The Way Forward

Shedding/Universal Traveler

Tonight, in the claw-foot tub in my new apartment, I took my first shower in four days.  I never generally look forward to showers, but this one I was especially loath to take.  I expected the water to be cold, the pressure to be puny, and the drafts to be ample, as I only have two regular shower curtains, instead of the three required to provide full wraparound coverage.  I really dislike being wet and cold, exponentially more than I already dislike being merely wet.  Wet is vulnerable.  Cold and wet is debilitating.

I could smell myself all day at work today, though, and I knew I had to shower this evening, no matter how uncomfortable it might be.  It turned out only to be mildly drafty, and not so much more terrible than showers are anyway.  I've had my beers, and I'm in a large, warm sweatshirt, and I'm at peace again. In fact, I'm in an exceptionally good mood.  I've reclaimed my speakers and my music, and they are with me in my bedroom, which is where they make the most sense.  It's like being able to hear music in the most intimate way, without the encumbrance of headphones.  How was I living without them in my bedroom? 

And how was I living without my own space and my own time and my own preferences?  The pleasure afforded me tonight, in this mostly empty apartment, is mostly worth the accompanying loss.  I am comfortable, able to adapt to drafty showers, able to consist on Miller Lite and pretzels.  I needn't have a microwave.  I needn't have a sofa.  I've got my music and the smell of my shampoo, and it's nice not to be wearing any lacy black underthings under this sweatshirt.  It's nice not to be wearing any underthings at all.

In addition, I don't give a motherfuck about what other people think of my taste in music.  I adore the music I adore, and if you don't like it, cool, man, but fucking fuck you for impugning my taste when clearly you have none.  Please, like what you want to like, and dislike what you want to dislike.  Please.  Please do that.  Think for yourself.  Allow yourself to enjoy or hate something for its own merits and according to your own preferences.  I don't give a fuck what you want to listen to.  I also do not need to hear your fucking mouth run about how a professional classical musician thinks my music to be terribly simple.  You wouldn't know better, so shut the motherfuck up.  If you had the capacity to enjoy anything other than bitterness, you might find some of my music to be rather lovely.

Finally, the food stuffs over which I felt sufficient ownership to take with me included: vodka and Party Pizzas from the freezer, tomato juice and Lea & Pearins from the fridge, Spike and Irish Breakfast from the cupboard. 

I've got many friends who can care for me.  Just feel everywhere at home to my role.  It's a brand new day.  Let's go somewhere else. 

Endpoints

I'm fucking sick of all the movies and books and art and "art" nowadays, all trying to tell me that the world consists only of shades of gray.  What?  Seriously, y'all, what the fuck?  Taoism was, like, a total Revelation in ninth fucking grade, back when Pepper Pearson made you listen to the Dead Kennedys in her seriously-not-bitchin' Camero on the way to the JV basketball game where she was a motherfucking CHEERLEADER.  I mean, all that "I adore Thurston Moore, and I dye my hair with crazy wild coloring from the head shop, and yet, here I am in this small town, so I guess I'll have to fuck football players with no table manners, even though all I really want, what I really, really want is a Sk8ter Boi!" bullshit was sorta interesting back then, but I, for one apparently, have certainly gotten the fuck over it.

Therefore, in the-opposite-of-honour of this revelatory revelation that life is complex, and people aren't simple, and art without contradiction is booor-RING and gauche, I offer you some items that dwell in the extremities.  The following are unlikely to be misplaced upon a continuum. . . please feel free to add to the list.

Always right?  Totino's Party Pizza in Pepperoni.
Never right?  Berets.
Always right? Madonna.
Never right?  Jay Leno.

My Role In This

"If we do not respect ourselves, we are on the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses.  On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out--since our self-image is untenable--their false notions of us.  We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: a gist for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness to give.  Of course I will play Francesca to your Paolo, Helen Keller to anyone's Annie Sullivan: no expectation is too misplaced, no role too ludicrous.  At the mercy of those we cannot but hold in contempt, we play roles doomed to failure before they are begun, each defeat generating fresh despair at the urgency of divining and meeting the next demand made upon us."  -- Joan Didion in "On Self-Respect", 1961