Listened to this Modern Love podcast on ‘seesawing libidos’ to close out Valentine’s Day.
“In the end my married friends were right: there may be a limit to passion but love flourishes.”
Now, goodnight.
Month: February 2017
one more hour
StandardI have one more hour in which I am allowed to mope.
Therefore, I give you … Sam Phillips’s “I Can’t Stop Crying”. All at once a jagged, near-power-pop painful reminder of spring/summer 1989, a reminder of the wandering-through-Reykjavik spring of 2008 (my final months in Iceland) and a trigger for the current waves of disturbance in otherwise calm waters.
“I saw black and you saw red
Crawled to separate corners
the line went dead I closed my heart up tore your love
for me to shredsTangled wires, love can’t breathe
pulling tighter to my ruthless need
Don’t look down I want you unconsolablyI can’t stop crying
Stubborn distance closes in
with your assistance bitterly begin
To build a wall of silence cutting soul in two
Cloudy water in my eyes
I’m ashamed of words with secret knives
In dream I scream but you can’t
Hear me calling youI know that this heartache is
A speck in the sky of love
But it’s all I feel around me”
determination
StandardI am determined to get off this emotional roller coaster by tomorrow. For now, reviewing some Key & Peele sketches is going to help me get there.
My favorite:
Prepared for terries: We’re not talking about no Teri Garr, and certainly not terrycloth. (And check out the other passenger – the dude from Timeless.)
Repetition
StandardPoem
-Novica Tadić
He turns the pages of books
And examines the poems there
Saying my god
All this has already been written
On this day that is meant to be a paean to love (even if it’s the most commercial farce of the year), all I can think about is hate.
I felt relieved, almost smug, if deluded, to believe (did I ever really believe?) that we lived in a time (or were closer to living in a time) beyond petty hatred and discrimination based on things like skin color or religion. I have never been able to understand the existence of this kind of hatred, the crippling inferiority and fear that it betrays. But then I have watched as suddenly all the closet racists, xenophobes and other bile-filled hate zealots became empowered to voice their inner hatred, perpetrate great violence openly – as late as 2017. Is this the new normal?
No, there is nothing new or normal about it.
Most stunning (but is it really stunning?) of all is realizing how deeply racist and – worse – fearful – people are – people I never would have imagined being racist, xenophobic or anti-Islam show themselves to be. I suppose I have been a hopeless fool for imagining that things were anywhere near being otherwise. In my current state of mind – the February doldrums – I only seem able to see the very worst. I can’t let this pull to defeatist gloom win – but my god, the pull is strong.
“No one else can touch us/While we’re in this place”
StandardThis popped up in a couple of Neil Finn feeds online today, and I realized I had not listened to him, Crowded House or Split Enz in a long time. This song…
“I don’t want to say “I love you”
That would give away too much.
It’s hip to be detached and precious,
The only thing you feel is vicious.
I don’t want to say “I want you”
Even though I want you so much.
It’s wrapped up in conversation,
It’s whispered in a hush.
Though I’m frightened by the word,
Think it’s time I made it heard.
No more empty self-possession,
Visions swept under the mat.
It’s no New Year’s resolution,
It’s more than that.
Now I wake up happy
Warm in lover’s embrace.
No one else can touch us
While we’re in this place.
So I’ll sing it to the world
This simple message to my girl.
No more empty self possession,
Visions swept under the mat.
It’s no New Year’s resolution,
It’s more than that.
Though I’m frightened by the word,
Think it’s time I made it heard.
So I’ll sing it to the world
This simple message to my girl.
No more empty self possession,
Visions swept under the mat.
It’s no New Year’s resolution,
It’s more than that.
Oh there’s nothing quite as real
As the touch of your sweet hands.
I can’t spend the rest of my life
Buried in the sand”
-“Message to my Girl” – Split Enz (1984, as if you couldn’t hear that already…)
see what you need to see
StandardI saw this comic today – it was exactly what I needed to see when I needed to see it. From Lunarbaboon – support today/buy the book.
few surprises
Researching local/regional and national politics (as well as pet-project Scottish politics) and issues, overdosing on poetry, looking at a flat, looking at some study options, conversing with a best friend from years ago, listening to a handful of different Joe Rogan podcasts (Henry Rollins, Leah Remini, Louis Theroux, Lance Armstrong? Weird mix, eh? Odd that I would watch the Armstrong one since I don’t care about him, cycling or doping; that said, the podcast ended with him rambling on about Hunter S. Thompson, someone I never think about but had had a conversation about no more than two hours earlier), walking like a penguin through miles of snow and ice, dining with a part of the past, contemplating next places and steps, coming to terms with finished things (can you call them finished if they never really started or never materialized for a host of reasons?), squaring myself with or discarding the things that felt important or even life altering for all of five minutes, five days (knowing this negates, at least in some way, the way I wanted to live, love and feel as this year dawned. Circumstances change, take quick turns – really quick, sharp turns. I will live, love and feel and dive into other things.), outlining writing and other projects. Face forward and march. (OH! Why can’t it already be March?)
In the cold city, unexpectedly and spur of the moment, curled up, having tea instead of coffee and digging back into the reading (the endless Infinite Jest), writing and numbness – literal and figurative.
Photo (c) Teodor Bjerrang
stunted growth
StandardDamaged by upbringing, forms of emotional abuse, observing dysfunctional relationships, we realized these things are nothing we wanted for ourselves. We have never been inclined to get too deeply involved or be too committed to others, so we are not the kinds of people who will ever marry or pair off, for example, even if we were in love. People like us, we just don’t trust other people’s emotions or intentions and feel we have had to be completely independent. And even if we have acknowledged and can see this, why would we take a big chance or invest much trust in another person’s feelings? Why would we tether ourselves to people whose feelings and decisions clearly cannot be trusted or relied on – a(n) (unconscious) way to continue being non-committal?
Rollins and Rogan
StandardIt’s a long listen, but like many of the Rogan podcasts, wide ranging (travel, personal freedom, politics) and thoughtful. It was a perfect complement to a morning conversation on the state of the world, the perils of commoditization and globalization and what we can do about it.
Love Rollins, recommend it. It’s all good but love the call to action at 1:38 or so.
Judgment day
I am always analyzing and processing and trying – wanting – to understand. I don’t, for example, understand addiction from the point of view of an addict. I try to understand it scientifically, clinically, neurologically, and of course gather the perspectives of addicts I meet and know. I may never gather all the insight I need or want, but I keep trying to learn.
I feel like, as I move along through life, getting older (hopefully a bit wiser), I am becoming more understanding, more compassionate, more interested in understanding, more caring, loving and accepting. What surprises me, though, is how one of the closest people to me is the exact opposite. He has become so closed, so judgmental – about everything. A total Besserwisser: he knows best (and is, perhaps not ironically, judgmental of all the people he meets who are equally know-it-all types!?). Addiction is just an example of a topic that I examine and think about a lot – and he and I diverge on this subject in a major way, but there are so many other things where the chasm between this close person and me keeps growing wider and deeper.
I’m not sure what to make of it because I don’t really want to feel judged, demeaned, second guessed or guilt-tripped every time I talk to this person. Because of his emotional proximity to me, it is not like I can or even want to write him off. In some ways, we are so close and the only people who can understand each other and our histories. I don’t like the idea of losing the connection but come on.
Photo (c) 2009 Brian Turner