I longed to find THE BOOK, the ONE that would make me privy to all the world's answers to all the world's mysteries ... an unconcious, unrealistic goal which consequently led to me wandering, empty-handed, through the biblio-jungle, desperately hoping to absorb knowledge from magic book-bindings, terrified to choose just one for fear that it wouldn’t be the correct key to the universe. I'd then shove that terror and feeling of inadequacy to the back of my head, and settle with something that looked interesting, or hole up in the drama section, crouch on the carpet, read unfamiliar plays and imagine starring in them, or in the international section, thinking of cultures so foreign from my own.

I am no longer overwhelmed by lack of worldly experience, and instead maintain a naive belief in endless possibility. Now it is not the unlearned fact that I find daunting, but the unfelt emotion. It is never too late to realize a goal or pursue an interest, but the longer your life is set in an emotional pattern, the harder it can be to figure out that something is amiss, and harder still to correct it. I fear I’ve closed myself off to so much beauty. I find myself bogged down by a stinky swamp of nostalgia for what hasn't happened yet.

What's worst about this, I don't know how to change it.

I’m an all-or-nothing kind of girl. Perhaps the solution for this inept, generic loneliness is to go out on the town and slut it up. Have indiscriminate sex and indiscriminate dinners and indiscriminate drinks with discriminating men, so that I have a lot to choose from and fill my cavity (heh) with a bevy of both prospects and experience.

On the other hand...

The character Varya from Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard" spends her life waiting on a marriage proposal from a man whose love ulitmately remains unspoken. Very Chekhovian. Despite her patient, loving nature, biding and disappointment become a part of her, and she fantasizes of escaping the quagmire by joining a convent and walking the surface of the world. "I would just go, and go, and go," she says. There's something to be said for the monastic lifestyle. There's a wisdom and independence in solitude.

I don't claim to have wisdom; I fully admit to being a big cheeseball. How to combine the mind of a monk with the soul of a lover?

Kelly the travelling hobo-slut! Wandering the countryside with nothing but the clothes on her back and a pack full of contraceptives!

Kelly the roving sailor woman, with a tattoo of a bachelor from every port!

Kelly the tragic mediocre beat poetess! You'll never see her eyes, but man, is she a good in the back room of a smoky club.

Pah. I don't fit any of those personae. Not remotely. (Though I have always related to Varya.)

There's this Ray Bradbury story, "Night Call Collect." It takes place in the future, and focusses on an old man, Martin, who was the last person mistakenly left on the moon (I think) when all the rest of the moon's human population had returned to earth after a great nuclear war. To cope with his loneliness, Martin dedicates his life to manufacturing sounds, sights, and smells to simulate a densely populated city. Phones ring, trains run, the artificial smell of bacon emanates from abandoned houses as if families are breakfasting to prepare for their full days of business and interaction. He also records his own voice over and over again, during all points of his life and in innumerable imagined situations. Though undeniably lonely, Martin is able to fool himself that he has friends and neighbors, that he has not been forgotten.

On his seventieth birthday (I think), Martin gets a phone call. It's the voice of his younger self, Martin in his twenties. Old Martin is confused and frightened, and hangs up the phone, but the calls continue, not only from Martin at 25, but from Martin at 35, Martin at 45, Martin at 55... Martin is stalking himself, and Old Martin becomes more and more afraid as he increasingly loses control over his own monster.

The voices quickly reveal their cruelty. In one instance, the voice disguises itself as an astronaut, calling Old Martin to alert him to the impending return of the rocketship to take Old Martin home to Earth. Old Martin gets his things together and goes to the appointed place to meet the rocket ship. A phone rings in a nearby house. It is the disembodied voice of Young Martin, laughing at the old Man.

In retaliation against his own voice, frightened Old Martin gets a dangerous amount of dynamite and destroys all the phone lines in town. He returns home, confident that he will be left alone in silence. The phone rings. Old Martin answers, to find more versions of his old voice taunting him. Hysterical and broken, Old Martin dies of a hear attack, leaving the voices to talk to themselves.

Yeah, so basically, I'm afraid that by asserting independence and becoming entrenched in solitary adventure and unrealistic expectations (of myself and others), I've created a monster. A disembodied, invincible, and unattainable memory that has never, and will never, occur.

I don't actually think that I have impossible standards (and I'm not just thinking romantically), but I do think that I wait too long and I think too much, and let too many simple opportunities pass. It's gotten to the point where sometimes, I don't know what I want or like anymore.

So, then, where do I start? I need to make mistakes. I need someone to pull the lever on this tilt-a-whirl, halting it so abruptly that I'm flung into a bale of dirty hay. This isn't fun anymore.

Meh. I am the queen of run-on nothings. I'll be funnier and less annoying soon. Must be the moon.

~ Last Five Entries ~

Moths, and Relative Nonsense - 08.18.05

I Finally Have Internet Access in my Bedroom. But, No Ashtray. - 08.09.05

Here I Am - 08.02.05

One-Armed Paper Hanger Earns her Wings - 07.29.05

Sugar & Lemon - 07.28.05

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BUY JEN'S BOOK! BUY IT! DO IT!

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BUY DEAN'S BOOK, TOO! YOU KNOW YOU WANNA! SERIOUSLY.

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