Burnt Ovens: 01.2006

Sunday, January 22, 2006

Juggling

Nicely warm hands, slightly numb--the pleasant results of an unproductive, fooling-around two-hour practice session. I still can't do the four-ball crossover patterns, but I can now more effectively drop rings when I want to! It won't matter that I don't sleep much tonight; I'm not willing to succumb to unconsciousness yet anyhow.

Friday, January 20, 2006

"Garnish Dishes for Visual Appeal"

No longer is food served on white, ceramic plates. Somehow if the dish is pretty enough, it won't matter that the food is less than palatable. Somehow it won't matter that there is no significance, no depth, not much of anything, in fact, for the garnish is there. For visual appeal.
--
It's slicing through my heart like a butter blade through butter. I'm tired of the new priorities and the new perspectives and the new confusions. I'd settled everything down before, and I was getting so complacent too. All I have to do now is get down those four-ball patterns, and maybe I'll be all right. Then again, maybe not.

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Cold

Making a mockery out of life! Despicable and disgusting, and utterly worthless. What am I doing? Struggling along, laughing, believing that somehow there is some way I can reap what I do not sow. Even while the fields grow barren and the relentless wind wears away at the soil, I plot and scheme behind closed doors on how, tomorrow, I shall steal my neighbor's grain stock, instead of growing my own today. Ridiculous.
--
My hands are always stiff from cold. The blood hardly running in constricted veins and dying capillaries. Broken nails and garish cuts, and my hands so cold so cold.

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Dawn

I want to talk about that moment before the sun rises, when the sky is painted a dusty blue. When the air still smells of damp and frost and night and the memory of stars still flickers in the sky, while their brilliance dims and melts and they wave their final farewell. I love that moment. That moment of magic and mystery and a satisfying feeling of knowing anything may happen that coming day. Some call it hope. But I prefer "contentment." In no other second in our endless cycles of 24-hour days can we falter and sigh and not have it matter at all. In no other minute can we look up and out and within all at once and see with new eyes what we have never seen before, or hear for the first time the unfamiliar utterings of exotic nighttime creatures, and know that life is maybe, just possibly worth living after all.

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Ineluctably painful

This being my second post within hours, I must apologize for the severe breach in protocol, but too much weighs on my mind at the moment to let this opportunity to write/rant/whatnot that I simply cannot pass it up. Perhaps due to my own hypocrisy, I seem to be handicapped with a debilitating inability to trust but a few specimens of my fellow creatures. The mildest deviation from strict routine arouses my suspicion to an unexplainably feverish pitch, at which unhappy state I am currently, and quite unfortunately, suspended. These few days have found me quite abnormally excitable by the most insignificant trifles, and this moment, as I have already stated, finds me wildly vacillating between the unfathomable cold, black abyss of insecurity and the endless, dry, yellow desert of fear. What was it that made me suspicious? The longer-than-usual lapses in time? The numerous allusions to this other, more divine being (my words, naturally, not the other's)? Or my own overly sensitive and vastly understimulated imagination? Perhaps it is merely an inherent need/longing/whatever you may wish to call it to see and feel and taste drama when reality fails to create it. Oh, no! A shift in the dominant paradigm! Aaaah. On that note, the sky is falling! The sky is falling!

Frass

Perhaps the proper reaction ought not to have been shock or horror. I'd asked, "What would you say are your worst fears?" for a lack of anything else to say as we walked hurriedly across the wet pavement, and she'd replied, "Not getting into the college I want to [get into]." Indeed. I'd said so myself, to someone else, that it was simply "our school culture." But it seems too simple to dismiss, in one deft motion, the pointless worries, the misplaced priorities, and the ridiculous fears as "just" the way we are. Perhaps it was simply that I had been expecting too much. I had been listening too intently for some heartfelt, insightful answer that would be too revealing and leave the other too vulnerable.
--
There's been a heavy fog of deja vu sitting in the air of late. I swelter beneath its thoughtless embrace, but I don't suppose it's worth fighting. Living with a ceaseless sensation that my doppelgänger is reclining on my right, or my left, or behind me, or maybe right here, on the table, is getting to be a bit uncanny.
--
pearls before swine.
"Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet." --Matthew 7:6

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

January 3rd

Speak proud aloud, and bitter!—In my ear
Whisper me simply this,—She loves thee not!
-Le Bret, Cyrano de Bergerac, Scene 2 VIII

--
A different version than the one we studied in English, but just as striking. I can't say how or wherefore, but the line appeared from a fathomless nothingness in my mind as I sat, doing something completely unrelated. The beauty of it, the emotional depth, Le Bret's loyalty, their friendship. A relic of a different time? A fragment from a different culture? Perhaps.
--
F. Scott Fitzgerald's writing. Indeed, it is worthy of standing alone as its own sentence! Fitzgerald's writing. Can you feel it hit you? A train, full-on, face smashed, heart crushed, wouldn't be nearly as powerful.
--
Respectable people seem to have a period of introspection at the beginning/end of every year. I suppose I must have one now.
--
This past year, as all years before have been and all years hereafter shall be, has been one of ups and downs. I can't honestly say it has been any bit more volatile or complex than before, but it may appear that way because of the inherent human need to electrify and color the mundane and inexpressive. Nonetheless, it has been, undeniably, one of incredible change. Not in emotional reactions or even morality, necessarily, but in the more crucial aspects of self-comprehension and social interaction. All of life is but an endless journey to discover...I was about to write "yourself" but that can't be it. I had the honor of interacting with many new people, who I both delightedly and disappointedly discovered were normal. A few colorful figures stand out, of course--the way they always do. I can even recall their names. But, happily, it is much more common to meet someone and realize they are of the same mold as someone you already know.

