About two months ago, I was talking to a few friends. One said she was afraid of the fact that she and a close guy friend had romantic feelings for each other because she was afraid of ruining their friendship, and even though it sounds corny, she can't imagine not having him in her life.
I told her that I hate that reason for not giving it a shot because 1) If it doesn't work out, you truly can still be friends if you BOTH want it enough, and 2) There are people that we think we can't live without. And then something happens and we find out, we can live without them. Life goes on.
I fully believe that.
I do, however, also believe in something I wrote four months ago:
You never really "get over" losing someone you love. You just learn how to accept it and turn it into something else. And if you loved them, you never really lose them, because they've had an impact on you--they've made a difference in your life and it's a part of you. The pain just mellows out.
It's funny. I was thinking before about the day in Venice when we went to the Universita Ca' Foscari and heard Kathy's friend Shaul lecture about the Venetian ghetto and The Merchant of Venice. After that, we took the vaporetto up from Dorsoduro to Cannaregio and had lunch in a cafeteria and then walked down to the old apartments that used to constitute the ghetto. During lunch, I somehow got to talking to Kathy about "intellectual alienation," as she called it, and we continued talking about it the rest of the day. I don't even really remember what we said, but I do remember that she emphasized to me: the struggle never ends.
I remember exclaiming to her that that was terribly depressing to hear. She shrugged, and told me very earnestly that it's true: she's been struggling with it her whole life, and even now, she still does.
She told me that nearly one year ago, to the day. In the past year, I've found myself oscillating between contentment and hopefulness, and despair and frustration, fairly evenly. When I came back from Venice, I was still pretty high. By July/August, I was falling hard and fast. September, I started getting better again. Pretty mellow for the most part, aside from some moments, through the fall. Winter break I went nuts, and it was even worse when I got back. I started looking up in March, and after Relay, I was pretty content all through April, though tormented by other things. Now I'm back home and frustrated and angry and feeling this dull ache all the time again. I'm trying to embrace it and channel it toward something productive, but sort of failing so far.
In a strange way, this past semester has kind of mimicked the second half of my junior year of high school. All of that year was pretty great, but the second half was just so crammed full of new friends, old friends, adjusted relationships, and crazy emotions, that the first two and a half years of high school are barely memorable by comparison. I can distinctly recall vivid, isolated incidences from those six months, while the two and a half years before that seem like a blur. That's how I feel about this past semester--as though I have lived more in the past five months than I did the two and a half years before that.
I wrote in my journal a lot at the end of junior year. I journaled a lot this semester. Mmm.
Well, I just hope senior year of college is a lot better than senior year of high school. Well...less painful. I don't know if I could go through that again. Although, isn't that what life is--fearing pain, taking a chance and living anyway, getting the shit kicked out of you, and then finding the strength to get back up again?
----------------
Now playing: Vampire Weekend - Oxford Comma
Showing posts with label functioning in the real world. Show all posts
Showing posts with label functioning in the real world. Show all posts
Friday, May 22, 2009
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Rationalizing.
"The trick to loving is letting go."
- The Jane Austen Book Club
So let go, so let go,
Jump in,
Oh well, what you waiting for?
It's alright,
'Cause there's beauty in the breakdown...
- "Let Go," Frou Frou
"Memory is a wonderful thing if you don't have to deal with the past."
- Celine, Before Sunset
We hold on too tight. We're nostalgic. Photo albums, journals, home movies--we love to relive as much if not more than we love living itself. Yet it's painful. To hold onto these memories hurts. We end up wanting the past back instead of hoping for a better future and enjoying what we have now. The past can be a trap and being too preoccupied with it is dangerous.
Nothing lasts forever; everything must end. For better, for worse, that's just how it is, and you can either try to hold onto it--whether you do so consciously or otherwise--or you can just do what you can with the time that you have, and when it's over, appreciate that it happened. You can try to stay in a moment that has passed. You can try to recreate something that's gone. You can try to hold onto something that's not there. But sooner or later you will have to keep going. You will have to move on. Then you can either hold onto the memory and live in it, or you can live in the present and let it be. Love that it happened, learn from it, embrace it, then let it go.
I suppose that letting go really is all you can try to do. You can't try to hold on anything for too long or it will just slip away faster. Just enjoy what you have, love what you have, immerse yourself in the present. Let it wash over you and bask in it, and when it's gone, let it go.
I wasn't going to just rant and moan and get all preachy but I have a migraine and need to sleep. Maybe I'll fix this up another time.
Edit 11/12/08
11:28 AM
I didn't really clarify any of that. It's fluid but it's mush. I started off saying, "We hold on too tight," and that's really what I meant--not, "let go of everything and don't remember anything," but, I guess, only hold memories in the open palm of your hand. If they stay, they stay. If they fall away, don't try to close your hand but let them fall. Then there's room for more.
Laaaaaaaame. Whatever.
Edit 11/12/08
11:28 AM
I didn't really clarify any of that. It's fluid but it's mush. I started off saying, "We hold on too tight," and that's really what I meant--not, "let go of everything and don't remember anything," but, I guess, only hold memories in the open palm of your hand. If they stay, they stay. If they fall away, don't try to close your hand but let them fall. Then there's room for more.
Laaaaaaaame. Whatever.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Jack Kerouac: "the originator of blue-collar cool"
First. Follow-up to that last post:
Check this out. Look at the photo caption, and the second paragraph. That's the Civic vs. the 13er. Right there.
On a completely separate note, I was leafing through an old GQ from last year - GQ's 50 Most Stylish Men of the Last 50 Years, I believe it was. Lots of great pictures in that - so classy. I pulled two pages from it and stuck them on my bulletin board. The first was a series of photos of Cary Grant, arguably the most stylish of them all. The other featured a wonderful picture and bit on Paul Newman, praising the simplicity of his wardrobe choices, and on the other half, Jack Kerouac. This is what they said about him:
I love that description of Kerouac. It's so true. That description, in particular, reminds me of a particular turn of phrase in Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night. Dick Diver is talking to Rosemary about a WWI trench and battlefield they are exploring.
Kerouac was utterly brilliant. Born to Canadian parents, he grew up speaking French, became fluent in English, and I believe was well versed in German as well. He spent his school years reading every American, British, French, German, Russian, and Sanskrit classic he could get his hands on, reading translations only of the latter two. He went to Columbia University on a football scholarship, only to break his leg during the first game his freshman year. He ended up dropping out, I think, and then came his first of two stints in the Navy. It was after that that he met Ginsberg, Burroughs, and the others. Cassidy was his real inspiration, though; Dean in On the Road (which, I'll admit, I haven't read) is fashioned after him. It was for him that Kerouac came up with his 30 Essentials for the Belief and Technique of Spontaneous Prose, which he employs in some of his later works. Even just his journals are amazing. He changed the way people thought about writing. The scope of his influence in general--I can't even begin to imagine how many people, how many artists of all kinds he and his work have affected over the years.
