Next Time I’ll Read the Directions
I fear that something has gone askew.
Hard to pinpoint the precise cause – I’m sure the top three or four moments I might choose are all collinear in some symbolic way – but I feel like my mind has been gutted. Stripped down, ready to be renovated, new appliances put in and all.
I thought clearing my mind of conscious thought was supposed to bring me enlightenment.
But it’s just made me utterly boring.
This blog isn’t a space for self-pity, though for what it’s worth it absolutely can be since this isn’t most people’s home pages, if you know what I mean. But there’s gotta be something to this notion in my head, even if it’s the only thing in there that isn’t quotes from some decades-old comedy.
I might be rushing to judgment on this not-being-enlightened thing. I’m not entirely illuminated either, but what I can say is that right now, from the window of my ivory tower miles away from anyway, it appears that all this busy busy busy has the dignity and impact of a swarm of gnats.
All this energy spent making friends and scenes, it’s never enough unless it’s too much.
The irony of it all, to me and to you, is that I too am rottenly spoiled, buying into the notion that more is better – “If less is more just think how much more more would be.”
And so I sit, isolated from everything, Queens my Elba, exiled but only to feel that ache in my chest, the ache of want, the ache of desire, in my score-odd years one of three distinct feelings I know that makes me feel alive. (The others are 1) the dual pangs of guilt and remorse/regret – one feeling, as if from one fangbite – and 2) the joy that overflows)
My head hurts from trying to rationalize these conflicting ideas into one Unified Theory of Modern Melancholy. I know as I know that I needn’t bother myself running around like a kid, accumulating things, cramming my ears full of music that does nothing for me but certainly ups whatever of-the-moment indie band it is’ MySpace ticker a notch, getting magazines that now pile themselves unread with no effort on my part, reading news sites full of horrors that do less help us appreciate our lot than thank the universe we don’t have it as bad as those guys over there.
I have a fallow field in my head right now, fertile from the books I’ve read and to a much lesser extent the life experiences I’ve had and dream of having. For whatever it’s worth, that’s how it feels. Like my entire past has composted itself, packed down the organic material, now ready to nurture and nourish whatever seed I choose to bury therein.
That’s where I am. It’s close. I’ve been clearing away the underbrush for some time now. I can’t admit that now’s the moment that the seed is planted. But the bed is made.
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