I've also had the privilege to, for the first time, interact with working adults on a regular basis. There seems to be a greater variance in personalities and personal interests when one explores the vast world that lies beyond the secure groves of academe. From my conversations with them, I've gleaned an immeasurable quantity of invaluable wisdom. I rememember, most clearly, one man telling me that life only gets faster every year. It's unfortunate that his reflection is true.

Socially, what else was there? Ah, yes. A greater attachment and loyalty to friends. A greater reliance on them, in general. The stronger realization that I am, indeed, not an island, although I am not a man. ("No man is an island...") I'm not funny. Yes! I realized that too! Which leads me to the next thing: self-discovery.

I'm not funny. I'm not talented at anything. I'm more ready to let things go at the first sight of danger, at the first taste of failure, than to persevere and succeed. I act very differently around different people and even around the same people at different times. I am too cynical for too many things, like religion, and love, and hope, and world peace. And...some people still want to be friends with me! And enjoy talking to me! Which means...what exactly, I don't know. I have also realized how incredibly difficult it is to maintain relationships with people you don't see much. That doesn't fall under self-comprehension, but then again perhaps it does. Whether fortunately or unfortunately, the people we associate with define who we are. They become our ruler for measuring, not only our social capabilities, but our self-worth, and they shape the way we see the world and the way we react to it. They form the basis for our personal growth, providing a secure home, if you will, to reach out and explore an insecure world. I miss so many people, and I can't recall ever missing them so much before--people who have, in some way or another, crossed my path and left something behind, although I know some of them don't even realize it.

I let what I do define who I am, instead of defining who I am before I enter the world. It's easy to call it creating a barrier or forming prejudices, but more accurately, it's living with a certainty of who you are, what you are, how you are. What makes you tick, what makes you smile, what makes you cry, what makes you laugh, or dance, or shout. All of that. But I've never sat down to think about it, so I don't know. I'm tempted to ask everyone I care about those same questions, to revel for a short moment in a well-hidden piece of their lives, but I can't bring myself to it when I can't answer them for myself. What sort of answers would they give me? Would they even bother to answer? And then, do I really want to know so much about them, about myself? Is it worth the time?

Of late, I've been trapped in that quandary. Should I really take the time to stop and think about these issues or should I let them go, stop worrying, face each moment as it comes? I can identify much of 2005 with that question. Perhaps this year will see the resolution of that, at least. That malicious quagmire of self-doubt reminds me of quicksand. Struggle and you're pulled in. Don't struggle and I get to enjoy dying more slowly. What does it matter, either way's ineluctable asphyxiation.

Towards the end of the last school year, I'd fallen into a quiet contentment. Ah, that dreaded complacency! But I was quite abruptly shaken out of it when September arrived, with its generally uncomfortable novelty. May I call it that? It wasn't truly novel; none of it was. The same people, the same place, the same aspirations, the same worries. But it was more than before. Amplified. Pulled like taffy to unrecognizable proportions and just as difficult to get off your teeth. More demands. More responsibilites. More taxing on my sanity. I learned I had no time management skills. The end of the fall season and the arrival of two breaks in quick succession made me forget about responsibility. I'm still waiting for it to catch up.

I feel as if I had more to say, but on the time scale I've arrived at the end of last year and the beginning of this one. So that's it. My year in review: what was worth mulling over and writing about, my hopes, dreams, fears, hung out like dirty laundry in my front yard. How funny.

Sunday, January 01, 2006

Life in an archive

Zorya, remember when we talked about blogs?

It's an ineffable, queer sort of reflection/introspection to glance in blog archives and recognize someone distant, yet near--indeed, yourself in a distorted mirror. Reflections are frightening for people discontented with themselves [read: the idiot writing here], but then, yes!, the joys of not having had a permanent online home! From one perspective, it's a sad, lonesome thing not to have that warmth [oh, hold on, I think that's my computer frying] and security [darn firewalls setting!], but on the other hand, it is a sort of freedom. No, not a sort. It IS freedom--pure, simple, complete. The freedom that is not being tied down. No loyalty. No obligations. No self-doubt and fear and loathing and contempt for all the world, but mostly, mostly, at the end of the day, for yourself and everything you're trying to be. It is the salesman who sleeps in a different hotel in a different country every night. The woman on the street whose house can fit in a metallic, grated shopping cart. Ah, yes, the very epitome of liberty.

What made me think of this? And old friend sending an old link to an old blog by an angsty freshman! Disturbing, mostly. Also, on a similar note, I flipped through an odds-and-ends notebook of mine and found an interesting entry. I shall type it here to amuse myself.

Wednesday, August 4, 2004 19:53
She was shrouded in black--her choice of clothing, her mood, her expression, her posture. She wore her trucker hat low, the brim hiding her eyes, because she was afraid they would see, in her eyes, her sorrow and her desperation and her loneliness.
"Others had coped with deaths before, why couldn't she?"
Self-doubt has killed many. Grief and sorrow has killed many. Loneliness has killed many. She had all this, and her eyes were red and swollen from crying and that was all.
Hugging her knees on the grass, she listed to the clicks and the swooshes of the people she had once been envious of for their skill and who she was now envious of for their joy and their happiness and their peace. Tears started and rolled down her face, so she hid beneath her cap and between her green hair and behind her bent knees as she sat on the grass listening to the clicks and the swooshes and feeling utterly and completely alone and knowing that no one at all really cared and that no one had ever really cared.~

I want to dye my hair again, for no particular reason.

Burnt Ovens