Kerouac's poetry drips with the sounds of jazz and blues, and his fascination with Buddhism comes out often. Much of his work is informed by his travels around the country, and all of it was essentially taboo when he was writing in the 1950s and '60s. That was a period when most post-war G.I.'s and Silents were trying to raise straight-laced Boomer babies. It was that era I mentioned in a previous post when men were trying to maintain their wartime masculinity yet succeed in the corporate world, and women were trying desperately hard to fit the model of the perfect, feminine wife. Sloan Wilson, Betty Friedan--they both wrote in opposition, but Kerouac and the Beats--they lived it. They rejected the values society chose for them, taking a darker, seedier route instead. Even though the lifestyle and culture they chose is not one I'd chose for myself, I can't help admire the way they did their own thing when conformity was a demand that, seemingly, most Americans surrendered to.
----------------
Now playing: She & Him - Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?
Check this out. Look at the photo caption, and the second paragraph. That's the Civic vs. the 13er. Right there.
On a completely separate note, I was leafing through an old GQ from last year - GQ's 50 Most Stylish Men of the Last 50 Years, I believe it was. Lots of great pictures in that - so classy. I pulled two pages from it and stuck them on my bulletin board. The first was a series of photos of Cary Grant, arguably the most stylish of them all. The other featured a wonderful picture and bit on Paul Newman, praising the simplicity of his wardrobe choices, and on the other half, Jack Kerouac. This is what they said about him:
Flower power was all well and good, but Jack Kerouac often wondered aloud how the Beats could’ve given birth to such Technicolor bravura. Kerouac’s look was broken but unbowed—as he once said: “ragged, beatific, beautiful in an ugly graceful new way.” And yet his aesthetic is everywhere today: That Brooklyn hipster rocking overalls under his Carhartt jacket while reading Hart Crane? That kid in San Francisco sporting scuffed oxfords and a frayed collar, with Madame Bovary stuffed in his back pocket? They’re paying unwitting tribute to the man who exploded the 1950s world of straight-white pretensions, rejecting the notion that class was synonymous with value. An uneven artist perhaps, and a troubled one to be sure, but unequivocally a man: the originator of blue-collar cool.Kerouac and his fellow Beats floated around the cusp of the G.I. Generation and the Silent Generation, by Strauss and Howe's definitions. Though technically a G.I., Kerouac belongs with Ginsberg and Cassidy in the Silent Generation of artists that came of age in the G.I.'s "get it done" world.
I love that description of Kerouac. It's so true. That description, in particular, reminds me of a particular turn of phrase in Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night. Dick Diver is talking to Rosemary about a WWI trench and battlefield they are exploring.
'All my beautiful lovely safe world blew itself up here with a great gust of high explosive love,' Dick mourned persistently. 'Isn't that true, Rosemary?'In my mind, that is what Kerouac did: he blew up the beautiful lovely safe world with a great gust of high explosive love--in the best way possible. He was only one of many to do so, but still. He coined the term "Beat" in reference to Neal Cassady, but people today remember him as the frontman of that generation.
'I don't know,' she answered with a grave face. 'You know everything.'
Kerouac was utterly brilliant. Born to Canadian parents, he grew up speaking French, became fluent in English, and I believe was well versed in German as well. He spent his school years reading every American, British, French, German, Russian, and Sanskrit classic he could get his hands on, reading translations only of the latter two. He went to Columbia University on a football scholarship, only to break his leg during the first game his freshman year. He ended up dropping out, I think, and then came his first of two stints in the Navy. It was after that that he met Ginsberg, Burroughs, and the others. Cassidy was his real inspiration, though; Dean in On the Road (which, I'll admit, I haven't read) is fashioned after him. It was for him that Kerouac came up with his 30 Essentials for the Belief and Technique of Spontaneous Prose, which he employs in some of his later works. Even just his journals are amazing. He changed the way people thought about writing. The scope of his influence in general--I can't even begin to imagine how many people, how many artists of all kinds he and his work have affected over the years.
Kerouac's poetry drips with the sounds of jazz and blues, and his fascination with Buddhism comes out often. Much of his work is informed by his travels around the country, and all of it was essentially taboo when he was writing in the 1950s and '60s. That was a period when most post-war G.I.'s and Silents were trying to raise straight-laced Boomer babies. It was that era I mentioned in a previous post when men were trying to maintain their wartime masculinity yet succeed in the corporate world, and women were trying desperately hard to fit the model of the perfect, feminine wife. Sloan Wilson, Betty Friedan--they both wrote in opposition, but Kerouac and the Beats--they lived it. They rejected the values society chose for them, taking a darker, seedier route instead. Even though the lifestyle and culture they chose is not one I'd chose for myself, I can't help admire the way they did their own thing when conformity was a demand that, seemingly, most Americans surrendered to.
That's the other thing that's great about that GQ piece--at the end of each section, they include a style tip related to the person they wrote about. At the end of the Kerouac segment, they wrote:
Personal style isn't about buying the trendiest labels or most expensive suits. It's about establishing a look that's all yours and sticking with it.
----------------
Now playing: She & Him - Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?
Friday, September 26, 2008
"I've never been in love...it all feels more like fiction to me."
Will: Emily, will you, uh, marry me?
April: No.
Will: Goddd.
April: What do you mean, “Will you, uh, marry me?”?! I haven’t seen you in weeks. You don’t look happy or excited about the prospect of our marriage. You’re asking me to give up my . . . my freedom, my joie de vivre, for an institution that fails as often as it succeeds? And why should I marry you, anyway? I mean, why do you want to marry me? Besides some bourgeois desire to fulfill an ideal that society embeds in us from an early age to promote a consumer capitalist agenda.
Will: Oh! Ohhh my god.
April: You should have got on your knee.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that it seems so easy to fall into the trappings of social norms, because they set the status quo on so many things that we don't even think about. Like, as April points out, marriage.
[Long excerpt coming up]
Celine: I was thinking, for me it’s better I don’t romanticize things as much any more. I was suffering so much all the time. I still have lots of dreams, but they’re not in regard to my love life. It doesn’t make me sad; it’s just the way it is.
Jesse: Is that why you’re in a relationship with someone who’s never around?
