Two weeks ago, I told Paul:
(10:18:48 AM) Helen: I just need to meet one person who is right, and I'm good. Just one. That's not that many at all.
(10:21:01 AM) Helen: same goes for you
(10:22:34 AM) Paul: i agree with that
Simplification is so deeply liberating. I felt the sun on my face for the rest of the day.
(10:28:32 AM) Helen: I know how to love someone. I'm even pretty good at it. And when someone comes along who will not act like a retard in the face of my ability to love them, then I will get what I deserve. Which is someone who will never let me fall.
One of the most thrilling experiences I’ve ever had was watching two friends of mine fall in love. My girlfriend said it felt like two raindrops running together on a windowpane.
One cannot sit at a party, watch it happen, and stand up the same.
I spend so much of my time raging inside myself. Sometimes it shields me. Mostly it entombs me. But tombs are pregnable, and I minored in Archaeology. I am more than capable of feeling the sun on my face when it shines on me.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Newport Folk Music Festival
I’ve been listening to NPR’s live coverage of the Newport Folk Festival this weekend, and I think I’ve finally figured out why I spend my time listening to public radio and not to music. Ditto for going to concerts: I almost never do. Because… I can’t do it without bawling. Showtunes tend to be the exception, but I can lose my shit over those too.
I have a very thin skin, under which roils a constant inferno of embattled emotions. (I had been quietly hoping that they would calm as I aged, but it seems that growing older is only making it easier to clamp them down and argue through them. They aren’t going anywhere.) Pierce it, and I cry. Not from sadness, necessarily. Usually not from sadness. Mostly it’s just the action of release that does it. The exultant loss of control and, in way, of self. That’s not something I want to happen at work, or on the bus, or even alone in my apartment most of the time. I’d rather listen to Wire Tap.
All this came up because, as I said, I’ve been listening to NPR’s coverage of the Newport Folk Fest, losing my shit. In my cubicle. (It’s a Sunday, so it’s cool.) And what I realized was, this isn’t so bad. Not many people I know experience music this way, so deep inside themselves. It isn’t pleasant by any means, but that doesn’t make it wrong.
I have a very thin skin, under which roils a constant inferno of embattled emotions. (I had been quietly hoping that they would calm as I aged, but it seems that growing older is only making it easier to clamp them down and argue through them. They aren’t going anywhere.) Pierce it, and I cry. Not from sadness, necessarily. Usually not from sadness. Mostly it’s just the action of release that does it. The exultant loss of control and, in way, of self. That’s not something I want to happen at work, or on the bus, or even alone in my apartment most of the time. I’d rather listen to Wire Tap.
All this came up because, as I said, I’ve been listening to NPR’s coverage of the Newport Folk Fest, losing my shit. In my cubicle. (It’s a Sunday, so it’s cool.) And what I realized was, this isn’t so bad. Not many people I know experience music this way, so deep inside themselves. It isn’t pleasant by any means, but that doesn’t make it wrong.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Friday Night Lights
I’ve been watching Friday Night Lights. Like any great, well like any great anything, it’s made me look at my life from a new angle. Made me re-examine my choices, particularly those I’ve made since moving to Seattle, my Exile Years.
In Season Three Episode 4, Brian “Smash” Williams, whose end-of-the-season knee injury could have easily ended his brilliant football career, gets himself back into fighting shape and is eventually admitted to the University of Oklahoma. (I’m hazy on the details.)
It goes without saying that everyone is behind him. The love on this show, in this town, is so thick you could cut it into pieces and sew it into a quilt. There’s maternal/paternal love, puppy love, marital love, fraternal love between friends and co-workers and just fellow football fans, love of the Panthers, love of town and state and country and on and on and on. The town is awash in it. I dive deeply into the worlds created by films, novels, and beautiful television shows. I take escapism seriously. Entering this particular land rights the toy boat that is my precarious little life.
So anyway, everyone is helping “Smash”. Coach Tyler practices with him in the mornings, his mother takes a second job, his football buddies encourage him, the doctors take great care of him, and he makes a full recovery. Still and all, he is dubious. He thinks he’s slower, and when the General Manager of the Alamo Freeze where he works part time offers him a job as Regional Manager, he tells his Momma he’s considering the offer.
The point is, it takes many people 50 impossibly inspiring TV minutes to convince Smash that he can do the one thing he was born to do: play football. The episode culminates in a speech by Coach, seconds before Smash will begin his trial, in which he tells him exactly what he needs to hear. After hearing the man who is essentially his surrogate father tell him he has dominated in times of crisis in the past and will do so this time, he of course, succeeds brilliantly and is accepted.
