The view from Bluebeard's castle

Depression has taken a shit on our household. Since my birthday I've been okay - bursting into spontaneous song, looking forward to the future, hugging people and heckling television screens as usual. And even on the shittiest days I wasn't too badly off because, let's face it, I spent a year and a half parting with my spare cash to a Jungian for a practical reason as well as for educational and developmental reasons - I know I have some damagingly melancholic tendencies and I knew that I had to learn to live with them so they wouldn't be damaging no more.

The F-word, however, is still wandering around like a particularly pissed off lost soul. You'd think I understand, right? Sympathize? Oh, but I do. Then when he doesn't demonstrate appreciation of my understanding and my sympathy to my satisfaction, they flip into teeth-gritting annoyance so easily! And if I'm perfectly honest with myself, in the end it all boils down to the ignoble but persistent pissy little thought: 'how can you possibly be so depressed for so long when you have me?!'

And that pissy little thought can be deconstructed even further. Because I can recall the most depressive period of my life, the one where I was living in what felt like a glass box without airholes, and that was around the time that I was living with Bluebeard. Life with him was difficult - he was a difficult person. No doubt about that. But at no time then, and not now either, could I say he caused the depressive state I was in. What I can say is that our ongoing relationship was a symptom of that state. If I wasn't in that state, I would have left him immediately. There might have been some nasty chambers in that castle, but the front door wasn't locked.

Nonetheless, having had that experience makes me paranoid now that our relationship is a symptom of the F-word's depression. I can look at that paranoia and see it's a false comparison - for example, I'm not fucking insane and I have reserves of everyday patience that poor old Bluebeard was never educated to have. But I have the paranoia nonetheless. I have it and it drives me nuts with annoyance when I 'understand' and 'sympathize' with the F-word's depression and it doesn't go away. It takes every particle of my everyday patience to not scream at him to do something about his depression instead of subjecting me to it when I'm so great and understanding and sympathetic and not at all like Bluebeard (am I?), and sometimes the best I can manage is a withdrawal from the situation.

And when I step back from the situation and try to analyze it, like this morning, it drives me nuts with annoyance that we piddly little people have to look at the world and each other through the flawed prism of our narrow little selves. We can sympathize, we can relate, but finally that's the best we can do - relating - and understanding anything beyond our own experience is never a sure or even a good bet. How limited, how frustrating. No wonder people get such a kick out of believing in a God who knows all and sees all, which I would assume would include being able to see through all of our eyes. No wonder Christians dream of going to a heaven where they can share in that. No wonder Buddhists struggle to leave the self behind. Et cetera.

Anyways, I suppose I should go count my blessings as I'm not depressed, not at all, very happy in fact. Melbine, who has not been so very active blogwise, may be less so as her new baby just popped out two weeks ahead of schedule, picture perfect and without a hitch. Sweet - another little Sagittarian to get indignant about the rotten state of this naughty world, and to walk into perfectly visible coffee tables! My cup runneth over.

Whale me if you dare

For all my rampant opinionation, I'm a pacific person. My self-image, which owes a lot to the days when I was fatter, is of a clumsy humpback whale gliding through the ocean, dum dee dum dee dum, mmmmm krill krill krill, dum dee dum, oops, capsized a boat of tourists, dum dee dum, and I reckon I swallowed a dolphin with that last mouthful of krill, shit, dum dee dum. By which I mean to say I know I've hurt a lot of people by accident or due to personal insecurities that engendered some pretty damaging behaviour, but I've rarely attacked anyone in anger.

Before I continue and while I have whales on the brain, I really have to recommend Walking With Beasts (outside of Kenneth Branagh's narration - the world wouldn't have lost much if his vocal cords had been surgically removed after filming the St. Crispin's Day speech in Henry V - ever since that admittedly goosepimply and inspirational bit of celluloid moment he's just sounded like a ponce to me), particularly the episode with the giant carnivorous whales. Get high and imagine if the Japanese would be so anxious to get back to whaling if those massive nasty motherfuckers were sharing the ocean with them. "I know, let's all get on a boat and go shoot at Godzilla." Yeah. It'd be great. Anyways.

My point was that when I get angry, which I do lots, I try to deal with being angry in a non-angry way, which usually works. So it pisses me off when friends make me angry because if we're close enough I can't deal with my anger in a non-angry way, as they tend to notice I'm angry. Thing is, my opinionation is getting more rampant as I age and now some friends are starting to blow my gaskets through - oh fuck, here it goes - the revelation of ongoing behaviour I think is immoral. But who am I to judge their morality, they may say, and then I'll say fuck you, I'm Mistress La Spliffe, and before you know it there's a blow up between me and very dear friends whose ferocity outstrips anything I've approached when dealing with all the cunts who I don't like that litter this naughty world.

I guess my point is that you shouldn't tell me about your naughty behaviour until you've decided to stop it. And that if you'd rather I participated in some sort of rationalization with you instead of bitching you out, well, no. There's a whole industry of mental health professionals you can hire for that. But I'll confess, sometimes I worry I'll run out of couches to crash on if this opinionation drive continues.

But the prettiest sight to see are the papers that will be served at your own front door

It's beginning to look a lot like divorce season. God, what a world. People getting so hard-bitten and cynically practical about their situations and carrying that over to the rest of the world. It makes me think, is that what we're supposed to look like when we grow up? Pursing our bitter lips and putting up with soul-destroying situations because we can count the days until we cut them off and perhaps 'benefit' from them?

