Gypsy

There is just no escaping it: all of the music that "moves" me or provokes me tends to elicit some kind of absurd vision or fantasy--and that is probably part of what makes me like it so much. They're not real experiences that I associate with the music, they are imagined experiences that seem so real! Case in point: today we were driving back from Glen Ivy and I requested that we listen to some Fleetwood Mac. The song "Gypsy" came on and I immediately began to envision myself dancing alone, slowly under a spinning disco ball, the background in total blackness, wearing heavy silver eyeshadow and a slinky white satin dress. Everything is in soft focus, like in a 70s music video. I shimmy my shoulders while Stevie sings, "Maybe once, maybe twice" and weave my head back and forth. Then a man in ballet tights and a billowy Renaissance blouse dances towards me slowly, pausing between each dance step (when I described this part to my friends, Sarah said that he was probably dressed this way because I had just watched the Lawrence Olivier version of "Hamlet" and the sword-fighting sequence must have made quite an impression.) The man dancing toward me is either a young Baryshnikov or Rahm Emanuel, who is, after all, a classically trained dancer. Then I will sway about while he dances in a circle around me. Maybe I will have a garland of white blossoms in my hair. The song fades away with us dancing away from eachother, arms outstretched, disappearing into the blackness, until all that's left is the disco ball rotating slowly in soft focus.

March heat

It was a hot day in which everything went still beneath the harsh sky. It wasn’t the yellow hot of the dog days of August, those days on which intangible rivers rose from the pavement and ran through the streets—it was a hot day of white instead; the sun filtered through a thin layer of clouds but still burning. Windows reflected the outside world like bright mirrors and insects hid underground. Birds took solace in the cool eves of the trees, singing out a single line of song before the parched, thin air silenced them. Crows dotted the telephone lines like smoldering coals against the blank sky and watched the earth crawl beneath them. Anyone who stepped outside was blinded as though they had looked into the terrible face of God.

Taylor Bird!

quotes

They are two completely different types of quotes, yet they are somehow strangely related.

I just read this frighteningly weird and wonderful book by Muriel Spark called The Driver's Seat. It is dark and hilarious. There is one part that I found particularly absurdly funny:

She drops her hand and looks at her coat which is stained with a long black oily mark. 'Look at my clothes,' Lise says. 'My new clothes. It's best never to be born. I wish my mother and father had practiced birth-control. I wish the pill had been invented at the time. I feel sick, I feel terrible.'

And then there's this goody from John Maynard Keynes:

"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead."

These two thing are in my mind as I go to bed. Does anyone even read this blog? I should probably rename it Tea for One.

the future

I was finally able to figure out my password, so I can write on here again.

The future. Let's just say that right now it doesn't look so bright that I need to wear sunglasses. In fact I don't feel good about it at all. I don't know what I want out of life, and I find that to be a little scary. I'm sure this is just normal pre-graduation jitters experienced by many, compounded by the looming economic crisis that will quite probably make it difficult to find a job. I am moving to San Francisco because I want to be someplace where life is beautiful. But I don't know the meaning of things. I have all these tangential ideas about what's going to be happening in the future--in the center of the orbit will be some kind of job, hopefully not a bad one, and then orbiting around that will be writing short stories, working on my novels, drinking wine in the park, shopping for vintage clothes, visiting my mom on the weekends, drinking scotch, going to the movies, maybe going out to dinner sometimes, buying used books. Pretty much the same kind of things I always do, only in a new place. 

But I want a revelation. I want a greater purpose. Until now my purpose has been simply to get through school. I will have accomplished that. Now I will need a new goal. I think about traveling, and I want that to be my goal. I hope that I can find a job that will allow me to save a little money, and to pay off my student loans, so that occasionally I can take a trip to Chicago or Paris or Cuba. I guess that's all I can really ask for.

When I start to think about the basics like that, the everyday stuff in my favorite city, it all seems a little less frightening. It looks like less of a gaping void. I suppose I need to stop thinking about the big picture and the meaning of life and my role in the universe and just focus on the things that I have some modicum of control over--work, money, play time. I wish I didn't put so much pressure on myself, but that's just the way I roll sometimes. I need to just go with the flow of the stars and the planets and the solar winds. 

High Windows

When I see a couple of kids
And guess he's fucking her and she's
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives—
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if
Anyone looked at me, forty years back,
And thought, That'll be the life;
No God any more, or sweating in the dark

About hell and that, or having to hide
What you think of the priest. He
And his lot will all go down the long slide
Like free bloody birds. And immediately

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

--Philip Larkin

oh happy day!

There have been so many, so so many times over the last three years when I have been ready to give up. I get into these writing frenzies and then all of a sudden I will find myself slipping on this long slide into self-loathing. I will read what I have written and will foam at the mouth. I will curse myself for ever having been born. I will marvel at the paradox of having been given this desire to create and this simultaneous revulsion any time I look at what I have created. Once when I was drunk I cried out, "Why have I been given the desire to understand everything and the inability to comprehend anything?" Such is my misfortune in this world.

And then will come the death knell. It has gotten very predictable. First I will tell myself to stop even trying. I will wish that I had been born someone else, someone without this accursed need to peddle words, and I will tell myself that I should do something useful with my life. I should become a nurse or a massage therapist or a barista or a stripper. Anything but a writer--misery down that path lies. And then I will stop writing for a while. Sometimes days, sometimes weeks, sometimes months.

But the happy news is that I have just gotten over one such period and I am feeling super productive. And the even happier news is that both of my novels in progress--one a meager five pages and the other forty pages so far--are still intact thanks to the magic of word processing. If I were Mikhail Bulgakov I would have burned my work in disgust only to regret it later. Thank god I am not. Some good comes of living in the age of computers rather than the age of parchment and fireplaces. I just reread both of the drafts for my novels, and they ain't half bad. So back to work! As long as I feel happy I can go and go and go. Until next time I become depressed and decide to seek my fortunes as a stewardess.