There's a riff in my head that is very exposed and simple, like the way (meaning what it is when) I want. It's from "Passing Strange." The song is called Amsterdam. And it is so pretty, and I think it says ME right now better than words can (not because it's pretty; that's not what I meant).

Tonight will be a process of growing thicker skin. Every night of the week, I bet everyone grows thicker skin, as a reward and a retaliation for living through another 24 hours. There's a scene in one of the Chronicles of Narnia books where the jerk kid Eustace has a dream where he keeps shedding his skin and it is very painful, but eventually he's better than he ever was before. I suspect this is biblical. There's a shake, rattle and roll to rebirth I guess--wipe off the water of the day and be dry in the morning, ya dig?

A New Era

Down with wallowing! Down with fretfulness and forgetfulness, fear and mock self-deprecation! Down with wasted time, passive aggression, list of worries and guilt! Down with excessive exercise! To hell with treating love like a quest, to whining instead of acting, to talking more often and more loudly than thinking, than writing! FUCK COMPARISONS! This is a new era. These are my resolutions. I am getting older, it is true, but so is everyone else.

These are some questions I have been thinking about:

Is a relationship "worth it" if it doesn't lead anywhere? Are we--am I--actually capable of enjoying transient things while knowing that they are transient, of actually living in the moment?

How is it that some people can make a relationship work and others cannot? What is the formula, what is the fear, what are the things that break our backs?

How is it that people you don't even know can hold power over you? What is a CRUSH?

How do the excuses we make hold us back? If we believe in our faults, do they actually gain more power? 

Do you really kill the thing you love the most? And how do you do it? Is it really you, having too high expectations and being disappointed and so killing it for yourself? Or when you invest so much in something, do you experience guilt and possession and ultimately face the reality before you face the imagination?

Is everything we do--no, more like CAN everything we do be really self-love? Are we masturbatory creatures by nature, do we idealize and put so much stock into everything because we want to see mirrored back to us only the most perfect versions of ourselves? Is this all love? Is this any love? Can love ever really be selfless?

The concept of being separated from everyone by six degrees.

Something I've Been Working On:

And all men kill the thing they love,
  By all let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
  Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
  The brave man with a sword!

The Ballad of Reading Gaol, Oscar Wilde

MOVEMENT ONE: try-outs.

 (Girl. Wearing glasses. Looking sheepish and frumpy. Clears throat, unfurls piece of very messed-up paper, looks around furtively, clears throat again, begins):

THINGS TO SAY/ QUESTIONS FOR/ UNRIGHTEOUS FURY DIRECTED AT/ A LIST OF THINGS AND RELATIONSHIPS AND CONTEXTS I DO NOT/MAY NEVER UNDERSTAND/ AVOID/ TO THE WORLD, TO THE VOID, TO JESUS CHRIST (pause) No, not Jesus Christ (pause, push glasses up, take out pen and erase this part)—TO MY MOTHER, TO THE BOY I AM IN LOVE WITH ACROSS THE HALL, TO MY BEST FRIEND, TO MY CAT: I am here. I am…announcing my presence to you. Welcome! (Lamely, coughs, tries once more for emphasis) Welcome!

So I’ve been doing a lot of research, since last we spoke.  About beginnings and endings and the stuff in between. (Each line is a totally new thought)

I wrote a story.

It’s not finished.

You can’t read it.

I’ll tell you about it.

I’ll…show you.

(Scurry to a corner where she turns on a light, “illuminating” a table in a cafe. A big mannequin is sitting at. Loud mood music. I have to talk kind of loud above it all.)

This is the café where two people fell in love one night. This one (motion to the mannequin) is Hildegart Sanchez Ramirovelta DeLaSoul Lasienaga Lasagna Pastille Monroe DeMarco. All of her friends called her Hilda. She loved to dance and her feet were like ice, or velvet or something, because they were so easy. She was so good at it. (Getting into it)

I sat across from them and I watched it all. I was by myself. She sat like this (shoving mannequin off stool, getting carried away), she was beautiful. It was night-time. Everything she said was unintentional poetry. (affecting Bette Davis):

I just adore old automobiles. Means of time travel. Old hats, old kid gloves, old standards of beauty, old books, old perfumes, old movies. Anything that had enough sense of a past to be chuckled at fondly, or shrugged off, or re-invented in the new millennium through some kind of stupid fashion craze. I hoard old things I find: ticket stubs, baseball gloves, board games, lamp shades. I walk  into every antique store. I simply do not concern myself with now very much at all, I am that outrageous.

Not until Tim, that is. (Snapping out of it) I mean, I don’t think his name will remain Tim, but--these are just some ideas. This is brainstorming. This is fiction. This is not fact.

Tim was either ruddy and unremarkable with a good smile or very tall with shoulder-length hair he wore in a sort of pony-tail or had very good taste in music but no sense of style or jumbled teeth and a guitar case or steel-framed glasses or a secret or a rather large penis and bright eyes or he smoked while driving his Subaru and had all these piercings which she hated but forgave or was a writer or was a veterinarian or was a wanderer or was a drummer or just had nice air about him, I guess. They sat here and she was breathtaking, looking at him, and he was breathtaking, looking at her, so I looked at them, obviously and ironically, I looked at them for either a few months or days or minutes or years I can never remember, but then we all got older, were kicked out of the restaurant, and sort of started to think about more important things.

They were mean to each other. They did and said unkind things. I watched from the outside, completely helpless. Like my favorite television show.

One day she looked in the mirror: (draws the curtain back to reveal a ghastly skinny mannequin, drops the real thing, looks smaller, somehow) She screamed: (scream!) and she knew right then and there that it was all over, that it was kaput. Because when you’re carrying around someone else’s heart it is always fat, it is always heavy, it is every single thing that you do, it is a feast, but suddenly she was so skinny and she knew it was gone, the both of their hearts (but for some reason men never seem to get as skinny…) but anyways she was thin and drawn and no longer beautiful. She hated him for it, even though it was her fault, too.

Hilda wanted to be the kind of person who read the paper and played the mandolin, never the kind of woman who sat by the phone. She wanted to write long and lovely poems about nothing to do with love or lack thereof, but maybe baby rabbits, or Niagara falls, or you know, Presidents and the way Gouda cheese tastes. She wanted to see Havana alone, she wanted to cut her hair short and eat as much ice cream as she liked and most of all learn to cry, because it was so weird, she had never learned how to.  (Dancing with the mannequin) I guess she will someday.

She doesn’t want to now, though. Even being skinny did not make her want to do anything. (Dropping the mannequin)

Hilda could think of nothing but Tim even though her name was so much better. And this was the only thing she thought knew how to do, (unexpected fury) THE ONLY FUCKING THING...“this” meaning dance.

But the problem is, I can’t think how to make her real. Most likely, in fact, she was a dream. But I think it’s a good story anyways. Anyway, that’s what I have so far.