Greener Pastures of Our Hearts

"Many, in fact, feign love of life to evade love itself. They try their skill at enjoyment and 'indulging in experiences.' But this is illusory. It requires a rare vocation to be a sensualist. The life of a man is fulfilled without the aid of his mind, with its backward and forward movements, at one and the same time its solitude and its presences. To see these men of Belcourt working, protecting their wives and children, and often without a reproach, I think one can feel a secret shame. To be sure, I have no illusions about it. There is not much love in the lives I am speaking of. I ought to say that not much remains. But at least they have evaded nothing. There are words I have never really understood, such as 'sin.' Yet I believe these men have never sinned against life. For if there is a sin against life, it consist perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life. These men have not cheated. Gods of summer they were at twenty by their enthusiasm for life and they still are, deprived of all hope. From Pandora's box, where all the ills of humanity swarmed, the Greeks drew out hope after all the others, as the most dreadful of all."*

Ah, spring time in Gainesville. Flowers are blooming on every corner, showing their faces like freed criminals and making my eyes water constantly despite all the Benadryl I've been eating. Through the haze of allergy medicine I stop to take note of the amazing greenness that's going on around town, everything all at once coming back to life with a sort of fascist vengeance. So too are the dormant pastures in our hearts turning green again, growing wild with the season.

I wake up every morning to a bracelet of hives (there is literally pollen covering every single fucking thing that I touch) and either an email, text message, or missed phone call from someone I haven't spoken to in enough time for it to seem disconcerting. My favorite this week was a message from an old friend that just said, "sorry for when we were young." I knew just what he meant, but I couldn't possibly explain it here, to the dark abyss of the internet. Suffice to say that there's something about the weather changing that makes people get teary eyed (for me it's half allergies and half nostalgia). We see the greener fields not just on the other side of the road (metaphorically and literally, work with me here) but also behind us. I want to wake up in the middle of the night and call Joe and talk to him about Mexico. Remember that time when...? Spring is the best time to send text messages that break the ice of winter or several years. There's something about the first warm days of shorts and afternoon bike rides that make everyone a little more prone to forgive and forget, or at least that's how it feels to me lately. I feel so high on all the drugs I'm eating and all the mended relationships that I find myself wanting more. This is good weather for "what might have been" and "what could be." I know for 24 hours this week if the right person would have asked I'd have moved out of Gainesville to live in their little room in a heartbeat (you know who you are, maybe). With the weather changing and after five months of being so completely alone next to my tiny little space heater the thought of going swimming with one person all summer and maybe even drinking frozen drinks with paper umbrellas in them sounds great, it sounds perfect, it sounds...possible?

What the fuck am I saying? Does this sound like me? Read my last few posts and you'll be asking yourself, "who the fuck is this happy stranger? I mean I know she has a 'posi' tattoo but this is getting really pathetic!" I know. It's not me though, I swear, it's spring. Everyone has seen Bambi and if you say you haven't you're lying, but everyone might not remember the scene where the little rabbit (Thumper) explains to Bambi why all the animals are acting bonkers. It's because they're twitterpated. I'm guessing on the spelling of that, but it sounds right. I think it was the Disney way of saying "horny" but I think they touched on something else. There is a certain kind of spring horniess that makes everyone go crazy. Maybe it's the shedding of clothes after winter, maybe it's the animal instinct taking over after hibernation, but either way it makes me feel overwhelmed by all the possibilities. The possibilities of what? I don't know, happiness maybe? I talked late into the night with a trusted friend about relationships, and the conclusions were all doom and gloom. I think my brain is fucked up beyond repair, and not from things I've done to it lately. I don't know if a few weeks of good weather can fix it.

There's either a Cometbus zine (80% sure it was him) that talks about the weather being great all of a sudden and walking around kind of smug like knowing if you asked someone to marry you they'd say yes, and that's sort of what it seems like lately, not just because of the weather but because of this terrible, awful winter ending and it just seems right to start completely over. But, I think I ought to know better. These feelings won't last, and as soon as weekly trips to the springs start and it's warm enough to go swimming when I get off work, I won't be thinking of what's on the other side of the fence. We'll all be focused on what's right in front of our faces, which may not be pretty but at least it'll be honest. The phone will stop ringing. The messages will stop coming. I know enough to know we'll all still forget about each other again.

*Albert Camus, Summer in Algiers

Litany Against Fear

"Without change something inside us sleeps."*

He asks on the phone, "how are you doing?" which makes me pause, because unlike with my mom or most of my friends, I actually want to tell the truth. Sandy's more to me than an old boss, he's really the dad I always wanted. Am I ok? Are we ok? He understands the daily cups of coffee, the afternoons on the porch, the quiet unchanging moments of the day to day which make things seem alright. He also understands the restlessness, the need to be looking over the edge at something, the days spent traveling alone, waiting in train stations where we recognize none of the signs and none of the people. We both love books, but there aren't books for this sort of disconnect. Books that explain the highs and lows - the weekend punk rock shows and the tuesday morning trips to the post office, so that they become one narrative, one feeling? I tell him I'm enjoying myself, but am basically really, really lonely. He tells me the same thing. We talk about long distant romances and our fears of slowly becoming too solitary for redemption. It's as if we've backed ourselves into a corner, and it'd be nice of someone lured us out, but until then we're content to sit and face the wall.

Punks don't like change in general. All in all, an entirely reactionary group of people. How many of us are conservative in our routines and interests? I get cranky in the morning when there's a boy in my bed and I can't drink my iced coffee immediately, what would being in an actual relationship be like? I still wake up hungry for experiences though, and it's depressing to see the young adults who've apparently had their fill. New bands and people become threats if you let them. Sometimes the change gets too much, you turn your back on the world for a little bit but since it keeps going on without you, when you look again everything's different and you're even more alone and stubborn as before. There's opposite problems too, people so hungry for something new they aren't discerning and their tastes aren't their tastes at all, just another passing fad. The way you experience something ought to count for something too. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration, but what about stagnation?

I spent all day doing exactly what I wanted. Watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, reading comic books, drinking two iced coffees at the two coffee shops I go to, eating when I wanted and what I wanted (jackfruit sandwich, yucca fries, goat cheese) and then sitting on the sofa for two hours thinking about Dune, change, and routines. No one stopped me. No one challenged me. I didn't even have to share my personal space with anyone. This can't be healthy. There's nothing new coming in, just a steady consuming. That's when it's time to leave the house. Pick out a book from the different part of the library (mystery?). Meet someone somewhere new, or even try to meet someone new. I know I can't live in a little bubble that I control all the time, I have to let something in, even if it's just a little new idea, or a new band. If you wake up and everything goes your way and everything's the same you didn't wake up at all. I told Mike on the phone today that the weather was so perfect I thought maybe I was dead, and he said, "well maybe you're in purgatory," and it hit a little too close to home. The sleeper must awaken.

*Dune