I'm going to ramble
on for a bit.
Life is unerringly
strange.
Every time I think
I've got a handle on what just happened and what is coming next, I
get thrown for a loop.
The current loop is
in small part the mistake I made of watching a Woody Allen film,
which has shifted my view of myself (as presented to the world),
at least temporarily.
This film featured a
character who was, basically, a conversational con artist.
No depth, no
insight, just a rambling seduction of well placed of words and
references.
While watching with
a friend — this character was describing a past sexual encounter
with someone they'd just met – I sat cringing. I asked, "I
don't sound like this when I talk do I?" B— immediately replied, "I was just thinking she sounded like you."
I wanted to throw my
shoe at the television.
I kept watching,
hoping this person would redeem herself, that the character would
develop. Considering it's maker, it wasn't a reasonable expectation
or desire.
I wasn't a terribly
good friend this weekend. It was a needed therapy to get out of my
village, but I was distracted and withdrawn at a time when I could
have spoken earnestly.
Everything seems so
abstract and fractured right now. And such a long distance away.
I struggled with the
words. I feel like I'm going to always struggle with the words.
I will never be an
orator, most certainly; and I will never be a proper writer, but at
least, for a while on the page or at the prompt of the flashing
cursor I can get it out.
"It,"
Bobby Britain, being those words that are trapped and floating in my
brain.
My parents have
instilled in me numerous and equally bad habits.
My father is
stubborn, and tends to be inclined toward an intense wave of angry
silence in which he works his jaw and mentally fillets you. He erupts
at some point, and an abstracted lecture begins in which past wrongs
are brought to the table in addition to current issues. Nothing is
ever forgiven, not really.
My mother uses angles to approach a topic, attempting to find the best way to come out with the upper hand. She also chatters on and makes every person she talks to the temporary center of her universe. Some of it is smoke in mirrors, some of it is manipulative, some of it is in earnest. When it comes down to it, though, she's a survivalist — and you can't really blame someone for that. Neither are fully coherent in their arguments.
I mirror these
habits. Just like we all fear we will, and find it happening anyway.
The angry silence
thing? I haven't mastered it; I'm working on its successful use — as in, avoiding eruption. I have this irascible need for people to
know. Even though I know they don't care. I constantly want to
work it out verbally.
The angles, I use
them in an attempt to be understood, not to win an argument. Not that
anyone seems to believe me — I find myself entrenched in verbal
combat before I even realize the other person thinks I'm intent on
walking away a victor. Then they think I'm being patronizing when I
try to climb out of the conversational rabbit hole.
Nothing frustrates
me more than the moment my inability to express myself rears its
ugly head while i'm in a discussion with someone.
By the time we're on
the same page — I've turned into Cecily Strong's SNL character:
"Girl at a party you wish you hadn't started a conversation
with."
I both love that bit
and inwardly cringe while watching it.
Currently reading:
A Border Passage — From Cairo to America — A Woman's Journey
—Leila Ahmed
On deck:
Night
—Elie Wiesel,
translation by Marion Wiesel
Now playing:
2 Albums | 27 songs
| 1 hour, 46 minutes
Andrew Bird |
Armchair Apocrypha (Album)
Andrew Bird | The
Mysterious Production of Eggs (Album)
As to their
mysterious production, in humans, we women have a set limit from the
beginning. In hens on the
homestead being prepped for storage... It's a trip.
Current (and past) Freewill horoscopes:
Week of 17 July:
Beginning in 1798,
European cartographers who drew maps of West Africa included the
Mountains of Kong, a range of peaks that extended more than a
thousand miles east and west. It was 90 years before the French
explorer Louis Gustave Binger realized that there were no such
mountains. All the maps had been wrong, based on faulty information.
Binger is known to history as the man who undiscovered the Mountains
of Kong. I'm appointing him to be your role model in the coming
weeks, Aquarius. May he inspire you to expose long-running
delusions, strip away entrenched falsehoods, and restore the simple,
shining truths.
Entomologist Justin
O. Schmidt drew up an index to categorize the discomfort caused by
stinging insects. The attack of the bald-faced hornet is "rich,
hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a
revolving door." A paper wasp delivers pain that's "caustic
and burning," with a "distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like
spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut." The
sweat bee, on the other hand, can hurt you in a way that's "light,
ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on
your arm."
Your homework is to
create an equally nuanced and precise index of three experiences that
feel really good.
Week of 10 July:
Expect nothing even
as you ask for everything. Rebel against tradition with witty
compassion, not cynical rage. Is there a personal taboo that no
longer needs to remain taboo? Break it with tender glee. Do something
playful, even prankish, in a building that has felt oppressive to
you. Everywhere you go, carry gifts with you just in case you
encounter beautiful souls who aren't lost in their own fantasies. You
know that old niche you got stuck in as a way to preserve the peace?
Escape it. At least for now, live without experts and without
leaders – with no teachers other than what life brings you moment
by moment.
"You can get a
feel on Kaho'olawe of what it was like to live on Hawaii at the time
of our ancestors," says Native Hawaiian Davianna McGregor. "We
can practice our traditions there without it being a tourist
attraction. It's one place we can go to be in communion with our
natural life forces."
Each of us has a personal version of Kaho'olawe: a part of our psyche that has been stolen or colonized by hostile forces. To grow bolder in your explorations, you'll need to take back yours.
It's perfect.