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Sep. 22nd, 2013 10:41 pmTonight - well tonight I did a few things, but I only just want to now think about a conversation I was having. I listened about heartbreak and loss and the attendant feelings that make a good fellow turn into a bad fellow, this from my friend, a kind-of-bad-fellow. It's not something you begin as, right? You get heartbroken and then you're turned bad, and that's what I was thinking about. The seasons and types of heartbreaks and the gooey center of everyone's saddest states.
I think, a few people I've known, they've fallen in love once or twice, just quickly and early and it's paid off for them in the longer term. Others, most of the others I've known, they've experienced betrayal, early and often. Betrayal is one of those really interesting things - because it's not something that just casually can happen to you - you aren't betrayed by the clerk at the supermarket, you aren't betrayed by acquaintances - you're only betrayed by the people you trust in the first place. People can dick you over all day long and it's somehow tolerable, de-rigueur even. But somewhere among the sea of unknowable hearts and preposterous hopes there's that person who speaks to you in a language that only you two can share - a magical unity results that drives you together, in a surreal correspondence of fact and fiction and unutterable hope. And then one day she tells you she's got a date with someone else, or she goes and sleeps with someone else or you find out that she's got this going on with all the guys, and so on. I mean, use girls as an example drawn from my own experiences - I'm sure it goes down similarly for people who fall in love with men, but so far I haven't. Now - I think that there's an experience - for me there's been this experience where these betrayals start to seem themselves somewhat inevitable, commonplace in themselves, and as they occur they stop being surprising novelties, or fearful suppositions - but rather, de-riguer, the anticipated result of all casual interactions - "Obviously," you think to yourself, "the clerk at the grocery is going to give me the wrong change to try and make a little money on the side." And you'll think nothing of it but be vigilant against it and then you start to think, "Obviously, she will want to date other people on the side and not be true." Because people are only just that and it's not a big deal, love, you realize it and know that it isn't important, only presented as such.
That kind of assymetry is weird - when it comes up. So earlier in the week there was some trouble with my jaws. I chewed through this stupid crown a bit ago and left it be - just a broken old tooth in the back of my head and finally it hurt enough that I figured I could spend some money to make it right. I go to the dentist and the dentist was fumbling with words, scared and at pains - I thought at first he was just a weirdo - probably competent, but certainly a weird nerd who shoves his hands in peoples mouths all day for money - a certain strangeness is to be expected. But later I put it together that he was being purely and totally apologetic. "Sir, what's happened is that the roots on that tooth have broken apart, the crown can't be replaced, I fear you've only one option..." All hesitating and speaking in ellipses. I'm of this thought: "These fucking crowns cost a fortune and I have to replace it every three yeas? What am I? Made of money? Take it out, I'll be fine, I'm fine, beautiful" (anyhow if you're reading along at home and wondering - it's true, I'm still beautiful, it just happens that at the back of my head there's this one hole where once I had a tooth. I ain't miss it. You wouldn't even notice. But the dentist is weird about it and I have a feeling now, planted by the surreptitious dentist, that Now, I'm facing an end, that I'm aboard the long journey through attrition into death. Okay - sure I am, I always have been, it's fine. It's not important - except that now I worry that it is, being influenced by the dentist's cares. But it's foolish too. Because I came to the place thinking - "This hurts like crazy and I need it fixed." and he came thinking: "This man has exacting demands and a morbid fear of age." Which is not true, so out of nerves and fears the dentist is apologetic, and out of pain and caring just about how much expensive things cost, I go in with completely asymmetric concerns.
And this is the whole parable of all the things that happen between us, between you and me and me and everyone and you and everyone. Some idea of what's expected and wanted that doesn't at all match. I go to you thinking - we will have some conversation and then makeouts and then sex and then the proper oblivion of sleep because this is what people can have together. And you think that our lives will be changed by proximity and that some unerring, absolute bond will form that will shake us to our fundaments. I think about this: "I once know how you feel." And then I was betrayed - not by a person but really - by unreal expectations cultivated by a youthful mind, unaware that people might be other than themselves and made so by the proximity of love&trust. Which things don't change people but rather just exist as appendages- the hands by which illusions are torn away, the hidden limbs, secret wings that carry us out and out and away. Because we are only just and Just isn't fair and it isn't ideal - it's merely just and so there are betrayals, and there always will be betrayals, because it's not that no one is true, that no one is good, that no one loves you - it's just that these things aren't as important as you maybe were led to believe.
