I haven't done one of these in a while. I haven't felt lethargic like I do right now in a while. My brain feels mildly broken, in the same way that only sleeping 5 or 6 hours doesn't feel like quite enough. My head feels sick. Nothing tastes good. Nothing seems interesting. Clearly, I'm cogent enough to explain how I feel, but the feeling itself makes the attempt at explaining it feel insurmountable. Simply put, my head feels very foggy, and at this moment, I don't care about the structure of what I'm writing. There's no structure in the service of elegance. I just need to get out of my head.
I used to feel like this all of the time, which I haven't quite forgotten, but I am no longer used to. Like, I spent months like this. Months as recent as last year. But I haven't felt like this since the month of the break-up, which, in retrospect, was weirdly a good time. Sure, I felt heartbreak, but my life became less and less tumultuous to the point where a lot of things in my life that used to bother me stopped bothering me. A lot of worries I had about my degree wipes themselves away, and I rediscovered film and photography, and I became sure of myself in a way I haven't ever been, etc. Like, I felt like I was fixing myself. I knew that a lot of this was merely a change in attitude, and the real work would come in the fall, when I have to put all of these new ideas about my life to work, and I'm still willing to do that. The Future doesn't seem so scary anymore. But right now, I feel like I feel nothing. I don't know what changed beyond school being always stressful, and the changing of the seasons. That's another thing that is worrying me. The winter. I'm coming to realize that despite me living in northern Canada, I might take the winter especially hard. The winter is more often than not the most prolific season for feeling like foggy nothing.
I don't feel the impulse to self-deprecate as much as I used to, though. I know I'm still much the same guy I used to hate, but I'm exhausted with Woody Allen-ing myself into a voodoo doll for my own dissatisfaction. I have real problems, sure. But I've totally burned myself out on narcissistically waxing about how I'm the worst guy in the world that could possibly deserve them. It seems besides the point of fixing them, which should be the goal. I know I have spent this entire day lying in bed and masturbating and dueling with the shame that seeps through it all, but maybe I just have a better head on my shoulders? I don't know.
I told Ewan about my experience talking to this girl who was trying to sell me shit that I knew from uni, and how she caught me on a bad day, because I just kept moping to her about how dysfunctional the school system is and bleak living is or whatever, and she said something like "You're kind of a bummer, hey?" (It was more like "You seem very pessimistic, "but my rewrite of that sentence is more coy and musical). Then I watched Annie Hall and felt like I sometimes sound like Woody Allen, and I've always wanted to be Orson Welles over Woody Allen (refer to image above). I want to be like Orson Welles and Mr. Rogers. I want Welles's bravado and intelligence, the kind that can gleefully move literal mountains, and I want Rogers's kindness and curiosity, the kind that can breakdance at 40 in 1980. These men (besides Mr. Rogers) are characters I have invented in my mind. They probably weren't actually like this. But maybe I can be.
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Fuck Woody Allen in the ass. It's insane how there's his movies, and then there's John Cassavetes. Woody Allen makes Ready Player One for college-aged date rapists in the 70s. I got all his dumb references, but he did absolutely nothing with them. Cassavetes made me God damn feel something beyond smug satisfaction with myself for just knowing who fucking Henry James is. Cassavetes, to be honest, made me feel grossed out with myself because his shit accurately described feelings I've never expressed. Fuck Woody Allen. Woody Allen can slap together a movie that mildly recreates what it feels like to be a low self-esteem narcissist who projects his desires on the quirkiest Midwestern girl he can swindle. Cassavetes, despite his obvious disdain with women, whatever. Fuck Woody Allen.
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There's two moments this year that I think about all the time: my final exam with my favourite professor at the UofA and meeting you in Brooklyn. The first was really minor, which was just me talking to Madhi and Lily about my writing - two people I have let down in the same way - and we just talked for an hour. I asked them meandering questions, they asked me some, and it went on, pleasantly indefinitely, until we had to leave. Some guys I knew from back in Dead Rear barged in and complimented my Instagram, which I had to explain to Madhi. We all left and wished each other luck for the summer ahead, and I got this weird feeling that my troubles were over. That nothing was ever going to stand in my way again, which is a bittersweet feeling. The first thing I think of when looking for an analogue are gay threatre kids, or at least how I imagine them. They're no longer alone as themselves: they now have each other. And sure, they're obnoxious, but it's dignified in it finally be shared. The pain of it not being shared - the pain of them being alone - is still real, and it always will be, but it's in the past now. It rests in the distance, obscuring as the distance grows larger, like a parting ship into a foggy sea. But the present, merely seconds into being as such, is ripe with possibility. There's too much of it to carry with just two hands, which these gay theatre kids presumably all have, but you never know. I listened to "Nothingsevergonnastandinmyway (Again)" as I biked home into the setting sun (for real). Like those imaginary gay theatre kids, I carried onto the pain of the past, and I always will, but the present, merely seconds into being as such, was ripe with possibility. Anything with possible, and nothing had to be the way it was before. But most importantly, my bad days were over. For now. The sun shot off the darkened windows of the toweer the newer condos and university dorms, and the blue of the sky, freed of the gray tinge of winter, rested into yellow with the evening. Its light helped the few dogwalkers and fellow commuters brave the residual cold of spring. Summer was coming to Edmonton.
I've been listening to "Nothingsevergonnastandinmyway (Again)" all throughout writing thus, and suddenly "Pot Kettle Black" came on in the queue, without the algorithm knowing that was the next song I was going to write about. Thank you, the ghost of the very much alive Jeff Tweedy.
The next moment was under the Manhattan Bridge, which was surreal to be under, because out of any American city, I've contemplated New York the most, even though I had only been there once before. Including the city's annoying mass-market mythology, any real encounter with its landscape will make the images you already have of the place sit uneasy in your mind. Not to mention that I was with you and Willow, two people I have contemplated far more than any other people I have technically never met before. So we were there, and the sun shone brilliantly through ever curve and bulge and trail of the overcast sky, and I got this feeling that every single moment of the last seven years had led to here, and I was hit with the serenity of being finished with something. Stopping for a moment, my head was clear. It was over then, whatever it was. Maybe I just decided that it was over.
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(These aren't allegorical or anything. I'm just fucking around).
It's over. They're gone now. It's over. They're gone now; it's over. They're gone now: it's over. It's over! They're gone now? It's over? They're gone now! It's over. They're gone. Now! They're gone. It's over? Now! They're gone! They're gone! It's over now! They're gone! It's over. Now. Now. It's over. They're gone. The summer ends.
The widest, emptiest space you've ever been alone in, and the echo of yelling "Hello?" The sharp cold of the concrete of set space the second you graze your fingertips across it for the first time. Walking down it, you think about what a light at the end of a tunnel looks like. In your mind's eye, you think of a light at the end of a tunnel as you walk down this space, but you can't see any light, and you don't know if it's a tunnel. Darkness without the sensation of a space beyond the floor and a wall. The sound not hearing anything makes.
