hospital, he could appreciate the irony of their collective action.

1. on the back of the Penguin book, The Grapes of Wrath is described as “The Pulizer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression, a book that galvanized – and sometimes outraged – millions of readers.”
2. reference to Transcendentalism.
3. relatively meaning as certain about the truth of the following statement as the idea that molasses grows on trees.

4. Steinbeck was born in 1909; he would have been a teenager during the Roaring Twenties, and it was those younger generations that were most fashionable and radical, as the old ones were still recovering from the Great War.
5. by ‘best interests’ Smith meant in the long run, not just whatever’s interesting or wanted, but what’s needed. His capitalism works (splendidly) off of the definition of ‘best’ as what is of the highest quality or most suited to need.

two years later, and my disdain remains the same.

one does not compartmentalize oneself unless one believes the self has no potential

there is, it is said - by two people, no more, that i know of - something called the Quantum Theory Of Relationships. the addage goes: " [i] can't observe a relationship without changing it. If i stop to think about the whys and wherefores, it's destined to fail. i'm happy to let what happens happen for the moment." {http://belledejour-uk.blogspot.com/2008_11_01_archive.html#2231860428554564075}

as i have my own ideas about the cosmic jokes that interfere with personal interplay (refer to the post where i posit that interpersonal relationships are simply facets of economics in a social market), i find anything intriguing that differs from what i conceive as fact. particularly when, as is the case here, that differentiated opinion is so blatantly Stoic.

a Stoic, you see, was invented in classical rome, by a manchild who blinked balefully at the world, and attributed to himself such importance that he imagined all misfortunes flocked to him. it was a curse of fate, he assumed; a displeasurable happenstance mapped out in the cosmos. but, he decided, one whose ill effects could be sidestepped. simply pack away all emotions, advised the Stoic, and treat each event as though the world weighing upon your shoulders will be joined by moons and stars.

essentially, the basic solution for someone who struggles, insisted those who peddled Stoicism, is to assume a grand design where all success is sabataged. and then to soldier onward, a shining star braced for expansion, for explosion. for death.

you see, Stoicism is secretly simply a crass bastardization of Zen Buddhism, an aspect of the philosophy i for which i find myself especially fond. guising itself as defeatism, it claims honor and fortitude in the face of pain. i doubt an epistemology which encourages overpersonalizing entropy and hiding from life experiences can be considered inspiring or hero-making, but Stoicism has garnered quite a following for itself, as observable by the quote that inspired this post.

i suppose the only good thing to come of that epidemic known as Stoicism is that now it has infested the emotastic blogosphere. perhaps there will be an end to those who formerly released tedious tantrums to cope with the lack of higher brain functioning that would have enabled them to blossom in the wake of frigid failures? may they cling to Stoicism like parasites, and the comfort of the ensuing silence will spare the rest of us from remembering them.

hmm. i had intended, i confess, to conduct this entry in a far different direction, but i suppose i got on the wrong train. i imagine no irretrievable loss, however.