domenica, febbraio 19, 2012

Because the greatest kitchen of all is happening to me

What days, readers, what days of fate and change and fear, and I'm not going to write about them. Everything is fine.

I'm distracting myself from what days these are with the new kitchen, which I'm cooking in so constantly you wouldn't think I had a job or another Mandarin exam next Friday. I love this kitchen so much I could puke. Leaving Australia will break my schizo heart someday, partly because of the animals, partly because of the good weather, and now, I'm afraid, because of this kitchen. God, I love it. I guess we can just adopt a general real-estate policy of buying houses or condos with shitty kitchens and ripping them out and putting nice ones in instead. But no other kitchen, of course, will ever be this kitchen, with the fairy wrens singing outside, and the fruit bats hollering, and the water dragons scurrying by - just looked up and saw one now - and this fucking awesome gas range. Oh, this fucking beautiful kitchen. You know when you're in love with someone and you're so happy but the happiness is enescapably tinged with a melancholy that makes it all the sweeter - the melancholic awareness that one day death will seperate you and you have no idea of the emotion you're feeling is actually as eternal as you feel it is, and really only God knows, and you've never felt so realized, and so really you, so powerfully you, but also so absolutely helpless in the hands of fate? Well, I don't feel like that about the kitchen. But it's on the same spectrum, probably.

Anyways, if I love something this much, I think it needs a name. I'm gonna call it Caetano Veloso.

I'm also distracting myself by reading Liasions Dangereuses. Actually, I think I'm re-reading it. But I've got to the point now where I'm honestly not sure, sometimes, when I'm reading a book, if I've read it before. Which is a mercy, really; I'll never run out of good books this way. And re-reading a thing always brings new meaning to it. I have a distant, possibly false memory of mostly thinking LD was just an amusing little book about French people being assholes, but I'm getting a lot more out of it this time.

Well, just one really important thing, actually; if I make a baby girl, I'm gonna make her read this fucking book so she will understand that male charm is just one asset like another, like a big schlong or being able to lift you up, and it's certainly no reason to fall in love with someone or trust them. Also, so that she'll understand it shouldn't be your problem if someone else wants you - just like it's not their problem if they don't want you.

I'm not sure how to address the issue if I make a baby boy, BTW. This is an aspect of Western gender relations I find fascinating - the fairly common phenomenon of women feeling guilty if they don't, or don't want to requite someone's emotions - and the fairly common phenomenon of men feeling sort of victimized and angry if their emotions (yes, a boner is an emotion) aren't requited. I don't say it's always like that, or even that it's the rule it's like that and when it's not, it's an exception. It's just a couple of things that seem to happen an awful lot. And it seems so wrapped up with vanity, childishness, duplicity, guilt, self-loathing, all sorts of awful things . . .
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No wonder "love at first sight" is such a thing people think about it. Wouldn't it make things so beautifully easy if it was always that way? Two people look at each other, and bam. No further discussion, about emotional things anyways, is necessary. There it is. I'm a lazy enough person that I'm pretty sure I wouldn't bother with a love that wasn't at first sight.

3 commenti:

Baywatch ha detto...

Funny, I'm a big skeptic on the love at first sight.

But I think you should give the boy a shot at LD, too.

there's more than just desire going on there. power. language. (mis)representation. performativity.

letters!

Mistress La Spliffe ha detto...

As they say, the plural of anecdote isn't data, but the only love that feels like it's ever worked out for me was at first sight. That's not to say LAFS isn't pretty much crotch-driven but I suspect my cunt, indeed most people's, has a better mainline to the heart than the brain does.

The other times I've reckoned myself in love, it's been exactly that - reckoning - a passage of time, and the emotion growing, me realizing it was there - and in retrospect I'm pretty sure I rationalized myself into it, and hence into a world of fucking annoyance.

I think my partiality to love at first sight has something to do with believing that love and relationships are a real pain in the ass, that it's better to be alone, and that one shouldn't go to all the trouble of being in love and having a relationship unless there's no choice because you've been hit by a thunderbolt. "Falling in love" instead of BAM! - suddenly being in love - just seems so . . . masochistic somehow. Why would anyone do that to themselves?

Anyways, my children, whichever their gender, shall be forcibly showered in abstract cautionary tale novels of myriad description - no problems there. I feel a little sorry for them already. What if they just want to be a plumber? Well, fine, buddy, be a plumber, but you're gonna be a plumber who reads books without pictures.

e.f. bartlam ha detto...

This bit about the emotional aspects of the boner is a good one that deserves more attention.

Sadly, at the moment, I can't string together ten minutes in front of the computer.