Celine: [laughing] Yes, obviously I can’t deal with the day-to-day life of a relationship. [seriously] Yeah, we, you know, have this exciting time together, and then he leaves, and I miss him, but at least I’m not dying inside. When somebody is always around me, I’m like, suffocating.
Jesse: No wait, you just said that you need to love, and to be loved.
Celine: Yeah, but when I do, it quickly makes me nauseous! It’s a disaster. I mean, I’m really happy only when I’m on my own. Even being alone—it’s better than sitting next to a lover and feeling lonely. It’s not so easy for me to be all romantic. …I’ve just had too many . . . blah relationships. They were mean, they cared for me, but there was no real connection or excitement. At least, not from my side.
Jesse: I’m—I’m sorry, is it really that bad? It’s not, right?
Celine: You know, it’s not even that. I was fine. Until I read your fucking book. It stirred shit up, you know? It reminded me of how genuinely romantic I was, how I had so much hope in things, and now, now it’s like, I don’t believe in anything that relates to love, I don’t feel things for people any more. In a way, I put all my romanticism into that one night and I was never able to feel all this again...
Jesse: I—I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that.
Celine: You know what, reality and love are almost contradictory for me. It’s funny. Every single of my ex’s, they are now married. Men go out with me, we break up, and then they get married. And later they call me to thank me for teaching them what love is, and that I taught them to care and respect women—
Jesse: I think I’m one of those guys.
Celine: —You know, I want to kill them! Why didn’t they ask me to marry them! I would have said no, but then at least they could have asked! But it’s my fault, I know it’s my fault, because I never felt it was the right man, never. But what does it mean, “the right man”? The “love of your life”? The concept is absurd, that we can only be complete with another person is evil, right?!
Also, the more I watch Before Sunset - well, first of all, the more I realize it's absolutely brilliant, especially when paired with Before Sunrise, then you realize Jesse and Celine as characters and performances are that much more beautifully, beautifully subtle and nuanced and real and detailed and perfect than when the movie stands alone - but really, the more I watch it, the more I identify with Celine. Take out the ultra-liberal activism and I'm basically her. But it always makes me think that marriage is just an institution that makes you take something irrational and impermanent and constantly changing, and force it into a mold of practicality and pragmatism and sensibility. It just doesn't work like that in my mind. Yet I think there's this constant pressure on most people I know to want to marry. Beyond that, even - in high school, we're practically forced to take the SAT's and apply to college, and it's implied to us that it's impossible to succeed otherwise. From there, we have to choose a degree. One line of study. Then we graduate and we have to get jobs. But not just a job - we have to choose a career, a practical line of work to which we can devote ourselves and from which we can make a comfortable living. And obviously after that we have to get married and start a family. Because that's the thing to do. It's like the whole '80s yuppie thing only evolved, so it doesn't necessarily mean a life of luxury but one of financial success, if only on a middle class level.
And my problem with that is that not everyone wants the same thing. In fact, most people don't want the same thing. Or else, they really don't want the same thing but they think they do because they've been tricked and trapped into it. But really, this whole life doesn't apply to everyone. It's one of the things I like about St. Elmo's Fire. Kevin starts off as this crazy cynic about love and marriage, even though he changes by the end, and Lesley accuses Alec of not wanting to get married, but of wanting to be able to send out a Christmas card with a picture of them on it, and Billy ends up realizing that the "after college life" isn't for him and he has to stop trying to be Alec. They all start off with these ideas of how life is supposed to be and they eventually realize that they just have to do their own thing. Well, to some extent.
It's funny because I just got back from my Theater & Society class, in which we're watching a bunch of documentaries on the 1950s. Today's was called "Let's Play House" and it was about how after World War II, there was this huge marriage and consequently baby boom, and the consequences. Men felt their masculinity was being threatened when they had to go back to civilian life and enter the corporate world - thus Sloan Wilson's book The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. Women, on the other hand, were feeling pressured to find a husband - after the war, the numbers said that 1 in 7 women would have to be single because of the death toll. So, they were pushed into this lifestyle of hyper-femininity in which they couldn't work, had to be housewives and mothers, and had to literally fit this physical mold of the American woman. She had to be the June Cleaver figure. And then all these men were unhappy because their lives were dull and corporate life was dissatisfying, and all these women were unhappy because they weren't allowed to do anything but cook and clean and basically not have a personality. Everything in the media was supporting this - movies, books, magazines - until a few people broke out and rebelled, like Wilson, and Betty Friedan (who wrote The Feminine Mystique).
In comparison, we have so much freedom today, so much choice, yet I feel like the current is still carrying us towards these unfulfilling lifestyles that society mandates are what we should want. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with wanting that whole packaged lifestyle, either, though, even though it very much sounds like I am, haha. The more I think about it, it's just not for me. While it's liberating to realize what you want is not what everyone else wants, it's also daunting, because in a way, you're preconditioned to fail. Or preconditioned to succeed, I'm not sure which. I mean, you're setting out to do what no one else wants you to be able to do. That's what I meant. What is that quote?
"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."
And also, I'm really not totally condemning marriage here or anything. Because in the society we live in, it does make sense. I just don't think it makes sense for humans in general, haha. And I'm not bashing love here, either. It's just...a mystery to me. Which sounds painfully obvious and stupid, but I mean it in a beyond-the-cliched-ways way. Because to me, love is different to everyone. And in some people, I think it's buried deeper than in others.
Jesse: We’re just living in a pretense of a marriage, responsibility, and all these ideas of how people are supposed to live.…and, and I know that there’s something wrong, and I know that I can’t keep living like this, and I think, there’s gotta be more to love than commitment, but then I think that I might have given up on the whole idea of romantic love...
Oh yeah. Romance. That's another thing. One of those Interview segments quoted Pop artist Ronnie Cutrone as saying that Andy Warhol taught him that, "All romantic love is an illusion." I never thought of it like that. All romance in general, though, I think is an illusion. It's all in how you choose (whether consciously or unconsciously) how to perceive things. Romance and cynicism are both just filters. They're films through which you see the world. So it makes sense that romantic love would be an illusion. It's just how you're choosing to see love. Not that I have a problem with that. Romance makes life palatable and easier to digest. That can become problematic, but in general, that rosiness is nice. Romance, in a way, is hope. And while part of me hates hope - because hope, like expectation, often leads to severe disappointment - a character one movie or another that I was watching in a class the other day pointed out, "We all hope. It's what keeps us alive." I think that was during one of the John Cassavetes movies that I didn't really like. Faces maybe. But I digress. Except not really because I think I was done.