It was after that speech that I thought, “Waaaaait a minute. Who has ever gotten exactly the encouragement they needed just when they needed it? What if we all did? What if I did? Seriously, what more would I have accomplished by now? Who would I have become?”
It’s too hard to pull oneself up by one’s own bootstraps all the time. Even Smash couldn’t do it, and he talks about himself in the third person. I am tired of trying. I cannot be my own personal football coach. It’s impossible. Even in the best of times, everyone needs guidance. And I get that support sometimes, I do. But let’s face it, I am not in a “best of times” scenario at the moment. I am…well, I am bereft, frankly. I feel like an old housecat going out to the woods to die alone. I just want to be somewhere dark and quiet where no one will ever bother me again. I’m starting a play, which is excellent as far as enforced interaction goes, but goddamnit I want to wallow. I want to wail and rend garments and gnash teeth. I am not okay. I do not want to do what I was born to do because it is too hard and I am too tired to do any more hard things all alone. And let there be no mistake, alone is what I very much am.
This is not say that I will end up working at the Helen-equivalent to the Alamo Freeze, doing something I hate because it is easy. I know myself well enough to be certain that someday, I will be proud of myself again. I think I just need to remember that a couple doses of great advice may not be enough to save me from myself today, and I guess that’s…what? Fine? Well not fine, but reasonable.
In Season Three Episode 4, Brian “Smash” Williams, whose end-of-the-season knee injury could have easily ended his brilliant football career, gets himself back into fighting shape and is eventually admitted to the University of Oklahoma. (I’m hazy on the details.)
It goes without saying that everyone is behind him. The love on this show, in this town, is so thick you could cut it into pieces and sew it into a quilt. There’s maternal/paternal love, puppy love, marital love, fraternal love between friends and co-workers and just fellow football fans, love of the Panthers, love of town and state and country and on and on and on. The town is awash in it. I dive deeply into the worlds created by films, novels, and beautiful television shows. I take escapism seriously. Entering this particular land rights the toy boat that is my precarious little life.
So anyway, everyone is helping “Smash”. Coach Tyler practices with him in the mornings, his mother takes a second job, his football buddies encourage him, the doctors take great care of him, and he makes a full recovery. Still and all, he is dubious. He thinks he’s slower, and when the General Manager of the Alamo Freeze where he works part time offers him a job as Regional Manager, he tells his Momma he’s considering the offer.
The point is, it takes many people 50 impossibly inspiring TV minutes to convince Smash that he can do the one thing he was born to do: play football. The episode culminates in a speech by Coach, seconds before Smash will begin his trial, in which he tells him exactly what he needs to hear. After hearing the man who is essentially his surrogate father tell him he has dominated in times of crisis in the past and will do so this time, he of course, succeeds brilliantly and is accepted.
It was after that speech that I thought, “Waaaaait a minute. Who has ever gotten exactly the encouragement they needed just when they needed it? What if we all did? What if I did? Seriously, what more would I have accomplished by now? Who would I have become?”
It’s too hard to pull oneself up by one’s own bootstraps all the time. Even Smash couldn’t do it, and he talks about himself in the third person. I am tired of trying. I cannot be my own personal football coach. It’s impossible. Even in the best of times, everyone needs guidance. And I get that support sometimes, I do. But let’s face it, I am not in a “best of times” scenario at the moment. I am…well, I am bereft, frankly. I feel like an old housecat going out to the woods to die alone. I just want to be somewhere dark and quiet where no one will ever bother me again. I’m starting a play, which is excellent as far as enforced interaction goes, but goddamnit I want to wallow. I want to wail and rend garments and gnash teeth. I am not okay. I do not want to do what I was born to do because it is too hard and I am too tired to do any more hard things all alone. And let there be no mistake, alone is what I very much am.
This is not say that I will end up working at the Helen-equivalent to the Alamo Freeze, doing something I hate because it is easy. I know myself well enough to be certain that someday, I will be proud of myself again. I think I just need to remember that a couple doses of great advice may not be enough to save me from myself today, and I guess that’s…what? Fine? Well not fine, but reasonable.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Synedoque, NY
This movie helped me regain my equilibrium. Well, this movie, the departure of my boyfriend for a week-long business trip, and landing a role I actually very much wanted to play.
When I was reading all the Pulitzers (I forgot I'd stopped - must restart reading of Pulitzers), I complained to my Father that every Great American Novel was about a white man going through a mid-life crisis. As a white man going through a mid-life crisis, he was not only unsympathetic, I think he might even have taken umbrage.
