The Waiting Game

Last night I saw the new Visa commercial. You know the one with Smashing Pumpkins' "Today" playing inspirationally in the background while people jump out of bed in the morning, ready to face the day, try new things and be better versions of themselves.

I'm fairly certain that commercial was meant to inspire and motivate me, but it did the opposite. I'm not jumping out bed in the morning. I'm not blazing a new trail or saving the world.

In fact, the things I used to love now elude me, like snowflakes melting on my tongue. They are just too fleeting to find any enjoyment in anymore. I find myself searching for a new kind of happiness in my life. A grown up kind of happiness.

I am constantly finding an exclamation point to all my question marks. A stop sign to my revving engine. I have become accustomed to my daily disappointed sigh and I can't tell you how disappointing that is.

You wait for a moment so telling, so epiphanous, and it never comes. Then you wait for a smaller moment. Something more subtle might mean more, you tell yourself. Then you wait for any moment, exasperated and aching from desperation. You start to be nicer to strangers in hopes that your karma will improve. After every sentence you speak, you pause awkwardly, hoping that in the silence it hides, waiting for a quiet minute to appear. And for a while, you actually are happier, knowing that the moment hangs suspensefully in the wings makes you think you have something to look forward to. And it too, never comes.

What happens when you are tired of waiting for that one glimmer of hope that keeps you balanced? What happens when that moment you've been waiting for actually turns out to be the heartbreaking realization that a moment like that might never come?

Write now.

Sometimes I wonder
if the seeds of my existence
were watered with the ink of great authors,
and this is what pushes my pen to the paper
at night and on
sad days.

Untitled

They told me I had
the heart of a poet.

How could they
have lied to me?

The x-rays showed nothing.

5th Avenue Girl

She leans from her window,
and dries her hair,
half-conciously hoping to be seen.
She has done everything that
was required,
and to her friend, who is fond
of her,
she offers an accomodating body.
Sometimes they speak of love.
Often, in crowds, she mistakes a
casual word for her name
and turns to see who calls.

For instance,

New beginnings are impossible
Because
Too many people slip into old ways
Like a pair of ancient shoes
That find your feet ---
They fit perfectly
More perfect than the two of you
Ever could

What if...

Eleanor and I would have spent Friday night actually being productive?

I'm trapped under the sweaty belly of life and it keeps yelling, "Submit!"

This boredom is good for my writing. All I have are my thoughts and this sorry keyboard to free them with.

I don't have that teathered to a rock feeling inside me anymore. There is no tension, immediacy. I miss it.

I miss longing and being unsure. All the aching questions tumbling about inside my head for hours. It’s easy to write then. Inking out the way I would get through this or that or it or him. And it was always him. I could have misplaced an arm on the way to work and it would still be about him. That was where the rawest emotions in me came from. The freshest cuts left to be gingerly dressed. The buzz in my head and the catch in my throat. I was the walking wounded, but I felt alive.

Complacency is like L.A. fog. During the day you don’t notice it because you are consumed with daily tasks and minutiae. Only when you’ve escaped the work day can you see it rising above the skyline, massive, yellow-luminous and steeping the air with indifference.

I'm plagued by a different beast now. And even though it's not one that cuts as deep, the damage is slower and more lasting.

There is a difference between stumbling into some restlessness and actually mass producing it. I don't know if my luck is just really bad, or if I am just this strange harbinger of small tragedies.

But on the other hand, would I be satisfied with a life of effortlessness?

That's a tough question. I think I thrive on the difficult, expect it.

It just seems I am always on the verge of this massive heartbreak and I can't keep myself from not just walking toward it, but running full speed ahead.

Ho hum.

Not much to say. I like posts with photos though.

This is where you will find me all weekend. (Please don't make fun of my TV).

Thoreau said "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" and that doesn't sound so bad.

I'm going to go off the record with this post. Meaning, I've turned off all the RSS feeds to any of my hundred other online outlets that would allow anyone else to peek around.