No I wasn't. I was about to say that I might have misinterpreted the way Cutrone meant "romantic love", but it still made me think of it the way I did. If he meant "romantic love" not as, being "in love" with romance, but just as, being "in love" in general (did that make ANY sense? Yikes, I need to sleep), then I'm not sure I agree. But like I was saying before, I think it's different for everyone. For some people it's harder to fall in love than for others. "Here's what I know. There are some people who fall in love over and over. And there are others who can only seem to do it once." Haha, that was from the fourth Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants book. But I like it. And I like that it says "seems," because I don't think that it's humanly possible for anyone to fall in love only once. I think it's possible to go your whole life being in love with only one person - but that's just because there's no way you'll ever meet all the people you could fall in love with. And then there are those people who are perfectly capable of falling in love with each other but they don't let themselves. But that's something else entirely.
It's like that Jane Austen Book Club bit:
"A person's no more sane falling out of love than falling into it, I guess..."
"What do we know about it, you and I?" Allegra asked. "We're not the sort who fall out of love, are we?"
Oh, and it reminds me of Persuasion. Anne and Capt. Wentworth both try to love other people. They try to resign themselves to the idea of loving another. What is it, eight years, that pass? Anne firmly believes that it's easier for men to fall out of love than women, that they are better at forgetting, and that women suffer more, but then Capt. Wentworth writes her that wonderful, wonderful letter completely contradicting her. "You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant." Oh, that's also like in Before Sunset. Nine years pass and Celine pretends to have forgotten because Jesse waltzes in all romantic and married and she thinks he's moved on, so she has that breakdown in the car, but then he reveals that he hasn't, and that he's still suffering just as much, if not more, than she is. Most amazing scene in the whole movie.
Ack, think I wrote enough? Too much overlap right now. None of this even makes sense any more. Sorry about that.
----------------
Now playing: Feist - So Sorry
April: No.
Will: Goddd.
April: What do you mean, “Will you, uh, marry me?”?! I haven’t seen you in weeks. You don’t look happy or excited about the prospect of our marriage. You’re asking me to give up my . . . my freedom, my joie de vivre, for an institution that fails as often as it succeeds? And why should I marry you, anyway? I mean, why do you want to marry me? Besides some bourgeois desire to fulfill an ideal that society embeds in us from an early age to promote a consumer capitalist agenda.
Will: Oh! Ohhh my god.
April: You should have got on your knee.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that it seems so easy to fall into the trappings of social norms, because they set the status quo on so many things that we don't even think about. Like, as April points out, marriage.
[Long excerpt coming up]
Celine: I was thinking, for me it’s better I don’t romanticize things as much any more. I was suffering so much all the time. I still have lots of dreams, but they’re not in regard to my love life. It doesn’t make me sad; it’s just the way it is.
Jesse: Is that why you’re in a relationship with someone who’s never around?
Celine: [laughing] Yes, obviously I can’t deal with the day-to-day life of a relationship. [seriously] Yeah, we, you know, have this exciting time together, and then he leaves, and I miss him, but at least I’m not dying inside. When somebody is always around me, I’m like, suffocating.
Jesse: No wait, you just said that you need to love, and to be loved.
Celine: Yeah, but when I do, it quickly makes me nauseous! It’s a disaster. I mean, I’m really happy only when I’m on my own. Even being alone—it’s better than sitting next to a lover and feeling lonely. It’s not so easy for me to be all romantic. …I’ve just had too many . . . blah relationships. They were mean, they cared for me, but there was no real connection or excitement. At least, not from my side.
Jesse: I’m—I’m sorry, is it really that bad? It’s not, right?
Celine: You know, it’s not even that. I was fine. Until I read your fucking book. It stirred shit up, you know? It reminded me of how genuinely romantic I was, how I had so much hope in things, and now, now it’s like, I don’t believe in anything that relates to love, I don’t feel things for people any more. In a way, I put all my romanticism into that one night and I was never able to feel all this again...
Jesse: I—I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that.
Celine: You know what, reality and love are almost contradictory for me. It’s funny. Every single of my ex’s, they are now married. Men go out with me, we break up, and then they get married. And later they call me to thank me for teaching them what love is, and that I taught them to care and respect women—
Jesse: I think I’m one of those guys.
Celine: —You know, I want to kill them! Why didn’t they ask me to marry them! I would have said no, but then at least they could have asked! But it’s my fault, I know it’s my fault, because I never felt it was the right man, never. But what does it mean, “the right man”? The “love of your life”? The concept is absurd, that we can only be complete with another person is evil, right?!
Also, the more I watch Before Sunset - well, first of all, the more I realize it's absolutely brilliant, especially when paired with Before Sunrise, then you realize Jesse and Celine as characters and performances are that much more beautifully, beautifully subtle and nuanced and real and detailed and perfect than when the movie stands alone - but really, the more I watch it, the more I identify with Celine. Take out the ultra-liberal activism and I'm basically her. But it always makes me think that marriage is just an institution that makes you take something irrational and impermanent and constantly changing, and force it into a mold of practicality and pragmatism and sensibility. It just doesn't work like that in my mind. Yet I think there's this constant pressure on most people I know to want to marry. Beyond that, even - in high school, we're practically forced to take the SAT's and apply to college, and it's implied to us that it's impossible to succeed otherwise. From there, we have to choose a degree. One line of study. Then we graduate and we have to get jobs. But not just a job - we have to choose a career, a practical line of work to which we can devote ourselves and from which we can make a comfortable living. And obviously after that we have to get married and start a family. Because that's the thing to do. It's like the whole '80s yuppie thing only evolved, so it doesn't necessarily mean a life of luxury but one of financial success, if only on a middle class level.
And my problem with that is that not everyone wants the same thing. In fact, most people don't want the same thing. Or else, they really don't want the same thing but they think they do because they've been tricked and trapped into it. But really, this whole life doesn't apply to everyone. It's one of the things I like about St. Elmo's Fire. Kevin starts off as this crazy cynic about love and marriage, even though he changes by the end, and Lesley accuses Alec of not wanting to get married, but of wanting to be able to send out a Christmas card with a picture of them on it, and Billy ends up realizing that the "after college life" isn't for him and he has to stop trying to be Alec. They all start off with these ideas of how life is supposed to be and they eventually realize that they just have to do their own thing. Well, to some extent.