After seeing Synedoque NY, a film about a white man in a mid-to-whole life crisis, my frustrations with these topic have finally shifted. Women are most appealing as literary heroines when they are teetering on the brink of puberty. When I was 11, I was indomitable in a way I have never recaptured. It's exciting to read books about girls who are unbreakable, since most of us become so very fragile once we enter junior high. Just as prepubescent girls are fascinating for their strength, middle aged white men are mesmerizing in their fragility. These are the world's most privileged DNA strands, and to watch them lose themselves in a self-inflicted morass of loneliness, boredom, mania, fear, paranoia, bankruptcy, adultery, you-name-it-I've-read-it-in-a-Pulitzer does make for great fiction and one great, great film.
When I watch a movie or see a play, I have only one demand as an audience member. Surprise me. Once is all I really need. One minute of the unexpected will get me through the remaining 1 hour and 59, and might even make me feel like I learned something. Somehow, Charlie Kaufman's films manage to incite, not a drip or a trickle but an endless wave of surprise that builds builds builds like a massive intellectual orgasm, the rosy after effects of which I have felt for at least an hour after the films are over.
A surprise in theater can be almost anything, but the ones I prefer are the familiar, quotidienne moments made beautiful, unique, even unrecognizable through a shift in perspective. Kaufman builds layers upon layers of these twists in all his films, all the while anchoring us in a (somewhat) creditable story and characters, so that, by the story's end, everyone is hopelessly enmeshed in a horrific nightmare fantasy which still manages to provide the audience with a satisfying catharsis and denouement. During this film in particular, I marveled at the disconcerting familiarity I felt with some moments (this is what my dreams are like too! this is why I think theater is irrelevant and narcissistic too! that's what I was like as an actor too!) while at the same time feeling overwhelmed by the sheer weight of his invention.
I hope to never look at my overly-optimistic theater friends the same way again. I hope to never look at middle-aged men in the same way again. I hope to never forget this feeling of having been simultaneously plumbed to my depths and given the blueprint to the soul of a stranger.
When I was reading all the Pulitzers (I forgot I'd stopped - must restart reading of Pulitzers), I complained to my Father that every Great American Novel was about a white man going through a mid-life crisis. As a white man going through a mid-life crisis, he was not only unsympathetic, I think he might even have taken umbrage.
After seeing Synedoque NY, a film about a white man in a mid-to-whole life crisis, my frustrations with these topic have finally shifted. Women are most appealing as literary heroines when they are teetering on the brink of puberty. When I was 11, I was indomitable in a way I have never recaptured. It's exciting to read books about girls who are unbreakable, since most of us become so very fragile once we enter junior high. Just as prepubescent girls are fascinating for their strength, middle aged white men are mesmerizing in their fragility. These are the world's most privileged DNA strands, and to watch them lose themselves in a self-inflicted morass of loneliness, boredom, mania, fear, paranoia, bankruptcy, adultery, you-name-it-I've-read-it-in-a-Pulitzer does make for great fiction and one great, great film.
When I watch a movie or see a play, I have only one demand as an audience member. Surprise me. Once is all I really need. One minute of the unexpected will get me through the remaining 1 hour and 59, and might even make me feel like I learned something. Somehow, Charlie Kaufman's films manage to incite, not a drip or a trickle but an endless wave of surprise that builds builds builds like a massive intellectual orgasm, the rosy after effects of which I have felt for at least an hour after the films are over.
A surprise in theater can be almost anything, but the ones I prefer are the familiar, quotidienne moments made beautiful, unique, even unrecognizable through a shift in perspective. Kaufman builds layers upon layers of these twists in all his films, all the while anchoring us in a (somewhat) creditable story and characters, so that, by the story's end, everyone is hopelessly enmeshed in a horrific nightmare fantasy which still manages to provide the audience with a satisfying catharsis and denouement. During this film in particular, I marveled at the disconcerting familiarity I felt with some moments (this is what my dreams are like too! this is why I think theater is irrelevant and narcissistic too! that's what I was like as an actor too!) while at the same time feeling overwhelmed by the sheer weight of his invention.
I hope to never look at my overly-optimistic theater friends the same way again. I hope to never look at middle-aged men in the same way again. I hope to never forget this feeling of having been simultaneously plumbed to my depths and given the blueprint to the soul of a stranger.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Sarah Palin
As a rule, I shirk from angry tirades against our political figures. Too many Democrats take the problematic view that because they are "liberal," they hold a moral high ground. Let's not confuse being a Democrat or a Republican with being "good" or "bad." It makes for ugly cocktail parties.
That being said, I am...disappointed that Sarah Palin, a candidate chosen to win female voters, is so opposed to many of the policies and practices that women come to the United States to enjoy, and women born in this country feel privileged to exercise. I am insulted that the GOP and McCain would think women voters pliant and silly as to vote for a ticket with such a dangerous woman at its back.
