December 2011
10 posts
My heart is unattended.
We speak of men with such angst. We run the full gamut of emotions. We are angry, disillusioned, confused, sad, excited, wanting. We are not apathetic. We are never apathetic. We listen to our friend’s urges and say it doesn’t matter, that we just don’t think it’s smart to care that much. And it’s not smart and maybe we don’t care about this particular man, but we do care greatly about this idea of being unloved. Can the world break your heart? Can the universe? What is it to feel constantly heartbroken if you heart has never been attended to? I’m having more men than both of you. I’m feeling nothing, seeing nothing, hoping to get laid well, but not certain or convinced of anything else. The way I have casual sex and toss the idea of each man I encounter aside is more about my rawness and disbelief than anything else. The way you get upset after casual hookups and wait, more often than not, until you have a reason to believe in him is more proof of your worth and character than anything else.
“…I think how kissing is a such an extravagance of nature. Like birdsong; heartfelt and lovely beyond any possible usefulness.”
—Anne Enright
More than anything it is probably that I don’t know what I want, but that I am very guarded about my wanting and stubborn in my belief that, should I ever have it, I’ll know, I’ll change.
There is the person you are and there is the person you want to be and that gap can be hard to reconcile, but the more you believe in and trust the person you are, the more the two identities begin to meld.
“The year closed with “Pina,” Wim Wenders’s documentary on Pina Bausch. Trying to get friends to go and see a film about a dead German choreographer is not, to be frank, the simplest mission that has befallen me recently. Yet, of those who did heed the call and summon up the blood, none came back disappointed. Put it next to last year’s “Black Swan,” for instance, which had the clear advantage of a meaty plot, flapping wings, and gooseflesh-raising sex, and it is the Wenders, oddly, that feels like the more mature and deep-delving enterprise, reducing the Aronofsky, for all its gusto, to an adolescent psychotrip. Natalie Portman threw and flew herself into the role, but even a short spell in the company of Bausch’s ghost was enough to remind us that, in dance—as in golf, cake-baking, and nighttime commando raids—there really is no substitute for a pro. At the end of “Pina,” I felt as thrilled and drained as if I’d just come back from a really good action movie. Which, in a way, I had.”
—Anthony Lane
“I will say that learning how to write has to do in part with learning how to accede to yourself and your object, instead of writing what you think you ought to write, or what at that point in time the world thinks poetry is about. Or what you think you ought to be about. The moment comes, if it ever comes, when you have enough strength to give way, to give in to being who you are, to give in to your themes. Giving in to your obsessions, giving in to the things that you will be writing about over and over. And sometimes the things you’ll be writing about over and over are things that some people don’t find very nice.”
—Frederick Seidel
“You’re here. So be here, dear one. You’re okay with us for now.”
—Dear Sugar
In things I say over and over again, we have, “I do what I want,” but I wonder why I feel this excuses me from doing everything else. Who is this person who does whatever she wants? What does admitting so say about her? I want to be untouchable. I want to say don’t worry you wont be able to love me. Don’t worry I don’t care about your judgment. Don’t worry I’ll disappear every time. Don’t worry I won’t make sacrifices for you. Don’t worry I live life on my terms and as sorry as I am that people still care for me in spite of this and that they still try to build bridges for me when I want to jump off the cliff, it doesn’t change me. I am still the girl that forges ahead blindly in a way that is unclear to everyone and I am still the girl that will apologize without really meaning it and I will still hope you love me even though I know that such love would do no one any good. And in that ambiguous place between structure and freedom is where my life plays out.