It's funny because I just got back from my Theater & Society class, in which we're watching a bunch of documentaries on the 1950s. Today's was called "Let's Play House" and it was about how after World War II, there was this huge marriage and consequently baby boom, and the consequences. Men felt their masculinity was being threatened when they had to go back to civilian life and enter the corporate world - thus Sloan Wilson's book The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. Women, on the other hand, were feeling pressured to find a husband - after the war, the numbers said that 1 in 7 women would have to be single because of the death toll. So, they were pushed into this lifestyle of hyper-femininity in which they couldn't work, had to be housewives and mothers, and had to literally fit this physical mold of the American woman. She had to be the June Cleaver figure. And then all these men were unhappy because their lives were dull and corporate life was dissatisfying, and all these women were unhappy because they weren't allowed to do anything but cook and clean and basically not have a personality. Everything in the media was supporting this - movies, books, magazines - until a few people broke out and rebelled, like Wilson, and Betty Friedan (who wrote The Feminine Mystique).
In comparison, we have so much freedom today, so much choice, yet I feel like the current is still carrying us towards these unfulfilling lifestyles that society mandates are what we should want. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with wanting that whole packaged lifestyle, either, though, even though it very much sounds like I am, haha. The more I think about it, it's just not for me. While it's liberating to realize what you want is not what everyone else wants, it's also daunting, because in a way, you're preconditioned to fail. Or preconditioned to succeed, I'm not sure which. I mean, you're setting out to do what no one else wants you to be able to do. That's what I meant. What is that quote?
"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."
And also, I'm really not totally condemning marriage here or anything. Because in the society we live in, it does make sense. I just don't think it makes sense for humans in general, haha. And I'm not bashing love here, either. It's just...a mystery to me. Which sounds painfully obvious and stupid, but I mean it in a beyond-the-cliched-ways way. Because to me, love is different to everyone. And in some people, I think it's buried deeper than in others.
Jesse: We’re just living in a pretense of a marriage, responsibility, and all these ideas of how people are supposed to live.…and, and I know that there’s something wrong, and I know that I can’t keep living like this, and I think, there’s gotta be more to love than commitment, but then I think that I might have given up on the whole idea of romantic love...
Oh yeah. Romance. That's another thing. One of those Interview segments quoted Pop artist Ronnie Cutrone as saying that Andy Warhol taught him that, "All romantic love is an illusion." I never thought of it like that. All romance in general, though, I think is an illusion. It's all in how you choose (whether consciously or unconsciously) how to perceive things. Romance and cynicism are both just filters. They're films through which you see the world. So it makes sense that romantic love would be an illusion. It's just how you're choosing to see love. Not that I have a problem with that. Romance makes life palatable and easier to digest. That can become problematic, but in general, that rosiness is nice. Romance, in a way, is hope. And while part of me hates hope - because hope, like expectation, often leads to severe disappointment - a character one movie or another that I was watching in a class the other day pointed out, "We all hope. It's what keeps us alive." I think that was during one of the John Cassavetes movies that I didn't really like. Faces maybe. But I digress. Except not really because I think I was done.
No I wasn't. I was about to say that I might have misinterpreted the way Cutrone meant "romantic love", but it still made me think of it the way I did. If he meant "romantic love" not as, being "in love" with romance, but just as, being "in love" in general (did that make ANY sense? Yikes, I need to sleep), then I'm not sure I agree. But like I was saying before, I think it's different for everyone. For some people it's harder to fall in love than for others. "Here's what I know. There are some people who fall in love over and over. And there are others who can only seem to do it once." Haha, that was from the fourth Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants book. But I like it. And I like that it says "seems," because I don't think that it's humanly possible for anyone to fall in love only once. I think it's possible to go your whole life being in love with only one person - but that's just because there's no way you'll ever meet all the people you could fall in love with. And then there are those people who are perfectly capable of falling in love with each other but they don't let themselves. But that's something else entirely.
It's like that Jane Austen Book Club bit:
"A person's no more sane falling out of love than falling into it, I guess..."
"What do we know about it, you and I?" Allegra asked. "We're not the sort who fall out of love, are we?"
Oh, and it reminds me of Persuasion. Anne and Capt. Wentworth both try to love other people. They try to resign themselves to the idea of loving another. What is it, eight years, that pass? Anne firmly believes that it's easier for men to fall out of love than women, that they are better at forgetting, and that women suffer more, but then Capt. Wentworth writes her that wonderful, wonderful letter completely contradicting her. "You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant." Oh, that's also like in Before Sunset. Nine years pass and Celine pretends to have forgotten because Jesse waltzes in all romantic and married and she thinks he's moved on, so she has that breakdown in the car, but then he reveals that he hasn't, and that he's still suffering just as much, if not more, than she is. Most amazing scene in the whole movie.
Ack, think I wrote enough? Too much overlap right now. None of this even makes sense any more. Sorry about that.
----------------
Now playing: Feist - So Sorry
Monday, August 11, 2008
Hugh Laurie by Emma Thompson
Interview, part 3. Hugh Laurie = Dr. House. Emma Thompson = brilliant British actress - aside from the Harry Potter movies and Nanny McPhee, she's done Sense and Sensibility, Love Actually, Stranger Than Fiction, and just out now, Brideshead Revisited. Plus a bunch of older things and period pieces. She wrote the screenplays for Nanny MacPhee and Sense and Sensibility as well as acted in them, too. She and Hugh Laurie are old friends - went to Cambridge and were active in the drama program there. It's funny - I think she may have said more than Hugh Laurie in interviewing him. Hehe.
ET: When we've talked about the U.S. in the past, one of the things that has certainly drawn our fire has been the tendency toward sentimentality.
HL: Yes.
ET: Yet it doesn't seem to haunt "House." Have you come across it? Because it is definitely there, don't you feel, in the U.S.?
HL: I do feel it there. But then, one of the interesting things about doing "House" is that an audience of Americans who might, as we suppose, turn toward the sentimental, have actually embraced someone so starkly and brutally cynical. Although, of course, the show is actually conceived by Canadians.
ET: But see, I think underneath that American sentimentality, there definitely is a much, much more realistic attitude to people.
HL: Yes.
ET: I do. I think, funnily enough, there is, as it were, an opposite reaction in England in the sense that we all look cynical and sort of reserved, and in fact, I don't think that we are. I think we're softer, in a sense.
HL: I think there is much in what you say. We have had some various peculiar fevers of sentimentality.
...
ET: Now, do you think you would describe yourself as a misanthropist or a misanthrope?
HL: No. I don't think so. I have misanthropic days--or half-days. I can get into a sort of muttering, curmudgeonly state. But no, I don't think I am overall. Believe it or not, perhaps I don't show it much, or well, but I think I like people.