For shame.
That being said, I am...disappointed that Sarah Palin, a candidate chosen to win female voters, is so opposed to many of the policies and practices that women come to the United States to enjoy, and women born in this country feel privileged to exercise. I am insulted that the GOP and McCain would think women voters pliant and silly as to vote for a ticket with such a dangerous woman at its back.
For shame.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Price of a Rapier Wit
I don’t know how or when it started, but when we weren’t physically coming to blows, my sisters and I were always at least sparring. Dueling is more like it, because the tips of our tongues were tempered steel from age eight on, and we fought for blood. It was what it was, and we all survived in our way.
I emerged a warrior, and it has cost me. It has taken me years to realize how sharp and bright my rapier can be, and how deep its snicker snack can go. I don’t think I try to hurt people. Well, maybe I do. I don’t try to make them hate me is more like it. I mean, I do care about whether people have been hurt by me and hate me. But I love to duel. I love to clash swords, but I always assume that I will be met. That’s not true. I hate being met. I love…flesh wounds. Quick little stings that scratch and then retract, just enough to know who’s in charge here, mister, or at least that I am fully present and not intimidated by you, mister. I love to do this. It makes me feel huge and indomitable. I can feel the blade enter, and when I do it just right, it feels very, very good.
Of course, it’s difficult to judge how far a blade will go. And sometimes it goes much too far. I feel it go in, and if the flesh is too yielding or my force is too strong, it just keeps sinking in deeper and deeper, and all I can do it watch while the damage is irreperabley done. I have my kill, standing wide-eyed in front of me, blinking, not yet aware that it is dead. That we are dead. Or a part of us. A kill is a lonely triumph.
I emerged a warrior, and it has cost me. It has taken me years to realize how sharp and bright my rapier can be, and how deep its snicker snack can go. I don’t think I try to hurt people. Well, maybe I do. I don’t try to make them hate me is more like it. I mean, I do care about whether people have been hurt by me and hate me. But I love to duel. I love to clash swords, but I always assume that I will be met. That’s not true. I hate being met. I love…flesh wounds. Quick little stings that scratch and then retract, just enough to know who’s in charge here, mister, or at least that I am fully present and not intimidated by you, mister. I love to do this. It makes me feel huge and indomitable. I can feel the blade enter, and when I do it just right, it feels very, very good.
Of course, it’s difficult to judge how far a blade will go. And sometimes it goes much too far. I feel it go in, and if the flesh is too yielding or my force is too strong, it just keeps sinking in deeper and deeper, and all I can do it watch while the damage is irreperabley done. I have my kill, standing wide-eyed in front of me, blinking, not yet aware that it is dead. That we are dead. Or a part of us. A kill is a lonely triumph.
Monday, April 28, 2008
I'm Afraid
Maybe the voice of the Everyman has become a little too loud.
I'm fine with micro-demographics bringing back TV shows. I'm fine with insignificant people making videos in which they knee other insignificant people to the groin and then posting said videos in the public domain.
What I am not fine with is ordinary people affecting the lives of extraordinary people by making them second-guess their choices.
Who says that this is not a stunning and significant photograph? Not Vanity Fair. Not her family. Some soccer mom in Texas? No. 4 million soccer moms in Texas. And now, thanks to the internet, they all get to say so. And suddenly, a beautiful, candid photograph that makes useless teeny-bopper Miley Cyrus look like she might have something worthwhile to say someday about something (maybe) is what? Degrading? Exploitative? Please. That girl's life has not been her own for years now. Don't make her feel "embarrassed" for having a photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz. Don't make her put "artistic" in quotes when talking about the photoshoot. Don't knock on the French windows of our Elite, middle America. And Elite, please please don't let us in.
I'm fine with micro-demographics bringing back TV shows. I'm fine with insignificant people making videos in which they knee other insignificant people to the groin and then posting said videos in the public domain.
What I am not fine with is ordinary people affecting the lives of extraordinary people by making them second-guess their choices.
Who says that this is not a stunning and significant photograph? Not Vanity Fair. Not her family. Some soccer mom in Texas? No. 4 million soccer moms in Texas. And now, thanks to the internet, they all get to say so. And suddenly, a beautiful, candid photograph that makes useless teeny-bopper Miley Cyrus look like she might have something worthwhile to say someday about something (maybe) is what? Degrading? Exploitative? Please. That girl's life has not been her own for years now. Don't make her feel "embarrassed" for having a photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz. Don't make her put "artistic" in quotes when talking about the photoshoot. Don't knock on the French windows of our Elite, middle America. And Elite, please please don't let us in.
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