The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity. The words of human love have been used by the saints to describe their vision of God, and so, I suppose, we might use the terms of prayer, meditation, contemplation to explain the intensity of the love we feel for a woman. We too surrender memory, intellect, intelligence, and we too experience the deprivation, the noche oscura, and sometimes as a reward a kind of peace. The act of love itself has been described as the little death, and lovers sometimes experience too the little peace.
Drink up, baby, stay up all night
With the things you could do
You won’t but you might
The potential you’ll be
That you’ll never see
The promises you’ll only make
Drink up with me now
And forget all about
The pressure of days
Do what I say
And I’ll make you okay
And drive them away
The images stuck in your head
People you’ve been before
That you don’t want around anymore
That push and shove and won’t bend to your will
I’ll keep them still
Drink up, baby, look at the stars
I’ll kiss you again between the bars
Where I’m seeing you there
With your hands in the air
Waiting to finally be caught
Drink up one more time
And I’ll make you mine
Keep you apart,
Deep in my heart
Separate from the rest,
Where I like you the best
And keep the things you forgot
The people you’ve been before
That you don’t want around anymore
That push and shove and won’t bend to your will
I’ll keep them still
Today has been one of the first days that has truly come across as a fall day in Mississippi. The undeniable beauty of October. Wanting to flee the commerce of the strip mall where I was enjoying coffee and flirting with a sweet-as-can-be barista (did not want to fly from her, but a man often must choose peace of mind over a woman), I headed toward a nearby lake.
Thoughts:
My students (I pray that I am dead by this point) will encounter, um, situations that will not merely be different in degree but radically different in kind: for instance, human-robot “relationships.”
The coming displacement of most of the working force through automation may force us to see that life is more than a career.
Then again, the massive displacement of people through automation may lead to a crushing listlessness, robbing us of the will to live.
Can two people in the current sexual market place make it work if they have fundamentally different hobbies and interests? Granted, such a concern is a product of modernity because, for most of humanity’s existence, most people have not had the luxury to quibble about items that did not pertain directly to life and death and eternity. Still, this being said, unless we return to a more exigency-driven and religious way of life, there is no going back. We no longer identify ourselves through our families or religious communities; rather, we identify ourselves based on those pursuits from which we derive a non-necessary–but now seemingly an irremovable–gratification.
As of this morning, my biggest regret in life is never having had children. Not that such a possibility is now beyond the pale, but were I to have children, I would be an older (read: grumpier and less energetic) dad. However, I do not regret not having married, for I really do not know if I am a good partner or would make a good husband, but I know without a waning shadow of a doubt I would have been an amazing father.
Then again, is it essentially selfish to want to bring souls into this world primarily to dull the edges of my own mortality and soften the blow of my encroaching death? Yes, that is what humanity does, but are we justified in this?
Why am I single again?
Anyway, enjoy. I would love to waltz by a lake on nights like what, I trust, tonight will become.
When I was younger, I listened to The Smiths to prolong heartbreak because I used to luxuriate in sorrow. Older, I still listen to The Smiths– but to expedite the getting over a heartbreak process because I no longer have the time/energy for it.
Listening to my Britpop playlist to distract me from having to thinking too heavily about what I am grading, this gem played. I was a huge fan of Garbage back in the 90s. Something about Shirley Manson’s in-your-face sexuality coupled with her darkly lyrical sensibilities enhanced by her depressive affectations substituted as my teenage crack. Also, I used to have a weakness for ginger girls, though not so much these days. Such a woman would probably put me off were I now to meet her, as I prefer women who understand the allure of less is more when it comes to displaying their sexuality publicly, but in the throes of adolescence, she threw me.
“In the darkness, her warm hand on my arm, I could watch the autumn sky thrown into convulsions of coloured light with the calm of someone for whom the whole unmerited pain of the human world had receded and diffused itself–as pain does when it goes on too long, spreading from a specific member to flood a whole area of the body or the mind.” ~Lawrence Durrell Justine