I think it's interesting how the general mood and tone of people reflects their cultural values and ultimately, their culture. In America, what do we have? Commercialism. But we also have this odd sort of unrealistic sentimentality that they mention, and this nostalgia, almost, for times when that sentimentality was more real than it is now. Now it's sort of affected, or a way to escape the coldness that is now reality. It's romance, versus reality. Whereas, according to these two, it's the other way around in Britain - coldness and reservedness on the surface, but really they have lots of warmth and sentimentality and this old-world, romantic, quality. At least, that's what it seems they're getting at. I suppose if you think about it, the Brontes had those great, epic romances, and the novels that came before that - the Gothic romances, like Ann Radcliffe's novels, must be somewhat sentimental, and I'm sure there's others. Then stuff after that too. Funny how things change and how sentimentality comes in waves and all that.
(I suddenly just lost all desire to write anything, and now am off to sleep. Hehe. Still to come: Marc Jacobs, and remembering Andy Warhol...)
ET: When we've talked about the U.S. in the past, one of the things that has certainly drawn our fire has been the tendency toward sentimentality.
HL: Yes.
ET: Yet it doesn't seem to haunt "House." Have you come across it? Because it is definitely there, don't you feel, in the U.S.?
HL: I do feel it there. But then, one of the interesting things about doing "House" is that an audience of Americans who might, as we suppose, turn toward the sentimental, have actually embraced someone so starkly and brutally cynical. Although, of course, the show is actually conceived by Canadians.
ET: But see, I think underneath that American sentimentality, there definitely is a much, much more realistic attitude to people.
HL: Yes.
ET: I do. I think, funnily enough, there is, as it were, an opposite reaction in England in the sense that we all look cynical and sort of reserved, and in fact, I don't think that we are. I think we're softer, in a sense.
HL: I think there is much in what you say. We have had some various peculiar fevers of sentimentality.
...
ET: Now, do you think you would describe yourself as a misanthropist or a misanthrope?
HL: No. I don't think so. I have misanthropic days--or half-days. I can get into a sort of muttering, curmudgeonly state. But no, I don't think I am overall. Believe it or not, perhaps I don't show it much, or well, but I think I like people.
I think it's interesting how the general mood and tone of people reflects their cultural values and ultimately, their culture. In America, what do we have? Commercialism. But we also have this odd sort of unrealistic sentimentality that they mention, and this nostalgia, almost, for times when that sentimentality was more real than it is now. Now it's sort of affected, or a way to escape the coldness that is now reality. It's romance, versus reality. Whereas, according to these two, it's the other way around in Britain - coldness and reservedness on the surface, but really they have lots of warmth and sentimentality and this old-world, romantic, quality. At least, that's what it seems they're getting at. I suppose if you think about it, the Brontes had those great, epic romances, and the novels that came before that - the Gothic romances, like Ann Radcliffe's novels, must be somewhat sentimental, and I'm sure there's others. Then stuff after that too. Funny how things change and how sentimentality comes in waves and all that.
(I suddenly just lost all desire to write anything, and now am off to sleep. Hehe. Still to come: Marc Jacobs, and remembering Andy Warhol...)
Monday, July 21, 2008
'We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live'
That's the name of a collection of nonfiction I have by Joan Didion. Mostly essays, I think, and like about 1/3 of the books I own, I have yet to read any of it. My mum bought it for me for Christmas a couple years ago, I think. I do love the title though. I like to think that it means "stories" in multiple ways - stories as in tales of fiction, creative pieces, and stories as in lies.
From time to time I wonder to what extent it is necessary to lie to yourself in order to survive in the world. There's a quote from A Farewell to Arms that I really like, even though I could only get through about a quarter of the book before stopping from boredom. (I do intend to return to it someday.)
"If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of those you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
I hate the lack of commas in his writing.
Anyway, I always think of that quote when I think about this - the idea that the world breaks everyone. I tend to think of it mostly as idealists and optimists being broken and reduced to cynicism and pessimism. The romantics of the world are really unfortunate. It's so easy to look at the world and see the darkness and evil that fills it, and it's so much harder to look at it and see the light and hope. It's even harder to see that light and hope and to continue to believe in it. Some people, I think, can function in day-to-day life and still accept all the darkness without losing sight of the light.
But I think other people need to harden themselves to it. They need to defend themselves from the darkness by denying the hope, because let's face it: even though in Corinthians, Paul says love is the greatest of the three that remain, faith and hope are still part of that, and all three are terribly painful. Rewarding if you can nurture them and keep them pure, but that purity hurts. It hurts to be unable to stop believing in someone in whom you know you should have less faith - it's such a battle to continue to have faith in them when deep down, the practical side of you truly believes that you will be let down. And even though you expect it, it still hurts just as much as you knew it would.
I'm generally an "honesty is the best policy" kind of person. With a tendency to use euphemisms and soften the blow, but straight up when you get down to it. But sometimes life just hurts so much, I find the need to convince myself of certain things that, deep down, I know are false. I need to keep telling myself that all people are honest, that all love is worth whatever else you have to endure, that things are going to get better without getting worse, that other people feel as much as I do. I'm not as good at it as some people I know, though. Some people amaze me with how much they have hardened themselves to others, or with how much importance they have placed on something material, which allows them to perform better. These are poor examples, but I can't think of anything better at the moment. Ah. People who can convince themselves that they love people that they really don't. And the people who can convince themselves that they don't love someone any more. (Persuasion!) (What is that quote? Hang on...got it. "Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I will not forget you. Love me and I may be forced to love you." - William Arthur Ward. Oh, and Proust? "In his younger days a man dreams of possessing the heart of the woman whom he loves; later, the feeling that he possesses the heart of a woman may be enough to make him fall in love with her." I think it's Proust.)
Sometimes I wonder if believing in everything good is really the self-deception. Maybe the practical side of me is the right one, the parts of me that is cynical and anti-social and sees more of the bad than the good.
The Dark Knight wrestled with some of this. I'd have to see it again in order to write about any of it though.
The Quiet American did too, if I remember. You had Fowler, the worn and weary old English journalist who had seen enough in the world to be tough and detached, and Pyle, the young American idealist whom the world had not yet either hardened or broken or even taught. Except they weren't in the real world. They were in a sort of hyper-reality - Vietnam in 1955 - trying not to die for 90% of their daily lives.
----------------
Now playing: Procol Harum - In Held 'Twas In I
From time to time I wonder to what extent it is necessary to lie to yourself in order to survive in the world. There's a quote from A Farewell to Arms that I really like, even though I could only get through about a quarter of the book before stopping from boredom. (I do intend to return to it someday.)
"If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of those you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
I hate the lack of commas in his writing.