I think, a few people I've known, they've fallen in love once or twice, just quickly and early and it's paid off for them in the longer term. Others, most of the others I've known, they've experienced betrayal, early and often. Betrayal is one of those really interesting things - because it's not something that just casually can happen to you - you aren't betrayed by the clerk at the supermarket, you aren't betrayed by acquaintances - you're only betrayed by the people you trust in the first place. People can dick you over all day long and it's somehow tolerable, de-rigueur even. But somewhere among the sea of unknowable hearts and preposterous hopes there's that person who speaks to you in a language that only you two can share - a magical unity results that drives you together, in a surreal correspondence of fact and fiction and unutterable hope. And then one day she tells you she's got a date with someone else, or she goes and sleeps with someone else or you find out that she's got this going on with all the guys, and so on. I mean, use girls as an example drawn from my own experiences - I'm sure it goes down similarly for people who fall in love with men, but so far I haven't. Now - I think that there's an experience - for me there's been this experience where these betrayals start to seem themselves somewhat inevitable, commonplace in themselves, and as they occur they stop being surprising novelties, or fearful suppositions - but rather, de-riguer, the anticipated result of all casual interactions - "Obviously," you think to yourself, "the clerk at the grocery is going to give me the wrong change to try and make a little money on the side." And you'll think nothing of it but be vigilant against it and then you start to think, "Obviously, she will want to date other people on the side and not be true." Because people are only just that and it's not a big deal, love, you realize it and know that it isn't important, only presented as such.
That kind of assymetry is weird - when it comes up. So earlier in the week there was some trouble with my jaws. I chewed through this stupid crown a bit ago and left it be - just a broken old tooth in the back of my head and finally it hurt enough that I figured I could spend some money to make it right. I go to the dentist and the dentist was fumbling with words, scared and at pains - I thought at first he was just a weirdo - probably competent, but certainly a weird nerd who shoves his hands in peoples mouths all day for money - a certain strangeness is to be expected. But later I put it together that he was being purely and totally apologetic. "Sir, what's happened is that the roots on that tooth have broken apart, the crown can't be replaced, I fear you've only one option..." All hesitating and speaking in ellipses. I'm of this thought: "These fucking crowns cost a fortune and I have to replace it every three yeas? What am I? Made of money? Take it out, I'll be fine, I'm fine, beautiful" (anyhow if you're reading along at home and wondering - it's true, I'm still beautiful, it just happens that at the back of my head there's this one hole where once I had a tooth. I ain't miss it. You wouldn't even notice. But the dentist is weird about it and I have a feeling now, planted by the surreptitious dentist, that Now, I'm facing an end, that I'm aboard the long journey through attrition into death. Okay - sure I am, I always have been, it's fine. It's not important - except that now I worry that it is, being influenced by the dentist's cares. But it's foolish too. Because I came to the place thinking - "This hurts like crazy and I need it fixed." and he came thinking: "This man has exacting demands and a morbid fear of age." Which is not true, so out of nerves and fears the dentist is apologetic, and out of pain and caring just about how much expensive things cost, I go in with completely asymmetric concerns.
And this is the whole parable of all the things that happen between us, between you and me and me and everyone and you and everyone. Some idea of what's expected and wanted that doesn't at all match. I go to you thinking - we will have some conversation and then makeouts and then sex and then the proper oblivion of sleep because this is what people can have together. And you think that our lives will be changed by proximity and that some unerring, absolute bond will form that will shake us to our fundaments. I think about this: "I once know how you feel." And then I was betrayed - not by a person but really - by unreal expectations cultivated by a youthful mind, unaware that people might be other than themselves and made so by the proximity of love&trust. Which things don't change people but rather just exist as appendages- the hands by which illusions are torn away, the hidden limbs, secret wings that carry us out and out and away. Because we are only just and Just isn't fair and it isn't ideal - it's merely just and so there are betrayals, and there always will be betrayals, because it's not that no one is true, that no one is good, that no one loves you - it's just that these things aren't as important as you maybe were led to believe.
