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2002-02-17 - 10:07 p.m. It's funny - actually, scratch that. It's not funny. Hope is a terrible thing. - I have for a while now been living with very, very modest hopes for future happiness. Basically I have been thinking about how I could avoid unhappiness, how I could dull my feelings down so as not to feel my sadness... anyway. Yesterday, it was like, I don't know... a few things brought it on. The first of which is that I have been feeling much, much more hopeful lately. Like, tremendous, awesome amounts of happiness now seem possible. But it scares me because, in order to actually get it I have to act, I mean, I have to be in the world, I have to make it possible both to get hurt and, more frightening still, have to make it possible for me to hurt someone else. The responsibility involved in this possibility absolutely and utterly scares the hell out of me. - And the other thing that brought it out was that I watched the movie "Vanilla Sky". It was critically panned in Australia, I've no idea why, because I think it's a really, really great film. It made me sad though. It made me think about all the ruined lives... but anyway. - I got this image in my head of those little children's toys, the ones made of hard inflexible plastic that say "made in Taiwan" or whatever on the bottom. You know the sort of thing. Anyway, you can make those things by the thousand very cheaply, but if they get broken then they are virtually impossible to repair, but why would you bother trying because firstly it's easier to just get a new one and secondly then by the time it's broken then the rather limited appeal has probably worn off anyway. I was thinking, I am like one of those broken toys. Whatever it is that's broken inside me, there is no way to repair it. I'm kidding myself when I say I'm getting better. I'm like a bubble under the wallpaper; you can shift the problem around, but you're never going to fix it. - Here's a couple of song quotes that say something about how I was feeling: - "I smile when I'm angry I cheat and I lie I do what I have to do To get by" - Leonard Cohen - "Like a baby stillborn Like a beast with it's horn I have torn everyone Who reached out to me" - Leonard Cohen - It was kind of a Leonard Cohen mood. The other thing that happenned was that this particular kind of sadness seemed to open the door to some other sadnesses that have been trying to break the surface for a while, and took me back to the way I felt... a few different things. Probably the strongest was the homesickness I felt at being torn away from my friends in England to go to some stupid farm in Australia surrounded by stupid ignorant people, never never ever to see my best and only friend Ralph ever again. It happenned thirteen years ago; it's strange to think the echoes of that time are still sounding inside me somewhere. - I feel better today. Starlight99 is really very wonderful and makes me feel great but of course that's the problem. I mean, if it weren't for feeling good I wouldn't have started hoping for good things in my future and I wouldn't have started getting scared of what it means to be alive. The little piece of wood that I have been clinging to in the mad storm of all these feelings is a quote from Solzhenitsyn, something I've always loved but see in a new way, now: "All those who act do some good and some evil". (It's in "Cancer Ward") I try to remind myself that I am just human, and the possibilty of being hurt... it exists for everyone, whether it is me hurting them or someone else. I shouldn't try to get into a position where it is impossible for me to ever hurt someone else, even if that is what scares me more than anything else... because if I do get into that position I will find that it is impossible for me to do anything else with anyone, to live, to be in the world, to... to do anything good. Anyway... - There's a story about a guy called Robert that I told her yesterday that I really ought to write in this diary sometime, but this entry is long enough already. Until next time... - "I said mother, I'm frightened Of the thunder and the lightning I'll never come through this alone" - Leonard Cohen
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