Anyway, I always think of that quote when I think about this - the idea that the world breaks everyone. I tend to think of it mostly as idealists and optimists being broken and reduced to cynicism and pessimism. The romantics of the world are really unfortunate. It's so easy to look at the world and see the darkness and evil that fills it, and it's so much harder to look at it and see the light and hope. It's even harder to see that light and hope and to continue to believe in it. Some people, I think, can function in day-to-day life and still accept all the darkness without losing sight of the light.
But I think other people need to harden themselves to it. They need to defend themselves from the darkness by denying the hope, because let's face it: even though in Corinthians, Paul says love is the greatest of the three that remain, faith and hope are still part of that, and all three are terribly painful. Rewarding if you can nurture them and keep them pure, but that purity hurts. It hurts to be unable to stop believing in someone in whom you know you should have less faith - it's such a battle to continue to have faith in them when deep down, the practical side of you truly believes that you will be let down. And even though you expect it, it still hurts just as much as you knew it would.
I'm generally an "honesty is the best policy" kind of person. With a tendency to use euphemisms and soften the blow, but straight up when you get down to it. But sometimes life just hurts so much, I find the need to convince myself of certain things that, deep down, I know are false. I need to keep telling myself that all people are honest, that all love is worth whatever else you have to endure, that things are going to get better without getting worse, that other people feel as much as I do. I'm not as good at it as some people I know, though. Some people amaze me with how much they have hardened themselves to others, or with how much importance they have placed on something material, which allows them to perform better. These are poor examples, but I can't think of anything better at the moment. Ah. People who can convince themselves that they love people that they really don't. And the people who can convince themselves that they don't love someone any more. (Persuasion!) (What is that quote? Hang on...got it. "Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I will not forget you. Love me and I may be forced to love you." - William Arthur Ward. Oh, and Proust? "In his younger days a man dreams of possessing the heart of the woman whom he loves; later, the feeling that he possesses the heart of a woman may be enough to make him fall in love with her." I think it's Proust.)
Sometimes I wonder if believing in everything good is really the self-deception. Maybe the practical side of me is the right one, the parts of me that is cynical and anti-social and sees more of the bad than the good.
The Dark Knight wrestled with some of this. I'd have to see it again in order to write about any of it though.
The Quiet American did too, if I remember. You had Fowler, the worn and weary old English journalist who had seen enough in the world to be tough and detached, and Pyle, the young American idealist whom the world had not yet either hardened or broken or even taught. Except they weren't in the real world. They were in a sort of hyper-reality - Vietnam in 1955 - trying not to die for 90% of their daily lives.
----------------
Now playing: Procol Harum - In Held 'Twas In I
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Life really bugs me.
Well, no.
What really bugs me is the realization I made at the beginning of freshman year that, for the rest of my life, I'm going to have to keep proving my worth to everyone I meet. I realized that, in a way, everything I did in high school, I did in part for the wrong reasons. Partly, I was so involved and worked so hard because that's who I am. I tried doing the non-involvement thing last year, and it was miserable. Now I'm over my head in activities and such again, and as rough as some days are, it's infinitely better than not doing anything and not being involved at all, though, I had probably needed that downtime given how burnt out from high school I was.
But part of the reason I was so burnt out in high school is because I kept thinking I had to. Getting into college is so competitive, I needed to keep doing all this stuff, to be such a perfectionist, so I could have the privilege of choosing a college, and not depend on a college choosing me. In the end, I probably went to the least selective of all of them. But also the cheapest. But that's neither here nor there.
At the beginning of last year, I was thinking about double majoring, and I didn't know what to do. I thought I might want a writing-based career, but then I realized that a) I didn't think I was good enough a writer to succeed or even live by writing, and b) I didn't want to spend the rest of my life submitting my work to someone else to have them tell me whether or not it's good enough. And to make a living by writing, that's what you need to do. Whether it's an editor telling you whether or not it's good enough, or the public telling you whether or not they like it, writers make a living not by enlightening through their works, but by being judged whether or not it's good enough, and I don't think I could live like that. I don't write for anyone else but me. It's my thing. I don't think I could do that. The only way I possibly could, I think, is as a critic, but a) that's such a difficult field to break into, and b) I don't think I could be okay with a life of writing about other people's work. I mean, I could, but only if I kept creating myself, and I don't think I could do both.
Notice any trend throughout all of that? Yeah, the whole me thinking thing kind of keeps getting in the way. But what happens if I don't think about that? I don't know. I've got too many interests to devote myself to just one. Maybe I'll hope one of my friends gets really rich and gives me the capital to write and publish myself. Muahaha. I'm going to have to marry rich. Except I'm mildly certain I'm not going to marry at all, which kind of throws a wrench into that plan.
So I keep thinking about all this stuff, and then stopping and realizing, wait. I should just stop thinking and worrying about everything. Whatever happens, happens, and as long as I don't just sit around on my ass waiting for things to happen, everything should just fall into place. Everything works together for good, right. (Though I can't get rid of the nagging suspicion that that's the kind of idealistic assumption that's going to be my downfall. Damn being a worrier by nature. Damnit.)
"Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul.
If either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas.
For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.
Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion, that it may sing;
And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes."
- Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
What really bugs me is the realization I made at the beginning of freshman year that, for the rest of my life, I'm going to have to keep proving my worth to everyone I meet. I realized that, in a way, everything I did in high school, I did in part for the wrong reasons. Partly, I was so involved and worked so hard because that's who I am. I tried doing the non-involvement thing last year, and it was miserable. Now I'm over my head in activities and such again, and as rough as some days are, it's infinitely better than not doing anything and not being involved at all, though, I had probably needed that downtime given how burnt out from high school I was.
But part of the reason I was so burnt out in high school is because I kept thinking I had to. Getting into college is so competitive, I needed to keep doing all this stuff, to be such a perfectionist, so I could have the privilege of choosing a college, and not depend on a college choosing me. In the end, I probably went to the least selective of all of them. But also the cheapest. But that's neither here nor there.
At the beginning of last year, I was thinking about double majoring, and I didn't know what to do. I thought I might want a writing-based career, but then I realized that a) I didn't think I was good enough a writer to succeed or even live by writing, and b) I didn't want to spend the rest of my life submitting my work to someone else to have them tell me whether or not it's good enough. And to make a living by writing, that's what you need to do. Whether it's an editor telling you whether or not it's good enough, or the public telling you whether or not they like it, writers make a living not by enlightening through their works, but by being judged whether or not it's good enough, and I don't think I could live like that. I don't write for anyone else but me. It's my thing. I don't think I could do that. The only way I possibly could, I think, is as a critic, but a) that's such a difficult field to break into, and b) I don't think I could be okay with a life of writing about other people's work. I mean, I could, but only if I kept creating myself, and I don't think I could do both.