Fuck, no. I refuse. I double-dutch refuse. Triple dutch. It feels like some behavioral manifesto has to come out of this year's divorce season for me - can't think exactly what though. Some sort of blend of 'to thine own self be true' and 'do onto others as you would have them do onto you' that I don't quite have the words for yet. 'Do onto others as you would do onto your own true self', I suppose.

There must be a catchier way to put it. Once I find it I plan on opening my own church, or founding my own branch of psychoanalysis.

Getting into the spirit cabinet

Really looking forward to the Christmas break. Was only sort of looking forward to it before as we're heading up to England and my dream was to head somewhere warm, sunny and non-Christian for Christmas. I believe that Jeebus was probably the Word Made Flesh, but come on, we all know he wasn't born in December, let's call a pagan New Years' ritual a pagan New Years' ritual. If the celebrations involved an elaborate ritual of the citizenry stripping naked and chasing a sacrificial greased pig across the snow, ripping it to pieces with their bare hands, roasting it on a fire, and then cunningly releasing a cute little greased piglet from below the ashes while everybody applauds and releases fireworks, then I could really get into it.

As it is - trudging along extremely crowded shopping thoroughfares in the biting Belgian rain, wracking your brain to try to remember if you've already bought your brother John Lennon's 'Rock'n'roll', and buying train or plane tickets during the peak price season, nominally to celebrate the birthday of a guy who was probably actually born in a less fucking shitty month, like August - I think Christmas would be a great season for touring the marijuana plantations of the Chefchaouen region in Morocco. Oh well. I'm just whining, really. I enjoy having family obligations very much - the alternative would be crap. So instead of going to the Rif mountains to get monumentally fucked up in the sun, we're going to fucking Scandinavia, which includes the British Isles whether they or Scandinavia like it or not. It's so fucking dark up there. Sooooo dark.

But I'm looking forward to seeing Mum, and the beauties of the Yorkshire Dales even though they'll only be illuminated by about two hours of daylight, and now also looking forward to a couple of days in London where the F-word, a fanboy, gets to see the terracotta army of the first Chinese emperor and I get to see one of my crazy old friends, and then New Year's, which we're spending with some of the F-word's crazy old friends (and I'm seeing our sweetheart in Oxford, Melbine). AND I won't be working. For nearly two weeks. This is a HUGE deal to me. The last time I didn't work for two weeks was my thesis defense trip, and I had to defend a thesis then, not to mention sleep off a breakdown, so it really didn't count. This is why I came to Europe. The periods of not working and still getting money. Oh, the joy.

That wasn't so bad now was it

Here are the views that convinced me, before I saw the F-word again, before I got a passing grade on my master's thesis, before I returned to Italy and had some ice cream, before I remembered they get five weeks of vacation here, that I would move back to Europe as soon as it was sensible:

It's from Carmen's loft, which she's opened to me when I needed it the most - the thesis, transit weekends away. It's a lovely apartment - an old industrial space that she renovated in such a way that seems to reflect her so much. But I reckon my favourite thing about it, besides her being in it, is the view:

She lives in the south of Paris, south of Montparnasse, in the neighborhood dubbed by some as the most boring in the city. But I love the way you can see from the view that people are stacked on top of each other without the cityscape losing its humanity. That's what made me want to move back so much, or one of the things: in Europe it's conceivable to live well in a city, to have a good life without thinking your carbon footprint is morbidly obese. Of course in Paris it helps to be rich. I couldn't have the life in Paris that I have here in Brussels. We'd have to live either out-of-town or in a tiny shithole.

Madame Pariyorker is soon to become Mlle Pariyorker. The marriage is spinning to a disastrous conclusion, which I spent most of Saturday hearing about. Gah. At least as I heard about it, it was a lovely day and we did some lovely things. Started it at Angelina's, a café on Rivoli that used to be classy and a lesbian hangout but is now an undiscriminating tourist trap, but a classy tourist trap with really great hot chocolate and pastries. We walked through the Tuileries after that, and then through Odéon et cetera and sat in the sun for awhile in the Luxembourg gardens. Luxembourg, I noticed during the chronicle of the Marriage That Won't, has many unattended attractive Gallic types in it that keep trying to catch your eye. Not the standard quality of Parisian drageur. These ones carry serious books, have nice shaggy hair, and don't look like they masturbate/sniff glue/piss behind trees.

Anyways. Feasted on oysters once the F-word made an appearance, and walked some more. Down to Notre Dame in the dark and enjoyed the views through the hours when you can't see the rats scuttling around. Fell asleep. We meant to go to the Musée de Luxembourg which has an Arcimboldo exhibition on, open late on Saturdays, but the reefer and chronic exhaustion had taken their toll.

Next day, Picasso museum for the benefit of the F-word, a fanboy. I got museum exhaustion the second we stepped in, as it was the first Sunday of the month and therefore free and therefore chokkers. Escaped to the Jewish neighborhood on Rue de Rosiers to get some cheesecake for the journey hope - best cheesecake ever, which is to the best as I don't really like cheesecake - and went back to collect the F-word so that we could return to Rosiers and go to L'As de Falafel, another tourist trap with awesome food. However, the falafel was slightly soggy in the middle and therefore no longer the best I'd ever had; it's been supplanted by some hippie-type restaurant in Brugges that uses more sesame seeds.

And that's all I have to say about that. Bluebeard didn't get me and I only imagined I saw him once or twice. I really have to grow the fuck up.