Let's get intimate, Blogger. It's just you. And me.

I'm depressingly bored. Or, boringly depressed. Either way you put it, I'm not leaping out of bed in the morning. I want to inhabit someone else's life. Take over their size sevens. I've always wanted to have size seven feet.

I'm ready to give in.

Give me the blue house and white picket fence once and for all. Give me the dog and the laundry and the groceries. Let me be satisfied with a life of percolating black coffee every morning, two sugars, one cream, kissing my husband goodbye, saying "Love you, babe" and believing that is all I've ever wanted out of life.

Let me be proud of small accomplishments, a well-hedged lawn, a bed made every morning and turned down every night. No dents in the car, no cracks in my proverbial sidewalk.

I surrender to the expected, to the routine. To the punch of the timeclock every day at the same time. To render ideas with no implementation. To be ineffective but remain jovial. Day in. Day out.

I don't want to be me anymore. It's too hard.

I want to be happy with the circumstances I'm given and never question anything. I want to settle and for once not regret it. I want to be a regular, not a small, not a large. I want to be the safe choice. Please let me live without ever having to know frustration or unmet potential. I don't want to know how things could have been. I want to concede to things I can't change, to accept futures that don't make waves, to live contentedly, concentrating only on being the best ordinary me I can be.

I don't want to grow up and have to be something.

And Blogger, I want this now.

I just want to be overlooked. I'm done with expecting anything other than the reliably pedestrian life that would never, ever, ever include this immutable heartbreak that just won't let me for one god damned day wake up without it.

I'm ready.

Can I get an amen?

Today has already been an inexplicably boring day and it’s not even three o'clock yet. It's raining and all day yesterday my Thursday felt like a Friday, so I don't even have that great, it's Friday thing going on for me. I had a dream last night that I was cheated on, so I woke up in a bad mood and defeated anyways. The drive to work was just stupid. I’m an English major and honestly, that’s the best way I can describe it. So I guess this means only one thing…yep, a post on religion.

I grew up with religion, though not in a very strict sense. It was always there, like a benchwarmer for me, waiting to get in the big game. As of yet, I haven’t had much use for it, though I can’t say for sure I never will. I was confirmed Presbyterian, but that was the last time I actually went to church. The worst thing I can think of is making up your mind about religion without ever going to church. It’s like trying to take the MCAT without ever having cracked Gray’s Anatomy.

I prefer Thomas Paine’s view of “My mind is my own church.” I’m a walking contradiction. A natural born skeptic on one hand, but I do believe nothing is impossible. I guess that romantic part of me is what leaves me open to anything. To the possibility that we can create our own religion and be just as fulfilled as those who choose to belong to someone else's.

Not believing in anything at all would make me sad. I believe in goodwill and conviction and myself. I believe in human compassion. Democracy. Science. Hope. You don’t have to be religious to have faith. For a while there I didn’t know where I fit, I was somewhere between agnostic and atheist, though I really don’t have any clear cut desire to be any one thing.

I think one of my biggest problems with religion is that I don’t like people telling me what to believe. Part of me also feels like people use god or religion as their excuse. My friend died in a car accident because it was part of god’s plan. I am homeless because this is what god wants for me. I murdered him because my religion called for it. That’s just bullshit. Your friend died because someone else was drunk and driving. You're homeless because you can't get a job because your parents didn't make you go to school. You killed him because your DSM-IV test indicates that you're legally insane. It's all about free will. I can't stand when people don't man up to the consequences of their actions and it happens more frequently every day. There is no integrity in placing blame and for me, that's no way to live.

Though the saying “religion is the opiate of the masses” rings particularly true with me, I can see the good in it. When people can’t explain why bad things happen in the world, religion is a good place to turn to. Religion means all is not lost. Religion is hope. I see the worth in it, but it’s just not for me. I see too much potential in the human race and sooner or later, we’ll get it right. To me, that’s much more powerful than any religion.