Notice any trend throughout all of that? Yeah, the whole me thinking thing kind of keeps getting in the way. But what happens if I don't think about that? I don't know. I've got too many interests to devote myself to just one. Maybe I'll hope one of my friends gets really rich and gives me the capital to write and publish myself. Muahaha. I'm going to have to marry rich. Except I'm mildly certain I'm not going to marry at all, which kind of throws a wrench into that plan.
So I keep thinking about all this stuff, and then stopping and realizing, wait. I should just stop thinking and worrying about everything. Whatever happens, happens, and as long as I don't just sit around on my ass waiting for things to happen, everything should just fall into place. Everything works together for good, right. (Though I can't get rid of the nagging suspicion that that's the kind of idealistic assumption that's going to be my downfall. Damn being a worrier by nature. Damnit.)
"Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul.
If either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas.
For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.
Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion, that it may sing;
And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes."
- Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
Monday, March 31, 2008
"You know, there is nothing greater than deciding in your life that things maybe really are black and white!"
I think I will forever be in awe of people who can do that - who can just look at life and the world in general and see nothing but black and white, right and wrong, with no gray area.
I used to like the gray areas. Somehow, that was comforting - knowing that if I never found the answers I was looking for, it was okay, because sometimes, there are no right answers.
Now it pisses me off and it's probably the one thing I struggle with the most.
I was going to write more about uncertainty and faith and forcing yourself to adapt to function in the world. And something else about denial and misinterpretation and self-deception and The Talented Mr. Ripley. And about how difficult it can be to change your basic nature and overcome inherent (and sometimes also seemingly irrational) fears and such. But now I really don't feel like it.
I think I'm developing carpal tunnel in my right hand/wrist. Booo.
I used to like the gray areas. Somehow, that was comforting - knowing that if I never found the answers I was looking for, it was okay, because sometimes, there are no right answers.
Now it pisses me off and it's probably the one thing I struggle with the most.
I was going to write more about uncertainty and faith and forcing yourself to adapt to function in the world. And something else about denial and misinterpretation and self-deception and The Talented Mr. Ripley. And about how difficult it can be to change your basic nature and overcome inherent (and sometimes also seemingly irrational) fears and such. But now I really don't feel like it.
I think I'm developing carpal tunnel in my right hand/wrist. Booo.
Friday, February 8, 2008
My Other Point
I have a friend who is ultra-conservative politically, and one day when we were talking he told me that the difference between conservatives and liberals are that conservatives are realists, while liberals are idealists: liberals want to enact plans that would work in an ideal world, while conservatives see that they would fail in the real world and act accordingly.
I'm pretty moderate. Socially more liberal, I guess. I blame college. Haha. Though according to my friend, blaming others and not taking responsibility is also a liberal attitude...but anyway, my point is, I decided today that I was totally designed for utopia. Or a vacuum.
In 20th Century American Foreign Politics today, the topic was liberal internationalism. We talked a lot about World War I, Woodrow Wilson, the Bolsheviks' October revolution, and the rise of Lenin. We spent a lot of time on Wilson's Fourteen Points, reviewing each of them, why we thought he thought they would lead to a perfectly peaceful world, and why Lenin shot them down. Most people said that they thought that the Fourteen Points weren't bad - just not realistic. In a perfect world, they would work - they worked on paper; just, they probably wouldn't in practice.
Some people are incredibly well equipped to succeed in the real world. They have the kind of mindset it takes to survive in the competitive society we live in. They're positive yet realistic; cynical yet happy. Then there are the people like me who were just made to live in a perfect world. The idealists who are capable of accepting the Way Things Are, and who can survive perfectly well in the real world - they're just forever frustrated that the Way Things Are isn't the Way Things Should Be.
That was fairly simple and kind of banal but oh well.
And now the marvelous Chris Ayer:
Now playing: Chris Ayer - Evaporate
I'm pretty moderate. Socially more liberal, I guess. I blame college. Haha. Though according to my friend, blaming others and not taking responsibility is also a liberal attitude...but anyway, my point is, I decided today that I was totally designed for utopia. Or a vacuum.
In 20th Century American Foreign Politics today, the topic was liberal internationalism. We talked a lot about World War I, Woodrow Wilson, the Bolsheviks' October revolution, and the rise of Lenin. We spent a lot of time on Wilson's Fourteen Points, reviewing each of them, why we thought he thought they would lead to a perfectly peaceful world, and why Lenin shot them down. Most people said that they thought that the Fourteen Points weren't bad - just not realistic. In a perfect world, they would work - they worked on paper; just, they probably wouldn't in practice.
Some people are incredibly well equipped to succeed in the real world. They have the kind of mindset it takes to survive in the competitive society we live in. They're positive yet realistic; cynical yet happy. Then there are the people like me who were just made to live in a perfect world. The idealists who are capable of accepting the Way Things Are, and who can survive perfectly well in the real world - they're just forever frustrated that the Way Things Are isn't the Way Things Should Be.
That was fairly simple and kind of banal but oh well.
And now the marvelous Chris Ayer:
I don't mind being alone
I don't mind seeing that I'm here on my own
It's the choice that I've chosen
And maybe we're all opening our eyes
To wisemen inside
Who give answers to questions
And make life a lesson
In hoping to the point of denial...
I don't mind being scared
Don't mind seeing that I'm under-prepared
For the life that I've chosen
And the way that it's going
Shows that I ought to give into my thoughts
The philosopher's prayer
Please show me I'm here
So I can be okay to go
All the way to the earth from the sky
Newly made today so I sink when I fly
It's in the way that I walk crooked lines
Gaining strength all the time
And by the ocean I'm told that we'll all be the same
A thousand pieces of an ocean, arriving and changing
We'll wait for the day when we'll evaporate
Evaporate...
We'll change...
Someday.
----------------I don't mind seeing that I'm here on my own
It's the choice that I've chosen
And maybe we're all opening our eyes
To wisemen inside
Who give answers to questions
And make life a lesson
In hoping to the point of denial...
I don't mind being scared
Don't mind seeing that I'm under-prepared
For the life that I've chosen
And the way that it's going
Shows that I ought to give into my thoughts
The philosopher's prayer
Please show me I'm here
So I can be okay to go
All the way to the earth from the sky
Newly made today so I sink when I fly
It's in the way that I walk crooked lines
Gaining strength all the time
And by the ocean I'm told that we'll all be the same
A thousand pieces of an ocean, arriving and changing
We'll wait for the day when we'll evaporate
Evaporate...
We'll change...
Someday.
Now playing: Chris Ayer - Evaporate
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
